Fingerprints, as one of the most widely used biometric modalities, can be used to identify and distinguish between genders. Gender classification is very important in reducing the time when investigating criminal offenders and gender impersonation. In this work, we use deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to not only classify fingerprints by gender, but also identify individual hands and fingers. Transfer learning is employed to speed up the training of the CNN. The CNN achieves an accuracy of 75.2%, 93.5%, and 76.72% for the classification of gender, hand, and fingers, respectively. These results obtained using our publicly available Sokoto Coventry Fingerprint Dataset (SOCOFing) serve as benchmark classification results on this dataset.

Organisations now frequently rely on virtual collaboration through the use of computer technology. After a sequence of meetings, participants may only need to refer to the most important points rather than the whole meeting proceedings. This paper addresses the need for automated meeting summarisation in virtual meeting systems. An extraction approach to summarisation is adopted and a new algorithm is proposed by extending the TextRank algorithm to include constructs representing the structure of the meeting. This helps extract the most relevant sentences from the meeting transcript. The proposed method was evaluated in the context of student-tutor meetings. Results show that harnessing and utilising the structure of a virtual meeting can lead to more relevant automated summaries.

This paper proposes a new model for data access and sharing within a spatial data infrastructure. Spatial data infrastructure, often proposed at national level, refers to the enabling of wider access to geographical data so that better knowledge can be generated to promote social, environmental and economic benefits. A good spatial data infrastructure includes people, policies, tools, methods and data. Many national spatial data infrastructure projects have included a clearing house, where meta-data can be searched in order to discover digital resources. While this approach can have certain advantages, there are also problems. Particularly the centralised clearing house has been shown to be hard to realise. In this paper, instead of a centralised top-down approach, we advocate a scalable, bottom-up distributed approach as the core of a spatial data infrastructure and demonstrate its feasibility. The advantage of this approach is that the spatial data infrastructure can grow organically without the need of a centralised entity and thus access to spatial data can be achieved sooner bringing with it environmental and economic benefits. We show how quality and security can be maintained within the approach. The National Geospatial Data Infrastructure (NGDI) project of Nigeria, together with the application area of environmental impact analysis, is used as a case study.

Plagiarism detection is gaining increasing importance due to requirements for integrity in education. In this paper, we have developed a new integrated approach for extrinsic plagiarism detection. The proposed approach is based on four well-known models namely Bag of Words (BOW), Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), Stylometry and Support Vector Machines (SVM). The proposed approach works by capturing usage patterns of the most common words (MCW) from books of 25 authors. Stylistic features for each author were harnessed in the method by adjusting the LSA weighting technique. The adjusted LSA method was trained in a novel manner using the leave-one-out-cross-validation technique and compared with the traditional LSA method. The results have shown that the enhanced weighting method of the adjusted LSA outperforms the traditional LSA method.

With exponential growth of the Internet users in past few years, there is a need of context-aware information sharing among different inter-connected entities over the Internet. The prime objective of the inter-connected objects is that within a minimum use of available resources, maximum output with respect to parameters such as throughput and delay can be achieved. But, due to high velocity and irrelevant information propagation, there may be a performance degradation in some part of the network with respect to these parameters. To address these issues, we have designed novel algorithms for context-aware information propagation among the vehicles. The proposed scheme consists of algorithms for data access, data dissemination, and data suggestion. These algorithms are based on reliability of vehicle which is calculated as soon as vehicles enter the network and is updated after each successful execution of various operations of information propagation. The scheme works on by increasing the reliability which in turn solve the broadcast storm problem in which sometime irrelevant information may also be sent to the vehicles. Simulation results prove the merit of the proposed scheme over the other existing schemes with respect to parameters such as message overhead, connectivity ratio, and resources utilization.

