Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Formal Specification and Verification of Complex Systems

The application of formal methods in the rigorous definition and analysis of the functionality and the behaviour of a system, promises the ability of showing that the system is correct. Given such a promise, that is already out since several years, it is astonishing to see how little formal methods are actually used in the safety critical system industry, though the use of formal methods is increasingly required by the international standards and guidelines for the development of complex systems. Industrial acceptance of formal methods is strictly related to the investment needed to introduce them, to the maturity of tool support available, and to the easiness of use of formal methods and tools. Nowadays, the industrial trend is directed to the adoption of formal verification techniques to validate the design, integrating them within the existing development process. Industries are more keen to accept formal verification techniques assessing the quality attributes of their products, obtained by a traditional life cycle, rather than a fully formal life cycle development, due to the lower training and innovation costs of the former. Several approaches to the application of formal methods in the development process have been proposed, differing for the degree of involvement of the method within it. Starting from rigorous specifications, formal methods can be used for the derivation of test cases, or as a validation technique aimed at proving that the specification satisfies the requirements, or as an auxiliary technique in the automated generation of code. The Formal Methods &&Tools Group of ISTI-CNR is active in the fields of development and application of formal notations, methods and software support tools for the specification, design and verification of complex computer systems. These systems often share important features like concur-
Tracking multiple moving targets with a mobile robot using particle filters and statistical data association

One of the goals in the field of mobile robotics is the development of mobile platforms which operate in populated environments and offer various services to humans. For many tasks it is highly desirable that a robot can determine the positions of the humans in its surrounding. In this paper we present a method for tracking multiple moving objects with a mobile robot. We introduce a sample-based variant of joint probabilistic data association filters to track features originating from individual objects and to solve the correspondence problem between the detected features and the filters. In contrast to standard methods, occlusions are handled explicitly during data association. The technique has been implemented and tested on a real robot. Experiments carried out in a typical office environment show that the method is able to track multiple persons even when the trajectories of two people are crossing each other.
Intravenous Injection of MVA Virus Targets CD8+ Lymphocytes to Tumors to Control Tumor Growth upon Combinatorial Treatment with a TLR9 Agonist

Fend and colleagues show in an orthotopic mouse model of renal carcinoma that intravenous and not subcutaneous injection of an MVA-MUC1 vaccine with TLR9 ligand (ODN1826) controls tumor growth by efficiently targeting tumor-specific effector/memory lymphocytes to the tumor. Effector T-cell access to tumor tissue is a limiting step for clinical efficacy of antigen-specific T cell–based immunotherapies. Ectopic mouse tumor models, in which a subcutaneously (s.c.) implanted tumor is treated with s.c. or intramuscular therapeutic immunization, may not be optimal for targeting effector T cells to an organ-borne tumor. We used an orthotopic renal carcinoma model to evaluate the impact of injection routes on therapeutic efficacy of a Modified Vaccinia virus Ankara viral vector expressing the human mucin 1 tumor–associated xeno-antigen (MVA-MUC1). We show that intravenous (i.v.) administration of MVA-MUC1 displayed enhanced efficacy when compared with s.c. injection. Therapeutic efficacy of MVA-MUC1 was further enhanced by i.v. injection of a TLR9 agonist. In all cases, infiltration of tumor-bearing kidney by CD8+ lymphocytes was associated with control of tumor growth. Biodistribution experiments indicate that, following i.v. injection, MVA-encoded antigens are quickly expressed in visceral organs and, in particular, in splenic antigen-presenting cells, compared with those following s.c. injection. This appears to result in a faster generation of MUC1-specific CD8+ T cells. Lymphocytes infiltrating tumor-bearing kidneys are characterized by an effector memory phenotype and express PD-1 and Tim3 immune checkpoint molecules. Therapeutic efficacy was associated with a modification of the tumor microenvironment toward a Th1-type immune response and recruitment of activated lymphocytes. This study supports the clinical evaluation of MVA-based immunotherapies via the i.v. route. Cancer Immunol Res; 2(12); 1163–74. ©2014 AACR.
An optimal boundary determination approach for cloud removal in satellite image

Satellite image have recently been wide used in academia and industry, and thus providing high quality and even cloud-free satellite image is a fundamental and important issue. Globally, the land scenes are on average about 35% cloud covered, as reported by Ju and Roy [1], indicating that cloud covers are generally present in optical satellite images. This phenomenon limits the usage of optical images and increases the difficulty of image analysis. Considerable research efforts have been devoted to the issue of cloud removal to ease the difficulties caused by cloud covers [2-13]. These efforts and studies focus on how to detect clouds and how to reconstruct the information of cloud-contaminated pixels. However, information reconstruction is generally sensitive to the feature structures lying on the boundaries of the cloud-contaminated areas. In this paper, we address the topic of determining optimal boundaries of cloud-contaminated areas for the purpose of cloud removal.
Multi-focus pixel-based image fusion in dual domain

