Ten Misconceptions from the History of Analysis and Their Debunking

The widespread idea that infinitesimals were "eliminated" by the "great triumvirate" of Cantor, Dedekind, and Weierstrass is refuted by an uninterrupted chain of work on infinitesimal-enriched number systems. The elimination claim is an oversimplification created by triumvirate followers, who tend to view the history of analysis as a pre-ordained march toward the radiant future of Weierstrassian epsilontics. In the present text, we document distortions of the history of analysis stemming from the triumvirate ideology of ontological minimalism, which identified the continuum with a single number system. Such anachronistic distortions characterize the received interpretation of Stevin, Leibniz, d'Alembert, Cauchy, and others.Comment: 46 pages, 4 figures; Foundations of Science (2012). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1108.2885 and arXiv:1110.545

In the beginning was game semantics

This article presents an overview of computability logic -- the game-semantically constructed logic of interactive computational tasks and resources. There is only one non-overview, technical section in it, devoted to a proof of the soundness of affine logic with respect to the semantics of computability logic. A comprehensive online source on the subject can be found at http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~giorgi/cl.htmlComment: To appear in: "Games: Unifying Logic, Language and Philosophy". O. Majer, A.-V. Pietarinen and T. Tulenheimo, eds. Springer Verlag, Berli

User Integration by the Evaluation of an Emergency Call System in the Context of the Research Project MOBECS

Within the AAL Joint Programme the MOBECS' projectconsortium (MOBility and Emergency Call System), develops a novel mobile emergency call system which offers use and security for indoor and outdoor to increase mobility. A special feature in advantage to other emergency applications, is a base station at home which allows evaluating and controlling of sensordata (as example, to check the health of users) and actuators to control other electronic devices (for example to turn off the heater after leaving the house if it has been forgotten). For a continuous user integration from the outset focus groups interviews were conducted already in the conception phase in order to analyze the needs of potential users at an early stage. To accommodate the needs of end-users in the development phase, evaluations of the developed prototypes took place: this is a Smartphone application for the end user and on the other hand the interfaces for the home emergency call Centre staff. The implementation and the results of the evaluation are documented in a Bachelor thesis. It will also show up problems and proposed instructions

On Compositional Failure Detection in Structured Transition Systems

In model-checking, systems are often given as products. We propose an approach that is built on a preprocessing of specifications in terms of appropriate automata. This allows to incorporate information about the local behaviour and synchronization of the system components into the specification. We develop a framework of (partially) synchronized automaton products and a format of corresponding specification automata that allows for a compositional failure detection of linear regular properties (either for finite or for infinite behaviour). As a result we obtain an algorithm which separates the local and the non-local segments of system runs, resulting in improved complexity bounds in typical specifications

QUAREP-LiMi: A community-driven initiative to establish guidelines for quality assessment and reproducibility for instruments and images in light microscopy

A modern day light microscope has evolved from a tool devoted to making primarily empirical observations to what is now a sophisticated, quantitative device that is an integral part of both physical and life science research. Nowadays, microscopes are found in nearly every experimental laboratory. However, despite their prevalent use in capturing and quantifying scientific phenomena, neither a thorough understanding of the principles underlying quantitative imaging techniques nor appropriate knowledge of how to calibrate, operate and maintain microscopes can be taken for granted. This is clearly demonstrated by the well-documented and widespread difficulties that are routinely encountered in evaluating acquired data and reproducing scientific experiments. Indeed, studies have shown that more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to repeat another scientist's experiments, while more than half have even failed to reproduce their own experiments. One factor behind the reproducibility crisis of experiments published in scientific journals is the frequent underreporting of imaging methods caused by a lack of awareness and/or a lack of knowledge of the applied technique. Whereas quality control procedures for some methods used in biomedical research, such as genomics (e.g. DNA sequencing, RNA-seq) or cytometry, have been introduced (e.g. ENCODE), this issue has not been tackled for optical microscopy instrumentation and images. Although many calibration standards and protocols have been published, there is a lack of awareness and agreement on common standards and guidelines for quality assessment and reproducibility. In April 2020, the QUality Assessment and REProducibility for instruments and images in Light Microscopy (QUAREP-LiMi) initiative was formed. This initiative comprises imaging scientists from academia and industry who share a common interest in achieving a better understanding of the performance and limitations of microscopes and improved quality control (QC) in light microscopy. The ultimate goal of the QUAREP-LiMi initiative is to establish a set of common QC standards, guidelines, metadata models and tools, including detailed protocols, with the ultimate aim of improving reproducible advances in scientific research. This White Paper (1) summarizes the major obstacles identified in the field that motivated the launch of the QUAREP-LiMi initiative; (2) identifies the urgent need to address these obstacles in a grassroots manner, through a community of stakeholders including, researchers, imaging scientists, bioimage analysts, bioimage informatics developers, corporate partners, funding agencies, standards organizations, scientific publishers and observers of such; (3) outlines the current actions of the QUAREP-LiMi initiative and (4) proposes future steps that can be taken to improve the dissemination and acceptance of the proposed guidelines to manage QC. To summarize, the principal goal of the QUAREP-LiMi initiative is to improve the overall quality and reproducibility of light microscope image data by introducing broadly accepted standard practices and accurately captured image data metrics