In this paper we investigate the Affective Trajectories Hypothesis in an educational context, and its possible implications on Affective Computing. Using the results from an online survey we try to explore the relationships of the Affective Trajectories basic elements, namely one's current affective state, prediction of the future, and experienced outcomes following this prediction, with a set of education related emotions. The relations of these elements with flow, excitement, calm, boredom, stress, confusion, frustration and neutral linguistic emotional labels are presented and discussed. Their predictive power is evaluated by using these elements as inputs to different classification systems, and observing their performance in mapping different combinations of those elements to specific emotion labels. A data-driven fuzzy approach is utilized in order to linguistically model the underlying relations between the emotions, and the basic elements, by creating easily interpretable fuzzy rule bases. In our research we suggest that the basic elements are combined in a personalized way in order for an individual to choose a specific emotion label to describe his affective state. For this reason a fuzzy adaptive approach is also implemented, in order to demonstrate the importance of individual differences in this process, and the benefits of having a personalized system that can perpetuate modelling of emotional trajectories over learning tasks. Finally an overview and a basic implementation of an affective computing system which uses these elements are presented, and future research directions discussed.

Optimization of data intensive applications is affected greatly by the nature of the platform, the distributed file system, the co-location of data and programs, and the proximity of resources. Data intensive applications running on a public cloud have been shown to exhibit degraded performance compared to a private cluster. This performance degradation is as a result of the inefficient resource allocation adopted in a virtualized, volatile and multi-tenancy environment such as a cloud. The placement of virtual machines is critical for improving performance in geo-clouds environment. We address degradation in performance by designing a scheduling algorithm that dynamically distributes virtual machines based on the characteristics of the job, the network characteristics and the real time performance of the data centers. Our algorithm also finds the best node(s) to host virtual machines that will yield maximum resource utilization and minimize bandwidth consumption. Our results show that incorporating these characteristics in a resource scheduling algorithm increases the performance of data intensive application than known traditional scheduling.

ABSTRACT CCM/CCMP is a two‐cycle authenticate and encrypt (AE) mode. One cycle is used to perform confidentiality computations, and the second cycle is used to compute authenticity and integrity. CCM/CCMP is also a generic composition. CCM/CCMP is actually made up of two separate modes, CBC‐MAC and AES counter mode amalgamated together. Although CCM/CCMP is an AE mode, it is not an authenticated encryption with associated data (AEAD) mode. Previous research has suggested that it is a major deficiency for an AE mode not to be an AEAD. Previous critiques of the CCM/CCMP have shown that CBC‐MAC and AES counter mode were poorly amalgamated to create the CCM/CCMP. They also showed that CCMP, which was ratified by the IEEE 802.11i workgroup in 2003 and implemented in WPA2, has some security issues. It also has some major efficiency and complexity issues. This research work reviewed the current major AE and AEAD modes such as the Galois counter mode, and the encryption system with keyed integrity and managed oracle and used critical analysis and statistical analysis approaches to identify more deficiencies in the CCM/CCMP. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Software developers produce a significant amount of knowledge, everyday facing a significant amount of engineering challenges and resolving them using a significant number of information resources. Once the task that they are facing is complete and the results of their effort are embedded into the source code this knowledge is very rarely shared with the software development community. As a consequence other software developers when faced with the same or similar problem have to solve it by themselves wasting a significant amount of time and resources every day. This paper proposes a Collaborative Information Recommender (CIR) system which intends to address the problem outlined above and facilitate the exchange of information between software developers. The proposed CIR system not only supports a direct reuse of the code related information found by other developers but also supports the creation and management of very problem focused social and knowledge networks.

In order to enhance students' problem-solving competences it is necessary to develop their technical skill as well as their soft skills such as business, communication and team working. In this paper, we present an Activity-Led Learning (ALL) approach and analyze its impact on students' engagement (time-on-task), satisfaction and group performance. We propose a Group Performance Model (GPM) to deploy ALL effectively in the master-level, Network Planning and Management, module. The model provides a structure within which students are introduced to the ALL pedagogical methodology. The model systematically helps to facilitate group formation and allows group integration and cooperation by developing `common ground' amongst group members. In order to evaluate the usage of GPM in ALL, we conducted group performance analysis using a fuzzy rule-based classification model. The results of the analysis showed that the application of GPM resulted in a reduction in overall time spent on tasks, while achieving better grades. This indicates that GPM can help groups to develop common ground, coordinate their activities and overcome inter-personal issues to achieve better overall performance in shorter times as opposed to groups in which GPM has not been applied. Students' direct feedback on module also shows the effectiveness of ALL on students' performance in general.

