A Critical Review of "Automatic Patch Generation Learned from Human-Written Patches": Essay on the Problem Statement and the Evaluation of Automatic Software Repair

At ICSE'2013, there was the first session ever dedicated to automatic program repair. In this session, Kim et al. presented PAR, a novel template-based approach for fixing Java bugs. We strongly disagree with key points of this paper. Our critical review has two goals. First, we aim at explaining why we disagree with Kim and colleagues and why the reasons behind this disagreement are important for research on automatic software repair in general. Second, we aim at contributing to the field with a clarification of the essential ideas behind automatic software repair. In particular we discuss the main evaluation criteria of automatic software repair: understandability, correctness and completeness. We show that depending on how one sets up the repair scenario, the evaluation goals may be contradictory. Eventually, we discuss the nature of fix acceptability and its relation to the notion of software correctness.Comment: ICSE 2014, India (2014

NASA space station automation: AI-based technology review

Research and Development projects in automation for the Space Station are discussed. Artificial Intelligence (AI) based automation technologies are planned to enhance crew safety through reduced need for EVA, increase crew productivity through the reduction of routine operations, increase space station autonomy, and augment space station capability through the use of teleoperation and robotics. AI technology will also be developed for the servicing of satellites at the Space Station, system monitoring and diagnosis, space manufacturing, and the assembly of large space structures

Exploring the Relationships Between Collegiate Sport Coaches’ Creative Productivity and Factors of Creative Potential

Sport coaches are perceived as problem solvers who engage in creativity to handle the spontaneity of competitive activity and generate winning results. However, while creativity in athletes has been researched, little has been investigated regarding coaches. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine different aspects of creativity – person, process, press, and product – among collegiate team sport coaches in the United States. Specifically, how personality traits, ideational fluency, remote association ability, years of coaching experience, and work climate related to creative product impact and frequency. A modified creativity personality test was found to be positively related to both the impact and frequency of creative products. Further, self-confidence and years of coaching experience were positively related to creative product impact, while inventiveness was positively related to creative product frequency. Analyzing the creative potential factors related to creative productivity may be useful in enhancing creativity for collegiate coaches and improving outcomes

Design and Implementation of Secure Location Service Using Software Engineering Approach in the Age of Industry 4.0

Data privacy and security are major concerns in any location-based system. In majority of location-based systems, data security is ensured via data replacement policies. Data replacement or hiding policy requires additional measures for providing required security standards for Industry 4.0. Whereas, cryptography primitives and protocols are integral part of any network and can be re-used for ensuring user’s locations in Industry 4.0 based applications. In this work, an application has been designed and developed that used RSA encryption/decryption algorithm for ensuring location data’s confidentiality. The proposed system is distributed in nature and gives access to location’s information after users get authenticated and authorized. In the proposed system, a threshold-based subset mechanism is adopted for keys and their storage. Server is designed to securely store the location information for clients and provide this information to those set of clients or users who are able to verify sum of subset of keys. This work has elaborated the location-based data confidentiality designs in a distributed client/server environment and presented the in-depth system working with different flow diagrams. The command line and graphical User Interface (GUI)-based implementation shows that the proposed system is capable of working with standard system requirements (i5 processor, 4 GB RAM and 64-bits operating system). In addition to location information, system is able to provide much important information (including IP address, timestamp, time to access, hop count) that enhances the overall system capabilities

A Survey on Trust Metrics for Autonomous Robotic Systems

This paper surveys the area of Trust Metrics related to security for autonomous robotic systems. As the robotics industry undergoes a transformation from programmed, task oriented, systems to Artificial Intelligence-enabled learning, these autonomous systems become vulnerable to several security risks, making a security assessment of these systems of critical importance. Therefore, our focus is on a holistic approach for assessing system trust which requires incorporating system, hardware, software, cognitive robustness, and supplier level trust metrics into a unified model of trust. We set out to determine if there were already trust metrics that defined such a holistic system approach. While there are extensive writings related to various aspects of robotic systems such as, risk management, safety, security assurance and so on, each source only covered subsets of an overall system and did not consistently incorporate the relevant costs in their metrics. This paper attempts to put this prior work into perspective, and to show how it might be extended to develop useful system-level trust metrics for evaluating complex robotic (and other) systems

