AI Assistant Zara

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  Real-time transcription

  Real-time transcription is the general term for transcription by court reporters using real-time text technologies to deliver computer text screens within a few seconds of the words being spoken. Specialist software allows participants in court hearings or depositions to make notes in the text and highlight portions for future reference. Real-time transcription is also used in the broadcasting environment where it is more commonly termed "captioning." == Career opportunities == Real-time reporting is used in a variety of industries, including entertainment, television, the Internet, and law. Specific careers include the following: Judicial reporters use a stenotype to provide instant transcripts on computer screens as a trial or deposition occurs. Communication access real-time translation (CART) reporters assist the hearing-impaired by transcribing spoken words, giving them personal access to the communications they need day to day. Television broadcast captioners use real-time reporting technology to allow hard-of-hearing or deaf people to see what is being said on live television broadcasts such as news, emergency broadcasts, sporting events, awards shows, and other programs. Internet information (or Webcast) reporters provide real-time reporting of sales meetings, press conferences, and other events, while simultaneously transmitting the transcripts to computers worldwide. Other rapid data entry positions. == History == Before the advent of the stenotype machine, court reporters wrote official trial transcripts by hand using a shorthand system of stenoforms that could later be translated into readable English. It often took eight years of training to learn this manual form of writing at the necessary speed. Walter Heironimus was among the first stenographers to make use of the stenotype machine during his work in the U.S. District Court system in New Jersey in 1935. A "transcript crisis" arose during the later half of the twentieth century due to the increasing volume of lawsuits. There were not enough number of court reporters to match the increasing number of trials. Not only were court reporters unavailable to attend many court proceedings, court transcripts were constantly late and the qualities varied. Some believed it was due to the non-interchangeability between court reporters, and others believed it was simply due to a labor shortage. In the meantime, magnetic audiotape recording, or known as electronic recording (ER) began to threaten all reporters' job since it could record long-hour courtroom trials and replace a court reporter's position in the courtroom. As a result, machine translation (MT) intended to serve as a solution for preventing ER from potentially replacing reporters' jobs. However, MT relied heavily on human labors operating behind the system and many started to question if it should be the right way to end the "transcript crisis." Later in 1964, set up by CIA, the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC) was set to review whether MT was capable of solving this crisis. They concluded that MT had failed to do so. Then Patrick O'Neill, a skilled and experienced court reporter, stayed to work on the stenotype-translation project with CIA and developed the prototype CAT system. After adopting the CAT system in court-reporting community, CAT was brought into the television broadcasting system, aiming to provide captions for the deaf or hard-of-hearing communities. In 1983, Linda Miller developed a further use for the CAT system. She successfully translated a lecture live on the television screen and provided a transcript for students. This technique is known as Computer-Aided Real-time Translation, or CART. == Court reporter == It is the court reporter's job to note down the exact words spoken by every participants during a court or deposition proceeding. Then court reporters will provide verbatim transcripts. The reason to have an official court transcript is that the real-time transcriptions allows attorneys and judges to have immediate access to the transcript. It also helps when there's a need to look up for information from the proceeding. Additionally, the deaf and the hard-of-hearing communities can also participate in the judicial process with the help of real-time transcriptions provided by court reporters. === Education and training === The required degree level for a court reporter to have is an Associate's degree or postsecondary certificate. In order to become a court reporter, more than 150 reporter training programs are provided at proprietary schools, community colleges, and four-year universities. After graduation, court reporters can choose to further pursue certifications to achieve a higher level of expertise and increase their marketability during a job search. In most states, Certificates of Proficiency from the NCRA or from state agencies are now required certificates for court reporters to have in order to qualify for appointments. The NCRA aims to set the national standard for the certification of court reporters, and since 1937 it has offered its certification program which is now accepted by 22 states instead of state licenses. Court reporter training programs include but not limited to: Training in rapid writing skill, or shorthand, which will enable students to record, with accuracy, at least 225 words per minute Training in typing, which will enable students to type at least 60 words per minute A general training in English, which covers aspects of grammar, word formation, punctuation, spelling and capitalization Taking Law related courses in order to understand the overall principles of civil and criminal law, legal terminology and common Latin phrases, rules of evidence, court procedures, the duties of court reporters, the ethics of the profession Visits to actual trials Taking courses in elementary anatomy and physiology and medical word study including medical prefixes, roots and suffixes. Other than official court reporters, who are assigned to and work for a particular court, other types of court reporters include free-lance reporter, who either works for a court reporting firm or self-employed. They are different from official court reporters in that they have the chances to work on a wider range of assignments and work on basis of hourly wage. Hearing reporters work at governmental agency hearings. Legislative reporters work in law-making bodies. The demand for reporters is not limited in just the court settings. Reporters are also needed in conferences, meetings, conventions, investigations, and a variety of industries with needs for employers with real-time data entry skills. == Non-English transcription == Transcription services are universally necessary, so it is not limited to the English language. A stenographer's ability to transcribe languages beyond only English is especially valuable as society as a whole becomes increasingly multilingual. Education in non-English transcription demands a comprehensive understanding of the given language. Phonetic differences between English and other languages are a particular challenge in carrying English transcription skills over into other languages. Stenography represents various sounds of a language in a formal system of shorthand, so differences within the sets of sounds that emerge in other languages require an alternative system of shorthand transcription. For example, the presence of many diphthongs and triphthongs in Spanish requires certain sounds to be distinguished that would not be present in transcribing English into shorthand. == Controversies == The usage of transcription in the context of linguistic discussions has been controversial. Typically, two kinds of linguistic records are considered to be scientifically relevant. First, linguistic records of general acoustic features, and secondly, records that only focuses on the distinctive phonemes of a language. While transcriptions are not entirely illegitimate, transcriptions without enough detailed commentary regarding any linguistic features, or transcriptions of poor quality resources, has a great chance of the content being misinterpreted. Besides misinterpretation, transcribers could also bring in cultural biases and ignorance that reflect onto their transcription. These instances may cause a disruption of reliability in the final real-time transcription, which could influence how the written utterance is seen as an evidence for a court-case. === Quality issues === Problems in the final resulting transcription can be caused by either the quality of the transcriber or the original source that is being transcribed. Transcribers can come from different levels of skill and training background. This makes the final transcription prone to poor quality, or if the transcription is being done by multiple people, lack of consistency in the content. If the source of the transcription is a recording, the problem may root back to the quality of the re

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  List of Java software and tools

