Elementos para a construção de uma cadeia de verificação para o projeto TopCased

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-graduação em Automação e SistemasAnalisando a história dos sistemas embarcados, podemos dividi-la em dois momentos. Em um primeiro momento, a origem dos problemas destes sistemas provinha, na grande maioria dos casos, da parte física chamada hardware. A partir dos anos 60, graças à chegada dos circuitos integrados, desenvolvidos para o Programa Espacial Americano, a parte física dos sistemas se tornou mais confiável. Nós últimos 20 anos, devido à complexidade inerente ao desenvolvimento dos softwares para sistemas embarcados, estes se tornaram a origem da maior parte dos erros. Uma das grandes dificuldades no desenvolvimento destes softwares é assegurar um funcionamento correto (de acordo com as especificações). A fim de reduzir a incidência de erros, a indústria passou a estudar o uso de métodos formais para auxiliar o desenvolvimento destes sistemas complexos. Estas técnicas auxiliam o processo decisório porque permitem afirmar antes de implementar o protótipo se uma dada especificação será cumprida ou não pelo sistema. Entretanto, a verificação formal ainda não é largamente empregada no ambiente industrial devido à dificuldade no intercâmbio de informações entre as linguagens de modelagem de alto nível (UML, AADL, SDL, etc) e as ferramentas de verificação formal. Esta dificuldade é decorrente da falta de uma semântica formal para estas linguagens de modelagem largamente utilizadas pela indústria. Além disto, cada ferramenta de verificação trabalha com formalismos matemáticos diferentes, não havendo uma fácil integração entre elas. Outro fator importante é que não podemos afirmar que existe um formalismo único capaz de atender a todas as necessidades de um sistema complexo. Isto implica que sistemas futuros vão cada vez mais requerer uma combinação de métodos baseados em modelos, tais como sistema de transição, álgebra de processos, lógica temporal, entre outros. Estas restrições impõem à indústria a necessidade de desenvolver uma ferramenta de tradução de modelos para cada par linguagem-formalismo empregado. A fim de facilitar este intercâmbio de informações entre as diferentes linguagens de modelagem e as ferramentas de verificação formais existentes - tais como TINA (Time Petri Net Analyser), CADP (Construction and Analysis of Distributed Processes), entre outras - o projeto TOPCASED (Toolkit in Open-Source for Critical Application & Systems Development) desenvolveu uma arquitetura de verificação original, que promove a transformação de modelos entre os diferentes níveis. Esta transformação é simplificada pelo advento de uma linguagem intermediária formal chamada FIACRE (Format Intermédiaire pour les Architectures de Composants Répartis Embarqués). Dentro deste contexto, as atividades desenvolvidas neste trabalho fazem parte da especificação e operacionalização da linguagem FIACRE do projeto TOPCASED. A primeira atividade apresentada neste trabalho é o estudo preliminar da tradução entre SDL e FIACRE para auxiliar na especificação da linguagem FIACRE. A segunda atividade consiste inicialmente na proposição de um esquema conceitual para a tradução de FIACRE para o formalismo matemático TTS (Sistema de Transições Temporizadas), e posteriormente na sua implementação na forma de um compilador (front-end) para a ferramenta TINA. Por último, um exemplo de verificação de sistema é apresentado com o intuito de demonstrar as vantagens das ferramentas que fazem parte do projeto TOPCASED

Implementing Circular Economy Techniques for the Optimal Management of Recyclable Solid Waste Using the M-GRCT Decision Support Model

[EN] This article analyzes the implementation of a circular economy model for the management of reusable solid waste in the Colombian municipalities of Arbelaez (province of Cundinamarca) and Tibasosa (province of Boyaca). The analysis is conducted using M-GRCT, a circular economy decision support model for the design of recyclable waste management systems in low-income municipalities. The model allows for performing calculations on a set of two scenarios integrating a sociocultural dynamics assessment-this being a characteristic feature of this type of municipalities. Results show that both the linear and circular models of waste management are economically viable. However, the particular conditions of each municipality, the tariff system, the number of subscribers and the variations in costs and inflation in each municipality affect the results of economic viability. In addition, the waste production scale and the volumes of recoverable waste also affect the results. All these factors are reflected in the scenarios analyzed. In terms of economic viability, the circular model presents better results in Arbelaez, while in the municipality of Tibasosa, the best results are obtained with a linear economy approach.Vargas-Terranova, C.; Rodrigo-Ilarri, J.; Rodrigo-Clavero, M.; Parra-Saad, A. (2022). Implementing Circular Economy Techniques for the Optimal Management of Recyclable Solid Waste Using the M-GRCT Decision Support Model. Applied Sciences. 12(16):1-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/app12168072117121

Size characterization of plasmonic nanoparticles with dark-field single particle spectrophotometry