Redundant-transform-based image fusion approaches require a lot of memory and computations. This paper proposes an effective and efficient multi-focus image fusion technique in dual domain using a redundant transform. The proposed scheme captures high-frequency informations, e.g. edges and slant textures, of images efficiently, and reduce the computational cost. The proposed scheme extracts the high-frequency information of images with multiple directional lapped orthogonal transforms (M-DirLOTs) through the following procedure: (1) reconstruct the detail image using high-pass subbands, (2) execute a fusion operation in spatial domain through joint measurement and (3) improve the performance by mathematical morphology processing. The proposed method overcomes some disadvantages of traditional transform-based and spatial-based fusion techniques. Experimental results show that the proposed method is able to significantly improve the fusion performance.
Frequency readout of nanomechanical graphene drums via a microwave resonator coupling method

In this paper a novel microwave method with the capability of simultaneous actuation and readout of nano-mechanical resonators is described along with the fabrication of graphene nano-mechanical resonator sensor structures. The method uses a high Q quarter wave coaxial resonator coupled to a sharpened conductive tip to create a highly localised near field. Hence allowing for high sensitivity displacement measurements via measurement of changes in the resonant frequency of the coaxial resonator and a simultaneous driving force through a mutual capacitance between probe tip a conducting mechanical resonator. We discuss the use of the microwave system to measure monolayer graphene mechanical resonators and achieve readout of a resonant mode in a 3μm suspended graphene drum.
Rewards and Punishments as Selective Incentives for Collective Action: Theoretical Investigations

Positive and negative selective incentives are shown analytically to have different structural implications when used to induce collective action. Positive selective incentives are effective for motivating small numbers of cooperators and generate pressures toward smaller, more "elite" actions, unless the incentives have jointness of supply. Negative selective incentives are effective for motivating unanimous cooperation, but their use is often uneven and cyclical and may generate hostilities which disrupt the cooperation they enforce. Examples of these dynamics are found in many arenas of collective action and social movements.
Optical Characterization of Industrial Slurries

In this work we focus on the characterization of microand nano-powders typically adopted for chemical mechanical polishing, extensively used whenever the global and local planarization of surfaces is required as in nanoelectronic fabs. We present an innovative method for the accurate characterization of water suspensions of nanoparticles. It relies upon the combination of a new approach to extract light-scattering information from single particles and the recently developed diagnostic tool named Single Particle Extinction and Scattering. It can be used in line. Data interpretation becomes independent of any a-priori assumptions about the samples. The results of accurate measurements performed on ceria as well as aluminium oxide slurries are reported. We show the strong advantages of this method compared with traditional ones by explicitly reporting experimental results on calibrated spheres made of different materials. We discuss possible applications for in-line characterization of ultrapure water, chemicals, slurries for abrasive processes, for example, as well as the detection of any undesired particles – which could be the key for future improvements to advanced process control systems.
From Low-Level Trajectory Demonstrations to Symbolic Actions for Planning

Robots that should solve complex manipulation tasks need to reason about their actions on a symbolic level to compute plans comprising sequences of actions. Planning, however, requires knowledge about the preconditions and effects of all the actions. In this work, we present an approach that allows a robot to learn manipulation skills from teacher demonstrations. Our approach enables the robot to learn to physically execute the motion needed to perform the actions, and, most importantly, to infer the preconditions and effects. Our system can express the acquired manipulation action as symbolic planning operators and thus can use any modern planner to solve tasks that are more complex than the individual, demonstrated actions. We implemented our approach on a PR2 robot and present real world manipulation experiments that illustrate that our system allows non-experts to transfer knowledge to robots.
A PROBABILISTIC NOTION OF CAMERA GEOMETRY: CALIBRATED VS. UNCALIBRATED

: We suggest altering the fundamental strategy in Fundamental or Essential Matrix estimation. The traditional approach ﬁrst estimates correspondences, and then estimates the camera geometry on the basis of those correspondences. Though the second half of this approach is very well developed, such algorithms often fail in practice at the correspondence step. Here, we suggest altering the strategy. First, estimate probability distributions of correspondence, and then estimate camera geometry directly from these distributions. This strategy has the effect of making the correspondence step far easier, and the camera geometry step somewhat harder. The success of our approach hinges on if this trade-off is wise. We will present an algorithm based on this strategy. Fairly extensive experiments suggest that this trade-off might be proﬁtable.
Therapeutics , Targets , and Chemical Biology EGF Receptor Inhibition Radiosensitizes NSCLC Cells by Inducing Senescence in Cells SustainingDNADouble-Strand Breaks

