12,593 research outputs found
Grand Challenges of Traceability: The Next Ten Years
In 2007, the software and systems traceability community met at the first
Natural Bridge symposium on the Grand Challenges of Traceability to establish
and address research goals for achieving effective, trustworthy, and ubiquitous
traceability. Ten years later, in 2017, the community came together to evaluate
a decade of progress towards achieving these goals. These proceedings document
some of that progress. They include a series of short position papers,
representing current work in the community organized across four process axes
of traceability practice. The sessions covered topics from Trace Strategizing,
Trace Link Creation and Evolution, Trace Link Usage, real-world applications of
Traceability, and Traceability Datasets and benchmarks. Two breakout groups
focused on the importance of creating and sharing traceability datasets within
the research community, and discussed challenges related to the adoption of
tracing techniques in industrial practice. Members of the research community
are engaged in many active, ongoing, and impactful research projects. Our hope
is that ten years from now we will be able to look back at a productive decade
of research and claim that we have achieved the overarching Grand Challenge of
Traceability, which seeks for traceability to be always present, built into the
engineering process, and for it to have "effectively disappeared without a
trace". We hope that others will see the potential that traceability has for
empowering software and systems engineers to develop higher-quality products at
increasing levels of complexity and scale, and that they will join the active
community of Software and Systems traceability researchers as we move forward
into the next decade of research
Optimizing Traffic Lights in a Cellular Automaton Model for City Traffic
We study the impact of global traffic light control strategies in a recently
proposed cellular automaton model for vehicular traffic in city networks. The
model combines basic ideas of the Biham-Middleton-Levine model for city traffic
and the Nagel-Schreckenberg model for highway traffic. The city network has a
simple square lattice geometry. All streets and intersections are treated
equally, i.e., there are no dominant streets. Starting from a simple
synchronized strategy we show that the capacity of the network strongly depends
on the cycle times of the traffic lights. Moreover we point out that the
optimal time periods are determined by the geometric characteristics of the
network, i.e., the distance between the intersections. In the case of
synchronized traffic lights the derivation of the optimal cycle times in the
network can be reduced to a simpler problem, the flow optimization of a single
street with one traffic light operating as a bottleneck. In order to obtain an
enhanced throughput in the model improved global strategies are tested, e.g.,
green wave and random switching strategies, which lead to surprising results.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure
Cluster formation and anomalous fundamental diagram in an ant trail model
A recently proposed stochastic cellular automaton model ({\it J. Phys. A 35,
L573 (2002)}), motivated by the motions of ants in a trail, is investigated in
detail in this paper. The flux of ants in this model is sensitive to the
probability of evaporation of pheromone, and the average speed of the ants
varies non-monotonically with their density. This remarkable property is
analyzed here using phenomenological and microscopic approximations thereby
elucidating the nature of the spatio-temporal organization of the ants. We find
that the observations can be understood by the formation of loose clusters,
i.e. space regions of enhanced, but not maximal, density.Comment: 11 pages, REVTEX, with 11 embedded EPS file
Probing the superconducting ground state of the noncentrosymmetric superconductors CaTSi3 (T = Ir, Pt) using muon-spin relaxation and rotation
The superconducting properties of CaTSi3 (where T = Pt and Ir) have been
investigated using muon spectroscopy. Our muon-spin relaxation results suggest
that in both these superconductors time-reversal symmetry is preserved, while
muon-spin rotation data show that the temperature dependence of the superfluid
density is consistent with an isotropic s-wave gap. The magnetic penetration
depths and upper critical fields determined from our transverse-field muon-spin
rotation spectra are found to be 448(6) and 170(6) nm, and 3800(500) and
1700(300) G, for CaPtSi3 and CaIrSi3 respectively. The superconducting
coherence lengths of the two materials have also been determined and are 29(2)
nm for CaPtSi3 and 44(4) nm for CaIrSi3.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure
Stochastic kinetics of ribosomes: single motor properties and collective behavior
Synthesis of protein molecules in a cell are carried out by ribosomes. A
ribosome can be regarded as a molecular motor which utilizes the input chemical
energy to move on a messenger RNA (mRNA) track that also serves as a template
for the polymerization of the corresponding protein. The forward movement,
however, is characterized by an alternating sequence of translocation and
pause. Using a quantitative model, which captures the mechanochemical cycle of
an individual ribosome, we derive an {\it exact} analytical expression for the
distribution of its dwell times at the successive positions on the mRNA track.
