A Priority-Based Negotiations Approach for Handling Inconsistencies in Multi-Perspective Software Requirements

Inconsistency of multi-perspective requirements specifications is a pervasive issue during the requirements process. However, managing inconsistency is not just a pure technical problem. It is always associated with a process of interactions and competitions among corresponding stakeholders. The main contribution of this paper is to present a negotiations approach to handling inconsistencies in multi-perspective software requirements. In particular, the priority of requirements relative to each perspective plays an important role in proceeding negotiation over resolving inconsistencies among different stakeholders. An algorithm of generating negotiation proposals and an approach to evaluating proposals are also presented in this paper, respectively.     

The projective plane crossing numbers of circular graphs*

The authors give an upper bound for the projective plane crossing number of a circular graph. Also, the authors prove the projective plane crossing numbers of circular graph C （8, 3） and C （9, 3） are 2 and 1, respectively.     

Web Services Composing by Multiagent Negotiation

Composing web services is gained daily attention in Service Oriented Computing. It includes the dynamic discovery, interaction and coordination of agent-based semantic web services. The authors first follow Function Ontology and Automated Mechanism Design for service agents aggregating. Then the problem is formulated but it is ineffective to solve it from the traditional global view. Because the complexity is NP-complete and it is dii~cult or even impossible to get some personal information. This paper provides a multi-agent negotiation idea in which each participant negotiates under the condition of its reservation payoff being satisfied. Numerical experiment is given and well evaluates the negotiation.     

THE M/M/c QUEUE WITH （e,d） SETUP TIME

The authors present a new queueing model with （e, d） setup time. Using the quasi-birth-and-death process and matrix-geometric method, the authors obtain the stationary distribution of queue length and the LST of waiting time of a customer in the system. Furthermore, the conditional stochastic decomposition results of queue length and waiting time are given.     

PRE-IMAGE ENTROPY OF NONAUTONOMOUS DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS*

The authors define and study topological pre-image entropy for the non-autonomous discrete dynamical systems given by a sequence {fi}i=1^∞ of continuous self-maps of a compact topological space. The basic properties and the invariant with respect to equiconjugacy of pre-image entropy for the non-autonomous discrete dynamical systems are obtained.     

Asymptotic Solution of Activator Inhibitor Systems for Nonlinear Reaction Diffusion Equations

A nonlinear reaction diffusion equations for activator inhibitor systems is considered. Under suitable conditions, firstly, the outer solution of the original problem is obtained, secondly, using the variables of multiple scales and the expanding theory of power series the formal asymptotic expansions of the solution are constructed, and finally, using the theory of differential inequalities the uniform validity and asymptotic behavior of the solution are studied.     

FROM HEDGING TO SPECULATION—AN EXPLANATON BASED ON PROSPECT THEORY*

This paper studies the impact of the reference point on a hedger＇s decision based upon prospect theory and experimental evidence on how prior outcomes affect risky choice. The authors show that in the futures market, a hedger who does not adjust his reference point timely would increase his positions continually as his accumulated losses increase, and finally become a speculator. Numerical simulation results under the normal distribution also lend support to the results. The model can help explain why the hedging behavior of firms turns into speculative activities and can offer some new insights into hedging behavior.     

Testing serial correlation in semiparametric varying coefficient partially linear errors-in-variables model

The authors propose a V _{N, p} test statistic for testing finite-order serial correlation in a semiparametric varying coefficient partially linear errors-in-variables model. The test statistic is shown to have asymptotic normal distribution under the null hypothesis of no serial correlation. Some Monte Carlo experiments are conducted to examine the finite sample performance of the proposed V _{N, p} test statistic. Simulation results confirm that the proposed test performs satisfactorily in estimated size and power. This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 10871217 and 40574003; the Science and Technology Project of Chongqing Education Committee under Grant No. KJ080609; the Doctor's Start-up Research Fund under Grant No. 08-52204; and the Youth Science Research Fund of Chongqing Technology and Business University under Grant No. 0852008.     

ON APPROXIMATION BY REPRODUCING KERNEL SPACES IN WEIGHTED L^p SPACES

In this paper, we investigate the order of approximation by reproducing kernel spaces on （-1, 1） in weighted L^p spaces. We first restate the translation network from the view of reproducing kernel spaces and then construct a sequence of approximating operators with the help of Jacobi orthogonal polynomials, with which we establish a kind of Jackson inequality to describe the error estimate. Finally, The results are used to discuss an approximation problem arising from learning theory.     

FLOCKING OF MULTI-AGENT DYNAMIC SYSTEMS WITH GUARANTEED GROUP CONNECTIVITY*

This paper investigates distributed flocking problem where the information exchange among agents is modeled by the communication topology changing with time. Previous research on this problem establishes group stabilization by assuming that the dynamic topology is connected all the time, which however cannot be guaranteed by most proposed distributed control laws. In this paper, a distributed algorithm to distill a necessary subgraph of the initial communication topology is presented. This subgraph covers all the vertices of the communication topology and is proved to be connected as long as the initial communication topology is connected. A distributed control law is then designed to pursue the flocking motion while preserving all the edges in this subgraph. In this way, connectivity can be preserved all the time, and flocking problem is thus solved only provided the initial communication topology of multi-agent system is connected.     

Inverse Center Location Problem on a Tree

This paper discusses the inverse center location problem restricted on a tree with different costs and bound constraints. The authors first show that the problem can be formulated as a series of combinatorial linear programs, then an O（｜V｜^2 log ｜V｜） time algorithm to solve the problem is presented. For the equal cost case, the authors further give an O（｜V｜） time algorithm.     

