Semi-formal Approach Research Articles

What Is Minimalist Governance?

Abstract “Informality” and “semiformality” are the primary characteristics of minimalist governance. The operation of minimalist governance assumes a boundary between state and society and some amount of autonomous space between them at the ground level. Whether in a traditional or modern form, minimalist governance stands in contrast to the formal, hierarchical bureaucracy of the state. Minimalism is a pragmatic approach to governance tailored to local conditions, a form of semiformal or informal government that emphasizes operational effectiveness over elaborate bureaucratic procedures. Since minimalist governance does not rely entirely on the hierarchical power of the state apparatus, this semiformal approach is simple and effective, hence its “minimalist” appearance. The key to solving the problem of formalism at the basic level of government lies in managing the relationship between “a thousand threads above” and “a single needle below.” Autonomy and self-governance must be granted to the basic level of the government so that party committees may fulfill their integrative political functions and their role in minimalist governance. Ultimately, this will allow the “needle” of grassroots organizations to connect with “a thousand threads above” while also penetrating deeply into local society. There is significant practical and theoretical importance in understanding the uniqueness of Chinese-style modernization, and the modernization of rural governance, from the perspective of “social foundations,” but to achieve this Chinese-style modernization we must learn from the West and from China’s own traditional and contemporary experiences.

What Is Minimalist Governance?*

“Informality” and “semiformality” are the primary characteristics of minimalist governance. The operation of minimalist governance assumes a boundary between state and society and some amount of autonomous space between them at the ground level. Whether in a traditional or modern form, minimalist governance stands in contrast to the formal, hierarchical bureaucracy of the state. Minimalism is a pragmatic approach to governance tailored to local conditions, a form of semiformal or informal government that emphasizes operational effectiveness over elaborate bureaucratic procedures. Since minimalist governance does not rely entirely on the hierarchical power of the state apparatus, this semiformal approach is simple and effective, hence its “minimalist” appearance. The key to solving the problem of formalism at the basic level of government lies in managing the relationship between “a thousand threads above” and “a single needle below.” Autonomy and self-governance must be granted to the basic level of the government so that party committees may fulfill their integrative political functions and their role in minimalist governance. Ultimately, this will allow the “needle” of grassroots organizations to connect with “a thousand threads above” while also penetrating deeply into local society. There is significant practical and theoretical importance in understanding the uniqueness of Chinese-style modernization, and the modernization of rural governance, from the perspective of “social foundations,” but to achieve this Chinese-style modernization we must learn from the West and from China’s own traditional and contemporary experiences.

Bringing Out-of-School Learning into the Classroom: Self- versus Peer-Monitoring of Learning Behaviour

Based on classroom management fostering autonomy support and intrinsic motivation, this study examines effects of reciprocal peer-monitoring of learning behaviours on cognitive and affective outcomes. Within our study, 470 German secondary school students between 13 and 16 years of age participated in a multimodal hands- and minds-on exhibition focusing on renewable resources. Three groups were separated and monitored via a pre-post-follow up questionnaire: the first conducted peer-monitoring with the performance of specific roles to manage students’ learning behaviours, the second accomplished a self-monitoring strategy, while the third group did not visit the exhibition. In contrast to the latter control group, both treatment groups produced a high increase in short- and long-term knowledge achievement. The peer-monitored group scored higher in cognitive learning outcomes than the self-monitored group did. Interestingly, the perceived level of choice did not differ between both treatment groups, whereas peer-monitoring increased students’ perceived competence and simultaneously reduced the perceived level of anxiety and boredom. Peer-monitoring realised with the performance of specific roles seems to keep students “on task” without lowering indicators for students’ intrinsic motivation. Herewith, we are amongst the first to suggest peer-monitoring as a semi-formal learning approach to balance between teacher-controlled instruction and free-choice exploration.

A Scientific Metaphysics and Ockham’s Razor

I argue that although Ockham’s Razor (OR) has its origins in a-priorist ontological mandates according to the purposes of natural theology and natural philosophy as influenced by it, the principle has taken on significant empirical and contingent materialist connotations and conceptual content since the scientific revolution. I briefly discuss the pluralism of the concept of OR historically and in contemporary science and philosophy. I then attempt to align scientific metaphysics with contemporary conceptions of OR, and to demonstrate that ontic parsimony is an indispensable element of scientific (contingent and anti-a-priorist) metaphysics. I then further deploy that scientific metaphysics to propose a contingently grounded semi-formal approach, with set theoretic features, and then with information theoretic features, to provide a way of assessing when a scientific theory and its ontology are aligned with OR appropriately in the context of the proposed scientific metaphysics.

