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This paper aims to explore the feasible mining and proper selection of QoS‐aware services for a P2P‐based business process enactment framework, and enhance the relevant workflow prototype. Design/methodology/approach – Through observing and analysing unpredictable dynamic changes that commonly exist in e‐service workflow, a set of QoS specifications and monitoring mechanisms in a P2P workflow framework is proposed. These specifications are an evolving extension of services' description with semantic web facilitators for P2P‐based e‐services.

It has been demonstrated that the QoS‐OWL approach can be effectively used to describe and exploit e‐services, particularly in a decentralised environment. QoS‐OWL is also able to provide the deliberation of geographic information for e‐services, and facilitates the peers' effective cooperation and automates business processes. It is recommended that the approach be adopted in the dynamic online information system environment to increase efficiency and reduce costs in running e‐services.

The QoS attributes discussed in this paper are relatively typical for benchmarking purposes, so the extension of the QoS metrics specifications and related protocols need to be discussed in future work.

The authors propose an approach to dynamically selecting appropriate service‐oriented peers in a P2P network, where the composition of e‐services in a business process can be enhanced significantly. The approach is based on ontology and QoS perspectives, and the descriptions of services have rich semantic features in an attempt to make the service selection more intelligent and reliable. Therefore the proposal offers e‐service providers innovative initiatives to re‐engineer their business services.

This paper aims to outline and implement a novel hybrid controller in humanoid robots to map an optimal path. The hybrid controller is designed using the Owl search algorithm (OSA) and Fuzzy logic.

The optimum steering angle (OS) is used to deal with the obstacle located in the workspace, which is the output of the hybrid OSA Fuzzy controller. It is obtained by feeding OSA's output, i.e. intermediate steering angle (IS), in fuzzy logic. It is obtained by supplying the distance of obstacles from all directions and target distance from the robot's present location.

The present research is based on the navigation of humanoid NAO in complicated workspaces. Therefore, various simulations are performed in a 3D simulator in different complicated workspaces. The validation of their outcomes is done using the various experiments in similar workspaces using the proposed controller. The comparison between their outcomes demonstrates an acceptable correlation. Ultimately, evaluating the proposed controller with another existing navigation approach indicates a significant improvement in performance.

A new framework is developed to guide humanoid NAO in complicated workspaces, which is hardly seen in the available literature. Inspection in simulation and experimental workspaces verifies the robustness of the designed navigational controller. Considering minimum error ranges and near collaboration, the findings from both frameworks are evaluated against each other in respect of specified navigational variables. Finally, concerning other present approaches, the designed controller is also examined, and major modifications in efficiency have been reported.

In e-government domain, an efficient semantic interoperability of services is a big challenge. In this context, semantic technologies play a fundamental role in numerous e-government programs. Indeed, these technologies enable enriching the public service description provided by different public administrations with additional semantic information, which allows automatic services processing and information exchange between involved members in comprehensive and interpretable manner, thus facilitating service integration and cooperation. The most frequently used technologies in this area are semantic web services (SWS) technology and ontology. Thus, for modelling efficiently public services, the authors have exploring, studying and analyzing some of e-government researches and projects that applied semantic technologies.

In this paper, the authors address how semantic technologies transform the e-government domain through exploring and studying the use of SWS and ontology in numerous researches and projects applying these technologies in this area. Then, the authors have compared them through a set of criteria defined according to e-government requirements such as the SWS modelling approach for describing semantically public services, ontologies for representing governmental specific features (e.g. regulation and organizational structures) and developed portal for supporting user ' s perspectives. Based on this study, the authors have identified the appropriate standards, frameworks, and models for developing the framework.

The authors have developed a framework for public services which enhances existing approaches with additional aspects. Thus, the approach comparing to other works improves the service ontology with a cognitive semantic approach to support the multiple usage contexts and situations of services. This semantic is developed in form of a Sit/Ctx ontology developed based on CSs model represented through conceptual graphs theory. The authors have used this model besides OWL-S, improving thus the level of automation of discovery and composition process of public services, which become more efficient with taken into consideration their interrelations and situations.

The approach comparing to other works improves the service ontology with a cognitive semantic approach to support the multiple usage contexts and situations of public services, providing thus the end-users (people and enterprises) a better orientation in discovery process.

