Transaction processing system

A 'Transaction Processing SystemTo be considered a transaction processing system the computer must pass the ACID test.

From a technical perspective, a Transaction Processing System (or Transaction Processing Monitor) monitors transaction programs, a special kind of programs. The essence of a transaction program is that it manages data that must be left in a consistent state. E.g. if an electronic payment is made, the amount must be either both withdrawn from one account and added to the other, or none at all. In case of a failure preventing transaction completion, the partially executed transaction must be 'rolled back' by the TPS. While this type of integrity must be provided also for batch transaction processing, it is particularly important for online processing: if e.g. an airline seat reservation system is accessed by multiple operators, after an empty seat inquiry, the seat reservation data must be locked until the reservation is made, otherwise another user may get the impression a seat is still free while it is actually being booked at the time. Without proper transaction monitoring, double bookings may occur. Other transaction monitor functions include deadlock detection and resolution (deadlocks may be inevitable in certain cases of cross-dependence on data), and transaction logging (in 'journals') for 'forward recovery' in case of massive failures.

Transaction Processing is not limited to application programs. The 'journaled file system' provided with IBMs AIX Unix operating system employs similar techniques to maintain file system integrity, including a journal.

Hierarchical model

In a hierarchical data model, data is organized into a tree-like structure. The structure allows repeating information using parent/child relationships: each parent can have many children but each child only has one parent. All attributes of a specific record are listed under an entity type. In a database, an entity type is the equivalent of a table; each individual record is represented as a row and an attribute as a column. Entity types are related to each other using 1: N mapping, also known as one-to-many relationships. The most recognized example of hierarchical model database is an IMS designed by IBM.

Encryption of mail sessions

All relevant email protocols have an option to encrypt the whole session. Remarkably, those options prevent a user's name and password from being sniffed, therefore they are recommended for nomadic users and whenever the internet access provider is not trusted. On sending mail, users can only control encryption at the hop from a client to its configured outgoing mail server. At any further hop, messages may be transmitted with or without encryption, depending solely on the general configuration of the transmitting server and the capabilities of the receiving one.

Encrypted mail sessions deliver messages in their original format, i.e. plain text or encrypted body, on a user's local mailbox and on the destination server's. The latter server is operated by an email hosting service provider, possibly a different entity than the internet access provider currently at hand.

AntiVirus Gold

AntiVirus Gold is a piece of rogue software that poses as a legitimate antivirus program. It is typified by a small icon in the system tray, with a link directing to download the offending software. It could also possibly do a homepage hijack. There have also been many variants of this malware, such as Antivirus Golden, Antispyware Gold and the like. They seem to be related to both WinAntiVirus and Winfixer. Typically, said infections are installed by the Vundo, SysProtect or SmitFraud trojans.

Gathering of addresses

In order to send spam, spammers need to obtain the e-mail addresses of the intended recipients. To this end, both spammers themselves and list merchants gather huge lists of potential e-mail addresses. Since spam is, by definition, unsolicited, this address harvesting is done without the consent (and sometimes against the expressed will) of the address owners. As a consequence, spammers' address lists are inaccurate. A single spam run may target tens of millions of possible addresses — many of which are invalid, malformed, or undeliverable.

Sometimes, if the sent spam is "bounced" or sent back to the sender by various programs that eliminate spam, or if the recipient clicks on an unsubscribe link, that may cause that email address to be marked as "valid", which is interpreted by the spammer as "send me more".

Adaptive system

An adaptive system is a system that is able to adapt its behavior according to changes in its environment or in parts of the system itself. A human being, for instance, is certainly an adaptive system; so are organizations and families. Some man-made systems can be made adaptive as well; for instance, control systems utilize feedback loops in order to sense conditions in their environment and adapt accordingly. Robots incorporate many of these control systems. Neural Networks are a common type of algorithmic implementation of adaptive systems.

Diffusion of innovations theory can help to explain the uptake of new ideas, practices and products by individuals and social groups -- human adaptive systems.