  This is a list of software and programming tools for the Java programming language, which includes frameworks, libraries, IDEs, build tools, application servers, and related projects. == Java frameworks == == Libraries == Apache Ant – build automation tool Apache Batik – SVG processing Apache Cayenne – object-relational mapping Apache Xerces – collection of software libraries for parsing, validating, serializing and manipulating XML. Applet – applet API Ardor3D – 3D graphics engine Bonita BPM – workflow engine Cassowary – constraint solving Checkstyle – static code analysis GNU Classpath – standard library implementation Colt – scientific computing and technical computing Commons Daemon – manages applications as daemons DESMO-J – discrete event simulation Diagrams.net – diagramming Disruptor – high-performance messaging Dom4j – XML processing Dynamic Languages Toolkit – support for dynamic programming languages on the JVM Echo – GUI Flying Saucer – XHTML/CSS rendering Formatting Objects Processor – XSL-FO to PDF H2 Database Engine – relational database IAIK-JCE – cryptography Internet Foundation Classes – legacy GUI JavaBeans – reusable component architecture for enabling encapsulation, events, and properties for software components JavaCC – open-source parser generator and lexical analyzer Java Class Library – standard library of Java and other JVM languages Java Native Access – provides Java programs easy access to native shared libraries without using the Java Native Interface Javolution – real-time computing Jblas – linear algebra JDBCFacade – simplifies JDBC use JExcel – Excel API JFugue – music programming JMusic – music programming Joget Workflow – workflow engine JOOQ Object Oriented Querying – fluent API for SQL JPOS – financial messaging JUNG – open-source graph modeling and visualization LanguageWare – language processing LibGDX – game development Modular Audio Recognition Framework – collection of voice, sound, speech, text and natural language processing algorithms. ASM – bytecode manipulation Open Inventor – 3D graphics OpenPDF – PDF Parallel Colt – parallel computing Parboiled – parser PlayN – game development QOCA – constraint solving QtJambi – Qt bindings SLF4J – logging StableUpdate – update management SWT – GUI SuanShu – numerical computing SwingLabs – GUI extensions UBY – natural language processing Undecimber – calendar XDoclet – attribute-oriented programming XINS – XML network services XStream – object serialization == Machine learning and AI == Apache Mahout – scalable machine learning library focused on clustering, classification, and collaborative filtering Apache MXNet – deep learning framework with Java API support Apache OpenNLP – machine learning based toolkit for natural language processing of text Deeplearning4j – distributed deep learning library Deep Java Library – open-source deep learning framework developed by Amazon Web Services Encog – framework for neural networks, genetic algorithms, Hidden Markov model, and Bayesian networks. LIBSVM – Support Vector Machine implementation Mallet – machine learning toolkit for classification, clustering, and topic modeling. MLlib – distributed machine-learning framework on top of Apache Spark Core Neuroph – lightweight neural network framework Weka – collection of machine learning algorithms for data mining Yooreeka – machine learning == Data mining == Java Data Mining (JDM) – standard Java API for data mining Massive Online Analysis (MOA) – data stream mining with concept drift == Math and scientific libraries == Apache Commons Math – general-purpose mathematics library including statistics, linear algebra, and optimization. Colt – high-performance scientific computing, including linear algebra and random numbers. Efficient Java Matrix Library (EJML) – dense and sparse matrix computations and linear algebra Easy Java Simulations – Open Source Physics project designed to create discrete computer simulations Exp4j – evaluates mathematical expressions at runtime GroovyLab – numerical computational environment Hipparchus – fork of Apache Commons Math with updated algorithms for statistics, linear algebra, and optimization. JAMA – numerical linear algebra library Jblas: Linear Algebra for Java (Jblas) – linear algebra library using native BLAS/LAPACK bindings Java Astrodynamics Toolkit – numerical library of software components for use in spaceflight applications for Java or MATLAB Matrix Toolkit Java (MTJ) – linear algebra library with BLAS and LAPACK support OjAlgo – optimization, linear algebra, and financial calculations. OptimJ – extension for mathematical optimization and constraint programming Parallel Colt – A parallel extension of Colt SuanShu – numerical analysis, linear algebra, statistics, and optimization. == Integrated development environments == See also: Java IDEs on Wikibooks Android Studio – IDE for Google's Android operating system BlueJ – educational IDE for teaching Java DrJava – lightweight Java IDE for beginners Eclipse IDE – open-source IDE with extensive plugin ecosystem Greenfoot – educational IDE IntelliJ IDEA – commercial and community editions from JetBrains JDeveloper – freeware IDE supplied by Oracle Corporation jGRASP – software visualizations MyEclipse – Java EE IDE NetBeans IDE – Apache NetBeans Visual Studio Code – general-purpose editor with Java extensions === Online IDEs === Eclipse Che GitHub Codespaces JDoodle Replit == Text editors with Java support == == Build tools and package managers == Apache Ant – automating software build Apache Ivy – subproject of Apache Ant Apache Maven – build automation and dependency management Boot – build automation for Clojure CMake – build tool with limited support for java Gradle – modern build automation tool Go continuous delivery (GoCD) – continuous delivery and build automation server Jenkins – automation server continuous delivery JitPack – package repository for Git projects Leiningen – build automation for Clojure Simple build tool (sbt) – open-source build tool Spring Roo – rapid application development of Java-based enterprise software WaveMaker – low-code development platform == Java runtimes, compilers and virtual machines == Android Runtime – runtime environment javac – Java programming language compiler Java Virtual Machine (JVM) – virtual machine that executes Java bytecode JD Decompiler JEB decompiler – disassembler and decompiler software for Android applications GraalVM – Just-in-time compilation HotSpot – JVM implementation included in OpenJDK == JVM languages and dialects == Clojure – Lisp dialect Groovy JRuby – Ruby implementation Jython – Python implementation Kotlin – popular for Android app development Renjin – R implementation Scala == Application servers and containers == Apache Geronimo – open source application server Apache MINA – event-driven asynchronous network application framework Apache Tomcat – web container and web server Apache TomEE – Apache Tomcat with Java EE features Borland Enterprise Server – discontinued application server by Borland ColdFusion – commercial application server by Adobe Systems GlassFish – application server for Jakarta EE IBM WebSphere Application Server – enterprise application server by IBM IBM WebSphere Application Server Community Edition – open source edition of WebSphere (discontinued) JBoss Enterprise Application Platform – Red Hat's supported distribution of JBoss/WildFly JEUS – commercial Java EE application server from TmaxSoft Jetty – HTTP server and web container Lucee (formerly Railo) – open source CFML application server Netty – non-blocking I/O client–server framework for network applications Oracle Containers for J2EE – discontinued application server by Oracle Oracle WebLogic Server – enterprise application server by Oracle Orion Application Server – early commercial Java EE server by IronFlare Payara Server – fork of GlassFish for production use Resin – Java application server by Caucho (open source and professional editions) SAP NetWeaver Application Server – enterprise application server by SAP WildFly – application server == Debugging and profiling tools == jdb – Java debugger bundled with the JDK JConsole – JMX-compliant monitoring tool JDK Flight Recorder – method profiling, allocation profiling, and garbage collection related events. JProfiler – commercial Java profiler VisualVM – visual tool integrating commandline JDK tools for profiling and monitoring == Testing and quality assurance == Apache JMeter – load testing tool JaCoCo – Java code coverage library JArchitect – analyzes code quality, architecture, and dependencies. Jtest – software testing and static analysis JUnit – unit testing framework Mockito – open-source testing framework for Java PMD – static program analysis source code analyzer Selenium – browser automation for web app testing Spock – test framework SpotBugs (formerly FindBugs) – static analysis tool TestNG – testing framework inspired by JUnit and NUnit == Other == Apache XMLBeans –