The mechanisms by which inhibition of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) sensitizes non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells to ionizing radiation remain poorly understood. We set out to characterize the radiosensitizing effects of the tyrosine kinase inhibitor erlotinib and the monoclonal antibody cetuximab in NSCLC cells that contain wild-type p53. Unexpectedly, EGFR inhibition led to pronounced cellular senescence but not apoptosis of irradiated cells, both in vitro and in vivo. Senescence was completely dependent on wild-type p53 and associated with a reduction in cell number as well as impaired clonogenic radiation survival. Study of ten additional NSCLC cell lines revealed that senescence is a prominent mechanism of radiosensitization in 45% of cell lines and occurs not only in cells with wild-type p53 but also in cells with mutant p53, where it is associated with an induction of p16. Interestingly, senescence and radiosensitization were linked to an increase in residual radiation-induced DNA double-strand breaks irrespective of p53/p16 status. This effect of EGFR inhibition was at least partially mediated by disruption of the MEK–ERK pathway. Thus, our data indicate a common mechanism of radiosensitization by erlotinib or cetuximab across diverse genetic backgrounds. Our findings also suggest that assays that are able to capture the initial proliferative delay that is associated with senescence should be useful for screening large cell line panels to identify genomic biomarkers of EGFR inhibitor–mediated radiosensitization. Cancer Res; 71(19); 1–9. 2011 AACR.
Reduction of cogging torque in flux-reversal machine by rotor teeth pairing

To retain the advantages of both switched reluctance and permanent magnet machine, the flux-reversal machine (FRM) has been proposed. In this paper, we suggest the rotor teeth pairing method with two different types of tooth width for reducing the cogging torque. To calculate cogging torque, a flux-MMF diagram technique is used.
Titanium-Diffused Lithium Niobate Waveguide Devices

Optical waveguide devices based upon lithium niobate substrates are presently in an advanced state. A large variety of devices have been demonstrated; fabrication parameters have been optimized by several laboratories; and waveguide devices have shown, for example, improved performance as external modulators in long-distance high-bit-rate systems. In fact, prototype research-grade devices are now commercially available. Lithium niobate has several important charateristics that make it attrative for waveguide devices, in particular its good electro-optic and acousto-optic coefficients. However, equally important is the fact that lithium niobate is readily available commercially in large substrates (7.5 cm wafers). Furthermore it is relatively easily processed and its material properties have been studied and documented extensively.
Sample Size Estimation for Alzheimer’s Disease Trials from Japanese ADNI Serial Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Background: Little is known about the sample sizes required for clinical trials of Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-modifying treatments using atrophy measures from serial brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the Japanese population. Objective: The primary objective of the present study was to estimate how large a sample size would be needed for future clinical trials for AD-modifying treatments in Japan using atrophy measures of the brain as a surrogate biomarker. Methods: Sample sizes were estimated from the rates of change of the whole brain and hippocampus by the k-means normalized boundary shift integral (KN-BSI) and cognitive measures using the data of 537 Japanese Alzheimer’s Neuroimaging Initiative (J-ADNI) participants with a linear mixed-effects model. We also examined the potential use of ApoE status as a trial enrichment strategy. Results: The hippocampal atrophy rate required smaller sample sizes than cognitive measures of AD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Inclusion of ApoE status reduced sample sizes for AD and MCI patients in the atrophy measures. Conclusion: These results show the potential use of longitudinal hippocampal atrophy measurement using automated image analysis as a progression biomarker and ApoE status as a trial enrichment strategy in a clinical trial of AD-modifying treatment in Japanese people.
POSITION VERIFICATION APPROACHES FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

Intervehicle communication is regarded as one of the major applications of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Compared to MANETs, these so-called vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have special requirements in terms of node mobility and position-dependent applications, which are well met by geographic routing protocols. Functional research on geographic routing has already reached a considerable level, whereas security aspects have been vastly neglected so far. Since position dissemination is crucial for geographic routing, forged position information has severe impact regarding both performance and security. In this work, we first analyze the problems that may arise from falsified position data. Then, in order to lessen these problems, we propose detection mechanisms that are capable of recognizing nodes cheating about their location in position beacons. In contrast to other position verification approaches, our solution does not rely on special hardware or dedicated infrastructure. Evaluation based on simulations shows that our position verification system successfully discloses nodes disseminating false positions and thereby widely prevents attacks using position cheating
Spatially-coupled random access on graphs

