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<div class="sectionTitle">Information Science Discussion Papers Series: 2004 Abstracts</div>

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<h3><a name="dp2004-01">2004/01: An architecture for self-organising evolvable virtual machines</a></h3>
<h4>M. Nowostawski, M. Purvis and S. Cranefield</h4>

<p>Contemporary software systems are exposed to demanding, dynamic, and unpredictable environments where the traditional adaptability mechanisms may not be sufficient. To imitate and fully benefit from life-like adaptability in software systems, that might come closer to the complexity levels of biological organisms, we seek a formal mathematical model of certain fundamental concepts such as: life, organism, evolvability and adaptation. In this work we will concentrate on the concept of software evolvability. Our work proposes an evolutionary computation model, based on the theory of hypercycles and autopoiesis. The intrinsic properties of hypercycles allow them to evolve into higher levels of complexity, analogous to multi-level, or hierarchical evolutionary processes. We aim to obtain structures of self-maintaining ensembles, that are hierarchically organised, and our primary focus is on such open-ended hierarchically organised evolution.</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2004-01.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 349 KB)</p>

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<h3><a name="dp2004-02">2004/02: Design strategies for GUI items with touch screen based information systems: Assessing the ability of a touch screen overlay as a selection device</a></h3>
<h4>M. Gleeson, N. Stanger and E. Ferguson</h4>

<p>Touch screens are a popular method of interaction with information systems embedded in public kiosks. Typical information systems are used on desktop PCs and therefore restricted to having a mouse as the selection device used to interact with the system. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how effective a touch screen overlay is in selecting typical graphical user interface (GUI) items used in information systems. A series of tests were completed involving multi-directional point and select tasks. A mouse, being the standard selection device, was also tested so the results of the touch screen could be compared. The GUI items tested were a button, check box, combo box and a text box. The results showed that the touch screen overlay was not suitable in terms of selecting small targets with a size of 4mm or less. The touch screen overlay was slower and had higher error rate compared to the mouse. There was no significant difference in throughput between a touch screen overlay and mouse. The mouse was rated easier to use and easier to make accurate selections with. The touch screen had higher arm, wrist and finger fatigue. This indicates that a touch screen overlay used only with a finger is not a practical selection device to use with interfaces containing small targets.</p>

<p><strong>Keywords: </strong>touch screen overlay,
mouse,
pointing devices,
Fitts&rsquo; Law,
performance evaluation,
GUI items</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2004-02.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 610 KB)</p>

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<h3><a name="dp2004-03">2004/03: Reliable group communication and institutional action in a multi-agent trading scenario</a></h3>
<h4>S. Cranefield</h4>

<p>The use of asynchronous communication is traditionally seen to be an important element of an agent&rsquo;s autonomy. This paper argues that groups of agents within a society need the ability to choose forms of communication with stronger guarantees for particular interactions, and in particular, focuses on the use of reliable group communication. An example electronic trading scenario&mdash;the game of Pit&mdash;is presented, and it is shown how a formal institution for a particular critical phase of Pit can be built on top of the semantics for totally ordered and virtually synchronous multicasting.</p>

<p><a href="papers/dp2004-03.pdf">Download</a> (PDF, 183 KB)</p>