4,185 research outputs found
A Critical Review of "Automatic Patch Generation Learned from Human-Written Patches": Essay on the Problem Statement and the Evaluation of Automatic Software Repair
At ICSE'2013, there was the first session ever dedicated to automatic program
repair. In this session, Kim et al. presented PAR, a novel template-based
approach for fixing Java bugs. We strongly disagree with key points of this
paper. Our critical review has two goals. First, we aim at explaining why we
disagree with Kim and colleagues and why the reasons behind this disagreement
are important for research on automatic software repair in general. Second, we
aim at contributing to the field with a clarification of the essential ideas
behind automatic software repair. In particular we discuss the main evaluation
criteria of automatic software repair: understandability, correctness and
completeness. We show that depending on how one sets up the repair scenario,
the evaluation goals may be contradictory. Eventually, we discuss the nature of
fix acceptability and its relation to the notion of software correctness.Comment: ICSE 2014, India (2014
Consistency of the Shannon entropy in quantum experiments
The consistency of the Shannon entropy, when applied to outcomes of quantum
experiments, is analysed. It is shown that the Shannon entropy is fully
consistent and its properties are never violated in quantum settings, but
attention must be paid to logical and experimental contexts. This last remark
is shown to apply regardless of the quantum or classical nature of the
experiments.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX2e/REVTeX4. V5: slightly different than the published
versio
Publisher Correction to:An economical and highly adaptable optogenetics system for individual and population-level manipulation of Caenorhabditis elegans
Abstract Background Optogenetics allows the experimental manipulation of excitable cells by a light stimulus without the need for technically challenging and invasive procedures. The high degree of spatial, temporal, and intensity control that can be achieved with a light stimulus, combined with cell type-specific expression of light-sensitive ion channels, enables highly specific and precise stimulation of excitable cells. Optogenetic tools have therefore revolutionized the study of neuronal circuits in a number of models, including Caenorhabditis elegans. Despite the existence of several optogenetic systems that allow spatial and temporal photoactivation of light-sensitive actuators in C. elegans, their high costs and low flexibility have limited wide access to optogenetics. Here, we developed an inexpensive, easy-to-build, modular, and adjustable optogenetics device for use on different microscopes and worm trackers, which we called the OptoArm. Results The OptoArm allows for single- and multiple-worm illumination and is adaptable in terms of light intensity, lighting profiles, and light color. We demonstrate OptoArm’s power in a population-based multi-parameter study on the contributions of motor circuit cells to age-related motility decline. We found that individual components of the neuromuscular system display different rates of age-dependent deterioration. The functional decline of cholinergic neurons mirrors motor decline, while GABAergic neurons and muscle cells are relatively age-resilient, suggesting that rate-limiting cells exist and determine neuronal circuit ageing. Conclusion We have assembled an economical, reliable, and highly adaptable optogenetics system which can be deployed to address diverse biological questions. We provide a detailed description of the construction as well as technical and biological validation of our set-up. Importantly, use of the OptoArm is not limited to C. elegans and may benefit studies in multiple model organisms, making optogenetics more accessible to the broader research community
New Data and Tools for Integrating Discrete and Continuous Population Modeling Strategies
Realistic population models have interactions between individuals. Such interactions cause populations to behave as systems with nonlinear dynamics. Much population data analysis is done using linear models assuming no interactions between individuals. Such analyses miss strong influences on population behavior and can lead to serious errors—especially for infectious diseases. To promote more effective population system analyses, we present a flexible and intuitive modeling framework for infection transmission systems. This framework will help population scientists gain insight into population dynamics, develop theory about population processes, better analyze and interpret population data, design more powerful and informative studies, and better inform policy decisions. Our framework uses a hierarchy of infection transmission system models. Four levels are presented here: deterministic compartmental models using ordinary differential equations (DE); stochastic compartmental (SC) models that relax assumptions about population size and include stochastic effects; individual event history models (IEH) that relax the SC compartmental structure assumptions by allowing each individual to be unique. IEH models also track each individual's history, and thus, allow the simulation of field studies. Finally, dynamic network (DNW) models relax the assumption of the previous models that contacts between individuals are instantaneous events that do not affect subsequent contacts. Eventually it should be possible to transit between these model forms at the click of a mouse. An example is presented dealing with Cryptosporidium . It illustrates how transiting model forms helps assess water contamination effects, evaluate control options, and design studies of infection transmission systems using nucleotide sequences of infectious agents.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75616/1/j.1749-6632.2001.tb02756.x.pd
