We propose a new method for system validation by means of testing, which is based on environment models expressed as UML state machines. A sun blind control case study serves to illustrate the method.

Current digital preservation is strongly biased towards data objects: digital files of document-style objects, or encapsulated and largely self-contained objects. To provide authenticity and provenance information, comprehensive metadata models are deployed to document information on an object’s context. Yet, we claim that simply documenting an objects context may not be sufficient to ensure pr...

In this paper we present an Information Retrieval System (COSYDOR) designed for sightless students or researchers, to improve their access to scientific information. Our approach consists in reusing search instances in order to help these users when querying COSYDOR. Thus, In the first part we define a search instance model, including our proposed user model. Then we present our approach of Cas...

Discussion of use cases and UML often focuses on the UML use case diagram. Use case diagrams are contrasted (usually unfavorably) with text use cases. But specification of use cases with UML is not limited to the use case diagram. In fact UML 2 includes a variety of expressive techniques for specifying a use case. This article looks at UML use cases from the ODP viewpoint, and describes UML use...

Let T be a rooted and weighted tree, where the weight of any node is equal to the sum of the weights of its children. The popular Treemap algorithm visualizes such a tree as a hierarchical partition of a square into rectangles, where the area of the rectangle corresponding to any node in T is equal to the weight of that node. The aspect ratio of the rectangles in such a rectangular partition ne...

Because there is some contamination of practically every body of water, risk analysis is important to determine diving exposure standards to pollutants, including requirements for protective equipment. In the following study we attempt to determine the increased risk of cancer in Israeli Naval divers exposed to pollutants in the Kishon River system. We calculated two risks, one using maximally ...

Large-scale fire danger assessment has become increasingly relevant in the past few years, and is usually based on weather information. Still, fuel characteristics also play an important role in fire behavior. This study presents a fire behavior simulation based on a global fuelbed dataset and climatic and topographic information. The simulation was executed using the Fuel Characteristic Classi...