Copyright (c) 2009 Texas State University All rights reserved. http://ecommons.txstate.edu Recent documents in eCommons@Texas State University en-us Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:41:51 PST 3600 http://ecommons.txstate.edu/englfacp/22 http://ecommons.txstate.edu/englfacp/22 Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:14:14 PST Tally reviews Loren Goldner's Herman Melville: Between Charlemagne and the Antemosaic Cosmic King, which posits that Melville was the American Marx, exposing the crisis of bourgeois ideology in the revolutionary period around 1848. In this, Goldner follows a tradition of Marxian scholarship of Melville, notably including C.L.R. James, Michael Paul Rogin, and Cesare Casarino. Tally concludes that Goldner's argument, while interesting, is limited by its persistent belief in an American exceptionalism that prevents it from recognizing the postnational force of Melville's novels. Robert T. Tally http://ecommons.txstate.edu/cscitrep/14 http://ecommons.txstate.edu/cscitrep/14 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:13:39 PST Software for computing Delaunay tetrahedralization is described. The software is designed to be used as part of a larger system and has a simple user interface. Numerically stable Householder transformations are used to implement orientation and insphere tests in floating-point arithmetic. A backward error analysis is done for the orientation test. Carol Hazlewood http://ecommons.txstate.edu/englfacp/21 http://ecommons.txstate.edu/englfacp/21 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:26:18 PST Literature abounds with the description and exploration of spaces. The writer maps the world, combining a representation of real places with the imaginary space of fiction. In some cases, what I have elsewhere called literary cartography serves to map a well known space (e.g., Dostoevsky's St. Petersburg or Twain's Mississippi River); in others, the places mapped may be wholly imaginary (More's Utopia or Tolkien's Middle Earth). Most often, the two combine, as the literary representation of a seemingly real place is never the purely mimetic image of that space. In a sense, all writing partakes in a form of cartography, since even the most realistic map does not truly depict the space, but, like literature, figures it forth in a complex skein of imaginary relations. In "La Géocritique: Réel, fiction, espace," Bertrand Westphal provides a theory and a method for analyzing this interplay of spatial practices in literary texts. Robert T. Tally http://ecommons.txstate.edu/cscitrep/13 http://ecommons.txstate.edu/cscitrep/13 Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:23:03 PST Multi-agent systems provide an increasingly popular solution in problem domains that require management of uncertainty and high degree of adaptability. Robustness is a key design criteria in building multi-agent systems. We present a novel approach for the design of robust multi-agent systems. Our approach constructs a model of the design of a multi-agent system in Alloy, a declarative language based on relations, and checks the properties of the model using the Alloy Analyzer, a fully automatic analysis tool for Alloy models. While several prior techniques exist for checking properties of multi-agent systems, the novelty of our work is that we can check properties of coordination and interaction, as well as properties of complex data structures that the agents may internally be manipulating or even sharing. The suggested work is the first application of Alloy to checking properties of multi-agent systems. Such unified analysis has not been possible before Rodion Podorozhny http://ecommons.txstate.edu/cscitrep/12 http://ecommons.txstate.edu/cscitrep/12 Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:12:35 PST Business processes emphasize the capture of best practices and improvement of business activities. A dynamic process aims to deal with a dynamic environment where processes have to change and adapt to respond to unexpected events and situations that have not been anticipated. Dynamic process change currently focuses on mechanisms and engines for dynamic process specification and execution. However, existing approaches do not ensure that dynamically adapted processes achieve desirable performance and optimality goals that are set by the target application. In this paper we suggest an approach that assembles a process customized for a particular crisis and dynamically modifies it, if necessary, to maintain an optimal execution. Rodion Podorozhny http://ecommons.txstate.edu/cscitrep/11 http://ecommons.txstate.edu/cscitrep/11 Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:47:20 PST In this paper we suggest an architecture that would integrate various methods for synthesis of a software process model based on domain knowledge about artifacts, process fragments, tools, and limited process execution observations. Our approach suggests using a meta-process specification for integration of various process synthesis methods to provide a generalized process model. We also propose using a process execution observation for confirmation of a synthesized process model. Rodion Podorozhny http://ecommons.txstate.edu/biolfacp/16 http://ecommons.txstate.edu/biolfacp/16 Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:18:00 PST The megaflora documented in this paper from Quantico, Virginia, is one of the first assemblages of Lower Cretaceous angiosperm megafossils from North America to be described in detail using modem methods of foliar architectural analysis. The megaflora is of middle to early late Albian age and consists of 22 species of leaves/shoots and at least 5 species of reproductive structures. Three new species are described in this publication. Estimates of botanical diversity indicate the presence of at least 1 species of pteridophyte (Equisetum), 1 species of cycadophyte, 9 species of conifers, and 12 species of angiosperms (all dicotyledons). A minimum of 5 angiosperm species are referable to the dicot subclass Magnoliidae, including leaves with affinities to extant Laurales, and leaves and associated reproductive structures with affinities to extant Nelumbonaceae (placed in Ranunculidae by some authors). Also present are leaf megafossils with probable affinities to the dicot subclasses Rosidae and/or Hamamelididae (2 species of Sapindopsis), other possible Hamamelididae (1 species of "platanoid" leaf fragments), and specimens assigned to the form genus Dicotylophylum. Evidence from sedimentology, megafossil preservation, and the morphology of the most abundant species (Nelumbites exmuinervis) indicates that the fossil-bearing beds at Quantico probably represent deposition in a pond or swale. The megaflora consists of both herbaceous aquatic angiosperms representing in situ elements and remains of woody gymnosperms and angiosperms transported from nearby terrestrial environments. Garland R. Upchurch, Jr. http://ecommons.txstate.edu/musifacp/2 http://ecommons.txstate.edu/musifacp/2 Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:41:56 PST Frank R. Lembo http://ecommons.txstate.edu/histfacp/14 http://ecommons.txstate.edu/histfacp/14 Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:33:05 PDT Jesús F. De la Teja http://ecommons.txstate.edu/histfacp/13 http://ecommons.txstate.edu/histfacp/13 Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:56:03 PDT James W. Pohl