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  Cobocards

  CoboCards is a web application for creation, study and sharing of flashcards. They also provide mobile application for Android and iOS mobile devices, to help study of flashcards on the move. Based on the freemium model, CoboCards provides users a free account with two card sets compared to paid subscription with premium features such as unlimited card sets, Leitner system based trainer and collaborative learning. == History == CoboCards is a project of Jamil Soufan and Tamim Swaid. Tamim Swaid has developed the concept and interface of a collaboratively usable e-learning platform in his diploma thesis at the University of Applied Sciences in February 2007. In January 2010 they founded the CoboCards GmbH (limited company) together with Ali Yildirim. CoboCards is supported by its strategic partners Prof. Schroeder (RWTH Aachen University), Prof. Oliver Wrede (University for Applied Sciences Aachen) and Prof. Klaus Gasteier (University of Arts Berlin). With the idea of creating and studying flashcards online and offering an active control of learning progress they won the start2grow business idea competition in September 2009 (€25.000 ). Additionally CoboCards was funded by German Authorities with approximately €100.000 .

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  Software configuration management

  Software configuration management (SCM), a.k.a. software change and configuration management (SCCM), is the software engineering practice of tracking and controlling changes to a software system. It is part of the larger cross-disciplinary field of configuration management (CM). SCM includes version control and the establishment of baselines. == Goals == The goals of SCM include: Configuration identification - Identifying configurations, configuration items and baselines. Configuration control - Implementing a controlled change process. This is usually achieved by setting up a change control board whose primary function is to approve or reject all change requests that are sent against any baseline. Configuration status accounting - Recording and reporting all the necessary information on the status of the development process. Configuration auditing - Ensuring that configurations contain all their intended parts and are sound with respect to their specifying documents, including requirements, architectural specifications and user manuals. Build management - Managing the process and tools used for builds. Process management - Ensuring adherence to the organization's development process. Environment management - Managing the software and hardware that host the system. Teamwork - Facilitate team interactions related to the process. Defect tracking - Making sure every defect has traceability back to the source. With the introduction of cloud computing and DevOps the purposes of SCM tools have become merged in some cases. The SCM tools themselves have become virtual appliances that can be instantiated as virtual machines and saved with state and version. The tools can model and manage cloud-based virtual resources, including virtual appliances, storage units, and software bundles. The roles and responsibilities of the actors have become merged as well with developers now being able to dynamically instantiate virtual servers and related resources. == History == == Examples == Ansible – Open-source software platform for remote configuring and managing computers CFEngine – Configuration management software Chef – Configuration management toolPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets LCFG – Computer configuration management system NixOS – Linux distribution OpenMake Software – DevOps company Otter Puppet – Open source configuration management software Salt – Configuration management software Rex – Open source software

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  Euratlas

  Euratlas is a Switzerland-based software company dedicated to elaborate digital history maps of Europe. Founded in 2001, Euratlas has created a collection of history maps of Europe from year 1 AD to year 2000 AD that present the evolution of every country from the Roman Empire to present times. The evolution includes sovereign states and their administrative subdivisions, but also unorganized peoples and dependent territories. The maps show European country borders at regular intervals of 100 years, but not year by year. This leaves out many important turning points in history. Euratlas is considered a digital humanities company, and a scholar research software used in the field of historic cartography. It is broadly known among American and European universities, who mainly use Euratlas as a research tool and as a digital library atlas. == Sequential mapping policy == This concept was first designed by the German scholar Christian Kruse (1753–1827). Kruse, well aware that historical accounts are often biased for geographical, philosophical or political reasons, created a set of sequential maps in order to give a global vision of the successive political situations. Nowadays, the majority of atlases don't use this approach, but are event-based, like the well-known Penguin Atlas of History. The sequential approach intends to make the sequence of maps more neutral and suitable for students, historians and professionals of several fields. Although, this approach has been discussed as it leaves out many important history events that are not reflected on any of the maps because of the century interval. == Geo-referenced historical data == Initially, the European maps by century were developed as vector maps. From 2006 on, they have been converted to a geographic information system (GIS) database, enabling geo-referenced data capabilities. The map information is distributed in several layers: physical (geography information layer); political information layer (supranational entities, sovereign states, administrative divisions, dependent states and autonomous peoples); and special layers for cities and uncertain borders. The software database also contains much non-geographical information about political relationships between the various kinds of territories. == Map projection == Euratlas History Maps uses a Mercator projection, with the center in Europe. The maps include the North-African coast and the Near-East, offering a complete view of the Mediterranean Basin. The European Russia plains are shown, but not Scandinavia, specially Finland, which is cropped off the map view.

