1,257 research outputs found
The natural history of bugs: using formal methods to analyse software related failures in space missions
Space missions force engineers to make complex trade-offs between many different constraints including cost, mass, power, functionality and reliability. These constraints create a continual need to innovate. Many advances rely upon software, for instance to control and monitor the next generation ‘electron cyclotron resonance’ ion-drives for deep space missions.Programmers face numerous challenges. It is extremely difficult to conduct valid ground-based tests for the code used in space missions. Abstract models and simulations of satellites can be misleading. These issues are compounded by the use of ‘band-aid’ software to fix design mistakes and compromises in other aspects of space systems engineering. Programmers must often re-code missions in flight. This introduces considerable risks. It should, therefore, not be a surprise that so many space missions fail to achieve their objectives. The costs of failure are considerable. Small launch vehicles, such as the U.S. Pegasus system, cost around 4 million up to 73 million from the failure of a single uninsured satellite. It is clearly important that we learn as much as possible from those failures that do occur. The following pages examine the roles that formal methods might play in the analysis of software failures in space missions
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Aluminium distribution in ZSM-5 revisited: the role of Al-Al interactions
We present a theoretical study of the distribution of Al atoms in zeolite ZSM-5 with Si/Al=47, where we focus on the role of Al-Al interactions rather than on the energetics of Al/Si substitutions at individual sites. Using interatomic potential methods, we evaluate the energies of the full set of symmetrically independent configurations of Al siting in a Si94Al2O192 cell. The equilibrium Al distribution is determined by the interplay of two factors: the energetics of the Al/Si substitution at an individual site, which tends to populate particular T sites (e.g. the T14 site), and the Al-Al interaction, which at this Si/Al maximises Al-Al distances in agreement with Dempsey’s rule. However, it is found that the interaction energy changes approximately as the inverse of the square of the distance between the two Al atoms, rather than the inverse of the distance expected if this were merely charge repulsion. Moreover, we find that the anisotropic nature of the framework density plays an important role in determining the magnitude of the interactions, which are not simply dependent on Al-Al distances
Mid-Miocene cooling and the extinction of tundra in continental Antarctica
A major obstacle in understanding the evolution of Cenozoic climate has been the lack of well dated terrestrial evidence from high-latitude, glaciated regions. Here, we report the discovery of exceptionally well preserved fossils of lacustrine and terrestrial organisms from the McMurdo Dry Valleys sector of the Transantarctic Mountains for which we have established a precise radiometric chronology. The fossils, which include diatoms, palynomorphs, mosses, ostracodes, and insects, represent the last vestige of a tundra community that inhabited the mountains before stepped cooling that first brought a full polar climate to Antarctica. Paleoecological analyses, 40Ar/39Ar analyses of associated ash fall, and climate inferences from glaciological modeling together suggest that mean summer temperatures in the region cooled by at least 8°C between 14.07 ± 0.05 Ma and 13.85 ± 0.03 Ma. These results provide novel constraints for the timing and amplitude of middle-Miocene cooling in Antarctica and reveal the ecological legacy of this global climate transition
Human derived feeder fibroblasts for the culture of epithelial cells for clinical use
Aim: To investigate human oral mucosal fibroblasts (HOMF) and human limbal fibroblasts (HLF) as alternatives to murine 3T3 feeder fibroblasts currently used to support epithelial cell expansion for the treatment of limbal epithelial stem cell deficiency.
Methods: HLF and HOMF were compared to 3T3 for their ability to support the culture of human limbal epithelial cells (HLE) and human oral mucosal epithelial cells.
Results: HOMF, but not HLF, were equivalent to 3T3 in terms of the number of epithelial population doublings achieved. HLE co-cultured with HOMF or 3T3 had similar expression of corneal and putative stem cell markers.
