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The purpose of this paper is to address the design, implementation, performance and limitations of an environment that emulates a secure element for rapid prototyping and debugging. Today, it is difficult for developers to get access to a near field communication (NFC)-secure element in current smartphones. Moreover, the security constraints of smartcards make in-circuit emulation and debugging of applications impractical. Therefore, an environment that emulates a secure element brings significant advantages for developers.

The authors' approach to such an environment is the emulation of Java Card applets on top of non-Java Card virtual machines (e.g. Android Dalvik VM), as this would facilitate the use of existing debugging tools. As the operation principle of the Java Card VM is based on persistent memory technology, the VM and applications running on top of it have a significantly different life cycle compared to other Java VMs. The authors evaluate these differences and their impact on Java VM-based Java Card emulation. They compare possible strategies to overcome the problems caused by these differences, propose a possible solution and create a prototypical implementation to verify the practical feasibility of such an emulation environment.

While the authors found that the Java Card inbuilt persistent memory management is not available on other Java VMs, they present a strategy to model this persistence mechanism on other VMs to build a complete Java Card run-time environment on top of a non-Java Card VM. Their analysis of the performance degradation in a prototypical implementation caused by additional effort put into maintaining persistent application state revealed that the implementation of such an emulation environment is practically feasible.

This paper addresses the problem of emulating a complete Java Card run-time environment on top of non-Java Card virtual machines which could open and significantly ease the development of NFC secure element applications.

A Web‐based multi‐user system has been developed to remotely execute a large size software package via the Internet. The software implements a genetic algorithm to optimize the design of spur and helical gears. To accomplish this, a combination of HTML, Java servlets, Java applets, Java Script and HTTP protocol has been employed.

Anonymous distributed computing systems consist of potentially millions of heterogeneous processing nodes connected by the global Internet. These nodes can be administered by thousands of organizations and individuals, with no direct knowledge of each other. This work defines anonymous distributed computing systems in general then focuses on the specifics of an applet‐based approach for large‐scale, anonymous, distributed computing on the Internet. A user wishing to participate in a computation connects to a distribution server, which provides information about available computations, and then connects to a computation server with a computation to distribute. A Java class is downloaded, which communicates with the computation server to obtain data, performs the computation, and returns the result. Since any computer on the Internet can participate in these computations, potentially a large number of computers can participate in a single computation.

This paper mainly discusses the author's prototype implementation of Java‐based electronic publishing system (JEPS) that facilitates the creation and delivery of electronic documents with Java technology. JEPS packages the document and viewer in a Java applet. The documents can be viewed on any computer platform with the identical content and style. This paper describes the framework of JEPS and compares JEPS with other Web publishing technologies such as PDF and XML. This paper concludes by considering the potential opportunities and prospects that JEPS provides in the area of electronic publishing over the Internet.

This contribution looks at some relatively new and recent advanced tools, techniques, methods and standards related to the Internet which form the basis for mixtures of documents and services, which we can call ‘document+program hybrids’. The new Internet systems contribute to an evolution from documents on the one side and computer programs on the other side, neatly separated, apart from each other, without much interaction, so that the static document can also exist without computers and networks, to hybrid systems where the classical distinction between the contents and the container is blurred; where all components are integrated, interwoven and exist in synergy with each other; they can be more dynamic and interactive, in comparison with more classical and static documents, by involving and exploiting the power of computers and networks. A collection is presented of Internet‐based sources (URLs) that can serve as illustrations. Recent methods, techniques, standards and protocols on the Internet that form the basis of the evolution are listed. As professional information intermediaries, the authors also consider the impact in the area of online access to information and knowledge.