Inverse of the average dwell time satisfies a ``Michaelis-Menten-like''
equation and is consistent with the general formula for the average velocity of
a molecular motor with an unbranched mechano-chemical cycle. Extending this
formula appropriately, we also derive the exact force-velocity relation for a
ribosome. Often many ribosomes simultaneously move on the same mRNA track,
while each synthesizes a copy of the same protein. We extend the model of a
single ribosome by incorporating steric exclusion of different individuals on
the same track. We draw the phase diagram of this model of ribosome traffic in
3-dimensional spaces spanned by experimentally controllable parameters. We
suggest new experimental tests of our theoretical predictions.Comment: Final published versio
Anomalous transport in disordered exclusion processes with coupled particles
We consider one-dimensional asymmetric exclusion processes with a simple
attractive interaction, where the distance between consecutive particles is not
allowed to exceed a certain limit and investigate the consequences of this
coupling on the transport properties in the presence of random-force type
disorder by means of a phenomenological random trap picture. In the
phase-separated steady state of the model defined on a finite ring, the
properties of the density profile are studied and the exponent governing the
decay of the current with the system size in the biased phase is derived. In
case all consecutive particles are coupled with each other and form a closed
string, the current is found to be enhanced compared to the model without
coupling, while if groups of consecutive particles form finite strings, the
current is reduced. The motion of a semi-infinite string entering an initially
empty lattice is also studied. Here, the diffusion of the head of the string is
found to be anomalous, and two phases can be distinguished, which are
characterised by different functional dependences of the diffusion exponent on
the bias. The obtained results are checked by numerical simulation.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figure
Simple Wriggling is Hard unless You Are a Fat Hippo
We prove that it is NP-hard to decide whether two points in a polygonal
domain with holes can be connected by a wire. This implies that finding any
approximation to the shortest path for a long snake amidst polygonal obstacles
is NP-hard. On the positive side, we show that snake's problem is
"length-tractable": if the snake is "fat", i.e., its length/width ratio is
small, the shortest path can be computed in polynomial time.Comment: A shorter version is to be presented at FUN 201
Communication in networks with hierarchical branching
We present a simple model of communication in networks with hierarchical
branching. We analyze the behavior of the model from the viewpoint of critical
systems under different situations. For certain values of the parameters, a
continuous phase transition between a sparse and a congested regime is observed
and accurately described by an order parameter and the power spectra. At the
critical point the behavior of the model is totally independent of the number
of hierarchical levels. Also scaling properties are observed when the size of
the system varies. The presence of noise in the communication is shown to break
the transition. Despite the simplicity of the model, the analytical results are
a useful guide to forecast the main features of real networks.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Final version accepted in PR
Lee-Yang zeros and phase transitions in nonequilibrium steady states
We consider how the Lee-Yang description of phase transitions in terms of
partition function zeros applies to nonequilibrium systems. Here one does not
have a partition function, instead we consider the zeros of a steady-state
normalization factor in the complex plane of the transition rates. We obtain
the exact distribution of zeros in the thermodynamic limit for a specific
model, the boundary-driven asymmetric simple exclusion process. We show that
the distributions of zeros at the first and second order nonequilibrium phase
transitions of this model follow the patterns known in the Lee-Yang equilibrium
theory.Comment: 4 pages RevTeX4 with 4 figures; revised version to appear in Phys.
Rev. Let
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