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Jonathan P. Bowen

Publications and source records attributed to Jonathan P. Bowen.

16 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Jean-Raymond Abrial: A Scientific Biography of a Formal Methods Pioneer

Jean-Raymond Abrial is one of the central figures in the development of formal methods for software and systems engineering. Over a career spanning more than five decades, he has played a decisive role in the creation of the Z specification notation, the B-Method, and Event-B, and in demonstrating their applicability to large-scale industrial systems. This paper presents a scholarly biographical account of Abrial's life and work, tracing the evolution of his ideas from early work on real-time languages and databases, through foundational contributions to formal specification, refinement, and proof, to the development of industrial-strength tool support such as the Atelier~B and the Rodin platform. The paper situates Abrial's contributions within their historical, intellectual, and industrial contexts, and assesses their lasting impact on software engineering and formal reasoning about programs.

cs.GL↗
arXiv2015

Provably Correct Systems: Community, connections, and citations

The original European ESPRIT ProCoS I and II projects on Provably Correct Systems} took place around a quarter of a century ago. Since then the legacy of the initiative has spawned many researchers with careers in formal methods. One of the leaders on the ProCoS projects was Ernst-Rüdiger Olderog. This paper charts the influence of the ProCoS projects and the subsequent ProCoS-WG Working Group, using Prof. Dr Olderog as an example. The community of researchers surrounding an initiative such as ProCoS is considered in the context of the social science concept of a Community of Practice (CoP) and the collaborations undertaken through coauthorship of and citations to publications. Consideration of citation metrics is also included.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2014

On the Security of Fully Homomorphic Encryption and Encrypted Computing: Is Division safe?

Since fully homomorphic encryption and homomorphically encrypted computing preserve algebraic identities such as 2*2=2+2, a natural question is whether this extremely utilitarian feature also sets up cryptographic attacks that use the encrypted arithmetic operators to generate or identify the encryptions of known constants. In particular, software or hardware might use encrypted addition and multiplication to do encrypted division and deliver the encryption of x/x=1. That can then be used to generate 1+1=2, etc, until a complete codebook is obtained. This paper shows that there is no formula or computation using 32-bit multiplication x*y and three-input addition x+y+z that yields a known constant from unknown inputs. We characterise what operations are similarly `safe' alone or in company, and show that 32-bit division is not safe in this sense, but there are trivial modifications that make it so.

cs.CR↗
arXiv2014

Empirical Patterns in Google Scholar Citation Counts

Scholarly impact may be metricized using an author's total number of citations as a stand-in for real worth, but this measure varies in applicability between disciplines. The detail of the number of citations per publication is nowadays mapped in much more detail on the Web, exposing certain empirical patterns. This paper explores those patterns, using the citation data from Google Scholar for a number of authors.

cs.DL↗
arXiv2013

Certifying Machine Code Safe from Hardware Aliasing: RISC is not necessarily risky

Sometimes machine code turns out to be a better target for verification than source code. RISC machine code is especially advantaged with respect to source code in this regard because it has only two instructions that access memory. That architecture forms the basis here for an inference system that can prove machine code safe against `hardware aliasing', an effect that occurs in embedded systems. There are programming memes that ensure code is safe from hardware aliasing, but we want to certify that a given machine code is provably safe.

cs.LO↗
arXiv2013

Electronic Visualisation in Chemistry: From Alchemy to Art

Chemists now routinely use software as part of their work. For example, virtual chemistry allows chemical reactions to be simulated. In particular, a selection of software is available for the visualisation of complex 3-dimensional molecular structures. Many of these are very beautiful in their own right. As well as being included as illustrations in academic papers, such visualisations are often used on the covers of chemistry journals as artistically decorative and attractive motifs. Chemical images have also been used as the basis of artworks in exhibitions. This paper explores the development of the relationship of chemistry, art, and IT. It covers some of the increasingly sophisticated software used to generate these projections (e.g., UCSF Chimera) and their progressive use as a visual art form.

cs.GR↗
arXiv2013

Online Communities: Visualization and Formalization

Online communities have increased in size and importance dramatically over the last decade. The fact that many communities are online means that it is possible to extract information about these communities and the connections between their members much more easily using software tools, despite their potentially very large size. The links between members of the community can be presented visually and often this can make patterns in the structure of sub-communities immediately obvious. The links and structures of layered communities can also be formalized to gain a better understanding of their modelling. This paper explores these links with some specific examples, including visualization of these relationships and a formalized model of communities using the Z notation. It also considers the development of such communities within the Community of Practice social science framework. Such approaches may be applicable for communities associated with cybersecurity and could be combined for a better understanding of their development.