From Mechanics to Meaning

While generative approaches to game design offer great promise, systems can only reliably generate what they can “understand,” which is often represented in a limited, implicit form in hand-crafted evaluation functions or constructive rules. Proceduralist readings, a semiformal approach for interpreting the meaning of a game based on its underlying processes and interactions in conjunction with aesthetic and cultural cues, offer a novel, systematic approach to game understanding. We formalize proceduralist argumentation as a logic program that performs static reasoning over game specifications to derive higher level meanings, as part of Gemini, a bidirectional game analysis and generation system.

Simulation-Based Hardware Verification with a Graph-Based Specification

Simulation-based verification continues to be the primary technique for hardware verification due to its scalability and ease of use; however, it lacks exhaustiveness. Although formal verification techniques can exhaustively prove functional correctness, they are limited in terms of the scale of their design due to the state-explosion problem. Alternatively, semiformal approaches can involve a compromise between scalability, exhaustiveness, and resource costs. Therefore, we propose an event-driven flow graph-based specification, which can describe the cycle-accurate functional behaviors without the exploration of whole state space. To efficiently generate input sequences according to the proposed specification, we introduce a functional automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) approach, which involves the proposed intelligent redundancy-reduction strategy to solve problems of random test vectors. We also proposed functional coverage criterion based on the formal specification to support a more reliable measure of verification. We implement a verification platform based on the proposed semiformal approach and compare the proposed semiformal approach with the constrained randomized test (CRT) approach. The experiment results show that the proposed semiformal verification method ensures a more exhaustive and effective exploration of the functional correctness of designs under verification (DUVs).

On the Concept of Theodicy

My purpose in this paper is to clarify or explicate the concept of theodicy. More specifically, I shall provide an account of the concept that takes its logical aspects seriously into consideration as well as satisfies the basic intuitions philosophers of religions have had about it. This shall be done by systematically analysing the several theodical conditions found in the literature. As it shall be seen, these conditions are logically related to one another; collectively, they point not to one, but to several concepts of theodicy. Thus, as by-product of this explicatory endeavour, I shall provide a logically guided, I may say, analysis of such conditions as well as a systematization of the theodical concepts arising from them. I shall follow what might be termed a semiformal approach; despite not developing a full logical theory, I use the standard notation and some important results from the field of formal logic.

Quantifying conformance using the Skorokhod metric

The conformance testing problem for dynamical systems asks, given two dynamical models (e.g., as Simulink diagrams), whether their behaviors are “close” to each other. In the semi-formal approach to conformance testing, the two systems are simulated on a large set of tests, and a metric, defined on pairs of real-valued, real-timed trajectories, is used to determine a lower bound on the distance. We show how the Skorokhod metric on continuous dynamical systems can be used as the foundation for conformance testing of complex dynamical models. The Skorokhod metric allows for both state value mismatches and timing distortions, and is thus well suited for checking conformance between idealized models of dynamical systems and their implementations. We demonstrate the robustness of the metric by proving a transference theorem: trajectories close under the Skorokhod metric satisfy “close” logical properties in the timed linear time logic FLTL (Freeze LTL) containing a rich class of temporal and spatial constraint predicates involving time and value freeze variables. We provide efficient window-based streaming algorithms to compute the Skorokhod metric for both piecewise affine and piecewise constant traces, and use these as a basis for a conformance testing tool for Simulink. We experimentally demonstrate the effectiveness of our tool in finding discrepant behaviors on a set of control system benchmarks, including an industrial challenge problem.

