The National Bank of Romania monetary policy characteristics in addition to the current financial crisis

Considering the starting point for research the Central Bank key role in economic life, through the implementation of the monetary policy, by exercising prudential control and supervision of commercial banks, the present paper proposes an analysis of the National Bank of Romania monetary policy coordinates in the frame of the increased intensification harsh effects of the global economic crisis

Making Automated Testing of Cloud Applications an Integral Component of PaaS

Traditional testing is inadequate for the complexity of modern cloud application software stacks. While the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model has streamlined application development and deployment, its multiple abstraction layers and dependencies have made testing more difficult. We argue that a modern PaaS offering should include a facility to thoroughly and automatically test a deployed cloud application with only little developer effort. To support this vision, we propose layered parameterized tests (LPTs) -- generalized integration tests suitable for cloud applications with multiple processing layers. From LPTs, a testing facility automatically generates concrete tests using layered symbolic execution, which focuses on exercising developer-written application logic instead of PaaS library code. We present our design of an automated testing system built on these concepts and demonstrate its use for a modern PaaS

Improving Scalability of Symbolic Execution for Software with Complex Environment Interfaces

Manual software testing is laborious and prone to human error. Yet, among practitioners, it is the most popular method for quality assurance. Automating the test case generation promises better effectiveness, especially for exposing corner-case bugs. Symbolic execution stands out as an automated testing technique that has no false positives, it eventually enumerates all feasible program executions, and can prioritize executions of interest. However, path explosionâthe fact that the number of program executions is typically at least exponential in the size of the programâhinders the applicability of symbolic execution in the real world, where software commonly reaches millions of lines of code. In practice, large systems can be efficiently executed symbolically by exploiting their modularity and thus symbolically execute the different parts of the system separately. However, a component typically depends on its environment to perform its task. Thus, a symbolic execution engine needs to provide an environment interface that is efficient, while maintaining accuracy and completeness. This conundrum is known as the environment problem. Systematically addressing the environment problem is challenging, as its instantiation depends on the nature of the environment and its interface. This thesis addresses two instances of the environment problem in symbolic execution, which are at opposite ends of the spectrum of interface stability: (1) system software interacting with an operating system with stable and well-documented semantics (e.g., POSIX), and (2) high-level programs written in dynamic languages, such as Python, Ruby, or JavaScript, whose semantics and interfaces are continuously evolving. To address the environment problem for stable operating system interfaces, this thesis introduces the idea of splitting an operating system model into a core set of primitives built into the engine at host level and, on top of it, the full operating system interface emulated inside the guest. As few as two primitives are sufficient to support a complex interface such as POSIX: threads with synchronization and address spaces with shared memory. We prototyped this idea in the Cloud9 symbolic execution platform. Cloud9's accurate and efficient POSIX model exposes hard-to-reproduce bugs in systems such as UNIX utilities, web servers, and distributed systems. Cloud9 is available at http://cloud9.epfl.ch. For programs written in high-level interpreted languages, this thesis introduces the idea of using the language interpreter as an "executable language specification". The interpreter runs inside a low-level (e.g., x86) symbolic execution engine while it executes the target program. The aggregate system acts as a high-level symbolic execution engine for the program. To manage the complexity of symbolically executing the entire interpreter, this thesis introduces Class-Uniform Path Analysis (CUPA), an algorithm for prioritizing paths that groups paths into equivalence classes according to a coverage goal. We built a prototype of these ideas in the form of Chef, a symbolic execution platform for interpreted languages that generates up to 1000 times more tests in popular Python and Lua packages compared to a plain execution of the interpreters. Chef is available at http://dslab.epfl.ch/proj/chef/

Parallel symbolic execution for automated real-world software testing

This paper introduces Cloud9, a platform for automated testing of real-world software. Our main contribution is the scalable parallelization of symbolic execution on clusters of commodity hardware, to help cope with path explosion. Cloud9 provides a systematic interface for writing "symbolic tests" that concisely specify entire families of inputs and behaviors to be tested, thus improving testing productivity. Cloud9 can handle not only single-threaded programs but also multi-threaded and distributed systems. It includes a new symbolic environment model that is the first to support all major aspects of the POSIX interface, such as processes, threads, synchronization, networking, IPC, and file I/O. We show that Cloud9 can automatically test real systems, like memcached, Apache httpd, lighttpd, the Python interpreter, rsync, and curl. We show how Cloud9 can use existing test suites to generate new test cases that capture untested corner cases (e.g., network stream fragmentation). Cloud9 can also diagnose incomplete bug fixes by analyzing the difference between buggy paths before and after a patch

ACGT: advancing clinico-genomic trials on cancer - four years of experience.