Development of Safety Standards for CubeSat Propulsion Systems

The CubeSat community has begun to develop and implement propulsion systems. This movement represents a new capability which may satisfy mission needs such as orbital and constellation maintenance, formation flight, de-orbit, and even interplanetary travel. With the freedom and capability granted by propulsion systems, CubeSat providers must accept new responsibilities in proportion to the potential hazards that propulsion systems may present. The Cal Poly CubeSat program publishes and maintains the CubeSat Design Specification (CDS). They wish to help the CubeSat community to safety and responsibly expand its capabilities to include propulsive designs. For this reason, the author embarked on the task of developing a draft of safety standards CubeSat propulsion systems. Wherever possible, the standards are based on existing documents. The author provides an overview of certain concepts in systems safety with respect to the classification of hazards, determination of required fault tolerances, and the use of inhibits to satisfy fault tolerance requirements. The author discusses hazards that could exist during ground operations and through launch with respect to hazardous materials and pressure systems. Most of the standards related to Range Safety are drawn from AFSPCMAN 91-710. Having reviewed a range of hypothetical propulsion system architectures with an engineer from Range Safety at Vandenberg Air Force Base, the author compiled a case study. The author discusses many aspects of orbital safety. The author discusses the risk of collision with the host vehicle and with third party satellites along with the trackability of CubeSats using propulsion systems. Some recommendations are given for working with the Joint Functional Component Command for Space (JFCC SPACE), thanks to the input of two engineers who work with the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC). Command Security is discussed as an important aspect of a mission which implements a propulsion system. The author also discusses End-of-Life procedures such as safing and de-orbit operations. The orbital safety standards are intended to promote “good citizenship.” The author steps through each proposed standard and offers justification. The author is confident that these standards will set the stage for a dialogue in the CubeSat community which will lead to the formulation of a reasonable and comprehensive set of standards. The author hopes that the discussions given throughout this document will help CubeSat developers to visualize the path to flight readiness so that they can get started on the right foot

Development of ListeriaBase and comparative analysis of Listeria monocytogenes

Background: Listeria consists of both pathogenic and non-pathogenic species. Reports of similarities between the genomic content between some pathogenic and non-pathogenic species necessitates the investigation of these species at the genomic level to understand the evolution of virulence-associated genes. With Listeria genome data growing exponentially, comparative genomic analysis may give better insights into evolution, genetics and phylogeny of Listeria spp., leading to better management of the diseases caused by them. Description: With this motivation, we have developed ListeriaBase, a web Listeria genomic resource and analysis platform to facilitate comparative analysis of Listeria spp. ListeriaBase currently houses 850,402 protein-coding genes, 18,113 RNAs and 15,576 tRNAs from 285 genome sequences of different Listeria strains. An AJAX-based real time search system implemented in ListeriaBase facilitates searching of this huge genomic data. Our in-house designed comparative analysis tools such as Pairwise Genome Comparison (PGC) tool allowing comparison between two genomes, Pathogenomics Profiling Tool (PathoProT) for comparing the virulence genes, and ListeriaTree for phylogenic classification, were customized and incorporated in ListeriaBase facilitating comparative genomic analysis of Listeria spp. Interestingly, we identified a unique genomic feature in the L. monocytogenes genomes in our analysis. The Auto protein sequences of the serotype 4 and the non-serotype 4 strains of L. monocytogenes possessed unique sequence signatures that can differentiate the two groups. We propose that the aut gene may be a potential gene marker for differentiating the serotype 4 strains from other serotypes of L. monocytogenes. Conclusions: ListeriaBase is a useful resource and analysis platform that can facilitate comparative analysis of Listeria for the scientific communities. We have successfully demonstrated some key utilities of ListeriaBase. The knowledge that we obtained in the analyses of L. monocytogenes may be important for functional works of this human pathogen in future. ListeriaBase is currently available at http://listeria.um.edu.my

Preliminaries of orthogonal layered defence using functional and assurance controls in industrial control systems

Industrial Control Systems (ICSs) are responsible for the automation of different processes and the overall control of systems that include highly sensitive potential targets such as nuclear facilities, energy-distribution, water-supply, and mass-transit systems. Given the increased complexity and rapid evolvement of their threat landscape, and the fact that these systems form part of the Critical National infrastructure (CNI), makes them an emerging domain of conflict, terrorist attacks, and a playground for cyberexploitation. Existing layered-defence approaches are increasingly criticised for their inability to adequately protect against resourceful and persistent adversaries. It is therefore essential that emerging techniques, such as orthogonality, be combined with existing security strategies to leverage defence advantages against adaptive and often asymmetrical attack vectors. The concept of orthogonality is relatively new and unexplored in an ICS environment and consists of having assurance control as well as functional control at each layer. Our work seeks to partially articulate a framework where multiple functional and assurance controls are introduced at each layer of ICS architectural design to further enhance security while maintaining critical real-time transfer of command and control traffic