Using new concepts, such as those on which Java is based, it is now possible to define a new framework within which risk analyses can be performed on electronic communications. In order truly to be effective, risk analyses must be done in real time, owing to the dynamic nature of open, distributed public networks. The strength of these public networks lies in the many routes available for a message to travel from point A to point B, thus ensuring that the message will be delivered. These many routes, however, also constitute the biggest security weakness in public networks, as it is impossible proactively to determine the route a message will follow. In a bid to compensate for the said weakness, this article will be devoted to a discussion on a framework in terms of which Real‐time Risk Analysis (RtRA) can, henceforth, be performed to determine a risk value for a communications session, rather than for the network components used on routes that need to be fixed and known in advance, as for conventional risk analysis. A communication session is defined as the transfer of data between two hosts; for example, exchanging e‐mail messages over open, distributed public networks RtRA produces a risk value that can be used to determine the appropriate countermeasures with which to minimise the risk associated with a communication session.

Integrating laboratory work into interactive engineering eLearning contents augments theory with practice while simultaneously ameliorating the apparent theory-practice gap in traditional eLearning. The purpose of this paper is to assess and recommend media that currently fulfil this desirable dual pedagogical goal.

The qualitative approach compares the eLearner-content interactivity deriving from Mathematica’s Computable Document File (CDF) application, Pearson’s myLab and Lucas-Nuelle’s UniTrain-I. Illustrative interactive examples written in JavaScript and Java are thereby drawn from an engineering eLearning course developed at the University of Botswana (UB).

Based on its scientific rigour, wide application scope, engineering analytical depth, minimal programming requirements and cross-subject-cum-faculty application and deployment potential, the authors found the CDF to be a versatile environment for generating dynamically interactive eLearning contents. The UniTrain-I, blending a multimedia information and communication technology (ICT)-based interactive eLearner-content philosophy with practical laboratory experimentation, is recommended for meeting the paper’s dual eLearning goal as the most adept framework to-date, blending dynamic interactive eLearning content with laboratory hands-on engineering experimentation.

The lack of other competing frameworks limited the considerations to only the three mentioned above. Consequently, the results are subject to review as the ongoing research advances new insights.

The conclusions help eLearning designers plan ICT-based resources for integration into practical electrical engineering eLearning pedagogy and both CDF and UniTrain-I help dispel the prevailing apparent disquiet regarding the effectiveness of the eLearning-mediated electrical engineering pedagogy. In addition, the cited examples document an original electrical engineering eLearning course developed at the UB.

Describes a system for using the World Wide Web to distribute computational tasks to multiple hosts on the Web. A programmer with a computation to distribute registers it with a Web server. An idle host uses this server to identify available computations and downloads a Java class to perform the computation ‐ we call this class a distriblet. The paper describes the programs written to carry out the load distribution, the structure of a distriblet class, and our experience in using this system.

This paper is to investigate a Web‐based engineering approach to enable engineers to use, share, and simulate effectively and efficiently design and manufacturing data through the World Wide Web. The enabling techniques to implement such an approach are critically discussed with an example based on a tolerancing application and two Java‐based machining simulators for e‐manufacturing purposes, as well as an example of real‐time 3D implementation. The outcome of this research is for helping designers and manufacturing engineers to be able accurately to make the right decisions for their respective purposes.

A secure electronic marketplace involves a significant number of real‐time transactions between remote systems, either for commercial or for authentication purposes. The underlying infrastructure of choice to support these transactions seems to be a distributed component architecture. Distributed component software (DCS) is the natural convergence of client/server network computing and object oriented technology in a mix providing reusability, scaleability and maintainability for software constructs. In DCS a client acquires references to objects provided by components located to remote machines and invokes methods of them as if they were located in its native environment. One implementation also provides the ability to pass objects by value, an approach recently examined also by others. The three major models in the distributed component software industry are OMG’s CORBA, Sun’s Enterprise Java Beans, and Microsoft’s DCOM. Besides these, we will discuss the progress for interoperable DCS systems performed in TINA, an open architecture for telecommunications services based on CORBA distributed components. In this paper the security models of each architecture are described and their efficiency and flexibility are evaluated in a comparative manner. Finally, upcoming extensions are discussed.