Systems engineering

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering, that focuses on the development and organization of complex artificial systems. Systems engineering is defined by INCOSE as "a branch of engineering whose responsibility is creating and executing an interdisciplinary process to ensure that customer and stakeholder's needs are satisfied in a high quality, trustworthy, cost efficient and schedule compliant manner throughout a system's entire life cycle, from development to operation to disposal. This process is usually comprised of the following seven tasks: State the problem, Investigate alternatives, Model the system, Integrate, Launch the system, Assess performance, and Re-evaluate. The systems engineering process is not sequential: the tasks are performed in a parallel and iterative manner."

Systems intelligence

Systems intelligence is human action that connects sensitivity about a systemic environment with systems thinking, thus spurring a persons problem solving capabilities and invoking performance and productivity in everyday situations. Systems intelligence, abbreviated SI, is intelligent behavior in complex systems, that are often human in nature. Key concepts a person uses when acting systems intelligently are perception of systemic occurrencies, feedback from the system's structure and interaction with the system's agents and subsystems.

Types of systems psychology

In the scientific literature different kind of systems psychology have been mentioned in the scientific literature:

Applied systems psychology
De Greene in 1970 described applied systems psychology as being connected with engineering psychology and human factor.

Cognitive systems theory
Cognitive systems psychology is a part of cognitive psychology and like existential psychology, attempts to dissolve the barrier between conscious and the unconscious mind.

Contract-systems psychology
Contract-systems psychology is about the human systems actualization through praticipative organizations.

Family systems psychology
Family systems psychology is a more general name for the subfield of family thearpists and like Murray Bowen, Michael E. Kerr, and Baard. and researchers have begun to theoretize a psychology of the family as a system.

Organismic-systems psychology
Through the application of organismic-systems biology to human behavior Ludwig von Bertalanffy conceived and developed the organismic-systems psychology, as the theoretical prospect needed for the gradual comprehension of the various ways human personalities may evolve and how could they evolve properly, being supported by a holistic interpretation of human behavior.

Developmental robotics

Developmental Robotics (DevRob), sometimes called epigenetic robotics, is a methodology that uses metaphors from developmental psychology to develop controllers for autonomous robots. The focus is on a single robot going through stages of autonomous mental development. Researchers in this field study artificial emotions, self-motivation, and other methods of self-organization.

DevRob is related to, but differs from, evolutionary robotics (ER). ER uses populations of robots that evolve over time, whereas DevRob is interested in how the organization of a single robot's control system develops through experience, over time.

DevRob is also related to work done in the domains of Robotics, Artificial Life.

Similar to developmental robotics, Epigenetic robotics is an interdisciplinary research area with the goal of understanding biological systems by the integration between neuroscience, developmental psychology and engineering sciences. Epigenetic systems are characterized by a prolonged developmental process through which varied and complex cognitive and perceptual structures emerge as a result of the interaction of an embodied system with a physical and social environment. An additional goal is to enable robots to autonomously develop skills for any particular environment instead of programming them for a specific environment.

Islamic Golden Age

The Islamic Golden Age, also sometimes known as the Islamic Renaissance, is traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 13th century, though some have extended it to the 15^th or 16^th centuries. During this period, engineers, scholars and traders in the Islamic world contributed to the arts, agriculture, economics, industry, law, literature, navigation, philosophy, sciences, and technology, both by preserving and building upon earlier traditions and by adding inventions and innovations of their own. Howard R. Turner writes: "Muslim artists and scientists, princes and laborers together created a unique culture that has directly and indirectly influenced societies on every continent."

Cargo

Cargo is a term used to denote goods or produce being transported generally for commercial gain, usually on a ship, plane, train, van or truck. Nowadays containers are used in most intermodal long-haul cargo transport.

Cargo represents a concern to U.S. national security. It was reported out of Washington, DC that in 2003 over 6 million cargo containers are entering the United States each year. After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the security of this magnitude of cargo has become highlighted. The latest US Government response to this threat is the CSI: Container Security Initiative. CSI is a program intended to help increase security for containerized cargo shipped to the United States from around the world.

