66,760 research outputs found
Abstraction of Elementary Hybrid Systems by Variable Transformation
Elementary hybrid systems (EHSs) are those hybrid systems (HSs) containing
elementary functions such as exp, ln, sin, cos, etc. EHSs are very common in
practice, especially in safety-critical domains. Due to the non-polynomial
expressions which lead to undecidable arithmetic, verification of EHSs is very
hard. Existing approaches based on partition of state space or
over-approximation of reachable sets suffer from state explosion or inflation
of numerical errors. In this paper, we propose a symbolic abstraction approach
that reduces EHSs to polynomial hybrid systems (PHSs), by replacing all
non-polynomial terms with newly introduced variables. Thus the verification of
EHSs is reduced to the one of PHSs, enabling us to apply all the
well-established verification techniques and tools for PHSs to EHSs. In this
way, it is possible to avoid the limitations of many existing methods. We
illustrate the abstraction approach and its application in safety verification
of EHSs by several real world examples
Cyber-Virtual Systems: Simulation, Validation & Visualization
We describe our ongoing work and view on simulation, validation and
visualization of cyber-physical systems in industrial automation during
development, operation and maintenance. System models may represent an existing
physical part - for example an existing robot installation - and a software
simulated part - for example a possible future extension. We call such systems
cyber-virtual systems.
In this paper, we present the existing VITELab infrastructure for
visualization tasks in industrial automation. The new methodology for
simulation and validation motivated in this paper integrates this
infrastructure. We are targeting scenarios, where industrial sites which may be
in remote locations are modeled and visualized from different sites anywhere in
the world.
Complementing the visualization work, here, we are also concentrating on
software modeling challenges related to cyber-virtual systems and simulation,
testing, validation and verification techniques for them. Software models of
industrial sites require behavioural models of the components of the industrial
sites such as models for tools, robots, workpieces and other machinery as well
as communication and sensor facilities. Furthermore, collaboration between
sites is an important goal of our work.Comment: Preprint, 9th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel
Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE 2014
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Three-dimensional modeling of single stranded DNA hairpins for aptamer-based biosensors.
Aptamers consist of short oligonucleotides that bind specific targets. They provide advantages over antibodies, including robustness, low cost, and reusability. Their chemical structure allows the insertion of reporter molecules and surface-binding agents in specific locations, which have been recently exploited for the development of aptamer-based biosensors and direct detection strategies. Mainstream use of these devices, however, still requires significant improvements in optimization for consistency and reproducibility. DNA aptamers are more stable than their RNA counterparts for biomedical applications but have the disadvantage of lacking the wide array of computational tools for RNA structural prediction. Here, we present the first approach to predict from sequence the three-dimensional structures of single stranded (ss) DNA required for aptamer applications, focusing explicitly on ssDNA hairpins. The approach consists of a pipeline that integrates sequentially building ssDNA secondary structure from sequence, constructing equivalent 3D ssRNA models, transforming the 3D ssRNA models into ssDNA 3D structures, and refining the resulting ssDNA 3D structures. Through this pipeline, our approach faithfully predicts the representative structures available in the Nucleic Acid Database and Protein Data Bank databases. Our results, thus, open up a much-needed avenue for integrating DNA in the computational analysis and design of aptamer-based biosensors
Standardized toolchain and model development for video quality assessment: the mission of the joint effort group in VQEG
International audienceSince 1997, the Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG) has been active in the field of subjective and objective video quality assessment. The group has validated competitive quality metrics throughout several projects. Each of these projects requires mandatory actions such as creating a testplan and obtaining databases consisting of degraded video sequences with corresponding subjective quality ratings. Recently, VQEG started a new open initiative, the Joint Effort Group (JEG), for encouraging joint collaboration on all mandatory actions needed to validate video quality metrics. Within the JEG, effort is made to advance the field of both subjective and objective video quality measurement by providing proper software tools and subjective databases to the community. One of the subprojects of the JEG is the joint development of a hybrid H.264/AVC objective quality metric. In this paper, we introduce the JEG and provide an overview of the different ongoing activities within this newly started group
Decision trees in epidemiological research
Background:
In many studies, it is of interest to identify population subgroups that are relatively homogeneous with respect to an outcome. The nature of these subgroups can provide insight into effect mechanisms and suggest targets for tailored interventions. However, identifying relevant subgroups can be challenging with standard statistical methods.
Main text:
We review the literature on decision trees, a family of techniques for partitioning the population, on the basis of covariates, into distinct subgroups who share similar values of an outcome variable. We compare two decision tree methods, the popular Classification and Regression tree (CART) technique and the newer Conditional Inference tree (CTree) technique, assessing their performance in a simulation study and using data from the Box Lunch Study, a randomized controlled trial of a portion size intervention. Both CART and CTree identify homogeneous population subgroups and offer improved prediction accuracy relative to regression-based approaches when subgroups are truly present in the data. An important distinction between CART and CTree is that the latter uses a formal statistical hypothesis testing framework in building decision trees, which simplifies the process of identifying and interpreting the final tree model. We also introduce a novel way to visualize the subgroups defined by decision trees. Our novel graphical visualization provides a more scientifically meaningful characterization of the subgroups identified by decision trees.
Conclusions:
Decision trees are a useful tool for identifying homogeneous subgroups defined by combinations of individual characteristics. While all decision tree techniques generate subgroups, we advocate the use of the newer CTree technique due to its simplicity and ease of interpretation
Hybrid performance modelling of opportunistic networks
We demonstrate the modelling of opportunistic networks using the process
algebra stochastic HYPE. Network traffic is modelled as continuous flows,
contact between nodes in the network is modelled stochastically, and
instantaneous decisions are modelled as discrete events. Our model describes a
network of stationary video sensors with a mobile ferry which collects data
from the sensors and delivers it to the base station. We consider different
mobility models and different buffer sizes for the ferries. This case study
illustrates the flexibility and expressive power of stochastic HYPE. We also
discuss the software that enables us to describe stochastic HYPE models and
simulate them.Comment: In Proceedings QAPL 2012, arXiv:1207.055
Approximately bisimilar symbolic models for nonlinear control systems
Control systems are usually modeled by differential equations describing how
physical phenomena can be influenced by certain control parameters or inputs.
Although these models are very powerful when dealing with physical phenomena,
they are less suitable to describe software and hardware interfacing the
physical world. For this reason there is a growing interest in describing
control systems through symbolic models that are abstract descriptions of the
continuous dynamics, where each "symbol" corresponds to an "aggregate" of
states in the continuous model. Since these symbolic models are of the same
nature of the models used in computer science to describe software and
hardware, they provide a unified language to study problems of control in which
software and hardware interact with the physical world. Furthermore the use of
symbolic models enables one to leverage techniques from supervisory control and
algorithms from game theory for controller synthesis purposes. In this paper we
show that every incrementally globally asymptotically stable nonlinear control
system is approximately equivalent (bisimilar) to a symbolic model. The
approximation error is a design parameter in the construction of the symbolic
model and can be rendered as small as desired. Furthermore if the state space
of the control system is bounded the obtained symbolic model is finite. For
digital control systems, and under the stronger assumption of incremental
input-to-state stability, symbolic models can be constructed through a suitable
quantization of the inputs.Comment: Corrected typo
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