One of the main challenges in search engine quality of service is how to satisfy the needs and the interests of individual users. This raises the fundamental issue of how to identify and select the information that is relevant to a specific user. This concern over generic provision and the lack of search precision have provided the impetus for the research into Web Search personalisation. In this paper a hybrid user profiling system is proposed - a combination of explicit and implicit user profiles for improving the web search effectiveness in terms of precision and recall. The proposed system is content-based and implements the Vector Space Model. Experimental results, supported by significance tests, indicate that the system offers better precision and recall in comparison to traditional search engines.

Virtual meeting environments are providing a viable alternative for conventional meetings bringing benefits of reduced costs and better use of time by removing the need for attendees to travel to national, international or global locations in order to attend meetings. This paper builds on the work of previous papers which discussed the functional and technical requirements for a virtual meeting system, reporting on a user trial and evaluating the prototype system. The trial was performed by students as users deploying the prototype for collaboration in group work focussed on the design of a computer system as part of the final year of their undergraduate study. The users were asked to comment on the features of the prototype as well as offering suggestions on useful features that should be included in a virtual meeting system. A summary of their comments and suggestions and the results of the evaluation are included in the paper. Security aspects of virtual meeting systems are also considered in some detail.

Even though there exists a number of search solutions targetted at software engineers the literature suggests that they are not widely used by the people engaged in code delivery [26]. Moreover, current code focused information retrieval systems such as Google Code Search (discontinued), Codeplex or Koders produce results based on specific keywords and therefore they do not take into account user context such as location, browsing history, previous interaction patterns and domain expertise. In this paper we discuss the development of task-specific information retrieval systems for software engineers. We discuss how software engineers interact with information and information retrieval systems and investigate to what extent a domain-specific search and recommendation system can be developed in order to support their work related activities. We have conducted a user study: a questionnaire and an automated observation of user interactions with the browser and software development environment. We discuss factors that can be used as implicit feedback indicators for further collaborative filtering and discuss how these parameters can be analysed using Computational Intelligence based techniques.

Many enterprises rely on a wide variety of collaborative applications in order to support their everyday activities and to share resources. The collaborative applications are typically designed from scratch if the existing applications do not meet the enterprise's evolving needs. This incurs significant costs, and inconvenience. In this paper we present a case study of six applications (Sage 200, Gold-Vision CRM system, E-Commerce System, Gold-Vision Connect System, Realex Transaction and Spindle Document Automation Tool) within an enterprise. These applications are working in isolation. Therefore, sharing of information and data among these applications is carried out manually which imposes additional burden on their users and causes performance degradation. In this paper, we address this problem by integration and optimization of these applications. We also address the usability problems of these applications. We present comparative evaluation results that show significant improvement in ease and performance of user tasks using integrated applications.

In order to enhance students' problem-solving competences it is necessary to develop their technical skill as well as their soft skills such as business, communication and team working. In this paper, we introduce an Activity-Led Learning (ALL) approach and analyze its impact on students' engagement (time-on-task), satisfaction and group performance. We also propose a Group Performance Model (GPM) in order to deploy ALL successfully in the master-level module, Network Planning and Management. The model facilitates group formation and allows group integration and cooperation by developing `common ground' amongst group members. This paper also presents students evaluation from two perspectives; students direct feedback on the module and indirect measures based on common ground and Task Performance Time (TPT) analysis.

