Incremental Consistency Checking in Delta-oriented UML-Models for Automation Systems

Automation systems exist in many variants and may evolve over time in order to deal with different environment contexts or to fulfill changing customer requirements. This induces an increased complexity during design-time as well as tedious maintenance efforts. We already proposed a multi-perspective modeling approach to improve the development of such systems. It operates on different levels of abstraction by using well-known UML-models with activity, composite structure and state chart models. Each perspective was enriched with delta modeling to manage variability and evolution. As an extension, we now focus on the development of an efficient consistency checking method at several levels to ensure valid variants of the automation system. Consistency checking must be provided for each perspective in isolation, in-between the perspectives as well as after the application of a delta.Comment: In Proceedings FMSPLE 2016, arXiv:1603.0857

Detecting Sunyaev-Zel'dovich clusters with PLANCK: III. Properties of the expected SZ-cluster sample

The PLANCK-mission is the most sensitive all-sky submillimetric mission currently being planned and prepared. Special emphasis is given to the observation of clusters of galaxies by their thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. In this work, the results of a simulation are presented that combines all-sky maps of the thermal and kinetic SZ-effect with cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations, Galactic foregrounds (synchrotron emission, thermal emission from dust, free-free emission and rotational transitions of carbon monoxide molecules) and sub-millimetric emission from planets and asteroids of the Solar System. Observational issues, such as PLANCKs beam shapes, frequency response and spatially non-uniform instrumental noise have been incorporated. Matched and scale-adaptive multi-frequency filtering schemes have been extended to spherical coordinates and are now applied to the data sets in order to isolate and amplify the weak thermal SZ-signal. The properties of the resulting SZ-cluster sample are characterised in detail: Apart from the number of clusters as a function of cluster parameters such as redshift z and total mass M, the distribution n(sigma)d sigma of the detection significance sigma, the number of detectable clusters in relation to the model cluster parameters entering the filter construction, the position accuracy of an SZ-detection and the cluster number density as a function of ecliptic latitude beta is examined.Comment: 14 pages, 16 figures, 13 tables, submitted to MNRAS, 16.Feb.200

Religious discrimination and religious armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa: an obvious relationship?

Relative deprivation theory suggests that discrimination increases the risk of violence. While religious armed conflicts have been increasing in sub-Saharan Africa, effects of religious discrimination have rarely been investigated. Using the new Religion and State dataset and other sources, this contribution investigates this question in a two-level analysis. The analysis yields three main results. First, religious discrimination has been increasing over the last 15 years but in interregional comparison sub-Saharan Africa has a low level of discrimination. Second, at the cross-country level there is a significant correlation between religious discrimination and armed conflict over religious content. Third, looking closer at four pertinent country cases (the Comoros, the Gambia, Mali and Mauritania) reveals that discrimination is probably not a direct driver of religious conflicts. High levels of discrimination are embedded in problematic state-religion relations and existing cleavages become mobilised along religious lines through transnational influences and geography

Harvestmen (Arachnida, Opiliones) in mixed and pure stands of spruce and beech - a study in the Solling mountains

Im Solling (Süd-Niedersachsen, Deutschland) wurden in einer Blockdesign-Studie 18 alte (> 90 Jahre) und mittelalte (58 - 89 Jahre) Fichten-, Misch- (Fichte/Buche) und Buchenbestände untersucht, die in sechs Blöcken angeordnet waren; jeder Block bestand aus einem Fichten-, einem Misch- und einem Buchenbestand. Es sollte überprüft werden, welchen Einfluss der Bestandestyp auf die Diversität und die Struktur von Populationen der epigäischen Bodenmakrofauna hat. In jeder Altersstufe wurde die Fauna über ein Jahr mit Streu- und Bodenproben, Bodenphotoeklektoren und Bodenfallen erfasst; die in diesem Beitrag dargelegten Ergebnisse zu den Weberknechten beziehen sich überwiegend auf Bodenfallenfänge. In beiden Altersstufen waren die Individuendichten der Arten und die Artendichte sowie der Deckungsgrad und die Diversität der Krautschicht in den lichteren Fichten- oder Fichten- und Mischbeständen signifikant am höchsten (nach einer nichtparametrischen zweifaktoriellen Varianzanalyse). Wichtige extrinsische Faktoren, die Diversität und Struktur der Weberknechtgemeinschaften beeinflussen, sind die Habitatdiversität, die Stratifikation der Vegetation und der für Populationen verfügbare Aktivitätsraum. In der vorliegenden Studie wird außerdem über die Phänologie der Weberknechtarten informiert. Im Solling wurden bisher 16 Weberknechtarten nachgewiesen.In the Solling mountains (Southern Lower Saxony, Germany) a block design study was carried out in 18 old (> 90 yrs) and middle-aged (58 - 89 yrs) spruce, beech, and mixed forest stands (spruce/ beech), arranged in six blocks, each consisting of a spruce, a beech, and a mixed forest stand, to investigate the effect of the forest stand type on the diversity and structure of epigeic macrofauna communities. In each age class, the fauna was sampled for one year by means of soil core samples, ground photo eclectors, and pitfall traps. The results for the harvestmen presented in this contribution focus on pitfall trap catches. In each age class, the numbers of individuals of the harvestmen species and the species density as well as the cover and diversity of the ground vegetation were significantly highest in the more open spruce or spruce and mixed forest stands, according to a nonparametrical twofactorial analysis of variance. Important extrinsic factors influencing the diversity and structure of the harvestmen communities are habitat diversity, stratification of the vegetation, and space for locomotory activity. Additionally, in the present study information about the phenology of the harvestmen species is given. In the Solling mountains 16 harvestmen species have been recorded to date