The Effect of Ongoing Exposure Dynamics in Dose Response Relationships
Characterizing infectivity as a function of pathogen dose is integral to
microbial risk assessment. Dose-response experiments usually administer doses to
subjects at one time. Phenomenological models of the resulting data, such as the
exponential and the Beta-Poisson models, ignore dose timing and assume
independent risks from each pathogen. Real world exposure to pathogens, however,
is a sequence of discrete events where concurrent or prior pathogen arrival
affects the capacity of immune effectors to engage and kill newly arriving
pathogens. We model immune effector and pathogen interactions during the period
before infection becomes established in order to capture the dynamics generating
dose timing effects. Model analysis reveals an inverse relationship between the
time over which exposures accumulate and the risk of infection. Data from one
time dose experiments will thus overestimate per pathogen infection risks of
real world exposures. For instance, fitting our model to one time dosing data
reveals a risk of 0.66 from 313 Cryptosporidium parvum
pathogens. When the temporal exposure window is increased 100-fold using the
same parameters fitted by our model to the one time dose data, the risk of
infection is reduced to 0.09. Confirmation of this risk prediction requires data
from experiments administering doses with different timings. Our model
demonstrates that dose timing could markedly alter the risks generated by
airborne versus fomite transmitted pathogens
Evolution of Liouville density of a chaotic system
An area-preserving map of the unit sphere, consisting of alternating twists
and turns, is mostly chaotic. A Liouville density on that sphere is specified
by means of its expansion into spherical harmonics. That expansion initially
necessitates only a finite number of basis functions. As the dynamical mapping
proceeds, it is found that the number of non-negligible coefficients increases
exponentially with the number of steps. This is to be contrasted with the
behavior of a Schr\"odinger wave function which requires, for the analogous
quantum system, a basis of fixed size.Comment: LaTeX 4 pages (27 kB) followed by four short PostScript files (2 kB +
2 kB + 1 kB + 4 kB
Controlled human infection models to evaluate schistosomiasis and hookworm vaccines: where are we now?
Host-parasite interactio
Effect of Concurrent Partnerships and Sex-Act Rate on Gonorrhea Prevalence
The disease gonorrhea (GC) is a major public health problem in the United States, and the dynamics of the spread of GC through popula tions are complicated and not well understood. Studies have drawn attention to the effect of concurrent sexual partnerships as an influen tial factor for determining disease prevalence. However, little has been done to date to quantify the combined effects of concurrency and within-partnership sex-act rates on the prevalence of GC. This simulation study examines this issue with a simplified model of GC transmission in closed human populations that include concurrent partnerships. Two models of within-partnership sex-act rate are compared; one is a fixed sex-act rate per partnership, and the other is perhaps more realistic in that the rate depends on the number of concurrent partners. After controlling for total number of sex acts, pseudo-equilibrium prevalence is higher with the fixed sex-act rate than under the concurrency-adjusted rate in all the modeled partnership formation conditions.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68414/2/10.1177_003754979807100404.pd
Chaos for Liouville probability densities
Using the method of symbolic dynamics, we show that a large class of
classical chaotic maps exhibit exponential hypersensitivity to perturbation,
i.e., a rapid increase with time of the information needed to describe the
perturbed time evolution of the Liouville density, the information attaining
values that are exponentially larger than the entropy increase that results
from averaging over the perturbation. The exponential rate of growth of the
ratio of information to entropy is given by the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy of the
map. These findings generalize and extend results obtained for the baker's map
[R. Schack and C. M. Caves, Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, 3413 (1992)].Comment: 26 pages in REVTEX, no figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Chaos and quantum-nondemolition measurements
The problem of chaotic behavior in quantum mechanics is investigated against the background of the theory of quantum-nondemolition (QND) measurements. The analysis is based on two relevant features: The outcomes of a sequence of QND measurements are unambiguously predictable, and these measurements actually can be performed on one single system without perturbing its time evolution. Consequently, QND measurements represent an appropriate framework to analyze the conditions for the occurrence of ‘‘deterministic randomness’’ in quantum systems. The general arguments are illustrated by a discussion of a quantum system with a time evolution that possesses nonvanishing algorithmic complexity
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