Minimizing Running Costs in Consumption Systems

A standard approach to optimizing long-run running costs of discrete systems is based on minimizing the mean-payoff, i.e., the long-run average amount of resources ("energy") consumed per transition. However, this approach inherently assumes that the energy source has an unbounded capacity, which is not always realistic. For example, an autonomous robotic device has a battery of finite capacity that has to be recharged periodically, and the total amount of energy consumed between two successive charging cycles is bounded by the capacity. Hence, a controller minimizing the mean-payoff must obey this restriction. In this paper we study the controller synthesis problem for consumption systems with a finite battery capacity, where the task of the controller is to minimize the mean-payoff while preserving the functionality of the system encoded by a given linear-time property. We show that an optimal controller always exists, and it may either need only finite memory or require infinite memory (it is decidable in polynomial time which of the two cases holds). Further, we show how to compute an effective description of an optimal controller in polynomial time. Finally, we consider the limit values achievable by larger and larger battery capacity, show that these values are computable in polynomial time, and we also analyze the corresponding rate of convergence. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first results about optimizing the long-run running costs in systems with bounded energy stores.Comment: 32 pages, corrections of typos and minor omission

Alleviating Effect of High Protein Diet on the Toxic Effect of Organophospho~C ompounds on the Growth of Rats

Elevation of protein in the diet from 19 to 59 per cent ,and keptisocaloric significantly improved the growth over a period of 20 days of male albino rats exposed to the toxic stress of DFP, EPN and Malathion

Effect of Diisopropyl Phosphorofluoridate in Some Aspects of Carbohydrate Metabolism

An acute dose of DFP equivalent to 50 per cent of the LD50 cause glycogenolysis and hyperglycemia in male albino rats. The hyperglycemic effect can atleast be partially suppressed by the administration of insulin. Under sub-acute dose equivalent to 5 per cent of the LD50, there is glycogenolysis but no change is blood glucose. The action of DFP on carbohydrate metabolism seems to be mediated through adrenal gland. DFP also increases the glycolytic rate, suppresses the LDH activity and is hepatotoxic

Percentile Queries in Multi-Dimensional Markov Decision Processes

Markov decision processes (MDPs) with multi-dimensional weights are useful to analyze systems with multiple objectives that may be conflicting and require the analysis of trade-offs. We study the complexity of percentile queries in such MDPs and give algorithms to synthesize strategies that enforce such constraints. Given a multi-dimensional weighted MDP and a quantitative payoff function $f$, thresholds $v_i$ (one per dimension), and probability thresholds $\alpha_i$, we show how to compute a single strategy to enforce that for all dimensions $i$, the probability of outcomes $\rho$ satisfying $f_i(\rho) \geq v_i$ is at least $\alpha_i$. We consider classical quantitative payoffs from the literature (sup, inf, lim sup, lim inf, mean-payoff, truncated sum, discounted sum). Our work extends to the quantitative case the multi-objective model checking problem studied by Etessami et al. in unweighted MDPs.Comment: Extended version of CAV 2015 pape

Plasma membrane associated enzymes of mammary tumours as the biochemical indicators of metastasizing capacity. Analyses of enriched plasma membrane preparations.

Plasma membranes from 6 spontaneously metastasizing and 4 non-metastasizing rat mammary carcinomata were isolated by discontinuous sucrose density gradient centrifugation of microsomal pellets. The starting microsomal fraction contained 40-50% plasma membranes as determined by the levels of 5'-nucleotidase activity, with a negligible amount of nuclear (1%), mitochondrial (5%) and lysomal (7%) contamination. Five distinct fractions (F1-F5) were banded at densities 1 X 09, 1 X 13, 1 X 15, 1 X 17 and 1 X 21 at 25 degrees C, in addition to a pellet (F6) obtained by centrifuging at 76,000 g for 17 h. The fractions F1 through F5, all contained various concentrations of membranous structures, while the pellet (F6) contained only amorphous materials as evidenced by electron microscopy. The F3 fraction at the gradient 1 X 15 had the highest specific as well as total activity of the plasma membrane marker enzyme, with aggregates of the least contaminated plasma membranes in vesicular forms. This fraction also had the lowest specific activity for glucose-6-phosphatase (smooth ER marker) and for beta-D-glucuronidase (lysomal marker), and therefore was considered to be the "cleanest" plasma membrane fraction. When the activity of 4 additional plasma membrane marker enzymes, i.e., alkaline phosphatase, phosphodiesterase I, nucleotide pyrophosphatase and alkaline ribonuclease was determined in the same F3 fraction, their levels were significantly lower in every metastasizing tumour than in the non-metastasizing ones, with the enzyme activity decreasing in direct proportion to the metastasizing capacity. On the other hand, the marker enzymes were high in all non-metastasizing tumours, with the activity seemingly increasing with the immunogenicity of tumour cells. There was no significant difference between the 2 groups of mammary tumours in the levels of sialic acid, hexosamine, phospholipid or cholesterol in the plasma membranes. Thus, the level of plasma membrane marker enzymes is considered an accurate indicator for metastasizing capacity in the rat mammary tumour system

Stress Corrosion Cracking of Copper-Manganese Alloys-Effect of Some Chemical Variables

Copper-manganese alloys, like a few other copper alloys, exhibit stress corrosion cracking in ammonia atmosphere, also they give cracking in Mattosson's solution which is a solution of copper sulphate, ammonium sulphate and ammo-nium hydroxide. Four compositions of copper-manganese alloys in their homogenous solid solution range, conta-ining 8 to 23 percent manganese, have been tested under varying conditions of Mattsson's solution in respect of PH and copper content for an assessment of the effect of these variables on the stress corrosion behaviour of these alloys

Non-Zero Sum Games for Reactive Synthesis

In this invited contribution, we summarize new solution concepts useful for the synthesis of reactive systems that we have introduced in several recent publications. These solution concepts are developed in the context of non-zero sum games played on graphs. They are part of the contributions obtained in the inVEST project funded by the European Research Council.Comment: LATA'16 invited pape

Class Transitions and Two Component Accretion Flow in GRS 1915+105

The light curve of the galactic micro-quasar GRS 1915+105 changes in at least thirteen different ways which are called classes. We present examples of the transitions from one class to another as observed by the IXAE instrument aboard the Indian Satellite IRS-P3. We find that the transitions are associated with changes in photon counts over a time-scale of only a few hours and they take place through unknown classes. Assuming that the transitions are caused by variation of the accretion rates, this implies that a significant fraction of the matter must be nearly freely falling in order to have such dramatic changes in such a short time.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, Astronomy and Astrophys. (in press

Mean-payoff Automaton Expressions

Quantitative languages are an extension of boolean languages that assign to each word a real number. Mean-payoff automata are finite automata with numerical weights on transitions that assign to each infinite path the long-run average of the transition weights. When the mode of branching of the automaton is deterministic, nondeterministic, or alternating, the corresponding class of quantitative languages is not robust as it is not closed under the pointwise operations of max, min, sum, and numerical complement. Nondeterministic and alternating mean-payoff automata are not decidable either, as the quantitative generalization of the problems of universality and language inclusion is undecidable. We introduce a new class of quantitative languages, defined by mean-payoff automaton expressions, which is robust and decidable: it is closed under the four pointwise operations, and we show that all decision problems are decidable for this class. Mean-payoff automaton expressions subsume deterministic mean-payoff automata, and we show that they have expressive power incomparable to nondeterministic and alternating mean-payoff automata. We also present for the first time an algorithm to compute distance between two quantitative languages, and in our case the quantitative languages are given as mean-payoff automaton expressions