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  Circular convolution

  Circular convolution, also known as cyclic convolution, is a special case of periodic convolution, which is the convolution of two periodic functions that have the same period. Periodic convolution arises, for example, in the context of the discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT). In particular, the DTFT of the product of two discrete sequences is the periodic convolution of the DTFTs of the individual sequences. And each DTFT is a periodic summation of a continuous Fourier transform function (see Discrete-time Fourier transform § Relation to Fourier Transform). Although DTFTs are usually continuous functions of frequency, the concepts of periodic and circular convolution are also directly applicable to discrete sequences of data. In that context, circular convolution plays an important role in maximizing the efficiency of a certain kind of common filtering operation. == Definitions == The periodic convolution of two T-periodic functions, h T ( t ) {\displaystyle h_{_{T}}(t)} and x T ( t ) {\displaystyle x_{_{T}}(t)} can be defined as: ∫ t o t o + T h T ( τ ) ⋅ x T ( t − τ ) d τ , {\displaystyle \int _{t_{o}}^{t_{o}+T}h_{_{T}}(\tau )\cdot x_{_{T}}(t-\tau )\,d\tau ,} where t o {\displaystyle t_{o}} is an arbitrary parameter. An alternative definition, in terms of the notation of normal linear or aperiodic convolution, follows from expressing h T ( t ) {\displaystyle h_{_{T}}(t)} and x T ( t ) {\displaystyle x_{_{T}}(t)} as periodic summations of aperiodic components h {\displaystyle h} and x {\displaystyle x} , i.e.: h T ( t ) ≜ ∑ k = − ∞ ∞ h ( t − k T ) = ∑ k = − ∞ ∞ h ( t + k T ) . {\displaystyle h_{_{T}}(t)\ \triangleq \ \sum _{k=-\infty }^{\infty }h(t-kT)=\sum _{k=-\infty }^{\infty }h(t+kT).} Then: Both forms can be called periodic convolution. The term circular convolution arises from the important special case of constraining the non-zero portions of both h {\displaystyle h} and x {\displaystyle x} to the interval [ 0 , T ] . {\displaystyle [0,T].} Then the periodic summation becomes a periodic extension, which can also be expressed as a circular function: x T ( t ) = x ( t m o d T ) , t ∈ R {\displaystyle x_{_{T}}(t)=x(t_{\mathrm {mod} \ T}),\quad t\in \mathbb {R} \,} (any real number) And the limits of integration reduce to the length of function h {\displaystyle h} : ( h ∗ x T ) ( t ) = ∫ 0 T h ( τ ) ⋅ x ( ( t − τ ) m o d T ) d τ . {\displaystyle (hx_{_{T}})(t)=\int _{0}^{T}h(\tau )\cdot x((t-\tau )_{\mathrm {mod} \ T})\ d\tau .} == Discrete sequences == Similarly, for discrete sequences, and a parameter N, we can write a circular convolution of aperiodic functions h {\displaystyle h} and x {\displaystyle x} as: ( h ∗ x N ) [ n ] ≜ ∑ m = − ∞ ∞ h [ m ] ⋅ x N [ n − m ] ⏟ ∑ k = − ∞ ∞ x [ n − m − k N ] {\displaystyle (hx_{_{N}})[n]\ \triangleq \ \sum _{m=-\infty }^{\infty }h[m]\cdot \underbrace {x_{_{N}}[n-m]} _{\sum _{k=-\infty }^{\infty }x[n-m-kN]}} This function is N-periodic. It has at most N unique values. For the special case that the non-zero extent of both x and h are ≤ N, it is reducible to matrix multiplication where the kernel of the integral transform is a circulant matrix. == Example == A case of great practical interest is illustrated in the figure. The duration of the x sequence is N (or less), and the duration of the h sequence is significantly less. Then many of the values of the circular convolution are identical to values of x∗h, which is actually the desired result when the h sequence is a finite impulse response (FIR) filter. Furthermore, the circular convolution is very efficient to compute, using a fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm and the circular convolution theorem. There are also methods for dealing with an x sequence that is longer than a practical value for N. The sequence is divided into segments (blocks) and processed piecewise. Then the filtered segments are carefully pieced back together. Edge effects are eliminated by overlapping either the input blocks or the output blocks. To help explain and compare the methods, we discuss them both in the context of an h sequence of length 201 and an FFT size of N = 1024. === Overlapping input blocks === This method uses a block size equal to the FFT size (1024). We describe it first in terms of normal or linear convolution. When a normal convolution is performed on each block, there are start-up and decay transients at the block edges, due to the filter latency (200-samples). Only 824 of the convolution outputs are unaffected by edge effects. The others are discarded, or simply not computed. That would cause gaps in the output if the input blocks are contiguous. The gaps are avoided by overlapping the input blocks by 200 samples. In a sense, 200 elements from each input block are "saved" and carried over to the next block. This method is referred to as overlap-save, although the method we describe next requires a similar "save" with the output samples. When an FFT is used to compute the 824 unaffected DFT samples, we don't have the option of not computing the affected samples, but the leading and trailing edge-effects are overlapped and added because of circular convolution. Consequently, the 1024-point inverse FFT (IFFT) output contains only 200 samples of edge effects (which are discarded) and the 824 unaffected samples (which are kept). To illustrate this, the fourth frame of the figure at right depicts a block that has been periodically (or "circularly") extended, and the fifth frame depicts the individual components of a linear convolution performed on the entire sequence. The edge effects are where the contributions from the extended blocks overlap the contributions from the original block. The last frame is the composite output, and the section colored green represents the unaffected portion. === Overlapping output blocks === This method is known as overlap-add. In our example, it uses contiguous input blocks of size 824 and pads each one with 200 zero-valued samples. Then it overlaps and adds the 1024-element output blocks. Nothing is discarded, but 200 values of each output block must be "saved" for the addition with the next block. Both methods advance only 824 samples per 1024-point IFFT, but overlap-save avoids the initial zero-padding and final addition.