Improving Reliability in Collection Condition Surveys by Utilizing Training and Decision Guides

A training program was developed to increase the reliability of collection condition survey data. Nine students carried out a series of three one-hour-long sessions before taking part in an experiment to examine agreement between their responses. The training sessions developed familiarity with a decision guide, provided worked-through examples of assessment and feedback and also the opportunity to analyze small practice surveys for monitoring purposes. The decision guide was modified to express ‘condition’ with greater clarity, but the scoring was not adjusted to meet individual preferences. The initial levels of reliability were low among the students. This increased incrementally up to the post-training experiment which reached an acceptable, if not ideal, level of reliability from which it would be possible to make sound decisions. The program demonstrated that a semi-formal approach to condition assessment that utilized a dynamic combination of the conservator's judgment and a systematic framework could lead to reliable approaches.

Using Deliberation-Centric Social Network Analysis to Measure Balkanization

Existing approaches to social media analysis are deeply limited by the fact that they typically incorporate little or no information about the semantics of the user interactions: they analyze who talked to whom but not what they talked about. In this paper, we present deliberation-centric social network analysis, a semi-formal approach that is built around coding and analyzing the deliberative topology of discussions. The requisite coding can be done relatively quickly, even by non-experts, but enables analyt- ics of unprecedented power. This paper will describe the tech- nique, review the kind of novel analytics it enables, and demon- strate its application to assessing balkanization in a set of Reddit forums. We also consider some of the rich future possibilities of deliberation-centric social network analysis.

Representing and Preparing for Resources in EPM’s Execution Model

Software evolution process model (EPM) is a knowledge-intensive process which is described in EPDL(Software Evolution Process Description Language) and modelled by semi-formal approach based on EPMM(Software Evolution Process Meta-Model). In order to support process improvement and process automation, the execution model is represented by logic programming. Activity in EEM (EPM’s execution model) is not implemented until its needing all kinds of resources are satisfied by system execution environment. The paper discussed the representations of all kinds of resources in EEM and their structures are proposed. The preparation resources method is presented in order to execute the EEM automatically. The converter program is realized and the correct results have presented to prove the correctness of the method.

Algorithm of Representing and Preparing for Resources in EEM

Software evolution process model (EPM) is a knowledge-intensive process which is described in EPDL(Software Evolution Process Description Language) and modelled by semi-formal approach based on EPMM(Software Evolution Process Meta-Model). EPM’s execution model (EEM) is represented by logic programming to create the knowledge base of EPM during constructing the EEM. Only its needing all kinds of resources are satisfied by system execution environment is activity in EEM implemented. The paper discussed the method and the algorithm of preparing resources is respectively presented in order to execute the EEM automatically. The converter program is realized and the correct results have presented to prove the correctness of the method.

Research on Information Technology with Transformation Method of Activity from EPMM-Based Software Evolution Process Model to its Execution Model

Software evolution process model (EPM) is created in terms of a formal evolution process meta-model (EPMM) and semi-formal approach to modeling based on EPMM. EPM is still abstract at higher abstract level and is general while software process is concrete, so EPM must be instantiated before its enactment. The method to transform any EPM to its execution model based on logic programming is proposed. Since activity contains the imports resource, roles resource, exports resource and tasks, the rules to transform the four parts of activity level of any EPM to its execution model based logic programming are respectively proposed by analyzing the execution semantics of the activities and the tasks in EPM. The converter program is realized and the correct results have presented to prove the correctness of the method.

A dynamic assertion-based verification platform for validation of UML designs

Capacity limitations continue to impede widespread adoption of formal property verification in the design validation ow of software and hardware systems. The more popular choice (at least in the hardware domain) has been dynamic property verification (DPV), which is a semi-formal approach where the formal properties are checked over simulation runs. DPV is highly scalable and can support a rich specification language. The main contribution of this paper is to build an integrated DPV platform for validation of UML-based designs. Specifically, we present (a) a language, named Action-LTL (a simple extension of Linear Temporal Logic) for writing assertions over data attributes and events of UML models, and (b) an integrated dynamic assertion-verification platform for verification of UML designs. In view of the capacity limitations of existing formal property verification tools, we believe that the methods presented in this paper are of immediate practical value to the UML design community.

A Generic Approach to Connector Architectures Part I: The General Framework

The aim of this paper is to present a generic framework for the modelling of componentbased systems using architectural connectors. More precisely, concepts of component, connector and architecture are presented in a formal generic way, which are independent of any semi-formal or formal modelling approach. The idea is that one could use this framework to define component and connector notions for every given modelling formalism. As a main result, we define the semantics of architectures using graph transformation, showing that the semantics is independent of the order in which the connections are computed, and that the semantics is compatible with transformation. In the continuation of this paper, we show the applicability of our ideas. In particular, our framework is instantiated by Petri nets and CSP, including a case study using Petri Nets.

