Immunotronics - novel finite-state-machine architectures with built-in self-test using self-nonself differentiation

A novel approach to hardware fault tolerance is demonstrated that takes inspiration from the human immune system as a method of fault detection. The human immune system is a remarkable system of interacting cells and organs that protect the body from invasion and maintains reliable operation even in the presence of invading bacteria or viruses. This paper seeks to address the field of electronic hardware fault tolerance from an immunological perspective with the aim of showing how novel methods based upon the operation of the immune system can both complement and create new approaches to the development of fault detection mechanisms for reliable hardware systems. In particular, it is shown that by use of partial matching, as prevalent in biological systems, high fault coverage can be achieved with the added advantage of reducing memory requirements. The development of a generic finite-state-machine immunization procedure is discussed that allows any system that can be represented in such a manner to be "immunized" against the occurrence of faulty operation. This is demonstrated by the creation of an immunized decade counter that can detect the presence of faults in real tim

Legal Information and the Development of American Law: Writings on the Form and Structure of the Published Law

Robert C. Berring\u27s writings about the impacts of electronic databases, the Internet, and other communications technologies on legal research and practice are an essential part of a larger literature that explores the ways in which the forms and structures of published legal information have influenced how American lawyers think about the law. This paper reviews Berring\u27s writings, along with those of other writers concerned with these questions, focusing on the implications of Berring\u27s idea that in the late nineteenth century American legal publishers created a conceptual universe of thinkable thoughts through which U.S. lawyers came to view the law. It concludes that, spurred by Berring and others, the literature of legal information has become far reaching in scope and interdisciplinary in approach, while the themes struck in Berring\u27s work continue to inform the scholarship of newer writers

Process Calculi Abstractions for Biology

Several approaches have been proposed to model biological systems by means of the formal techniques and tools available in computer science. To mention just a few of them, some representations are inspired by Petri Nets theory, and some other by stochastic processes. A most recent approach consists in interpreting the living entities as terms of process calculi where the behavior of the represented systems can be inferred by applying syntax-driven rules. A comprehensive picture of the state of the art of the process calculi approach to biological modeling is still missing. This paper goes in the direction of providing such a picture by presenting a comparative survey of the process calculi that have been used and proposed to describe the behavior of living entities. This is the preliminary version of a paper that was published in Algorithmic Bioprocesses. The original publication is available at http://www.springer.com/computer/foundations/book/978-3-540-88868-

Truly Concurrent Logic via In-Between Specification

AbstractIn order to obtain a formalism for the specification of true concurrency in reactive systems, we modify the μ-calculus such that properties that are valid during the execution of an action can be expressed. The interpretation of this logic is based on transition systems that are used to model the ST-semantics. We show that this logic and step equivalence have an incomparable expressive power. Furthermore, we show that the logic characterizes the ST-bisimulation equivalence for finite process algebra expressions that do not contain synchronization mechanisms

A Survey on Continuous Time Computations

We provide an overview of theories of continuous time computation. These theories allow us to understand both the hardness of questions related to continuous time dynamical systems and the computational power of continuous time analog models. We survey the existing models, summarizing results, and point to relevant references in the literature