An important aspect of redesign for usability is to evaluate the system with its real users in order to identify key areas for improvement. In this paper we discuss the redesign of a project management system using a user-centred design methodology. The system is used by a wide range of users; academic staff, students, external clients and administrative staff. The original system was not fulfilling its needs as it had not captured work practices in a way that was recognizable to the users. The advantages of the redesign included: improved usefulness; improved efficiency and productivity; reduced learning time; improved usability; and increased acceptance among users. We evaluated the current system and analysed work practices using a user-centred design and evaluation philosophy. We present comparative evaluation results that show significant improvements in performance of user tasks for the redesigned project management system.

Web services have capabilities that make them suitable to meet the requirements posed by collaborative editing applications (CEAs). In this paper we describe how AuTrA(Adaptable user defined Transaction relaxing Approach), a system for composing web applications that allows user-specified varying of transaction characteristics, can be usefully applied to collaborative editing. We show how the application of AuTrA can be efficacious for business processing by increasing work throughput. A major feature of AuTrA is support for relaxation of any ACID property of transactions in certain circumstances.

This paper is concerned with the issue of low quality of web search results and ways of improving it. Information sources are exponentially increasing on the web and are making it increasingly difficult to get relevant information. The quality of web search results depends on two factors: the information needs of the users and the searching techniques. In order to improve the quality of search results it is necessary to have information about user requirements. This paper attempts to address the issue of low quality of web search results through the user profiling technique, where the profiles can be explicitly specified or implicitly generated. The proposed approach in this paper is based on explicit user profiles. The implemented system allows users to create, save, remove and update profiles based on their changing information needs and preferences. Preliminary experimental results indicate that the system produces more refined results based on explicit user profiles when compared to traditional search methods.

The high cost of air travel and accommodation together with the increasing capacity and speed of internet networks has resulted in large multinational companies considering virtual meetings as an alternative to face-to-face meetings. The hardware and software to support virtual meetings is becoming more sophisticated and more accessible, as some Hotel Chains are offering the facility to businesses as part of their portfolio of services. With the rise in popularity of this type of meeting environment the need for a facilitator to co-ordinate this type of activity has become more acute but the technology to support this has lagged behind. With the emergence of the Virtual Design Office as a response to multi-cultural design teams working on global projects the need for virtual meetings becomes more important in time critical situations. This paper presents work that has been completed in developing the requirements for an agent based virtual meeting support system, with particular emphasis on the role of the facilitator.

Security methods based on biometrics are gaining importance increasingly for the past few years due to several major security disasters that occurred in the last decade. The successful development of biometric security systems cannot only minimise such threats but may also help in preventing them from happening on a global scale. Biometric security methods take into account humans' unique physical or behavioural traits that help to identify them based on their intrinsic characteristics. Such characteristics are usually obscure due to low quality images produced by Surveillance camera. In this paper, we propose an image enhancement method based on contrast enhancement and colour balancing methods in order to improve the quality of the images. We have improved the colour balancing method significantly in order to get better performance. The proposed method has been applied to the enhancement of low quality images produced by surveillance cameras. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by applying three face detection methods to surveillance images before and after enhancement using the proposed method. The results show a significant improvement in face detection when the proposed method was applied.

GridSim is a well known and useful open software product through which users can simulate a Grid environment. At present Qualities of Service are not modeled in GridSim. When utilising a Grid a user may wish to make decisions about type of service to be contracted. For instance performance and security are two levels of service upon which different decisions may be made. Subsequently during operation a grid may not be able to fulfill its contractual obligations. In this case renegotiation is necessary. This paper describes an extension to GridSim that enables various Qualities of Service to be modeled together with Service Level Agreements and renegotiation of contract with associated costs. The extension is useful as it will allow users to make better estimates of potential costs and will also enable grid service suppliers to more accurately predict costs and thus provide better service to users.

