parallel algorithms and to offer guidelines to machine designers. Such a model must strike a balance between detail and simplicity in order to reveal important bottlenecks without making analysis of interesting problems intractable. The model is based on four parameters that specify abstractly

Composed of tens of thousands of tiny devices with very limited resources ("motes"), sensor networks are subject to novel systems problems and constraints. The large number of motes in a sensor network means that there will often be some failing nodes; networks must be easy to repopu

Multiuser diversity is a form of diversity inherent in a wireless network, provided by independent time-varying channels across the different users. The diversity benefit is exploited by tracking the channel fluctuations of the users and scheduling transmissions to users when their instantaneous

Cognitive radio is viewed as a novel approach for improving the utilization of a precious natural resource: the radio electromagnetic spectrum. The cognitive radio, built on a software-defined radio, is defined as an intelligent wireless communication system that is aware of its environment

as model construction. An operational semantics is provided for PEPA and its use to generate an underlying Markov process for any PEPA model is explained and demonstrated. Model simplification and state space aggregation have been proposed as means to tackle the problems of large performance models

Growth of distributed systems has attained unstoppable momentum. If we better understood how to think about, analyze, and design distributed systems, we could direct their implementation with more confidence.

This survey characterizes an emerging research area, sometimes called coordination theory, that focuses on the interdisciplinary study of coordination. Research in this area uses and extends ideas about coordination from disciplines such as computer science, organization theory, operations research, economics, linguistics, and psychology. A key insight of the framework presented here is that coordination can be seen as the process of managing dependencies among activities. Further progress, therefore, should be possible by characterizing different kinds of dependencies and identifying the coordination processes that can be used to manage them. A variety of processes are analyzed from this perspective, and commonalities across disciplines are identified. Processes analyzed include those for managing shared resources, producer/consumer relationships, simultaneity constraints, and tank/subtask dependencies. Section 3 summarizes ways of applying a coordination perspective in three different domains: (1) understanding the effects of information technology on human organizations and markets, (2) designing cooperative work tools, and (3) designing distributed and parallel computer systems. In the final section, elements of a research

This paper provides an overview of research and development activities in the field of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. It aims to identify key concepts and applications, and to indicate how they relate to one-another. Some historical context to the field of agent-based computing is given, and contemporary research directions are presented. Finally, a range of open issues and future challenges are highlighted.

Evolutionary theory has always been plagued by scantiness of evidence. We see the products of evolution but not much of the process. Most of the story happened long ago, and little remains of the early stages. Especially few traces of behavior remain; only recently were there artefacts that could endure. Verbal behavior left no artifacts until the appearence of writing, and that was a very late stage. We shall probably never know precisely what happened, but we ougth to be able to say what might have happended – that is what kind of variations and what kind of contingencies of selection could have brought verbal behavior into existence. Speculation about natural selection is supported by current research on genetics; the evolution of a social enviroment or culture is supported by the experimental analysis of behavior. Strictly speaking, verbal behavior does not evolve. It is the product of a verbal enviroment or what linguistics call a language, and it is the verbal enviroment that evolves. Since a verbal enviroment is composed of listeners, it is understandable that linguistics emphasize the listener. A question often asked, for example, is

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