Tools and verification

This chapter presents different tools that have been developed inside the Sensoria project. Sensoria studied qualitative analysis techniques for verifying properties of service implementations with respect to their formal specifications. The tools presented in this chapter have been developed to carry out the analysis in an automated, or semi-automated, way. We present four different tools, all developed during the Sensoria project, exploiting new techniques and calculi from the Sensoria project itself

A Formal Framework for Modeling Trust and Reputation in Collective Adaptive Systems

Trust and reputation models for distributed, collaborative systems have been studied and applied in several domains, in order to stimulate cooperation while preventing selfish and malicious behaviors. Nonetheless, such models have received less attention in the process of specifying and analyzing formally the functionalities of the systems mentioned above. The objective of this paper is to define a process algebraic framework for the modeling of systems that use (i) trust and reputation to govern the interactions among nodes, and (ii) communication models characterized by a high level of adaptiveness and flexibility. Hence, we propose a formalism for verifying, through model checking techniques, the robustness of these systems with respect to the typical attacks conducted against webs of trust.Comment: In Proceedings FORECAST 2016, arXiv:1607.0200

Method for coregistration of optical measurements of breast tissue with histopathology : the importance of accounting for tissue deformations

For the validation of optical diagnostic technologies, experimental results need to be benchmarked against the gold standard. Currently, the gold standard for tissue characterization is assessment of hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained sections by a pathologist. When processing tissue into H&E sections, the shape of the tissue deforms with respect to the initial shape when it was optically measured. We demonstrate the importance of accounting for these tissue deformations when correlating optical measurement with routinely acquired histopathology. We propose a method to register the tissue in the H&E sections to the optical measurements, which corrects for these tissue deformations. We compare the registered H&E sections to H&E sections that were registered with an algorithm that does not account for tissue deformations by evaluating both the shape and the composition of the tissue and using microcomputer tomography data as an independent measure. The proposed method, which did account for tissue deformations, was more accurate than the method that did not account for tissue deformations. These results emphasize the need for a registration method that accounts for tissue deformations, such as the method presented in this study, which can aid in validating optical techniques for clinical use. (C) The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License

On the Degree of Team Cooperation in CD Grammar Systems.

In this paper, we introduce a dynamical complexity measure, namely the degree of team cooperation, in the aim of investigating "how much" the components of a grammar system cooperate when forming a team in the process of generating terminal words. We present several results which strongly suggest that this measure is trivial in the sense that the degree of team cooperation of any language is bounded by a constant. Finally, we prove that the degree of team cooperation of a given cooperating/distributed grammar system cannot be algorithmically computed and discuss a decision problem

Definition of large bowel obstruction by primary colorectal cancer:A systematic review

Aim: Controversies on therapeutic strategy for large bowel obstruction by primary colorectal cancer mainly concern acute conditions, being essentially different from subacute obstruction. Clearly defining acute obstruction is important for design and interpretation of studies as well as for guidelines and daily practice. This systematic review aimed to evaluate definitions of obstruction by colorectal cancer in prospective studies. Method: A systematic search was performed in PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane Library. Eligibility criteria included randomized or prospective observational design, publication between 2000 and 2019, and the inclusion of patients with an obstruction caused by colorectal cancer. Provided definitions of obstruction were extracted with assessment of common elements. Results: A total of 16 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and 99 prospective observational studies were included. Obstruction was specified as acute in 28 studies, complete/emergency in five, (sub)acute or similar terms in four and unspecified in 78. Five of 16 RCTs (31%) and 37 of 99 cohort studies (37%) provided a definition. The definitions included any combination of clinical symptoms, physical signs, endoscopic features and radiological imaging findings in 25 studies. The definition was only based on clinical symptoms in 11 and radiological imaging in six studies. Definitions included a radiological component in 100% of evaluable RCTs (5/5) vs. 54% of prospective observational studies (20/37, P = 0.07). Conclusion: In this systematic review, the majority of prospective studies did not define obstruction by colorectal cancer and its urgency, whereas provided definitions varied hugely. Radiological confirmation seems to be an essential component in defining acute obstruction

Dietary resilience in patients with severe COPD at the start of a pulmonary rehabilitation program

Background: COPD may impact food-related activities, such as grocery shopping, cooking, and eating. Decreased food intake may result in an unhealthy diet, and in malnutrition, which is highly prevalent in patients with COPD. Malnutrition is known to negatively impact clinical outcome and quality of life. Aims: In this qualitative study, we aimed to explore strategies used to overcome food-related challenges, ie, dietary resilience, and whether these led to a healthy diet. Furthermore, we aimed to identify the key themes of motivation for dietary resilience in patients with severe COPD. Methods: In October 2015 to April 2016, 12 patients with severe COPD starting a pulmonary rehabilitation program were interviewed. Qualitative description and thematic analysis were performed. Results: All participants mentioned the use of strategies to overcome challenges. Key themes of motivation for dietary resilience were identified as "wanting to be as healthy as possible", "staying independent", and "promoting a sense of continuity and duty". Two out of 12 participants met the criteria for a healthy diet. Conclusion: Our study showed a variety of motivational factors and strategies reported by patients with severe COPD to overcome food-related challenges. However, the majority (n=10) of the participants did not meet the criteria for a healthy diet. The identified key themes can be used to develop education to support patients with severe COPD to improve their diet

Towards Activity Context using Software Sensors

Service-Oriented Computing delivers the promise of configuring and reconfiguring software systems to address user's needs in a dynamic way. Context-aware computing promises to capture the user's needs and hence the requirements they have on systems. The marriage of both can deliver ad-hoc software solutions relevant to the user in the most current fashion. However, here it is a key to gather information on the users' activity (that is what they are doing). Traditionally any context sensing was conducted with hardware sensors. However, software can also play the same role and in some situations will be more useful to sense the activity of the user. Furthermore they can make use of the fact that Service-oriented systems exchange information through standard protocols. In this paper we discuss our proposed approach to sense the activity of the user making use of software

Statistical Model Checking for Product Lines

International audienceWe report on the suitability of statistical model checking forthe analysis of quantitative properties of product line models by an extendedtreatment of earlier work by the authors. The type of analysis thatcan be performed includes the likelihood of specific product behaviour,the expected average cost of products (in terms of the attributes of theproducts’ features) and the probability of features to be (un)installed atruntime. The product lines must be modelled in QFLan, which extendsthe probabilistic feature-oriented language PFLan with novel quantitativeconstraints among features and on behaviour and with advancedfeature installation options. QFLan is a rich process-algebraic specifi-cation language whose operational behaviour interacts with a store ofconstraints, neatly separating product configuration from product behaviour.The resulting probabilistic configurations and probabilistic behaviourconverge in a discrete-time Markov chain semantics, enablingthe analysis of quantitative properties. Technically, a Maude implementationof QFLan, integrated with Microsoft’s SMT constraint solver Z3,is combined with the distributed statistical model checker MultiVeStA,developed by one of the authors. We illustrate the feasibility of our frameworkby applying it to a case study of a product line of bikes