An important aspect of Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) is augmenting people and environments with computational resources which provide information and services unobtrusively whenever and wherever required. In line with the vision of UbiComp, we have developed a multi-user location-awareness system by following a user-centred design and evaluation method. In this paper we discuss the development of such a system that allows users to share informative feedback about their current geographical location. The proposed system can be used by various users, for example family members, relatives or a group of friends, in order to share the information related to their locations and to interact with each other. It is intended that this type of system in the future will become a typical part of the Smart Home environment.

This paper addresses a need to increase competitiveness in design chains. Designers are focusing their efforts in the reduction of a number of factors: product development time, engineering change costs, and pilot run time. The approach in this study provides flexibility of New Product Design for Small Series Production. The work focuses on the use postponement design to enable quick response and cost effectiveness. The field studied is luggage design. An evaluation procedure is proposed which will adjust component specifications to increase their degree of availability and substitution. Practical simulations are applied in a luggage design center. The contribution of this work is to shorten the lead-time of design operations and to thereby reduce costs and increase competitiveness.

This paper presents an agent based computational model in order to address the long acknowledged problem of translating ethnographic findings into system design. This model is based on an ethnographic framework consisting of three dimensions, distributed coordination, awareness of work and plans and procedures; and the BDI (belief, desire and intention) model of intelligent agents. The ethnographic framework is used to organise ethnographically derived information into the three dimensions; whereas the BDI model allows the information to be mapped onto the concepts of multi-agent systems. Focusing on a case study, the usefulness of the proposed model is demonstrated by showing that ethnographic accounts can systematically inform system design and development. Evaluation and generalisability of the model is discussed in the paper.

Underwater images are affected by reduced contrast and non-uniform colour cast due to the absorption and scattering of light in the aquatic environment. This affects the quality and reliability of image processing and therefore colour correction is a necessary pre-processing stage. In this paper, we propose an Unsupervised Colour Correction Method (UCM) for underwater image enhancement. UCM is based on colour balancing, contrast correction of RGB colour model and contrast correction of HSI colour model. Firstly, the colour cast is reduced by equalizing the colour values. Secondly, an enhancement to a contrast correction method is applied to increase the Red colour by stretching red histogram towards the maximum (i.e., right side), similarly the Blue colour is reduced by stretching the blue histogram towards the minimum (i.e., left side). Thirdly, the Saturation and Intensity components of the HSI colour model have been applied for contrast correction to increase the true colour using Saturation and to address the illumination problem through Intensity. We compare our results with three well known methods, namely Gray World, White Patch and Histogram Equalisation using Adobe Photoshop. The proposed method has produced better results than the existing methods.

An important aspect of redesign for usability is to evaluate the system with its real users in order to explore implications for better design. In this paper we discuss the redesign of a support management system deployed in a small and medium sized enterprise (SME) in the UK. The system is used to support complex and distributed cooperative activities taking place in the SME. We evaluate the current system and analyse work practices using a user-centred design and evaluation philosophy. Following that we discuss how user needs are incorporated into the enhanced design of the support management system. The user-centred design techniques used in this research include interviews, questionnaires, observations and user tests. Finally, we present comparative evaluation results that show significant improvement in performance of user tasks using the redesigned support management system.

This paper examines how web services can be used to aid co-operative working for design applications, particularly with regard to transaction management. Design applications classically are long running. Users typically check documents out to work on them, and then check them back in later. While checked out other users cannot work on them. We propose a model which will increase throughput. We achieve this by optionally relaxing all ACID properties. The model will be adaptive to meet different situations with different characteristics. For instance in some cases it will be appropriate to just relax atomicity. In others it may be appropriate to relax isolation and atomicity while maintaining consistency. In our model we will explore how far ACID properties of a transaction and combinations thereof can be relaxed in collaborating design applications whilst still maintaining a reliable user service. The proposed model can be used in many areas of application.

In an increasingly sophisticated global business environment there is often a need to be able to bring together professionals from all types of organizations from all over the world. Those professionals operate under severe time constraints and a conventional face-to-face meeting is both impractical and expensive. Virtual meetings have proved to be a convenient alternative, offering a flexible meeting domain more suitable for the busy executive. This paper explores the concept of using a peer-to-peer network and multi-agent systems to facilitate virtual meetings, managing the artifacts required for the session. By the use of a laptop, PDA or similar electronic device the meeting participant can join the meeting and collaborate in the discussion.