Current networks are providing plenty of services that users can access and use. These services are more and more pervasive and deployed in different networks distributed across an environment. This raises the problem of managing such environments in order to grant access to services from anywhere and to adapt the environment’s networks to dynamic changes. Also, there is a need of an autonomous behavior to reduce human intervention and assure environment’s consistency. This autonomous and distributed behavior leads to the definition and integration of existing and new technologies to enable autonomous distributed management. This is fulfilled by providing paradigms that bring awareness about the surroundings and enabled tools to manage and adapt the environment’s resources. The main problem is to dynamically provide auto‐configuration of networks to deal with the frequent changes which results from users’ roaming, changing services constraints, and changing services themselves, and adding, upgrading or removing policies. The outcome of these issues is a dynamic system with complex management. Hence, this paper proposes the integration of different techniques to provide an autonomous, distributed, and secure management including auto‐configuration, adaptation, and auto‐protection of pervasive environments. Then, policies control the behavior of the environment, devices configuration and the enforcement of security mechanisms to protect sensitive data. Also, mobile agents are employed to distribute management tasks across the distributed environment. In order to provide auto‐protection capabilities, the autonomous behavior of the environment have to be secured. Actually, this security issue is addressed by defining an agent‐based Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) with X.509 certificates. The agent ensures then that the security functions are applied across all the distributed networks, where specific agents are responsible for conveying necessary information and certificates to local environments. Finally, the paper proposes a semantic‐based privacy management approach using ontologies to decide how privacy information is handled in the environment.

The northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) was declared a threatened species by the US Fish and Wildlife Service on June 22, 1990. Its listing as a threatened species makes it illegal not only to harm the owls directly, but also to destroy their habitat. Uncertainty associated with the federal government's handling of the owl habitat area increased with the announcement on June 27 that a plan for protection would be delayed. Subsequently, the Bush administration responded with a plan aimed at “balancing” environmental and employment considerations (Hooker and Rockwell, 1990). Reflecting the 1994 Clinton forest plan for the Pacific Northwest, total harvests of softwoods in the Douglas‐fir region of Western Washington and Western Oregon were recently projected to decline from 3.14 billion cubic feet in 1986 to 1.75 billion cubic feet in 2010 (Haynes, Adams, and Mills, 1995). Since the stock market responds very rapidly to new information, its reaction to the owl's listing can be investigated in an attempt to uncover Wall Street's perception of the likely future effect of the decision on the financial attractiveness of growing and marketing timber. Results have implications for the forest products industry and should be of interest to policymakers, forest industry planners, and security analysts.

Managing components' resources plays a critical role in the success of systems' architectures designed for cyber–physical systems (CPS). Performing the selection of candidate components to pursue a specific application's needs also involves identifying the relationships among architectural components, the network and the physical process, as the system characteristics and properties are related.

Using a Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) approach is a valuable asset therefore. Within this context, the authors present the so-called Systems Architecture Ontology (SAO), which allows the representation of a system architecture (SA), as well as the relationships, characteristics and properties of a CPS application.

SAO uses a common vocabulary inspired by the Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL) standard. To demonstrate SAO's applicability, this paper presents its use as an MDE approach combined with ontology-based modeling through the Ontology Web Language (OWL). From OWL models based on SAO, the authors propose a model transformation tool to extract data related to architectural modeling in AADL code, allowing the creation of a components' library and a property set model. Besides saving design time by automatically generating many lines of code, such code is less error-prone, that is, without inconsistencies.

To illustrate the proposal, the authors present a case study in the aerospace domain with the application of SAO and its transformation tool. As result, a library containing 74 components and a related set of properties are automatically generated to support architectural design and evaluation.

Uses the story of Albert the tortoise to explain the principles of teamwork within an organization. Shows the benefits of this to the organization as a whole, and to Albert the tortoise, the embodiment of the steady worker.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new method of ontology‐based digital product data exchange. The digital product data are enriched with virtual prototype (VP) model information and the designed exchange process is discussed. Additionally, an algorithm enabling the ontology‐based data exchange method among missile guide systems is proposed and analyzed.

Semantic sevice‐oriented architecture (SSOA) is an innovative integration architecture for digital product information integration and process integration. In digital product ontology layer of SSOA, a new method of ontology‐based product data exchange is proposed. Compared with traditional information exchange, the method adds the VP's information to general digital products' information. The VP's information is described by building VP static structure ontology and dynamic behavior ontology. The exchange process of the novel method is discussed in detail. Finally, an example illustrating the data exchange among missile guide systems is given and the merits of the proposed method is analyzed.

Simulation information, especially VP information, is not always well defined and taken into account by product data exchange systems such as product data management or product lifecycle management. A formal description of VP information is often required in efficient and effective product data exchange. The goal is to define VP structure and behavior ontologies to enable ontology‐based digital product data exchange.

Using VP information including structure information and behavior information, the paper provides a new method of digital product data exchange.

This article is based on an interview conducted with Jane Taylor and Debbie Brenner, former joint chief executives of Owl (now Dimensions (Owl)), a provider of support services to people with learning disabilities.