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  SEMAT

  SEMAT (Software Engineering Method and Theory) is an initiative to reshape software engineering such that software engineering qualifies as a rigorous discipline. The initiative was launched in December 2009 by Ivar Jacobson, Bertrand Meyer, and Richard Soley with a call for action statement and a vision statement. The initiative was envisioned as a multi-year effort for bridging the gap between the developer community and the academic community and for creating a community giving value to the whole software community. The work is now structured in four different but strongly related areas: Practice, Education, Theory, and Community. The Practice area primarily addresses practices. The Education area is concerned with all issues related to training for both the developers and the academics including students. The Theory area is primarily addressing the search for a General Theory in Software Engineering. Finally, the Community area works with setting up legal entities, creating websites and community growth. It was expected that the Practice area, the Education area and the Theory area would at some point in time integrate in a way of value to all of them: the Practice area would be a "customer" of the Theory area, and direct the research to useful results for the developer community. The Theory area would give a solid and practical platform for the Practice area. And, the Education area would communicate the results in proper ways. == Practice area == The first step was here to develop a common ground or a kernel including the essence of software engineering – things we always have, always do, always produce when developing software. The second step was envisioned to add value on top of this kernel in the form of a library of practices to be composed to become specific methods, specific for all kinds of reasons such as the preferences of the team using it, kind of software being built, etc. The first step is as of this writing just about to be concluded. The results are a kernel including universal elements for software development – called the Essence Kernel, and a language – called the Essence Language - to describe these elements (and elements built on top of the kernel (practices, methods, and more). Essence, including both the kernel and language, has been published as an OMG standard in beta status in July 2013 and is expected to become a formally adopted standard in early 2014. The second step has just started, and the Practice area will be divided into a number of separate but interconnected tracks: the practice (library track), the tool track are so far identified and work has started or is about to get started. The practice track is currently working on a Users Guide. == Education area == The area focuses on leveraging the work of SEMAT in software engineering education, both within academia and industry. It promotes global education based on a common ground called Essence. The area's target groups are instructors such as university professors and industrial coaches as well as their students and learning practitioners. The goal of the area is to create educational courses and course materials that are internationally viable, identify pedagogical approaches that are appropriate and effective for specific target groups and disseminate experience and lessons learned. The area includes members from a number of universities and institutes worldwide. Most members have already been involved in leveraging aspects of SEMAT in the context of their software engineering courses. They are gathering their resources and starting a common venture towards defining a new generation of SEMAT-powered software engineering curricula. As of 2018, some studies of utilizing Essence in educational settings exist. One example of the use of Essence in university education was a software engineering course carried out in Norwegian University of Science and Technology. A study was conducted by introducing Essence into a project-based software engineering course, with the aim of understanding what difficulties the students faced in using Essence, and whether they considered it to have been useful. The results indicated that Essence could also be useful for novice software engineers by (1) encouraging them to look up and study new practices and methods in order to create their own, (2) encouraging them to adjust their way-of-working reflectively and in a situation-specific manner, (3) helping them structure their way of working. The findings of another study introducing students to Essence through a digital game supported these findings: the students felt that Essence will be useful to them in future, real-world projects, and that they wish to utilize it in them. == Theory area == An important part of SEMAT is that a general theory of software engineering is planned to emerge with significant benefits. A series of workshops held under the title SEMAT Workshop on a General Theory of Software Engineering (GTSE) are a key component in awareness building around general theories. In addition to community awareness building, SEMAT also aims to contribute with a specific general theory of software engineering. This theory should be solidly based on the SEMAT Essence language and kernel, and should support software engineering practitioners' goal-oriented decision making. As argued elsewhere, such support is predicated on the predictive capabilities of the theory. Thus, the SEMAT Essence should be augmented to allow the prediction of critical software engineering phenomena. The GTSE workshop series assists in the development of the SEMAT general software engineering theory by engaging a larger community in the search for, development of, and evaluation of promising theories, which may be used as a base for the SEMAT theory. == Organizational structure == === Main organization === SEMAT is chaired by Sumeet S. Malhotra of Tata Consultancy Services. The CEO of the organization is Ste Nadin of Fujitsu. The Executive Management Committee of SEMAT are Ivar Jacobson, Ste Nadin, Sumeet S. Malhotra, Paul E. McMahon, Michael Goedicke and Cecile Peraire. === Japan Chapter === Japan Chapter was established in April 2013, and it has more than 250 members as of November 2013. Member activities include carrying out seminars about SEMAT, considering utilization of SEMAT Essence for integrating different requirements engineering techniques and body of knowledges (BoKs), and translating articles into Japanese. === Korea Chapter === The chapter was inaugurated with about 50 members in October 2013. Member activities include: 2e Consulting started rewriting their IT service engagement methods using the Essence kernel, and uEngine Solutions started developing a tool to orchestrate Essence-kernel based practices into a project method. Korean government supported KAIST to conduct research in Essence. === Latin American Chapter === Semat Latin American Chapter was created in August 2011 in Medellin (Colombia) by Ivar Jacobson during the Latin American Software Engineering Symposium. This Chapter has 9 Executive Committee members from Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, chaired by Dr. Carlos Zapata from Colombia. More than 80 people signed the initial declaration of the Chapter and nowadays the Chapter members are in charge of disseminating the Semat ideas in all Latin America. Chapter members have participated in various Latin American conferences, including the Latin American Conference on Informatics (CLEI), the Ibero American Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering Journeys (JIISIC), the Colombian Computing Conference (CCC), and the Chilean Computing Meeting (ECC). The Chapter contributed in the submission sent in response to the OMG call for proposals and currently studies didactic strategies for teaching the Semat kernel by games, theoretical studies about some kernel elements, and practical representations of several software development and quality methods by using the Semat kernel. Some of the members also translated the Essence book and some other Semat materials and papers into Spanish. === Russia Chapter === Russian Chapter has about 20 members. A few universities have incorporated SEMAT in their training courses , including Moscow State University, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Higher School of Economics, Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics, and Informatics. The chapter and some commercial companies are carrying out seminars about SEMAT. INCOSE Russian Chapter is working on an extension of SEMAT to systems engineering. EC-leasing is working on an extension of the Kernel for Software Life Cycle. Russian Chapter attended in two conferences: Actual Problems of System and Software Engineering and SECR with SEMAT section and articles. Translation of the Essence book into Russian is in progress. == Practical Applications of SEMAT == Ideas developed by the SEMAT community have been applied by both industry and ac

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  Site reliability engineering