Grid computing provides the infrastructure needed to access and benefit from distributed resources through virtual organizations. Grids will be a vital part in the execution of applications, such as complex simulations. They will also carry applications that need large computational power. Such Grids are called computational grids. Some applications on the grid will expect benefit from services that might be time or content specific and will therefore need to adhere to a strict set of guidelines for their operation, these guidelines are referred to as qualities of services (QoS). Even though they were extensively researched for Web Services, there is still much work to be done to implement QoS on grid services. This aim of this paper is to explain what QoS's are vital for a grid service, how they would enhance its operation and how they are to be delivered and guaranteed.

QoS is an issue of intrinsic importance in service oriented applications. Although many service oriented applications deliver their promised services yet it is rather difficult for them to maintain the QoS from user perspective. In this paper we develop an approach based on multi-agent system that helps to achieve the desired level of QoS by negotiating and coordinating between agents at the application layer. These service oriented applications may use the Web services of an agent based service in order to realize a service oriented architecture. In this paper, we propose an agent based approach to address QoS issues in service oriented applications. This approach is based on a unified framework that is applicable to both Web services and agent based services.

This paper presents some reflection upon the use of a flexible scenario-based method for the assessment of a third level module in databases in a UK university. The method is designed to encourage problem-solving skills amongst students by carrying out scenario-based assessments which are highly flexible. By the use of this method, we intend to address the surface learning strategy demonstrated by many students - a problem identified by many studies in higher education. The method is applied to assess the intended learning outcomes and performance of students. The key benefits of this method are its applicability to courses with large cohorts, flexibility and time saving in marking. In this paper, we report our experience of using the technique of scenario-based learning as a key pedagogical method for assessing practical databases issues concerning data protection, data legislations and object-oriented databases.

This paper takes a holistic view of computer supported cooperative systems and considers the subsystems that may be required. Some research projects in a variety of relevant areas are described. In particular a research project in the area of information retrieval of the hidden web is presented from the viewpoint of facilitating the provision of better knowledge for computer supported cooperative systems.

One of the major issues in dealing with exceptions in open multi-agent systems (MAS) is lack of uniform representation of exceptions and their shared semantics. In the absence of a uniform framework different business organization may use different representations for the same exception or may interpret the same exception in different way. In order to address this issue we present an ontological approach to provide a uniform way of representing and interpreting exceptions in cross-organizational settings. This helps agents from different organizations to interpret exceptional situations in an unambiguous way and exchange exception related information using standard structures. We believe that exception ontology along with domain ontology increases the open MAS reliability and also enhances its fault tolerance capability.

Design for emerging technologies such as ubiquitous computing, calm technology and Grid computing requires knowledge and expertise from different disciplines. Such knowledge helps to improve our individual information processing resources and thus overcome our limitations. However, integrating design knowledge and expertise of different team members coming from different disciplines is a complex task. Today, we are facing two problems. Firstly, how to enable the multidisciplinary design team to solve problems given the need to build common ground amongst team members? Secondly, how to structure the information which is held about projects so that issues can be progressed and resolved, in particular those arising as a result of the diversity of team members. In this paper, we propose an approach based on common ground theory and IBIS (Issue Based Information System) to address issues encountered by the multidisciplinary team and to enable the decision making process. We also provide a means of evaluating the approach by using statistical analysis.

Multi-agent systems (MAS) are one of the complex applications of distributed artificial intelligence. They are prone to different kinds of exception due to their characteristic of operating in a complex and dynamic environment. The dynamism and unpredictable nature of an open environment gives rise to unpredictable exceptions. It becomes essential to have some exception diagnosis mechanisms in place to be able to diagnose the cause of such exceptions and to execute proper recovery plans. These mechanisms do come with some overheads. In this paper, we present an empirical evaluation of our proposed sentinel based approach to exception diagnosis in an open MAS and also discuss the trade offs in using a sentinel based approach to exception diagnosis in an MAS.