cs.SI↗
arXiv2013

An Open Question on the Uniqueness of (Encrypted) Arithmetic

We ask whether two or more images of arithmetic may inhabit the same space via different encodings. The answers have significance for a class of processor design that does all its computation in an encrypted form, without ever performing any decryption or encryption itself. Against the possibility of algebraic attacks against the arithmetic in a `crypto-processor' (KPU) we propose a defence called `ABC encryption' and show how this kind of encryption makes it impossible for observations of the arithmetic to be used by an attacker to discover the actual values. We also show how to construct such encrypted arithmetics.

cs.CR↗
arXiv2012

Visualising Virtual Communities: From Erdős to the Arts

Monitoring communities has become increasingly easy on the web as the number of visualisation tools and amount of data available about communities increase. It is possible to visualise connections on social and professional networks such as Facebook in the form of mathematical graphs. It is also possible to visualise connections between authors of papers. In particular, Microsoft Academic Search now has a large corpus of information on publications, together with author and citation information, that can be visualised in a number of ways. In mathematical circles, the concept of the "Erdős number" has been introduced, in honour of the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős, measuring the "collaborative distance" of a person away from Erdős through links by co-author. Similar metrics have been proposed in other fields, including acting. The possibility of exploring and visualising such links in arts fields is proposed in this paper.

cs.CY↗
arXiv2012

Usability, Design and Content Issues of Mobile Apps for Cultural Heritage Promotion: The Malta Culture Guide Experience

The paper discusses the experience of producing and distributing an iPhone app for promotion of the Maltese Cultural Heritage on behalf of the Malta Tourism Authority. Thanks to its position at the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Malta has been a crossroads of civilisations whose traces are still visible today, leaving a particularly rich and varied cultural heritage, from megalithic temples to baroque palaces and Caravaggio masterpieces. Conveying all these different aspects within a single application, using textual, visual, and audio means, has raised many different issues about the planning and production of cultural content for mobile usage, together with usability aspects regarding design and distribution of a mobile app. In this paper, we outline all of these aspects, focusing on the design and planning strategies for a long-term user commitment and how to evaluate results for cultural mobile applications. We include experience of all the steps of developing a mobile app, information that is of possible benefit to other app developers in the cultural sector.

cs.HC↗
arXiv2005

Can Small Museums Develop Compelling, Educational and Accessible Web Resources? The Case of Accademia Carrara

Due to the lack of budget, competence, personnel and time, small museums are often unable to develop compelling, educational and accessible web resources for their permanent collections or temporary exhibitions. In an attempt to prove that investing in these types of resources can be very fruitful even for small institutions, we will illustrate the case of Accademia Carrara, a museum in Bergamo, northern Italy, which, for a current temporary exhibition on Cezanne and Renoir's masterpieces from the Paul Guillaume collection, developed a series of multimedia applications, including an accessible website, rich in content and educational material [www.cezannerenoir.it].

cs.MM↗
arXiv2005

Copyright and Promotion: Oxymoron or Opportunity?

Copyright in the cultural sphere can act as a barrier to the dissemination of high-quality information. On the other hand it protects works of art that might not be made available otherwise. This dichotomy makes the area of copyright difficult, especially when it applies to the digital arena of the web where copying is so easy and natural. Here we present a snapshot of the issues for online copyright, with particular emphasis on the relevance to cultural institutions. We concentrate on Europe and the US; as an example we include a special section dedicated to the situation in Italy.

cs.CY↗
arXiv2004

Disabled Access for Museum Websites

Physical disabled access is something that most museums consider very seriously. Indeed, there are normally legal requirements to do so. However, online disabled access is still a relatively novel field. Most museums have not yet considered the issues in depth. The Human-Computer Interface for their websites is normally tested with major browsers, but not with specialist browsers or against the relevant accessibility and validation standards. We consider the current state of the art in this area and mention an accessibility survey of some museum websites.

cs.CY↗
arXiv2004

The Building of Online Communities: An approach for learning organizations, with a particular focus on the museum sector

This paper considers the move toward and potential of building online communities, with a particular focus on the museum sector. For instance, the increase in the use of `personalized' toolkits that are becoming an integral part of the online presence for learning organizations, like museums, can provide a basis for creating and sustaining communities. A set of case studies further illustrates working examples of the ways in which personalization and specific tools are developing collaborative spaces, community channels and group interactions.

cs.CY↗
arXiv2003

Web Access to Cultural Heritage for the Disabled

Physical disabled access is something that most cultural institutions such as museums consider very seriously. Indeed, there are normally legal requirements to do so. However, online disabled access is still a relatively novel and developing field. Many cultural organizations have not yet considered the issues in depth and web developers are not necessarily experts either. The interface for websites is normally tested with major browsers, but not with specialist software like text to audio converters for the blind or against the relevant accessibility and validation standards. We consider the current state of the art in this area, especially with respect to aspects of particular importance to the access of cultural heritage.

cs.CY↗