Simplifying the construction of domain-specific automatic programming systems: The NASA automated software development workstation project

An overview is presented of the Automated Software Development Workstation Project, an effort to explore knowledge-based approaches to increasing software productivity. The project focuses on applying the concept of domain specific automatic programming systems (D-SAPSs) to application domains at NASA's Johnson Space Center. A version of a D-SAPS developed in Phase 1 of the project for the domain of space station momentum management is described. How problems encountered during its implementation led researchers to concentrate on simplifying the process of building and extending such systems is discussed. Researchers propose to do this by attacking three observed bottlenecks in the D-SAPS development process through the increased automation of the acquisition of programming knowledge and the use of an object oriented development methodology at all stages of the program design. How these ideas are being implemented in the Bauhaus, a prototype workstation for D-SAPS development is discussed

A learning apprentice for software parts composition

An overview of the knowledge acquisition component of the Bauhaus, a prototype computer aided software engineering (CASE) workstation for the development of domain-specific automatic programming systems (D-SAPS) is given. D-SAPS use domain knowledge in the refinement of a description of an application program into a compilable implementation. The approach to the construction of D-SAPS was to automate the process of refining a description of a program, expressed in an object-oriented domain language, into a configuration of software parts that implement the behavior of the domain objects

A New Method to Improve the Sensitivity of Leak Detection in Self-Contained Fluid-filled Cables

A method of real-time detection of leaks for self-contained fluid-filled cables without taking them out of service has been assessed and a novel machine learning technique, i.e. support vector regression (SVR) analysis has been investigated to improve the detection sensitivity of the self-contained fluid-filled (FF) cable leaks. The condition of a 400 kV underground FF cable route within the National Grid transmission network has been monitored by Drallim pressure, temperature and load current measurement system. These three measured variables are used as parameters to describe the condition of the cable system. In the regression analysis the temperature and load current of the cable circuit are used as independent variables and the pressure within cables is the dependent variable to be predicted. As a supervised learning algorithm, the SVR requires data with known attributes as training samples in the learning process and can be used to identify unknown data or predict future trends. The load current is an independent variable to the fluid-filled system itself. The temperature, namely the tank temperature is determined by both the load current and the weather condition i.e. ambient temperature. The pressure is directly relevant to the temperature and therefore also correlated to the load current. The Gaussian-RBF kernel has been used in this investigation as it has a good performance in general application. The SVR algorithm was trained using 4 days data, as shown in Figure 1, and the optimized SVR is used to predict the pressure using the given load current and temperature information

Consistency in statistical moments as a test for bubble cloud clustering

Frequency dependent measurements of attenuation and/or sound speed through clouds of gas bubbles in liquids are often inverted to find the bubble size distribution and the void fraction of gas. The inversions are often done using an effective medium theory as a forward model under the assumption that the bubble positions are Poisson distributed (i.e., statistically independent). Under circumstances in which single scattering does not adequately describe the pressure field, the assumption of independence in position can yield large errors when clustering is present, leading to errors in the inverted bubble size distribution. It is difficult, however, to determine the existence of clustering in bubble clouds without the use of specialized acoustic or optical imaging equipment. A method is described here in which the existence of bubble clustering can be identified by examining the consistency between the first two statistical moments of multiple frequency acoustic measurements

An Estimate of the Gas Transfer Rate from Oceanic Bubbles Derived from Multibeam Sonar Observations of a Ship Wake

Measurements of gas transfer rates from bubbles have been made in the laboratory, but these are difficult to extrapolate to oceanic bubbles where populations of surfactants and particulate matter that inhibit gas transfer are different. Measurements at sea are complicated by unknown bubble creation rates that make it difficult to uniquely identify and observe the evolution of individual bubble clouds. One method that eliminates these difficulties is to measure bubbles in a ship wake where bubble creation at any given location is confined to the duration of the passing ship. This method assumes that the mechanisms slowing the gas dissolution of naturally created bubbles act in a similar manner to slow the dissolution of bubbles in a ship wake. A measurement of the gas transfer rate for oceanic bubbles using this method is reported here. A high-frequency upward-looking multibeam echosounder was used to measure the spatial distribution of bubbles in the wake of a twin screw 61-m research vessel. Hydrodynamic forcing functions are extracted from the multibeam data and used in a bubble cloud evolution model in which the gas transfer rate is treated as a free parameter. The output of model runs corresponding to different gas transfer rates is compared to the time-dependent wake depth observed in the data. Results indicating agreement between the model and the data show that the gas transfer rate must be approximately 15 times less then it would be for surfactant-free bubbles in order to explain the bubble persistence in the wake