While we have seen a successful move towards a rapid proliferation of CSCW integration through Web technology including artificial intelligence techniques, still a significant work needs to be done in order to provide quality of service (QoS), particularly addressing the issues of QoS in terms of user requirements. In this paper, we present an approach based on ethnography and multi-agents systems to address these issues in an effective way by mapping a user mental model onto agents. We apply ethnographic approach in order to understand and explain the semantics, functionality and detailed user requirements of CSCW systems. Secondly, we employ artificial intelligent agents for communication and collaboration purposes based on user profile and preferences. In this paper, we also demonstrate the use/illness of this approach by presenting a real life case study of two CSCW (computer supported cooperative work) systems

Collaborative working projects require information to be shared between participants. That information can take many forms and is usually stored digitally making it possible to be processed by computers. The introduction of peer-to-peer computing made it possible to share whole files between individuals which was typified by Napster allowing music files (e.g. MP3) for personal use to be transferred between two Internet users. This provided an opportunity for collaborative working projects to use peer-to-peer as a means of supporting this sharing of information. The use of XML opens up the prospect of processing data structures as well as whole files in a peer-to-peer environment. Tools have emerged and are now being refined to allow information to be passed between peers in XML format. This paper looks at one of these tools, JXTA from the SUN Corporation and applies it specifically to collaborative working. Through the experience gained by the development of a prototype the extent that JXTA and XML meets the challenges thrown up by collaborative working will be examined

The advantages of service-oriented architecture for information systems development have increased its popularity and improved service availability over the Internet. In order to maintain its sustainability and prevent users from exploiting free services, a service-oriented market mechanism should be introduced to regulate the market. However, this issue has not been well addressed in the community. In this work, we propose core-based agents that can collect information from service-oriented markets to convince service providers and consumers to form a coalition based on the core concept solution from game theory. With the introduction of the agent to the service-oriented market, a number of multiple core markets can be merged into a virtual market with a unique core which satisfies the requirements of stability and efficiency. An example of a travel agent web service, which is a composite web service, will be used to illustrate the roles of the agents in this paper.

Hidden Web databases maintain a collection of specialised documents, which are dynamically generated in response to users' queries. The categorisation of such databases into a set of predefined categories has been widely employed to assist users in their information searches. In this paper we present a technique that automatically categorises a document database through its content summary and concepts described by their specificity and coverage. Experimental results show that our approach categorises databases with a larger number of relevant categories.

Open multi-agent systems (MAS) are decentralised and distributed systems that consist of large number of loosely coupled autonomous agents. Data and control in such systems is highly distributed. In the absence of centralised control they tend to be difficult to manage, especially in an open environment, which is a dynamic, complex, distributed and unpredictable. This dynamism and uncertainty of an open environment gives rise to unexpected plan failures. In this paper we focus on the process of diagnosing causes of exceptions in failed plan. We apply our proposed sentinel agent based architecture in order to diagnose a plan's actions failure interactively. Once an exception is detected the sentinel agents involve in a dialogue with associated agents using Agent Communication Language (ACL) messages in order to obtain relevant information. This information consists of abstract knowledge about the failed plan and knowledge about agents' mental attitudes regarding the failed plan. The sentinel agent then uses this abstract knowledge and agent's mental attitudes to diagnose the underlying cause of the plan failure. Agents voluntarily inform the sentinel about their mental state regarding the failed plan.

The larger amount of information on the Web is stored in document databases and is not indexed by general-purpose search engines (i.e., Google and Yahoo). Such information is \ndynamically generated through querying databases — which are \nreferred to as Hidden Web databases. Documents returned in \nresponse to a user query are typically presented using templategenerated Web pages. This paper proposes a novel approach that identifies Web page templates by analysing the textual contents and the adjacent tag structures of a document in order to extract query-related data. Preliminary results demonstrate that our approach effectively detects templates and retrieves data with high recall and precision.