URDAD as a semi-formal approach to analysis and design

The Use Case, Responsibility Driven Analysis and Design (URDAD) methodology is a methodology for technology neutral design generating the Platform Independent Model of the Object Management Group’s Model Driven Architecture. It requires the core modeling to be done in the problem space by domain specialists and not in the solution space by technology specialists. URDAD allows for formal elements to be added by different role players at different stages of the model refinement, whilst aiming to preserve agility of the outputs and low cost of the process generating the outputs. This paper discusses the semi-formal aspects of URDAD which facilitate model validation and testing, documentation generation and automated implementation mapping as well as aspects which promote agility and low cost.

Auxiliary state machines + context-triggered properties in verification

Formal specifications of interface protocols between a design-under-test and its environment mostly consist of two types of correctness requirements, namely (a) a set of invariants that applies throughout the protocol execution and (b) a set of context-triggered properties that applies only when the protocol state belongs to a specific set of contexts. To model such requirements, an increasingly popular design choice in the assertion IP design community has been the use of abstract context state machines and state-oriented properties. In this paper, we formalize this modeling style and present algorithms for verifying such specifications. Specifically, we present a purely formal approach and a semi-formal approach for verifying such specifications. We demonstrate the use of this design style in modeling some of the industry standard protocol descriptions and present encouraging results.

Using semi-formal methods for detecting interactions among smart homes policies

Feature Interaction is a problem mostly considered in the telecommunications domain. Many solutions for detecting interactions between telephony features have been reported. In this paper, we investigate the feature interaction problem beyond the traditional telecommunications domain and look at interactions between policies in other domains. We propose the use of semi-formal methods for detecting interactions between policies in the smart homes domain. The novelty of this research is threefold: firstly, a six step semi-formal approach, called IRIS (Identifying Requirements Interactions using Semi-formal methods), for detecting interactions is presented. A major component within IRIS, which is an interaction taxonomy, is also presented. Secondly, we extend the scope of the problem of feature interactions beyond telecommunication features and investigate interactions between policies in the smart homes domain. Thirdly, in order to show how IRIS is used to detect interactions between policies, a case study of the smart homes domain is conducted. A complete description of the results obtained is also provided. Our approach was successfully applied to the smart homes domain and was able to discover 83 interactions among 35 user policies using only 525 pairwise comparisons as opposed to 630 a human expert would have to do. These results support the paper’s main claim of being able to use the semi-formal approach IRIS to detect interactions between policies. Furthermore, these results are to date the most complete publication of interactions between policies in the smart homes domain.

A semi-formal approach to build the functional graph of an automated production system for supervision purposes

This paper presents a functional analysis approach, called an analytical approach, used to model automated production systems (APSs). In addition, Unified Modelling Language models taking into account the various business concepts (i.e. the concepts used in our interest field) involved in this approach are proposed. The final goal of this study is the automation of an analytical approach to enable an expert to obtain the functional graph of an existing APS. This graph has proved useful in developing fault detection and isolation, and fault-tolerant control techniques for flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) and complex plants such as nuclear power plants or chemical plants. However, industrial applications have revealed difficulties in manually constructing functional graphs for complex systems, thus justifying automation for this modelling process. The originality of our approach lies in the fact that it is generic, i.e. it is not specific to a particular set of APSs. This property results both from the use of generic concepts such as the notion of function that is independent of the application context and from the adoption of an object-oriented approach for our analysis process. This study allows us to develop an efficient software tool. It also allows enrichment of an existing reference frame which regroups different models of an FMS from various points of view.

Computer-assisted prediction for industrial organic reactions based on a semi-formal approach

Abstract A computer system has been developed for the industrial organic reaction path synthesis. The characteristic features of this system are the technique used for encoding molecules, semi-formal reaction schemes without any database of known reactions, and convenient thermochemical evaluation of the reaction. This approach introduces a useful idea to the field of the computer-aided reaction path synthesis design.