Zixue Cheng

An agent-based personalized distance learning system

The Internet has becoming very popular and many education learning systems which use the Internet are proposed. There now exist many stand alone education systems. But, the use of computer networks make possible distance learning which will be a more effective learning process. To build a distance learning systems agent-based systems can be an effective way. An agent can examine the learners information from the learning history. This information is used to provide the right teaching materials. In this paper, we propose an agent-based personalized distance learning system which can deliver the learning materials and test the learners understanding.

A model for negotiation among agents based on the transaction analysis theory

In the research work presented, interactions among the various types of agents in autonomous decentralized systems are based on the theory of transaction analysis (TA) of psychology. Human beings are considered one particular type of autonomous agent. Hence, the agents structure as well as interactions among them are defined and performed much the same as human behavior and attitudes. Cooperation among agents is negotiated by exchanging strokes. After the cooperation among agents is established, each of them has a specific role to perform in order to reach a particular goal. The paper presents the definition of the inner structure of an agent along with the negotiation process occurred among them until the cooperation is established.<<ETX>>

An agent based education system for cellular phone

The cellular phone is now the most popular information terminal that anyone can use freely anywhere and anytime. We propose a mobile education system (MES) and an extended mobile HTTP (MHTTP) protocol. The MES can support the students learning by downloading the teacher agent (TA) into the students cellular phone. The TA plays an advising role for students, marks the students answers, and makes communication with the management agent (MA). The MA supports the teacher in preparing learning materials, preparing appropriate exercises, and homework. Also, it performs the students score management. The MHTTP is a protocol extended from the HTTP in order to deal with problems caused by HTTP for the cellular phone network. We implemented and evaluated the proposed system. The system evaluation shows that MES is a useful education system for students and teachers.

An agent based campus information providing system for cellular phone

In this paper a campus information providing system (CIPS) for cellular phones is proposed. By using this system, the search time to find the necessary information in the campus is reduced. A user can access the system using the cellular phone terminal and by clicking the links or by inserting a keyword in the form they can get easily the campus information. The system has four agents which deals with Web information required by users, Net News, the students login state, campus navigation and the filtering of the received campus information for cellular phone terminal. Therefore the proposed system can provide different media informations to a cellular phone. By using the proposed system, the users are able to get the information anywhere and anytime. The system performance was evaluated using a questionnaire. From the questionnaire results, we found that the system was able to show the required information. However the system operation should be improved and the information content should be shown better.

An Agent-Based Personalized Distance Learning System for Delivering Appropriate Studying Materials to Learners

In this paper, we propose an agent-based personalized distance learning system for delivering appropriate studying materials to learners by judging learners degree of understanding. The main elements of our proposed system are the agents, which play the role of teacher and based on the learning history they analyze the understanding degree of learners. To evaluate the proposed distance learning system, we carried out three experiments and a questionnaire investigation. The evaluation results show that by making grouping of learners the agents can decide what kind of materials should be given to learners. We show that by adding new features such as mental action of color and the competition with other learners, the learners will increase furthermore the learning efficiency.

A Working Model for Real-time Interactive Distance Education Support Systems

In Japan, most of the real time distance learning systems constructed over JGN (Japan Gigabit Network) are simple applications of video conference system equipped with high-quality audio/video transmission equipment. Such systems are not modeled to add distance educational support such as real time floor control, and are insufficient and inefficient to perform real time distance lecture or seminar when the number of sites get larger. This paper proposes a Working Model for distributed computer systems supporting real-time interactive distance lectures or seminars over JGN. As an application of the working model, functions for floor control and tele-presentation were discussed. The utility of the proposed working model was confirmed with an experimental system.

A new approach to ADT specification support based on reuse of similar ADT by the application of Case-Based Reasoning

Abstract Abstract Data Type (ADT) is a powerful tool having a very good mathematic basis called many-sorted algebra and is also combined into several Formal Description Techniques (FDTs). By using ADT, a protocol or a software system can be specified in a very abstract way. It also facilitates the verification and validation of the specified system. However, in practice ADT is rarely used because it is difficult for a non-ADT expert to specify. As a consequence of this, in order to promote the widespread use of ADT and FDT, a support method for ADT specification is necessary. Unfortunately, there is almost no such a support method so far. We propose an ADT specification support method in terms of support system based on Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) which is a kind of problem solving by reusing solutions of the existing similar problem with some appropriate modifications. CBR has been used in some researches. But there is no research which uses this technique for ADT specification support so far. The support system can ease the specification of ADT and prevent the user from spending too much time and effort in specifying the whole ADT from the beginning. Our support system consists of four parts: (1) Case base of ADTs; (2) Requirement Acquisition Template; (3) Search mechanism for finding the most similar case in (1); (4) Modifier for modifying the retrieved case to meet the requirement of user. Among these parts, the core of the support system is the search mechanism which is based on the definition of similarity of ADTs. In this paper, we first propose an ADT specification model which defines a data carrier part of an ADT as a combination of constructors of four patterns. Based on the specification model, a similarity definition is given. Furthermore, we have designed the support system. Finally, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the system, we experimented with data types of service and protocol in the data communication field. From the evaluation, the effectiveness of the system is ensured.

A New Distributed Algorithm for Implementation of LOTOS Multi-Rendezvous

LOTOS[1] is a high level specification language which incorporates the Multi-Rendezvous. Multi-Rendezvous is a powerful communication mechanism that allows a set of processes to execute an event in synchronous way. Besides the multi-synchronous property, Multi-Rendezvous has nondeterministic and exclusion properties. It is not a trivial problem to implement Multi-Rendezvous in a network system. The implementation has to maintain the properties mentioned above, be fair and make progress.

A synthesis algorithm of a protocol model from a single entity

Protocol entities, in communication protocols, behave under sets of communication rules (protocols). Thus, it is desirable to concentrate on the design of one protocol entity and generate the corresponding protocol entity automatically by exploiting the communication rules. A protocol is desired to be formal, precise and unambiguous, in other words, it is described using FDTs (Formal Description Techniques). In this paper, we propose a protocol synthesis algorithm in which a peer protocol entity is generated from a single given entity. Unlike previous works, where FSMs (Finite State Machines) were used to synthesize partial protocols, we use LOTOS, which is one of FDTs developed by ISO, in our proposed synthesis algorithm. We prove that the resultant protocol consisting of the given entity and the generated peer entity is logical errors free, collectively represented as deadlock free, if the given entity is in certain forms which are natural in the context of communication protocols. We also present that the protocol is bisimulated by both the given entity and the peer entity to show that the protocol maintains the behaviours of the entities.

Performance evaluation of an adaptive ring access protocol for super high-speed networks

As the number of World Wide Web (WWW) users have been growing, the network traffic over the Internet have increased. As a result the Internet has been suffering from a chronic congestion. To improve this situation, it is necessary to develop a super high-speed backbone network. We propose a media access protocol for super high-speed backbone networks such as terabit networks. The cost of network facilities for terabit networks is high. Therefore, we consider a shared media network such as a ring topology in order to decrease the network cost. Our goal is to build an adaptive protocol with high throughput and good fairness. To achieve this, our protocol considers the traffic condition on the ring. If the traffic on the ring is low each station can send a lot of packets. Otherwise, when the ring starts to become congested, the number of packets sent by stations starts to decrease. Performance evaluation via simulations shows that proposed protocol has a good behavior and can be used as a backbone network for high-speed networks.