The component oriented language COMODEL for the description of technical systems is presented. It represents technical knowledge by means of functions and geometric properties of components in a uniform way based on a small number of elementary concepts. Components together with interactions between components can be composed to aggregates, and a whole technical system is viewed as a big aggreg...

The estimation of frontier cost and production functions has been given impetus by the introduction of the stochastic frontier.’ This model is distinguished by a disturbance term composed of two parts a one-sided component, non-positive for production functions and non-negative for cost functions, representing the degree of inefficiency, and a symmetric component representing the usual statisti...

Many useful properties that might be discovered from a component in a large software system do not depend solely on the code for that component but rather are contingent upon properties of that component’s environment. This paper describes a novel approach for adapting modular analyses, based on abstract interpretation, to run in reverse direction in order to discover a property that—if assumed...

Mature push button tools have emerged for checking trace properties (e.g. secrecy or authentication) of security protocols. The case of indistinguishability-based privacy properties (e.g. ballot privacy or anonymity) is more complex and constitutes an active research topic with several recent propositions of techniques and tools. We explore a novel approach based on type systems and provide a (...

Organizations producing products based on technical standards are interested in the factors that influence a customers’ intention to adopt that product, and accordingly that standard. In general, standards-based products are expected to be affected by factors similar to those that affect ordinary innovations, as described in Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations with the addition of a few factors in...