Conclusion: HOMF are a suitable and safer feeder fibroblast alternative to 3T3 for the production of epithelial cells for clinical use
Synthesis and characterization of Na03RhO206H2O - a semiconductor with a weak ferromagnetic component
We have prepared the oxyhydrate Na03RhO206H2O by extracting Na+ cations from
NaRhO2 and intercalating water molecules using an aqueous solution of Na2S2O8.
Synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and
energy-dispersive x-ray analysis (EDX) reveal that a non-stoichiometric
Na03(H2O)06 network separates layers of edge-sharing RhO6 octahedra containing
Rh3+(4d6, S=0) and Rh4+ (4d5, S=1/2). The resistivities of NaRhO2 and
Na03RhO206H2O (T < 300) reveal insulating and semi-conducting behavior with
activation gaps of 134 meV and 7.8 meV, respectively. Both Na03RhO206H2O and
NaRhO2 show paramagnetism at room temperature, however, the sodium-deficient
sample exhibits simultaneously a weak but experimentally reproducible
ferromagnetic component. Both samples exhibit a temperature-independent Pauli
paramagnetism, for NaRhO2 at T > 50 K and for Na03RhO206H2O at T > 25 K. The
relative magnitudes of the temperature-independent magnetic susceptibilities,
that of the oxide sample being half that of the oxyhydrate, is consistent with
a higher density of thermally accessible electron states at the Fermi level in
the hydrated sample. At low temperatures the magnetic moments rise sharply,
providing evidence of localized and weakl -ordered electronic spins.Comment: 15 fages 5 figures Solid State Communications in prin
WS23.6 Assessment of renal function in cystic fibrosis patients by estimated and measured glomerular filtration rate – a cross-sectional study
SAT-Based Synthesis Methods for Safety Specs
Automatic synthesis of hardware components from declarative specifications is
an ambitious endeavor in computer aided design. Existing synthesis algorithms
are often implemented with Binary Decision Diagrams (BDDs), inheriting their
scalability limitations. Instead of BDDs, we propose several new methods to
synthesize finite-state systems from safety specifications using decision
procedures for the satisfiability of quantified and unquantified Boolean
formulas (SAT-, QBF- and EPR-solvers). The presented approaches are based on
computational learning, templates, or reduction to first-order logic. We also
present an efficient parallelization, and optimizations to utilize reachability
information and incremental solving. Finally, we compare all methods in an
extensive case study. Our new methods outperform BDDs and other existing work
on some classes of benchmarks, and our parallelization achieves a super-linear
speedup. This is an extended version of [5], featuring an additional appendix.Comment: Extended version of a paper at VMCAI'1
Constraining slow-roll inflation with WMAP and 2dF
We constrain slow-roll inflationary models using the recent WMAP data
combined with data from the VSA, CBI, ACBAR and 2dF experiments. We find the
slow-roll parameters to be and . For inflation models
we find that at the 2 and levels,
indicating that the model is under very strong pressure from
observations. We define a convergence criterion to judge the necessity of
introducing further power spectrum parameters such as the spectral index and
running of the spectral index. This criterion is typically violated by models
with large negative running that fit the data, indicating that the running
cannot be reliably measured with present data.Comment: 8 pages RevTeX4 file with six figures incorporate
Non-Gaussian isocurvature perturbations in dark radiation
We study non-Gaussian properties of the isocurvature perturbations in the
dark radiation, which consists of the active neutrinos and extra light species,
if exist. We first derive expressions for the bispectra of primordial
perturbations which are mixtures of curvature and dark radiation isocurvature
perturbations. We also discuss CMB bispectra produced in our model and forecast
CMB constraints on the nonlinearity parameters based on the Fisher matrix
analysis. Some concrete particle physics motivated models are presented in
which large isocurvature perturbations in extra light species and/or the
neutrino density isocurvature perturbations as well as their non-Gaussianities
may be generated. Thus detections of non-Gaussianity in the dark radiation
isocurvature perturbation will give us an opportunity to identify the origin of
extra light species and lepton asymmetry.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figure
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