Scaling Size and Parameter Spaces in Variability-Aware Software Performance Models (T)

In software performance engineering, what-if scenarios, architecture optimization, capacity planning, run-time adaptation, and uncertainty management of realistic models typically require the evaluation of many instances. Effective analysis is however hindered by two orthogonal sources of complexity. The first is the infamous problem of state space explosion — the analysis of a single model becomes intractable with its size. The second is due to massive parameter spaces to be explored, but such that computations cannot be reused across model instances. In this paper, we efficiently analyze many queuing models with the distinctive feature of more accurately capturing variability and uncertainty of execution rates by incorporating general (i.e., non-exponential) distributions. Applying product-line engineering methods, we consider a family of models generated by a core that evolves into concrete instances by applying simple delta operations affecting both the topology and the model's parameters. State explosion is tackled by turning to a scalable approximation based on ordinary differential equations. The entire model space is analyzed in a family-based fashion, i.e., at once using an efficient symbolic solution of a super-model that subsumes every concrete instance. Extensive numerical tests show that this is orders of magnitude faster than a naive instance-by-instance analysis

Study of the Feasibility of Using a Doctor's Assistant in Rural Areas

In this study, a program for the use of a doctor's assistant in rural areas was outlined. It was proposed that this assistant position would be filled by a man who had received training and had worked as an independent duty medical technician in the Armed Forces. Information about this individual's specific medical capabilities was obtained through the use of a questionnaire completed by training personnel at Sheppard Air Force Base. Another questionnaire was used to compare the opinions of doctors and independent duty technicians on the corpsman's ability to perform 48 medical tasks at varying degrees 9f independence. 'l'he capabilities of the medical techrtician, plus the expected population usage were used to determine the size and type of facilities and equipment necessary to provide medical service to a community. The cost of this equipment and the related services were compared to the expected patient workload at a specific fee to determine the feasibility of the program. The results of the survey from Sheppard Air Force Base supported the assumption that the independent duty technician was able to diagnose and treat a number of the more common medical disorders with a minimum of supervision. The doctors and corpsmen surveyed in the sample were found to have similar perceptions about the degree of independence with which the independent duty technician could perform the tasks listed. Analysis of the anticipated costs and expected revenues of the program showed that, initially, it would not be financially feasible. The problem arose from the high risk involved for the supervising doctor and the payment necessary to offset this risk.Business Administratio

Toward Automated Feature Extraction for Deep Learning Classification of Electrocardiogram Signals

Many recent studies have focused on the automatic classification of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals using deep learning (DL) methods. Most rely on existing complex DL methods, such as transfer learning or providing the models with carefully designed extracted features based on domain knowledge. A common assumption is that the deeper and more complex the DL model is, the better it learns. In this study, we propose two different DL models for automatic feature extraction from ECG signals for classification tasks: A CNN-LSTM hybrid model and an attention/transformer-based model with wavelet transform for the dimensional embedding. Both of the models extract the features from time series at the initial layers of the neural networks and can obtain performance at least equal to, if not greater than, many contemporary deep neural networks. To validate our hypothesis, we used three publicly available data-sets to evaluate the proposed models. Our model achieved a benchmark accuracy of 99.92% for fall detection and 99.93% for the PTB database for myocardial infarction versus normal heartbeat classification

Synchronization of muscular oscillations between two subjects during isometric interaction

Muscles oscillate with a frequency around 10 Hz. But what happens with myofascial oscillations, if two neuromuscular systems interact? The purpose of this study was to examine this question, initially, on the basis of a case study. Oscillations of the triceps brachii muscles of two subjects were determined through mechanomyography (MMG) during isometric interaction. The MMG-signals were analyzed concerning the interaction of the two subjects with algorithms of nonlinear dynamics. In this case study it could be shown, that the muscles of both neuromuscular systems also oscillate with the known frequency (here 12 Hz) during interaction. Furthermore, both subjects were able to adapt their oscillations against each other. This adjustment induced a significant ( < .05) coherent behavior, which was characterized by a phase shifting of approximately 90°. The authors draw the conclusion, that the complementary neuromuscular partners potentially have the ability of mutual synchronization