Contractual Testing

Variants of must testing approach have been successfully applied in Service Oriented Computing for capturing compliance between (contracts exposed by) a client and a service and for characterising safe replacement, namely the fact that compliance is preserved when a service exposing a ’smaller’ contract is replaced by another one with a ’larger’ contract. Nevertheless, in multi-party interactions, partners often lack full coordination capabilities. Such a scenario calls for less discriminating notions of testing in which observers are, e.g., the description of uncoordinated multiparty contexts or contexts that are unable to observe the complete behaviour of the process under test. In this paper we propose an extended notion of must preorder, called contractual preorder, according to which contracts are compared according to their ability to pass only the tests belonging to a given set. We show the generality of our framework by proving that preorders induced by existing notions of compliance in a distributed setting are instances of the contractual preorder when restricting to suitable sets of observers

A compositional coalgebraic model of a fragment of fusion calculus

This work is a further step in exploring the labelled transitions and bisimulations of fusion calculi. We follow the approach developed by Turi and Plotkin for lifting transition systems with a syntactic structure to bialgebras and, thus, we provide a compositional model of the fusion calculus with explicit fusions. In such a model, the bisimilarity relation induced by the unique morphism to the final coalgebra coincides with fusion hyperequivalence and it is a congruence with respect to the operations of the calculus. The key novelty in our work is to give an account of explicit fusions through labelled transitions. In this short essay, we focus on a fragment of the fusion calculus without recursion and replication

A compositional coalgebraic model of a fragment of fusion calculus

This work is a further step in exploring the labelled transitions and bisimulations of fusion calculi. We follow the approach developed by Turi and Plotkin for lifting transition systems with a syntactic structure to bialgebras and, thus, we provide a compositional model of the fusion calculus with explicit fusions. In such a model, the bisimilarity relation induced by the unique morphism to the final coalgebra coincides with fusion hyperequivalence and it is a congruence with respect to the operations of the calculus. The key novelty in our work is to give an account of explicit fusions through labelled transitions. In this short essay, we focus on a fragment of the fusion calculus without recursion and replication

Atrial natriuretic peptide presence in parotid gland of human foetus at 13th week of development and in adult man

Our immunohistochemical study shows that atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) is present in both human fetal and adult parotid gland. In the fetuses ANP is localized in cell clusters, while in adult parotid gland, the ANP is seen only in the wall of intra- and extralobular ducts. The results suggest that ANP might play a role in the differentiation of the parotid gland similarly as in brain and that during fetal growth ANP may play a role in the regulating the secretion of primitive salivary fluid, even if acini are still not developed. (Folia Histochemica et Cytobiologica 2013, Vol. 51, No. 1, 55-58

Contracts for Abstract Processes in Service Composition

Contracts are a well-established approach for describing and analyzing behavioral aspects of web service compositions. The theory of contracts comes equipped with a notion of compatibility between clients and servers that ensures that every possible interaction between compatible clients and servers will complete successfully. It is generally agreed that real applications often require the ability of exposing just partial descriptions of their behaviors, which are usually known as abstract processes. We propose a formal characterization of abstraction as an extension of the usual symbolic bisimulation and we recover the notion of abstraction in the context of contracts.Comment: In Proceedings FIT 2010, arXiv:1101.426

Obesity and Circulating Levels of Vitamin D before and after Weight Loss Induced by a Very Low-Calorie Ketogenic Diet

Background: Vitamin D plays a pivotal role in calcium and phosphorus metabolism, also influencing bone tissue. Several studies have reported that vitamin D blood levels were significantly lower in people with obesity, probably due to its uptake by the adipose tissue. Clinical studies that investigated the changes of circulating levels of vitamin D following weight loss reported controversial data. A very low-calorie ketogenic diet is acknowledged as a reliable treatment to achieve a rapid weight loss. Therefore, we investigated the effect of weight loss, consequent to a very low-calorie ketogenic diet, on vitamin D blood concentrations. Methods: A cohort of 31 people with obesity underwent a very low-calorie ketogenic diet for 10-12 weeks. The serum concentrations of vitamin D, parathormone, calcium and phosphorous were measured before and after weight loss; they were compared to a control group of 20 non-obese, non-diabetic, age- and gender-matched persons. Results: Patients with obesity had a higher habitual intake of vitamin D than the control group (p < 0.05). However, the vitamin D blood levels of the obese group were significantly lower than those of the control group (p < 0.005) and they increased after weight loss (p < 0.001). At baseline, vitamin D blood concentrations of the persons with obesity were significantly correlated with both fat mass-kg (r = -0.40; p < 0.05) and body mass index (r = -0.47; p < 0.01). Following very low-calorie ketogenic diet, the change in vitamin D serum concentrations was correlated only with the change in fat mass-kg (r = -0.43; p < 0.01). Conclusion: This study confirmed that patients with obesity have lower vitamin D levels that normalize after significant weight loss, supporting the hypothesis that vitamin D is stored in the adipose tissue and released following weight loss

The Chain of Custody in the Era of Modern Forensics: From the Classic Procedures for Gathering Evidence to the New Challenges Related to Digital Data