Plasmonic nanoparticles are widely used in multiple scientific and industrial applications. Although many synthesis methods have been reported in the literature throughout the last decade, controlling the size and shape of large populations still remains as a challenge. As size and shape variations have a strong impact in their plasmonic properties, the need to have metrological techniques to accurately characterize their morphological features is peremptory. We present a new optical method referred as Dark-Field Single Particle Spectrophotometry which is able to measure the individual sizes of thousands of particles with nanometric accuracy in just a couple of minutes. Our method also features an easy sample preparation, a straightforward experimental setup inspired on a customized optical microscope, and a measurement protocol simple enough to be carried out by untrained technicians. As a proof of concept, thousands of spherical nanoparticles of different sizes have been measured, and after a direct comparison with metrological gold standard electron microscopy, a discrepancy of 3% has been attested. Although its feasibility has been demonstrated on spherical nanoparticles, the true strengthness of the method is that it can be generalized also to nanoparticles with arbitrary shapes and geometries, thus representing an advantageous alternative to the gold-standard electron microscopyTis work was supported by the grants from the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain (Retos Nano Prost: RTC-2016-4776-1, Retos Spectrasens: RTC-2017-6311-1-1 & Líneas Estratégicas 2021 for the Oncodeespasm Platform: PLEC2021-007892). Rodrigo Calvo acknowledges funding of his training from Dirección General de Investigación (Comunidad de Madrid) through project IND2019/IND-17155. Valerio Pini and Andreas Ton thank the Spanish State Research Agency for the Torres Quevedo grants (PTQ-16-08540 & PTQ-15-07565

Benford's law: what does it say on adversarial images?

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are fragile to small perturbations in the input images. These networks are thus prone to malicious attacks that perturb the inputs to force a misclassification. Such slightly manipulated images aimed at deceiving the classifier are known as adversarial images. In this work, we investigate statistical differences between natural images and adversarial ones. More precisely, we show that employing a proper image transformation and for a class of adversarial attacks, the distribution of the leading digit of the pixels in adversarial images deviates from Benford's law. The stronger the attack, the more distant the resulting distribution is from Benford's law. Our analysis provides a detailed investigation of this new approach that can serve as a basis for alternative adversarial example detection methods that do not need to modify the original CNN classifier neither work on the raw high-dimensional pixels as features to defend against attacks

Local Fourier Analysis of the Complex Shifted Laplacian preconditioner for Helmholtz problems

In this paper we solve the Helmholtz equation with multigrid preconditioned Krylov subspace methods. The class of Shifted Laplacian preconditioners are known to significantly speed-up Krylov convergence. However, these preconditioners have a parameter beta, a measure of the complex shift. Due to contradictory requirements for the multigrid and Krylov convergence, the choice of this shift parameter can be a bottleneck in applying the method. In this paper, we propose a wavenumber-dependent minimal complex shift parameter which is predicted by a rigorous k-grid Local Fourier Analysis (LFA) of the multigrid scheme. We claim that, given any (regionally constant) wavenumber, this minimal complex shift parameter provides the reader with a parameter choice that leads to efficient Krylov convergence. Numerical experiments in one and two spatial dimensions validate the theoretical results. It appears that the proposed complex shift is both the minimal requirement for a multigrid V-cycle to converge, as well as being near-optimal in terms of Krylov iteration count.Comment: 20 page

Cardiovascular Effects of the Essential Oil of Croton argyrophylloides

Cardiovascular effects of the essential oil of Croton argyrophylloides Muell. Arg. (EOCA) were investigated in normotensive rats. In saline-pretreated anesthetized or conscious rats, intravenous (i.v.) injection of the EOCA induced dose-dependent hypotension. Dose-dependent tachycardia was observed only in conscious rats. In anesthetized rats, cervical bivagotomy failed to enhance EOCA-induced hypotension but unmasked significant bradycardia. In conscious rats, i.v. pretreatment with methylatropine, but not with atenolol or L-NAME, reduced both hypotensive and tachycardiac responses to EOCA. However, hexamethonium pretreatment reverted the EOCA-induced tachycardia into significant bradycardia without affecting the hypotension. In aortic ring preparations precontracted with phenylephrine, EOCA induced a concentration-dependent relaxation that was significantly reduced by vascular endothelium removal and pretreatment with atropine, indomethacin, or glibenclamide but remained unaffected by pretreatment with L-NAME or TEA. It is concluded that i.v. treatment with EOAC decreased blood pressure probably through an active vascular relaxation rather than withdrawal of sympathetic tone. Muscarinic receptor stimulation, liberation of the endothelium-derived prostacyclin, and opening KATP channels are partially involved in the aortic relaxation induced by EOCA and in turn in the mediation of EOCA-induced hypotension. EOCA-induced tachycardia in conscious rats appears to be mediated reflexly through inhibition of vagal drive to the heart