This paper reports on the need for integration and different aspects of interoperability in CSCW. This is a part of our research towards investigating and developing an integrative framework for CSCW applications. The framework will enable different applications to communicate with each other to share information and to support organizational activities. It will be flexible enough to accommodate the various and varying needs of the user community. We discuss different types of integration and interoperability in CSCW and consider different models of CSCW systems. A framework for CSCW integration is presented. The framework includes ontological, coordination, user interface, security and transaction models. An example application scenario involving integration is given. The work is novel as no integrative framework for CSCW exists currently.

Exception handling in a multi-agent system (MAS) has not been well addressed compared to other software engineering paradigms. This results in part from the lack of a comprehensive classification of exceptions in MAS. The interaction between agents presents exceptions that cannot be addressed by the exception handling techniques used in traditional software engineering systems due to the introduction of the notions of sociability and autonomy. This paper attempts to provide an insight of agent exceptions by dividing them into three levels, namely environmental, knowledge and social level. The use of a temporal dimension in the form of explicit deadlines in communicative acts is presented as a means of clarifying and facilitating exception analysis at a social level. Comments are made on related work and areas for further work are identified.

Web-based engineering design activities require fault tolerance and concurrent access to shared resources such as databases and Web servers. Such activities are generally dynamic, cooperative, long-lived, interactive, and non-prescriptive. We propose a new multi-agent transaction model, which is based on extended transactions and multi-agent technologies. The novelty of this model is that it automatically customises transactions to the requirements of the design activities. In addition, this model is believed to improve concurrency and fault tolerance, facilitate interaction and co-operation of participating systems involved in design activities.

S. Conrad, W. Hasselbring, A. James, D. Kambur, R.-D. Kutsche, P. Thiran; Report on the EFIS 2001 Workshop, The Computer Journal, Volume 45, Issue 2, 1 January

One feature of concurrent engineering is the notion of distributed design, and the ability to communicate changes to all participating disciplines. However, successful engineering design is constrained by the complexities of the design activity. The differences in system architectures or methodologies, the diverse knowledge and information generated by these distributed disciplines, all compounded by the problems of coordinating the communication process, reduce the reflectiveness of distributed design. Current thinking indicates that multi-agent systems (MASs) could alleviate this complex and large engineering design problem. A drawback of these approaches is the failure to recognise the significance of agent autonomy and proactiveness. In this paper, it is suggested that agent attributes such as proactiveness and autonomy are ideally suited to resolving these problems. They provide a more flexible and dynamic approach to multiple disciplines situated within distributed design environments, which can reduce the number of redundant design activities and thereby reduce the coordination management required and the number of design versions. It is proposed that an agent-based framework incorporating CORBA technology should be used to maximise the proactive nature of autonomous design agents.

The NHS in the UK recognizes six levels of IT adoption in healthcare systems. Most current healthcare systems are at Level 1 (clinical administrative data), with some notable specialized exceptions. The telematic system for oncology is at Level 6 (advanced multimedia and telematics). Oncology is a particularly complicated area, as it draws on most of the other diagnostic systems and also has a number of different treatment regimes, each of which may have their own system. Relevant information is extracted from the underlying systems on a regular basis and stored on a server that can be accessed by various parties. Regarding the electronic health record (EHR), a centralized national directory would need to be in place to show the locations of individual electronic patient records (EPRs). In order to clearly capture and specify the requirements of the telematic system for oncology, it was decided that a framework based on Ariadne, especially designed for describing computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) should be used. The use of such a framework captures the workflow, clearly showing the tasks of each actor within the processes, as well as the resources needed by each actor. The Ariadne framework was developed as part of a European ESPRIT research project (No. 6225) which studied computational notations for representing CSCW. Ariadne can be considered as a notation for defining a multi-agent architecture for supporting articulation work among cooperating actors.