  Site reliability engineering (SRE) is a discipline in the field of software engineering and IT infrastructure support that monitors and improves the availability and performance of deployed software systems and large software services (which are expected to deliver reliable response times across events such as new software deployments, hardware failures, and cybersecurity attacks). There is typically a focus on automation and an infrastructure as code methodology. SRE uses elements of software engineering, IT infrastructure, web development, and operations to assist with reliability. It is similar to DevOps as they both aim to improve the reliability and availability of deployed software systems. == History == Site Reliability Engineering originated at Google with Benjamin Treynor Sloss, who founded SRE team in 2003. The concept expanded within the software development industry, leading various companies to employ site reliability engineers. By March 2016, Google had more than 1,000 site reliability engineers on staff. Dedicated SRE teams are common at larger web development companies. In middle-sized and smaller companies, DevOps teams sometimes perform SRE, as well. Organizations that have adopted the concept include Airbnb, Dropbox, IBM, LinkedIn, Netflix, and Wikimedia. == Definition == Site reliability engineers (SREs) are responsible for a combination of system availability, latency, performance, efficiency, change management, monitoring, emergency response, and capacity planning. SREs often have backgrounds in software engineering, systems engineering, and/or system administration. The focuses of SRE include automation, system design, and improvements to system resilience. SRE is considered a specific implementation of DevOps; focusing specifically on building reliable systems, whereas DevOps covers a broader scope of operations. Despite having different focuses, some companies have rebranded their operations teams to SRE teams. == Principles and practices == Common definitions of the practices include (but are not limited to): Automation of repetitive tasks for cost-effectiveness. Defining reliability goals to prevent endless effort. Design of systems with a goal to reduce risks to availability, latency, and efficiency. Observability, the ability to ask arbitrary questions about a system without having to know ahead of time what to ask. Common definitions of the principles include (but are not limited to): Toil management, the implementation of the first principle outlined above. Defining and measuring reliability goals—SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets. Non-Abstract Large Scale Systems Design (NALSD) with a focus on reliability. Designing for and implementing observability. Defining, testing, and running an incident management process. Capacity planning. Change and release management, including CI/CD. Chaos engineering. == Deployment == SRE teams collaborate with other departments within organizations to guide the implementation of the mentioned principles. Below is an overview of common practices: === Kitchen Sink === Kitchen Sink refers to the expansive and often unbounded scope of services and workflows that SRE teams oversee. Unlike traditional roles with clearly defined boundaries, SREs are tasked with various responsibilities, including system performance optimization, incident management, and automation. This approach allows SREs to address multiple challenges, ensuring that systems run efficiently and evolve in response to changing demands and complexities. === Infrastructure === Infrastructure SRE teams focus on maintaining and improving the reliability of systems that support other teams' workflows. While they sometimes collaborate with platform engineering teams, their primary responsibility is ensuring up-time, performance, and efficiency. Platform teams, on the other hand, primarily develop the software and systems used across the organization. While reliability is a goal for both, platform teams prioritize creating and maintaining the tools and services used by internal stakeholders, whereas Infrastructure SRE teams are tasked with ensuring those systems run smoothly and meet reliability standards. === Tools === SRE teams utilize a variety of tools with the aim of measuring, maintaining, and enhancing system reliability. These tools play a role in monitoring performance, identifying issues, and facilitating proactive maintenance. For instance, Nagios Core is commonly employed for system monitoring and alerting, while Prometheus (software) is frequently used for collecting and querying metrics in cloud-native environments. === Product or Application === SRE teams dedicated to specific products or applications are common in large organizations. These teams are responsible for ensuring the reliability, scalability, and performance of key services. In larger companies, it's typical to have multiple SRE teams, each focusing on different products or applications, ensuring that each area receives specialized attention to meet performance and availability targets. === Embedded === In an embedded model, individual SREs or small SRE pairs are integrated within software engineering teams. These SREs collaborate with developers, applying core SRE principles—such as automation, monitoring, and incident response—directly to the software development lifecycle. This approach aims to enhance reliability, performance, and collaboration between SREs and developers. === Consulting === Consulting SRE teams specialize in advising organizations on the implementation of SRE principles and practices. Typically composed of seasoned SREs with a history across various implementations, these teams provide insights and guidance for specific organizational needs. When working directly with clients, these SREs are often referred to as 'Customer Reliability Engineers.' In large organizations that have adopted SRE, a hybrid model is common. This model includes various implementations, such as multiple Product/Application SRE teams dedicated to addressing the specific reliability needs of different products. An Infrastructure SRE team may collaborate with a Platform engineering group to achieve shared reliability goals for a unified platform that supports all products and applications. == Industry == Since 2014, the USENIX organization has hosted the annual SREcon conference, bringing together site reliability engineers from various industries. This conference is a platform for professionals to share knowledge, explore effective practices, and discuss trends in site reliability engineering.

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  Elowan

  Elowan is a plant-robot cyborg. Using its own internal bioelectrical signals, The plant has a robotic extension that makes it move towards light sources. Electrodes are inserted into the leaves, stem, and ground to detect the faint bioelectrical signals the plant produces. Then they are amplified so the robot can read them. So when the plant "wants" to go to light, the cyborg automatically goes to the nearest light source. Future extensions of the robot could provide: Protection, growth frameworks, and nutrients. Other factors that could make the cyborg move are temperature, soil, and gravity conditions Elowan is one in a series of plant-electronic hybrid experiments.