In this paper we investigate the effect of spatial coupling applied to the recently-proposed coded slotted ALOHA (CSA) random access protocol. Thanks to the bridge between the graphical model describing the iterative interference cancellation process of CSA over the random access frame and the erasure recovery process of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes over the binary erasure channel (BEC), we propose an access protocol which is inspired by the convolutional LDPC code construction. The proposed protocol exploits the terminations of its graphical model to achieve the spatial coupling effect, attaining performance close to the theoretical limits of CSA. As for the convolutional LDPC code case, large iterative decoding thresholds are obtained by simply increasing the density of the graph. We show that the threshold saturation effect takes place by defining a suitable counterpart of the maximum-a-posteriori decoding threshold of spatially-coupled LDPC code ensembles. In the asymptotic setting, the proposed scheme allows sustaining a traffic close to 1 [packets/slot].
Introducing a family of linear measures for feature selection in text categorization

Text categorization, which consists of automatically assigning documents to a set of categories, usually involves the management of a huge number of features. Most of them are irrelevant and others introduce noise which could mislead the classifiers. Thus, feature reduction is often performed in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the classification. In this paper, we propose to select relevant features by means of a family of linear filtering measures which are simpler than the usual measures applied for this purpose. We carry out experiments over two different corpora and find that the proposed measures perform better than the existing ones.
Translation the Wiki way

This paper discusses the design and implementation of processes and tools to support the collaborative creation and maintenance of multilingual wiki content. A wiki is a website where a large number of participants are allowed to create and modify content using their Web browser. This simple concept has revolutionized collaborative authoring on the web, enabling among others, the creation of Wikipedia, the world's largest online encyclopedia. On many of the largest and highest profile wiki sites, content needs to be provided in more than one language. Yet, current wiki engines do not support the efficient creation and maintenance of such content. Consequently, most wiki sites deal with the issue of multilingualism by spawning a separate and independent site for each language. This approach leads to much wasted effort since the same content must be researched, tracked and written from scratch for every language. In this paper, we investigate what features could be implemented in wiki engines in order to deal more effectively with multilingual content. We look at how multilingual content is currently managed in more traditional industrial contexts, and show how this approach is not appropriate in a wiki world. We then describe the results of a User-Centered Design exercise performed to explore what a multilingual wiki engine should look like from the point of view of its various end users. We describe a partial implementation of those requirements in our own wiki engine (LizzyWiki), to deal with the special case of bilingual sites. We also discuss how this simple implementation could be extended to provide even more sophisticated features, and in particular, to support the general case of a site with more than two languages. Finally, even though the paper focuses primarily on multilingual content in a wiki context, we argue that translating in this "Wiki Way", may also be useful in some traditional industrial settings, as a way of dealing better with the fast and ever-changing nature of our modern internet world.
The paramutated SULFUREA locus of tomato is involved in auxin biosynthesis

The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) sulfurea mutation displays trans-inactivation of wild-type alleles in heterozygous plants, a phenomenon referred to as paramutation. Homozygous mutant plants and paramutated leaf tissue of heterozygous plants show a pigment-deficient phenotype. The molecular basis of this phenotype and the function of the SULFUREA gene (SULF) are unknown. Here, a comprehensive physiological analysis of the sulfurea mutant is reported which suggests a molecular function for the SULFUREA locus. It is found that the sulf mutant is auxin-deficient and that the pigment-deficient phenotype is likely to represent only a secondary consequence of the auxin deficiency. This is most strongly supported by the isolation of a suppressor mutant which shows an auxin overaccumulation phenotype and contains elevated levels of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA). Several lines of evidence point to a role of the SULF gene in tryptophan-independent auxin biosynthesis, a pathway whose biochemistry and enzymology is still completely unknown. Thus, the sulfurea mutant may provide a promising entry point into elucidating the tryptophan-independent pathway of IAA synthesis.
Real Time Implementation of QRS Complex Extraction Using Discrete Wavelets

: - Electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) is basically a diagnostic tool that measures and records the electrical signal by comparing the activity of heart. R wave (QRS complex) in electrocardiogram has significance importance since it reveals important information about the various disorders. The analysis of the ECG has been widely used for diagnosing many cardiac diseases. ECG signals commonly change their statistical property over time and are highly non stationary signals. For the analysis of ECG signals wavelet transform is a powerful tool. Several algorithms have been developed for detection and classification of QRS complex. In this paper a real time automated R wave analysis of diagnostic electrocardiogram (ECG) based on the discrete wavelet transform is evaluated and developed. Beat detection and QRS complex feature extraction are necessary to determine the heart rate, and several related abnormalities such as Tachycardia, Bradycardia, bundle block and ventricular fibrillation. Using the proposed algorithm, heart rate calculation, R peak detection and QRS feature extraction are done by using discrete wavelet transform (DWT) in MATLAB and Lab VIEW.