Pre-Columbian Islamic contact theories

Pre-Columbian Islamic contact theories are theories which contend that medieval Muslim explorers from the Islamic world (specifically Al-Andalus, Africa or China) may have reached the Americas (and possibly made contact with the indigenous peoples of the Americas) at some point before Christopher Columbus' first voyage to the Americas in 1492. Proponents of these theories cite as evidence reports of expeditions and voyages conducted by Muslim navigators and adventurers who they allege reached the Americas from the late 9th century onwards

Prototyping

Prototyping is the process of quickly putting together a working model (a prototype) in order to test various aspects of a design, illustrate ideas or features and gather early user feedback. Prototyping is often treated as an integral part of the system design process, where it is believed to reduce project risk and cost. Often one or more prototypes are made in a process of iterative and incremental development where each prototype is influenced by the performance of previous designs, in this way problems or deficiencies in design can be corrected. When the prototype is sufficiently refined and meets the functionality, robustness, manufacturability and other design goals, the product is ready for production.

Object database

In an object oriented database, information is represented in the form of objects as used in object-oriented programming. When database capabilities are combined with object programming language capabilities, the result is an object database management system (ODBMS). An ODBMS makes database objects appear as programming language objects in one or more object programming languages. An ODBMS extends the programming language with transparently persistent data, concurrency control, data recovery, associative queries, and other capabilities.

Database security

Database security is the system, processes, and procedures that protect a database from unintended activity. Unintended activity can be categorized as authenticated misuse, malicious attacks or inadvertent mistakes made by authorized individuals or processes. Database security is also a specialty within the broader discipline of computer security.

Traditionally databases have been protected from external connections by firewalls or routers on the network perimeter with the database environment existing on the internal network opposed to being located within a demilitarized zone. Additional network security devices that detect and alert on malicious database protocol traffic include network intrusion detection systems along with host-based intrusion detection systems.

Proxy server

In computer networks, a proxy server is a server (a computer system or an application program) which services the requests of its clients by forwarding requests to other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource, available from a different server. The proxy server provides the resource by connecting to the specified server and requesting the service on behalf of the client. A proxy server may optionally alter the client's request or the server's response, and sometimes it may serve the request without contacting the specified server. In this case, it would 'cache' the first request to the remote server, so it could save the information for later, and make everything as fast as possible.

SQL (Structured Query Language)

SQL (Structured Query Language) (pronounced /ɛskjuːˈɛl/ officially, although the unofficial pronunciation /ˈsiːkwəl/ is often used (see below)) is a database computer language designed for the retrieval and management of data in relational database management systems (RDBMS), database schema creation and modification, and database object access control management.

SQL is a standard interactive and programming language for querying and modifying data and managing databases. Although SQL is both an ANSI and an ISO standard, many database products support SQL with proprietary extensions to the standard language.

Toxicity of Metabolites

Many substances regarded as poisons are toxic only indirectly. An example is "wood alcohol," or methanol, which is chemically converted to formaldehyde and formic acid in the liver. It is the formaldehyde and formic acid that cause the toxic effects of methanol exposure. Many drug molecules are made toxic in the liver, a good example being acetaminophen (paracetamol), especially in the presence of alcohol. The genetic variability of certain liver enzymes makes the toxicity of many compounds differ between one individual and the next. Because demands placed on one liver enzyme can induce activity in another, many molecules become toxic only in combination with others.

Human-powered transport

Human-powered transport is the transport of person(s) and/or goods using human muscle power. Like animal-powered transport, human-powered transport has existed since time immemorial in the form of walking, running and swimming. Modern technology has allowed machines to enhance human-power.

Although motorization has increased speed and load capacity, many forms of human-powered transport remain popular for reasons of lower cost, leisure, physical exercise and environmentalism. Human-powered transport is sometimes the only type available (especially in underdeveloped or inaccessible regions), and is considered an ideal form of sustainable transportation.