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  Distributed manufacturing

  Distributed manufacturing, also known as distributed production, cloud producing, distributed digital manufacturing, and local manufacturing, is a form of decentralized manufacturing practiced by enterprises using a network of geographically dispersed manufacturing facilities that are coordinated using information technology. It can also refer to local manufacture via the historic cottage industry model, or manufacturing that takes place in the homes of consumers. == Enterprise == In enterprise environments, the primary attribute of distributed manufacturing is the ability to create value at geographically dispersed locations. For example, shipping costs could be minimized when products are built geographically close to their intended markets. Also, products manufactured in a number of small facilities distributed over a wide area can be customized with details adapted to individual or regional tastes. Manufacturing components in different physical locations and then managing the supply chain to bring them together for final assembly of a product is also considered a form of distributed manufacturing. Digital networks combined with additive manufacturing allow companies a decentralized and geographically independent distributed production (cloud manufacturing). == Consumer == Within the maker movement and DIY culture, small scale production by consumers often using peer-to-peer resources is being referred to as distributed manufacturing. Consumers download digital designs from an open design repository website like Youmagine or Thingiverse and produce a product for low costs through a distributed network of 3D printing services such as 3D Hubs, Geomiq. In the most distributed form of distributed manufacturing the consumer becomes a prosumer and manufacturers products at home with an open-source 3-D printer such as the RepRap. In 2013 a desktop 3-D printer could be economically justified as a personal product fabricator and the number of free and open hardware designs were growing exponentially. Today there are millions of open hardware product designs at hundreds of repositories and there is some evidence consumers are 3-D printing to save money. For example, 2017 case studies probed the quality of: (1) six common complex toys; (2) Lego blocks; and (3) the customizability of open source board games and found that all filaments analyzed saved the prosumer over 75% of the cost of commercially available true alternative toys and over 90% for recyclebot filament. Overall, these results indicate a single 3D printing repository, MyMiniFactory, is saving consumers well over $60 million/year in offset purchases of only toys. These 3-D printers can now be used to make sophisticated high-value products like scientific instruments. Similarly, a study in 2022 found that 81% of open source designs provided economic savings and the total savings for the 3D printing community is more than $35 million from downloading only the top 100 products at YouMagine. In general, the savings are largest when compared to conventional products when prosumers use recycled materials in 'distributed recycling and additive manufacturing' (DRAM). == Emergency Distributed Manufacturing During COVID-19 Pandemic == Distributed manufacturing became far more visible during the COVID-19 pandemic because it offered a practical response to the breakdown of centralized global supply chains. As lock downs, border restrictions, and factory shutdowns disrupted conventional production, decentralized networks using local facilities such as Open Source Medical Supplies stepped in and manufactured over 48 million products. Additive manufacturing /3D printing were used to produce urgently needed items such as face shields, ventilators and their components, nasopharyngeal swabs, and other personal protective equipment. This demonstrated that distributed manufacturing could reduce lead times, improve responsiveness, and lessen dependence on distant suppliers during crisis conditions for a wide range of products. Peer-reviewed studies on pandemic-era manufacturing note that additive manufacturing was especially valuable because digital design files could be shared rapidly and produced close to the point of need, enabling hospitals, universities, small firms, and maker communities to supplement strained medical supply chains. The pandemic also helped shift distributed manufacturing from being seen as a niche or experimental model to a credible strategy for resilience, flexibility, and emergency response. At the same time, scholars caution that its wider adoption depends on solving issues related to quality assurance, regulation, material consistency, and coordination across distributed production sites. Overall, COVID-19 popularized distributed manufacturing by showing that localized, digitally enabled production could complement traditional manufacturing systems when speed, adaptability, and supply-chain resilience were critical. == Social change == Some call attention to the conjunction of commons-based peer production with distributed manufacturing techniques. The self-reinforced fantasy of a system of eternal growth can be overcome with the development of economies of scope, and here, the civil society can play an important role contributing to the raising of the whole productive structure to a higher plateau of more sustainable and customised productivity. Further, it is true that many issues, problems and threats rise due to the large democratization of the means of production, and especially regarding the physical ones. For instance, the recyclability of advanced nanomaterials is still questioned; weapons manufacturing could become easier; not to mention the implications on counterfeiting and on "intellectual property". It might be maintained that in contrast to the industrial paradigm whose competitive dynamics were about economies of scale, commons-based peer production and distributed manufacturing could develop economies of scope. While the advantages of scale rest on cheap global transportation, the economies of scope share infrastructure costs (intangible and tangible productive resources), taking advantage of the capabilities of the fabrication tools. And following Neil Gershenfeld in that "some of the least developed parts of the world need some of the most advanced technologies", commons-based peer production and distributed manufacturing may offer the necessary tools for thinking globally but act locally in response to certain problems and needs. As well as supporting individual personal manufacturing social and economic benefits are expected to result from the development of local production economies. In particular, the humanitarian and development sector are becoming increasingly interested in how distributed manufacturing can overcome the supply chain challenges of last mile distribution. Further, distributed manufacturing has been proposed as a key element in the Cosmopolitan localism or cosmolocalism framework to reconfigure production by prioritizing socio-ecological well-being over corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption. == Technology == By localizing manufacturing, distributed manufacturing may enable a balance between two opposite extreme qualities in technology development: Low technology and High tech. This balance is understood as an inclusive middle, a "mid-tech", that may go beyond the two polarities, incorporating them into a higher synthesis. Thus, in such an approach, low-tech and high-tech stop being mutually exclusive. They instead become a dialectic totality. Mid-tech may be abbreviated to "both…and…" instead of "neither…nor…". Mid-tech combines the efficiency and versatility of digital/automated technology with low-tech's potential for autonomy and resilience. == Contracting in Distributed Manufacturing == Research into contracting and order processing models tailored for distributed manufacturing has highlighted the need for flexible, role-based frameworks and advanced digital tools. These tools and frameworks are essential for addressing issues related to quality assurance, payment structures, legal compliance, and coordination among multiple actors. By addressing these challenges, contracting models for distributed manufacturing can unlock its potential for more localized, efficient, and sustainable production systems. A system prototype has been developed to simplify contracting for distributed manufacturing. This tool allows buyers to manage orders across multiple manufacturers using a single interface, automating workflows to ensure clarity and accountability for everyone involved. This research was led by the Internet of Production, as part of the mAkE project (African European Maker Innovation Ecosystem), funded by the European Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

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  RCUDA

  rCUDA, which stands for Remote CUDA, is a type of middleware software framework for remote GPU virtualization. Fully compatible with the CUDA application programming interface (API), it allows the allocation of one or more CUDA-enabled GPUs to a single application. Each GPU can be part of a cluster or running inside of a virtual machine. The approach is aimed at improving performance in GPU clusters that are lacking full utilization. GPU virtualization reduces the number of GPUs needed in a cluster, and in turn, leads to a lower cost configuration – less energy, acquisition, and maintenance. The recommended distributed acceleration architecture is a high performance computing cluster with GPUs attached to only a few of the cluster nodes. When a node without a local GPU executes an application needing GPU resources, remote execution of the kernel is supported by data and code transfers between local system memory and remote GPU memory. rCUDA is designed to accommodate this client-server architecture. On one end, clients employ a library of wrappers to the high-level CUDA Runtime API, and on the other end, there is a network listening service that receives requests on a TCP port. Several nodes running different GPU-accelerated applications can concurrently make use of the whole set of accelerators installed in the cluster. The client forwards the request to one of the servers, which accesses the GPU installed in that computer and executes the request in it. Time-multiplexing the GPU, or in other words sharing it, is accomplished by spawning different server processes for each remote GPU execution request. == rCUDA v20.07 == The rCUDA middleware enables the concurrent usage of CUDA-compatible devices remotely. rCUDA employs either the InfiniBand network or the socket API for the communication between clients and servers. rCUDA can be useful in three different environments: Clusters. To reduce the number of GPUs installed in High Performance Clusters. This leads to energy savings, as well as other related savings like acquisition costs, maintenance, space, cooling, etc. Academia. In commodity networks, to offer access to a few high performance GPUs concurrently to many students. Virtual Machines. To enable the access to the CUDA facilities on the physical machine. The current version of rCUDA (v20.07) supports CUDA version 9.0, excluding graphics interoperability. rCUDA v20.07 targets the Linux OS (for 64-bit architectures) on both client and server sides. CUDA applications do not need any change in their source code in order to be executed with rCUDA.

