http://www.computer.org/computer Computer, the flagship publication of the IEEE Computer Society, publishes peer-reviewed technical content that covers all aspects of computer science, computer engineering, technology, and applications. The articles selected for publication are edited to enhance readability for the general Computer reader. Computer is a resource that practitioners, researchers, and managers can rely on to provide timely information about current research developments, trends, best practices, and changes in the profession. en-us Sun, 19 May 2013 10:00:07 GMT http://csdl.computer.org/common/images/logos/computer.gif List of recently published journal articles http://www.computer.org/computer http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.151 Visual analytics aims at providing people insight in large data sets using a combination of automated and visual methods. Development of successful solutions is currently often a trial and error process, and there is a lack of solid guidelines and findings. One explanation for this is that visual analytics aims to cover a huge range of data, users, and tasks; another factor is that evaluation in visual analytics is particularly challenging. In this article we give a broad overview of these challenges and efforts to make progress. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.151 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.360 In the past decade, the field of Tangible Interaction (TI) has gained significant interest. As a result, numerous systems, theories and frameworks have been developed with this vision in mind. This has led to various instantiations of TI that seem developed to make digital information tangible, rather than to optimally use and combine all important qualities of TI. We believe that TI has more to offer than what has been used advantageously so far. Therefore, this paper reflects on the foundations of TI and identifies three qualities of control and representation in TI based on existing systems, theories and frameworks. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.360 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.154 Deploying muti-tier business, retail, financial or social networks on the computing cloud is a complex, expensive and challenging task. While frameworks such as Software as a Service (SaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS) appear to offer a pathway to rapid deployment, on closer examination these approaches are both language-specific and architecture-specific, and often tied to a vendor through use of predefined application templates. The authors propose a new approach to constructing, deploying and optimizing complex cloud-based applications in a language-independent and vendor-neutral manner, allowing rapid prototyping of business applications in a manner that assists targeted performance optimization. The proposed approach, Cloud Component Model (CCM), relies on logical functional decomposition of the application, utilizing loosely coupled components in a manner that realizes the promise of the cloud, while freeing the design from the restrictive constraints of a particular programming style or architectural pattern. Our experience using a complex e-Commerce benchmark provides describes CCM's application and resulting benefits in terms of reduction in prototyping time, testing cost, and performance. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.154 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.153 ThThis article examines the transformation of Big Data into collective awareness in order to have transformative impact on society. We argue that computational management of common-pool resources requires a new approach to ‘institution science’. This proposal goes beyond using sensor networks for event and situation recognition and ICT for social networking, and instead integrates the artificial society of sensors and devices and the natural society of ICT-enabled users within a self-organising community. We intend this integration to deliver a ‘higher form’ of collective awareness by using Big Data to achieve desirable macro-level outcomes for the community and to avoid undesirable ones, for example by sustaining rather than depleting a common-pool resource. We argue that a crucial element of ensuring that the original producers of the Big Data are also those that receive the benefits of the desirable outcomes, Big Data should also be treated as a common-pool resource. In summary we propose a common integrated framework for both knowledge-commons management and critical-infrastructure management and discuss its potential for transformative impact on society. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.153 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.152 Social media, online news websites, and product review pages are examples for the production of vast amounts of textual information that have become widely accessible through the Web. This article describes novel visual data analysis methodology that supports the interactive exploration of this rich body of information in real-time. We also discuss related research challenges and present a taxonomy of current text analysis components, helpful for the design of visual analysis systems for streaming text sources. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.152 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.149 Smart Cities, change the traditional production mode and lifestyle, enrich people's material and cultural life, and promote economic and social progress. This paper introduces the research from Digital Cities to Smart Cities, discusses major projects of Smart Cities in China, analyzes their theoretical basis, key technology and framework, reflects on existing problems, draws lessons, and makes suggestions and explores possible development in the future. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.149 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.121 Blood-flow velocity information can nowadays be obtained through imaging and simulation, providing time-varying volumetric vector-fields. The 4D blood-flow data contain valuable information for diagnosis, prognosis, and risk assessment of cardiovascular diseases, which currently form the leading cause of death worldwide. However, these complex blood-flow data are still rarely analyzed, because conventional inspection is insufficient to extract useful information. Therefore, comprehensive visualization techniques are necessary to effectively communicate the essential blood-flow dynamics. In recent years, the blood-flow application has gained interest in the visualization research field, and new techniques have been proposed to convey the complex hemodynamics. Still, many challenges remain in terms of the visualization and interaction. This work first describes the main applications, and the current blood-flow analysis process. Subsequently, we set out key challenges for blood-flow visualization research, and describe to what extent the challenges have been achieved in the state of the art in this field. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.121 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.120 Visual Analytics is growing in popularity both as a research and application field. However, implementing Visual Analytics applications remains difficult due to the mismatch between the needs of analysts who perform exploratory analysis and existing software components for information visualization, data analysis, and data management. We explain analysts' requirements in terms of human cognitive abilities and show how information visualization has had to re-implement in-memory databases and some analytical algorithms to meet these demands. Visual Analytics relies on visualization but also requires tools for performing analysis and managing data at larger scales. We explain how the competing constraints of limited human cognition and increasing data strain existing software systems and provide some hints how to address them in the future. We argue that addressing these requirements will benefit not only Visual Analytics tools, but also analytics and data management systems in general. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.120 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.119 To support interactive visualization and analysis of complex, large-scale climate data sets, UV-CDAT integrates a powerful set of scientific computing libraries and applications to foster more efficient knowledge discovery. Connected through a provenance framework, the UV-CDAT components can be loosely coupled for fast integration or tightly coupled for greater functionality and communication with other components. This framework addresses many challenges in interactive visual analysis of distributed large-scale data for the climate community. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.119 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.76 Intelligence analysis challenges investigators to examine large collections of data and documents and come to a deeper understanding of the information and events contained within them. Visual analytics technologies hold great promise as potential aids for intelligence analysis professionals. We describe our research to better understand intelligence analysis processes and analysts, learn how visual analytics can help investigators, and design visual analytics systems to serve in this role. To illustrate these ideas, we present a hypothetical intelligence analysis scenario that explores a collection of text documents using the Jigsaw system that we have created. The system combines computational analysis of document text with interactive visualizations of the document contents and analysis results. Evaluating such systems is very challenging and the article concludes by discussing potential evaluation methodologies for these types of systems. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.76 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.73 The pervasive use of information technology in the past decade has given rise to several settings where it is desired to securely share data between different private organizations, law enforcement agencies, and state, local and international governments, while ensuring privacy of law-abiding citizens. Balancing security and privacy concerns with information sharing remains a top priority for several organizations. Secure pattern matching (SPM) can address some of the challenges facing sharing and searching such data. This paper surveys the state of the art in SPM protocols, providing clear technical descriptions and detailed performance comparisons thereof. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.73 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.71 We evaluate the the use of cellular communications mobile wireless healthcare by examining the implementation of an example wireless electrocardiogram application in a CDMA2000 1xEV-DO network. We endeavor to quantify "medical-grade" real-time quality of service in terms of data integrity and delay, and show how this might be achieved by designing a CDMA2000 protocol stack for wireless ECG. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.71 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.69 Information systems, networks, and technologies have become an integral part of modern critical control systems that manage many of today’s critical infrastructures. The continuous operation, maintenance, and protection of critical infrastructures have become a high national priority for governments around the world because our society heavily depends on them for most of our daily activities (travel, power usage, banking transactions, telecommunications, etc) and safety. It is therefore critical that these infrastructures have to be protected from potential accidental incidents or cyberattacks. We present the fundamental architectural components of critical control systems which manage most critical infrastructures. We identify some of the vulnerabilities and threats to modern critical control systems followed by protection solutions that can be deployed to mitigate attacks exploiting these vulnerabilities. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.69 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.7 Software has become an integral part of many products over the last decades. In 2010 we started a series of columns in IEEE Software with the goal to develop a better quantitative understanding of the impact of software on different industries. The columns are written by industry insiders from companies like Honeywell, Microsoft, Oracle, Shell Oil, Fujitsu, Hitachi and Philips Electronics. A frame of reference is presented that allows comparing the impact of software on different companies and industries. Summarizing the results of the first 15 columns, we are able to propose new metrics such as “Compound Average Growth Rate” (CAGR) for software and “software mileage”. The data shows that software typically grows with 16 percent a year, doubling every 4 to 5 years. The CAGR data presented fall within a surprisingly small range. Software mileage captures the impact of size and volume of software in one ratio and starts to explain how relatively small software companies can dominate large industries. The limitations of the data is discussed and next steps are outlined. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.7 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.1 The study of social networks has attracted much attention in the research community. With abundant data produced by online social applications, much effort has been devoted to mining their patterns. In this paper, we analyze the structural and evolutionary properties of Renren (http://www.renren.com/), a large-scale online social network website, and discuss potential applications. Our empirical results show that Renren exhibits exponentially truncated power law in degree distribution, and has a short average node distance. The network demonstrates temporal locality in the edge creation process, and follows a power law in the distribution of the longevity of the disconnected components. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2013.1 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.428 Human-in-the-Loop Cyber-Physical-Systems (HiLCPS) is a challenging and very promising class of applications with immense potential of impacting daily lives of many people. HiLCPS systems measure cognitive activity through body and brain sensors, infer the intent through analysis on an embedded system, they then translate the intent into robot control signals influencing the physical environment by robotic actuators, where the effects are then again observed by the human as an input for new decisions -- closing the loop. This article overviews HiLCPS opportunities and design challenges from the view of 4 disciplines: embedded system design, brain-computer interface algorithm design, assistive robotics, and innovative networking. The article outlines a common design scheme unifying these disciplines. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.428 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.425 Database management systems are designed to handle large amounts of data as efficiently as possible. This means that every request and every piece of data is treated in the same best-effort manner, regardless of user expectations. Yet, the last few years have seen a consistent drive towards designing software (and hardware) that focuses on providing high Quality of Experience (QoE) to users. The focus is shifted from blind performance optimization into optimizing user satisfaction. This led to important changes in many areas of the software development industry. In this paper, we discuss how to provide high levels of QoE to database users. We present how to provide QoE by considering user-defined requirements. We describe the main types of execution-related requirements and present how to measure the QoE level the system provides. Experimental results obtained over two widely adopted DBMS (Oracle 11g and SQL Server 2008) prove the usefulness of proposed strategies. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.425 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.359 Future multiprocessor chips will integrate many different units, each tailored to a specific computation. When designing such a system, a chip architect must decide how to distribute the available limited system resources, such as area, power and energy among all the computational units. We introduce MultiAmdahl, an analytical optimization technique for resource sharing among heterogeneous units. We identify the optimal resource allocation in the unit using the performance of each computational unit, the workload, the target design goal, and the total available resource. We conclude by analyzing the impact of our optimization framework on chip design. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.359 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.328 While the potential benefits of smart home technology are widely recognized, a lightweight design is needed for the benefits to be realized at a large scale. We introduce the CASAS “smart home in a box”, a lightweight smart home design that is easy to install and provides smart home capabilities out of the box with no customization or training. We discuss types of data analysis that have been performed by the CASAS group and can be pursued in the future by using this approach to designing and implementing smart home technologies. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.328 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.326 Social networking sites have become increasingly popular over recent years. However, there is a wide-spread level of dissatisfaction and lack of trust from users towards social network providers due to privacy concerns. This article attempts to uncover whether these feelings are justified by examining the degree of traceability between privacy policies and the privacy controls of social networking sites. Our aim was to determine whether the privacy controls actually reflect the contents of the privacy policies. We studied sixteen prominent social networking sites and discovered that there is a significant disconnect between privacy policies and privacy controls. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.326 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.118 Modern, computationally-driven, interdisciplinary research demands close collaboration between individuals from many disciplines. Systems biology is one such interdisciplinary field, drawing on computational and experimental expertise to elucidate complex biological systems and processes. In our efforts to better understand the regulation of cell division in budding yeast, the development of a shared, project-specific style of communication became just as much a goal of the collaboration as the development of our models. Finding this common language for the collaboration helped us overcome cultural barriers, understand the nuances of each other’s work, and enhance the precision and interpretability of our models. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2012.118 http://www.computer.org/portal/site/computer/ Computer http://www.computer.org/portal/site/computer/