CARACTERIZAÇÃO GEOMÉTRICA DE UM SISTEMA FLUVIAL, FORMAÇÃO ITAQUAQUECETUBA, TERCIÁRIO DA BACIA DE SÃO PAULO

The objective of this study is the geometric characterization of a fluvial system, exemplified by the Itaquaquecetuba Formation. The studied area is a quarry located in Itaquaquecetuba, distant 35 km from the city of São Paulo, which is inserted in the context of São Paulo Basin. Fluvial systems are important hydrocarbon reservoirs, and this study may contribute with an analogue for ancient reservoirs. It was elaborated ten facies logs along a distance of 200 m (log spacing of 20 m), with a vertical column (thickness) of 40 m for each log. Eight facies cycles, and its lateral chrono-correlation allowed to map the potential reservoir and non-reservoir facies within each cycle. Regarding the depositional model for the studied section, it is assumed an alluvial fan system composed of meandering and ribbon-type fluvial channelsO presente trabalho tem como objetivo a caracterização geométrica de um sistema fluvial, exemplificado pela Formação Itaquaquecetuba. O local de estudo é uma pedreira na cidade de Itaquaquecetuba, a 35 km da cidade de São Paulo, e que está inserida no contexto geológico da Bacia de São Paulo. Sistemas fluviais constituem importantes reservatórios de hidrocarbonetos e aqui se busca a caracterização de um análogo para outros reservatórios fluviais do passado. Foram elaborados dez perfis faciológicos verticais em um lance de 200 m (espaçamento de 20 m entre os perfis), com uma altura média de 40 m para cada perfil (espessura). Foram identificados oito ciclos de fácies e a correlação dos perfis possibilitou mapear a distribuição das fácies reservatório e não-reservatório de cada ciclo. Quanto ao sistema deposicional da referida unidade, chegou-se um ambiente fluvial meandrante associado a canais do tipo ribbon, implantados em um sistema de leque aluvial

Autoimmune features caused by dengue fever: a case report

Dengue virus is the most important mosquito-borne viral disease in the world. Co-circulation of the four types of dengue viruses and expansion of dengue epidemic gave rise to infection enhancement and a big expansion of clinical aspects of the disease. Herein we report a case of a 25-year-old white woman with dengue fever and numerous associated autoimmune features. Our patient had proteinuria, an extensive right pleural effusion, a thin pericardial effusion and ascites. She had a low C3 level and positive antinuclear antibody; cryoglobulins were also positive. The numerous autoimmune features of this patient were a diagnostic challenge, since she was a young woman and could be easily mistaken for a rheumatologic patient in a newly open disease. Dengue infection probably was a triggering event causing an abnormal immune response. Therefore, dengue should be suspected in patients with hematological disorders and autoimmune features in endemic regions or those who have travelled to those regions.929

Association of Ramadan Participation with Psychological Parameters: A Cross-Sectional Study during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Iran

COVID-19 restrictions are associated with poor physical-activity (PA). Less is known about the relationship between the combination of these restrictions with Ramadan intermittent fasting (RIF), PA, mental health, and sleep-quality. The present study aimed to evaluate whether COVID-19 restrictions and RIF during the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran are associated with poor PA, anxiety, well-being, and sleep-quality outcomes. A total of 510 individuals participated in an online questionnaire that was disseminated to adults (≥18 years) residing in Iran from 13 May 2021 to 16 May 2021 (~3 days), just after the end of Ramadan 2021. PA behavior (Godin-Shephard Leisure-Time Exercise Questionnaire), anxiety (General Anxiety Disorder-7), well-being (Mental Health Continuum-Short Form), and sleep-quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index). Of 510 individuals included in the study (331 female (64.9%); mean ± SD, 31 ± 12 years), 172 (33.7%) reported less PA during the Ramadan 2021. PA was associated with better well-being and sleep-quality outcomes. Regardless of PA, participants who fasted for all of Ramadan had less anxiety and better well-being outcomes than those who fasted part of Ramadan or did not fast at all. However, the fasting part of Ramadan decreased the sleep-quality of active participants. The Ramadan 2021 was associated with poor PA, well-being, and sleep-quality of Iranians. However, PA was associated with better well-being and sleep-quality outcomes, and those who fasted all Ramadan had better anxiety and well-being outcomes. Therefore, PA during Ramadan might be an essential and scalable mental health resilience builder during COVID-19 restrictions which should be encouraged. Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; exercise training; feasting; holy month; lockdown; mental health; sleep-quality

Population Reference Ranges of Urinary Endogenous Sulfate Steroids Concentrations and Ratios as Complement to the Steroid Profile in Sports Antidoping

The population based Steroid Profile (SP) ratio of testosterone (T) and epitestosterone (E) has been considered as a biomarker approach to detect testosterone abuse in '80s. The contemporary Antidoping Laboratories apply the World Antidoping Agency (WADA) Technical Document (TD) for Endogenous Androgenic Anabolic Steroids (EAAS) in the analysis of SP during their screening. The SP Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) adaptive model uses the concentrations of the total of free and glucuronide conjugated forms of six EAASs concentrations and ratios measured by GC/MS. In the Antidoping Lab Qatar (ADLQ), the routine LC/MS screening method was used to quantitatively estimate the sulfate conjugated EAAS in the same analytical run as for the rest qualitative analytes. Seven sulfate EAAS were quantified for a number of routine antidoping male and female urine samples during screening. Concentrations, statistical parameters and selected ratios for the 6 EAAS, the 6 sulfate EAAS and 29 proposed ratios of concentrations from both EAAS and sulfate EAAS, which potentially used as SP ABP biomarkers, population reference limits and distributions have been estimated after the GC/MSMS analysis for EAAS and LC/Orbitrap/MS analysis for sulfate EAAS