TWO-STAGE ESTIMATION FOR SEEMINGLY UNRELATED NONPARAMETRIC REGRESSION MODELS

This paper is concerned with the estimating problem of seemingly unrelated （SU） non- parametric regression models. The authors propose a new method to estimate the unknown functions, which is an extension of the two-stage procedure in the longitudinal data framework. The authors show the resulted estimators are asymptotically normal and more efficient than those based on only the individual regression equation. Some simulation studies are given in support of the asymptotic results. A real data from an ongoing environmental epidemiologie study are used to illustrate the proposed procedure.     

Robust Consensus and Soft Control of Multi-Agent Systems with Noises*

This paper considers the problem of robust consensus for a basic class of multi-agent systems with bounded disturbances and with directed information flow. A necessary and sufficient condition on the robust consensus is first presented, which is then applied to the analysis, control and decision making problems in the noise environments. In particular, the authors show how a soft control technique will synchronize a group of autonomous mobile agents without changing the existing local rule of interactions, and without assuming any kind of connectivity conditions on the system trajectories.     

Remarks on Network Community Properties

This paper discusses a popular community definition in complex network research in terms of the conditions under which a community is minimal, that is, the community cannot be split into several smaller communities or split and reorganized with other network elements into new communities. The result provides a base on which further optimization computation of the quantitative measure for community identification can be realized.     

A multiyear lags input-holding-output model on education with excluding idle capital

This paper develops a multi-year lag Input-Holding-Output (I-H-O) Model on education with exclusion of the idle capital to address the reasonable education structure in support of a sustainable development strategy in China. First, the model considers the multiyear lag of human capital because the lag time of human capital is even longer and more important than that of fixed capital. Second, it considers the idle capital resulting from the output decline in education, for example, student decrease in primary school. The new generalized Leonitief dynamic inverse is deduced to obtain a positive solution on education when output declines as well as expands. After compiling the 2000 I-H-O table on education, the authors adopt modifications-by-step method to treat nonlinear coefficients, and calculate education scale, the requirement of human capital, and education expenditure from 2005 to 2020. It is found that structural imbalance of human capital is a serious problem for Chinese economic development. This research was supporting by the Key Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 60874119, Innovation Funds of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Research Fund for Humanities and Social Sciences in colleges under Grant No. 06BJY102, Key project in Jiangxi Soft Science Project under Grant No. [2006]188, Jiangxi Research Fund for Humanities and Social Sciences in colleges under Grant No. 03JJ01, and Henan Research Fund for Humanities and Social Sciences in colleges under Grant No. 2008-ZD-002.     

A modified likelihood ratio test for homogeneity in bivariate normal mixtures of two samples

This paper investigates the asymptotic properties of a modified likelihood ratio statistic for testing homogeneity in bivariate normal mixture models of two samples. The asymptotic null distribution of the modified likelihood ratio statistic is found to be χ₂², where χ₂² is a chi-squared distribution with 2 degrees of freedom. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 10661003, SRF for ROCS, SEM under Grant No. [2004]527, and the Natural Science Foundation of Guangxi under Grant No. 0728092.     

A STAGE-STRUCTURED SI ECO-EPIDEMIOLOGICAL MODEL WITH TIME DELAY AND IMPULSIVE CONTROLLING*

This paper formulates a robust stage-structured SI eco-epidemiological model with periodic constant pulse releasing of infectious pests with pathogens. The authors show that the conditions for global attractivity of the ＇pest-eradication＇ periodic solution and permanence of the system depend on time delay, hence, the authors call it ＂profitless＂. Further, the authors present a pest management strategy in which the pest population is kept under the economic threshold level （ETL） when the pest population is uniformly persistent. By numerical analysis, the authors also show that constant maturation time delay for the susceptible pests and pulse releasing of the infectious pests can bring obvious effects on the dynamics of system.     

A low order nonconforming anisotropic finite element approximation to parabolic problem

A low order nonconforming finite element is applied to the parabolic problem with anisotropic meshes. Both the semidiscrete and fully discrete forms are studied. Some superclose properties and superconvergence are obtained through some novel approaches and techniques. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 10671184.     

Nonmonotonic Reduced Projected Hessian Method Via an Affine Scaling Interior Modified Gradient Path for Bounded-Constrained Optimization

The authors propose an affine scaling modified gradient path method in association with reduced projective Hessian and nonmonotonic interior backtracking line search techniques for solving the linear equality constrained optimization subject to bounds on variables. By employing the QR decomposition of the constraint matrix and the eigensystem decomposition of reduced projective Hes- sian matrix in the subproblem, the authors form affine scaling modified gradient curvilinear path very easily. By using interior backtracking line search technique, each iterate switches to trial step of strict interior feasibility. The global convergence and fast local superlinear/quadratical convergence rates of the proposed algorithm are established under some reasonable conditions. A nonmonotonic criterion should bring about speeding up the convergence progress in some ill-conditioned cases. The results of numerical experiments are reported to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.     

Recognition of Structure Similarities in Proteins

Protein fold structure is more conserved than its amino acid sequence and closely associated with biological function, so calculating the similarity of protein structures is a fundamental problem in structural biology and plays a key role in protein fold classification, fold function inference, and protein structure prediction. Large progress has been made in recent years in this field and many methods for considering structural similarity have been proposed, including methods for protein structure comparison, retrieval of protein structures from databases, and ligand binding site comparison. Most of those methods can be available on the World Wide Web, but evaluation of all the methods is still a hard problem. This paper summarizes some popular methods and latest methods for structure similarities, including structure alignment, protein structure retrieval, and ligand binding site alignment.