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  Easyrec

  easyrec is an open-source program that provides personalized recommendations using RESTful Web services to be integrated into Web enabled applications. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License by the Studio Smart Agent Technologies and hosted at SourceForge. It is written in Java, uses a MySQL database and comes with an administration tool. == History == The development of easyrec, an implementation of the Adaptive Personalization approach, started in the course of several research and development projects conducted by the Studio Smart Agent Technologies in close cooperation with international companies. During the year of 2008 the core functionality of easyrec was developed forming the basis of research prototypes focusing on the music domain (e.g. MusicExplorer). In June 2009 a beta version of easyrec, containing basic administration features, was integrated into a movie streaming portal for evaluation purposes. Furthermore, in September 2009 easyrec was awarded a special recognition in the category “Award for Innovations – IT Innovations for an economic upswing” by the jury of the Austrian state prize for multimedia and e-business. After a comprehensive refactoring phase and the integration of the evaluation results easyrec was published on SourceForge on 18 February 2010. In course of the CeBIT tradeshow 2011 in Hanover easyrec has been awarded the German “INNOVATIONSPREIS-IT 2011”. == Principles == The following five primary goals guided the development of easyrec. It should be a ready-to-use application, not another algorithmic framework It should be easy to use, concerning installation, integration and administration It should be robust and scalable for serving real world applications It should be free of charge, so that anyone can profit from personalization features It should rely on a community-driven development == Uses == Although easyrec is a domain-agnostic, general purpose personalization system, the current Web service API is customized for providing online shops with item recommendations. Especially for small and medium enterprises, easyrec provides a low barrier entrance to personalization. == Features == A major feature of easyrec is a set of usage statistics and other business relevant information presented via an administration and management interface. Furthermore, the easyrec administrator is supported by a variety of administration and configuration functions including the manual import or adaptation of business rules. Integrators or developers benefit from the lightweight Web service APIs (REST and SOAP) as well as from the guided installation wizard. Concerning personalization functionality easyrec is providing the following services unpersonalized recommendations of the form "other users also bought/viewed/...", etc. personalized recommendation depending on individual preferences rankings such as "most bought items", "most viewed...", etc. Additionally, as an integration showcase, a MediaWiki extension was developed and is bundled with the application. Currently additional features like further recommender algorithms and a plugin-system are evaluated and prepared for integration into the easyrec system. == Architecture == The underlying architecture of easyrec is designed to be robust and scalable—separating time-consuming computations from the task of online assembling of recommendations. easyrec is designed as a multi-layer system consisting of a database layer as storage of user actions and pre-calculated business rules an application layer for hosting online and offline recommendation services and an API layer for various Web service interfaces. Moreover, the generator server contains different item association generators which create business rules that define a relation between two items.

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  Spreading activation

  Spreading activation is a method for searching associative networks, biological and artificial neural networks, or semantic networks. The search process is initiated by labeling a set of source nodes (e.g. concepts in a semantic network) with weights or "activation" and then iteratively propagating or "spreading" that activation out to other nodes linked to the source nodes. Most often these "weights" are real values that decay as activation propagates through the network. When the weights are discrete this process is often referred to as marker passing. Activation may originate from alternate paths, identified by distinct markers, and terminate when two alternate paths reach the same node. However brain studies show that several different brain areas play an important role in semantic processing. Spreading activation in semantic networks as a model were invented in cognitive psychology to model the fan out effect. Spreading activation can also be applied in information retrieval, by means of a network of nodes representing documents and terms contained in those documents. == Cognitive psychology == As it relates to cognitive psychology, spreading activation is the theory of how the brain iterates through a network of associated ideas to retrieve specific information. The spreading activation theory presents the array of concepts within our memory as cognitive units, each consisting of a node and its associated elements or characteristics, all connected together by edges. A spreading activation network can be represented schematically, in a sort of web diagram with shorter lines between two nodes meaning the ideas are more closely related and will typically be associated more quickly to the original concept. In memory psychology, the spreading activation model holds that people organize their knowledge of the world based on their personal experiences, which in turn form the network of ideas that is the person's knowledge of the world. When a word (the target) is preceded by an associated word (the prime) in word recognition tasks, participants seem to perform better in the amount of time that it takes them to respond. For instance, subjects respond faster to the word "doctor" when it is preceded by "nurse" than when it is preceded by an unrelated word like "carrot". This semantic priming effect with words that are close in meaning within the cognitive network has been seen in a wide range of tasks given by experimenters, ranging from sentence verification to lexical decision and naming. As another example, if the original concept is "red" and the concept "vehicles" is primed, they are much more likely to say "fire engine" instead of something unrelated to vehicles, such as "cherries". If instead "fruits" was primed, they would likely name "cherries" and continue on from there. The activation of pathways in the network has everything to do with how closely linked two concepts are by meaning, as well as how a subject is primed. == Algorithm == A directed graph is populated by Nodes[ 1...N ] each having an associated activation value A [ i ] which is a real number in the range [0.0 ... 1.0]. A Link[ i, j ] connects source node[ i ] with target node[ j ]. Each edge has an associated weight W [ i, j ] usually a real number in the range [0.0 ... 1.0]. Parameters: Firing threshold F, a real number in the range [0.0 ... 1.0] Decay factor D, a real number in the range [0.0 ... 1.0] Steps: Initialize the graph setting all activation values A [ i ] to zero. Set one or more origin nodes to an initial activation value greater than the firing threshold F. A typical initial value is 1.0. For each unfired node [ i ] in the graph having an activation value A [ i ] greater than the node firing threshold F: For each Link [ i, j ] connecting the source node [ i ] with target node [ j ], adjust A [ j ] = A [ j ] + (A [ i ] W [ i, j ] D) where D is the decay factor. If a target node receives an adjustment to its activation value so that it would exceed 1.0, then set its new activation value to 1.0. Likewise maintain 0.0 as a lower bound on the target node's activation value should it receive an adjustment to below 0.0. Once a node has fired it may not fire again, although variations of the basic algorithm permit repeated firings and loops through the graph. Nodes receiving a new activation value that exceeds the firing threshold F are marked for firing on the next spreading activation cycle. If activation originates from more than one node, a variation of the algorithm permits marker passing to distinguish the paths by which activation is spread over the graph The procedure terminates when either there are no more nodes to fire or in the case of marker passing from multiple origins, when a node is reached from more than one path. Variations of the algorithm that permit repeated node firings and activation loops in the graph, terminate after a steady activation state, with respect to some delta, is reached, or when a maximum number of iterations is exceeded. == Examples ==

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  Fuse Services Framework

  Fuse Services Framework is an open source SOAP and REST web services platform based on Apache CXF for use in enterprise IT organizations. It is productized and supported by the Fuse group at FuseSource Corp. Fuse Services Framework service-enables new and existing systems for use in enterprise SOA infrastructure. Fuse Services Framework is a pluggable, small-footprint engine that creates high performance, secure and robust services in minutes using front-end programming APIs like JAX-WS and JAX-RS. It supports multiple transports and bindings and is extensible so developers can add bindings for additional message formats so all systems can work together without having to communicate through a centralized server. Fuse Services Framework is now a part of Red Hat JBoss Fuse. Fabric8 is a free Apache 2.0 Licensed upstream community for the JBoss Fuse product from Red Hat.

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  Toggl Track

  Toggl Track (formerly Toggl) is a time tracking software developed by Toggl OÜ which is headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia. The company offers online time tracking and reporting services through their website along with mobile and desktop applications. Time can be tracked through a start/stop button, manual entry, or dragging and resizing time blocks in a calendar view. == History == According to Alari Aho, Toggl's CEO and founder, the application has been fully self-funded from the start. The name was created using a random name generator.

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