Vibration limiting of rotors by feedback control

Experimental findings of a three mass rotor with four channels of feedback control are reported. The channels are independently controllable with force being proportional to the velocity and/or instantaneous displacement from equilibrium of the shaft at the noncontacting probe locations (arranged in the vertical and horizontal attitudes near the support bearings). The findings suggest that automatic feedback control of rotors is feasible for limiting certain vibration levels. Control of one end of a rotor does afford some predictable vibration limiting of the rotor at the other end

Mumford dendrograms and discrete p-adic symmetries

In this article, we present an effective encoding of dendrograms by embedding them into the Bruhat-Tits trees associated to $p$-adic number fields. As an application, we show how strings over a finite alphabet can be encoded in cyclotomic extensions of $\mathbb{Q}_p$ and discuss $p$-adic DNA encoding. The application leads to fast $p$-adic agglomerative hierarchic algorithms similar to the ones recently used e.g. by A. Khrennikov and others. From the viewpoint of $p$-adic geometry, to encode a dendrogram $X$ in a $p$-adic field $K$ means to fix a set $S$ of $K$-rational punctures on the $p$-adic projective line $\mathbb{P}^1$. To $\mathbb{P}^1\setminus S$ is associated in a natural way a subtree inside the Bruhat-Tits tree which recovers $X$, a method first used by F. Kato in 1999 in the classification of discrete subgroups of $\textrm{PGL}_2(K)$. Next, we show how the $p$-adic moduli space $\mathfrak{M}_{0,n}$ of $\mathbb{P}^1$ with $n$ punctures can be applied to the study of time series of dendrograms and those symmetries arising from hyperbolic actions on $\mathbb{P}^1$. In this way, we can associate to certain classes of dynamical systems a Mumford curve, i.e. a $p$-adic algebraic curve with totally degenerate reduction modulo $p$. Finally, we indicate some of our results in the study of general discrete actions on $\mathbb{P}^1$, and their relation to $p$-adic Hurwitz spaces.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

Imipramine blue sensitively and selectively targets FLT3-ITD positive acute myeloid leukemia cells.

Aberrant cytokine signaling initiated from mutant receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) provides critical growth and survival signals in high risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Inhibitors to FLT3 have already been tested in clinical trials, however, drug resistance limits clinical efficacy. Mutant receptor tyrosine kinases are mislocalized in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of AML and play an important role in the non-canonical activation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 5 (STAT5). Here, we have tested a potent new drug called imipramine blue (IB), which is a chimeric molecule with a dual mechanism of action. At 200-300 nM concentrations, IB is a potent inhibitor of STAT5 through liberation of endogenous phosphatase activity following NADPH oxidase (NOX) inhibition. However, at 75-150 nM concentrations, IB was highly effective at killing mutant FLT3-driven AML cells through a similar mechanism as thapsigargin (TG), involving increased cytosolic calcium. IB also potently inhibited survival of primary human FLT3/ITD+ AML cells compared to FLT3/ITDneg cells and spared normal umbilical cord blood cells. Therefore, IB functions through a mechanism involving vulnerability to dysregulated calcium metabolism and the combination of fusing a lipophilic amine to a NOX inhibiting dye shows promise for further pre-clinical development for targeting high risk AML

Persistent current formation in a high-temperature Bose-Einstein condensate: an experimental test for c-field theory

Experimental stirring of a toroidally trapped Bose-Einstein condensate at high temperature generates a disordered array of quantum vortices that decays via thermal dissipation to form a macroscopic persistent current [T. W. Neely em et al. arXiv:1204.1102 (2012)]. We perform 3D numerical simulations of the experimental sequence within the Stochastic Projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation using ab initio determined reservoir parameters. We find that both damping and noise are essential for describing the dynamics of the high-temperature Bose field. The theory gives a quantitative account of the formation of a persistent current, with no fitted parameters.Comment: v2: 7 pages, 3 figures, new experimental data and numerical simulation