The purpose of this work is to renew the interest and attention for the chain of custody in forensic medicine, its establishment and maintenance, protecting the integrity and validity of evidence as well as to analyze how over time the establishment of the chain of custody and the collection of evidence has evolved also in function of the advent of technology and the use of electronic devices connected to the network. The analysis of the various aspects of the chain of custody demonstrates how necessary it is for the professional figures involved in the phases of the investigation (especially those who manage the evidence and who have, therefore, designated the assignment) to know the procedures to follow, trace the movement and the handling of objects subjected to seizure, also for the purposes of toxicological and/or histological investigations. The knowledge of interferences or complications helps to reduce errors and safeguard the validity of the evidence, assuring the proceeding judicial authority that the evidence is authentic and that it is, in other words, the same evidence seized at the scene of the crime. Furthermore, the issue is particularly felt today, with the recent need to guarantee the originality of digital data. Following a careful review and analysis of the literature currently available in this regard, it is worth adding that further efforts are needed to formulate internationally validated guidelines, harmonizing the different reference criteria in forensic science and medical areas, given the current absence of good international practices valid in the field and applicable both in the case of physical evidence and in the case of seizure of digital evidence

Synthesis of platinum complexes with 2-(5-perfluoroalkyl-1,2,4-oxadiazol-3yl)-pyridine and 2-(3-perfluoroalkyl-1-methyl-1,2,4-triazole-5yl)-pyridine ligands and their in vitro antitumor activity

Five new mononuclear Pt(II) complexes with 5-perfluoroalkyl-1,2,4-oxadiazolyl-pyridine and 3-perfluoroalkyl-1,2,4-triazolyl-pyridine ligands are reported. The ligands 2-(5-perfluoroheptyl-1,2,4-oxadiazole-3yl)-pyridine (pfhop), 2-(5-perfluoropropyl)-1,2,4-oxadiazole-3yl)-pyridine (pfpop), 2-(3-perfluoroheptyl-1-methyl-1,2,4-triazole-5yl)-pyridine (pfhtp), 2-(3-perfluoropropyl-1-methyl-1,2,4-triazole-5yl)-pyridine (pfptp) and their complexes [PtCl2(pfhop)(2)]center dot 1.5 DMSO (2a), [PtCl2(pfpop)(2)]center dot 1.5 DMSO (3a), [PtCl2(pfhtp)(2)]center dot 1.5 DMSO (4a), PtCl2(pfhtp) (4b), [PtCl2(PfPtP)(2)]center dot 1.5 DMSO (5a) have been synthesized and structurally characterized. The complexes 2a, 3a, 4a and 5a have the same chemical environment of Pt(II) where PtCl2 moieties coordinate two molecules of ligand via N1 atom of pyridine in the case of pfhop and pfpop, and N2 atom of 1,2,4-triazole in the case of pfhtp and pfptp. For 4b, pfhtp behaves as bidentate ligand, coordinating Pt(II) ion via N4 atom of triazole and N1 atom of pyridine. All complexes have been tested in vitro by 3-(4,5-dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)bromide-2,5-diphenyl-2 H-tetrazolium (MTT) test on four tumor cell lines MCF-7 (human breast cancer), HepG2 (human hepatocellular carcinoma), HCT116 (human colorectal carcinoma). Compounds 2a and 4b showed a dose-dependent anti-proliferative effect against the three tumor cell lines whereas did not affect viability of intestinal normal-like differentiated Caco-2 cells. The cell death of HepG2, MCF-7 and HCT116 induced by the compounds, was considered to be apoptotic by measuring the exposure of phosphatidylserine to the outer membrane and observing the typical apoptotic morphological change by acridine orange (AO)/ethidium bromide (EB) stainin

Expression of gelatinases (MMP-2, MMP-9) and cyclooxygenases (COX-1, COX-2) in some benign salivary gland tumors.

Salivary gland tumors, most of which are rare benign tumors, represent a histologically heterogenous group with the greatest diversity of morphological and cellular features. The aim of this study is to analyse the expression and possible interactions between gelatinases (MMP-2, MMP-9) and cyclooxygenases (COX-1, COX-2) in some benign salivary gland tumors. We investigated the expression of gelatinases and cyclooxigenases in control salivary gland, Pleomorphic adenoma and Warthin's tumor through immunohistochemistry and Reverse Transcription – Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). We identified the expression of both classes of enzyme in normal samples and in the two types of pathological samples without any quantitative differences. From the present data no significant differences emerge in the expression of these enzymes among the different pathologies examined. Nevertheless, due to the small number of samples included in this study, general statements regarding correlation between the degree of severity of the tumoral pathology and the quantitative expression of these potential tumoral markers can not be made

Amending Contracts for Choreographies

Distributed interactions can be suitably designed in terms of choreographies. Such abstractions can be thought of as global descriptions of the coordination of several distributed parties. Global assertions define contracts for choreographies by annotating multiparty session types with logical formulae to validate the content of the exchanged messages. The introduction of such constraints is a critical design issue as it may be hard to specify contracts that allow each party to be able to progress without violating the contract. In this paper, we propose three methods that automatically correct inconsistent global assertions. The methods are compared by discussing their applicability and the relationships between the amended global assertions and the original (inconsistent) ones.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2011, arXiv:1108.014