Open systems are usually understood as a small Hamiltonian system (i.e. with a finite number of degrees of freedom) in contact with one or several large reservoirs. There are several ways to model reservoirs and we will take the point of view that the reservoirs are also Hamiltonian systems themselves. It is a convenient physical and mathematical idealization to separate scales and assume that ...

E-institutions are envisioned as facilities on the Internet for heterogeneous software agents to perform their interactions and thus forming truly open agent systems. We investigate how these heterogeneous agents can determine whether an institution is one in which they can participate. We propose a layered approach which is supported through a (traditional) middle agent that is part of the env...

Applications designed to support t k work of groups will becoming increasingly important to f w e distributed systems. This paper considers the role of distributed systems within the development of cooperative systems. In particular, we focus on the need to provide Open CSCW systems and their impact on dism'bured systems. The work currently being undertoken in Open Distributed Systems (ODP) is ...

The basic technology for open distributed processing is now understood. The challenge now is to be able to deliver appropriate non-functional guarantees (e.g. reliability, availability and performance), and to be able to integrate existing services and systems into this world of open dependable distributed computing. It is important to realize that there will not be one set of nonfunctional gua...

Just as conventional institutions are organisational structures for coordinating the activities of multiple interacting individuals, electronic institutions provide a computational analogue for coordinating the activities of multiple interacting software agents. In this paper, we argue that open multi-agent systems can be effectively designed and implemented as electronic institutions, for whic...

Government policies on the acquisition of software-intensive systems have recently undergone a significant shift in emphasis toward the use of existing commercial products. Some Requests for Proposals (RFPs) now include a mandate concerning the amount of COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) products that must be included. This interest in COTS products is based on a number of factors, not least of w...

Two different “wave chaotic” systems, involving complex eigenvalues or resonances, can be analyzed using common semiclassical methods. In particular, one obtains fractal Weyl upper bounds for the density of resonances/eigenvalues near the real axis, and a classical dynamical criterion for a spectral gap.

In computer system design, we distinguish between closed and open systems. A closed system is a system whose behavior is completely determined by the state of the system. An open system is a system that interacts with its environment and whose behavior depends on this interaction. The ability of temporal logics to describe an ongoing interaction of a reactive program with its environment makes ...

For the polynomial planar vector fields with a hyperbolic or nilpotent critical point at the origin, the monodromy problem has been solved, but for the strongly degenerate critical points this problem is still open. When the critical point is monodromic, the stability problem or the center- focus problem is an open problem too. In this paper we will consider the polynomial planar vector fields ...

Just as conventional institutions are organisational structures for coordinating the activities of multiple interacting individuals, electronic institutions provide a computational analogue for coordinating the activities of multiple interacting software agents. In this paper, we argue that open multi-agent systems can be effectively designed and implemented as electronic institutions, for whic...