The challenges regarding seamless integration of distributed, heterogeneous and multilevel data arising in the context of contemporary, post-genomic clinical trials cannot be effectively addressed with current methodologies. An urgent need exists to access data in a uniform manner, to share information among different clinical and research centers, and to store data in secure repositories assuring the privacy of patients. Advancing Clinico-Genomic Trials (ACGT) was a European Commission funded Integrated Project that aimed at providing tools and methods to enhance the efficiency of clinical trials in the -omics era. The project, now completed after four years of work, involved the development of both a set of methodological approaches as well as tools and services and its testing in the context of real-world clinico-genomic scenarios. This paper describes the main experiences using the ACGT platform and its tools within one such scenario and highlights the very promising results obtained

Evidence of negative Poisson's ratio in wood from finite element analysis and off-axis compression experiments

© 2017 The microstructure of wood is highly anisotropic, which suggests that this material could exhibit unusual elastic properties. A few studies have suggested the possibility of auxeticity, or negative Poisson's ratio (NPR) in some wood samples. In order to conclusively confirm that wood does show NPR, we have used a combination of geometric modelling, finite element analysis (FEA) and off-axis compression testing. The geometric model indicates that idealised thin-walled wood cell structures should generate NPR of −1, FEA suggests that more realistic cell arrays can attain NPR, to −0.27, and compression tests show that some NPR – to −0.74 – remains in real wood samples. These results could help design “engineered-wood” laminates products with tailored elastic properties

A novel caspase 8 selective small molecule potentiates TRAIL-induced cell death

Recombinant soluble TRAIL and agonistic antibodies against TRAIL receptors (DR4 and DR5) are currently being created for clinical cancer therapy, due to their selective killing of cancer cells and high safety characteristics. However, resistance to TRAIL and other targeted therapies is an important issue facing current cancer research field. An attractive strategy to sensitize resistant malignancies to TRAIL-induced cell death is the design of small molecules that target and promote caspase 8 activation. For the first time, we describe the discovery and characterization of a small molecule that directly binds caspase 8 and enhances its activation when combined with TRAIL, but not alone. The molecule was identified through an in silico chemical screen for compounds with affinity for the caspase 8 homodimer’s interface. The compound was experimentally validated to directly bind caspase 8, and to promote caspase 8 activation and cell death in single living cells or population of cells, upon TRAIL stimulation. Our approach is a proof-of-concept strategy leading to the discovery of a novel small molecule that not only stimulates TRAIL-induced apoptosis in cancer cells, but may also provide insights into the structure-function relationship of caspase 8 homodimers as putative targets in cancer

Stakeholders' perspectives on the operationalisation of the ecosystem service concept : Results from 27 case studies

The ecosystem service (ES) concept is becoming mainstream in policy and planning, but operational influence on practice is seldom reported. Here, we report the practitioners' perspectives on the practical implementation of the ES concept in 27 case studies. A standardised anonymous survey (n = 246), was used, focusing on the science-practice interaction process, perceived impact and expected use of the case study assessments. Operationalisation of the concept was shown to achieve a gradual change in practices: 13% of the case studies reported a change in action (e.g. management or policy change), and a further 40% anticipated that a change would result from the work. To a large extent the impact was attributed to a well conducted science-practice interaction process (>70%). The main reported advantages of the concept included: increased concept awareness and communication; enhanced participation and collaboration; production of comprehensive science-based knowledge; and production of spatially referenced knowledge for input to planning (91% indicated they had acquired new knowledge). The limitations were mostly case-specific and centred on methodology, data, and challenges with result implementation. The survey highlighted the crucial role of communication, participation and collaboration across different stakeholders, to implement the ES concept and enhance the democratisation of nature and landscape planning. (C) 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe

Bisphenol A Adsorption on Silica Particles Modified with Beta-Cyclodextrins

This study presents the synthesis of silica particles bearing two beta-cyclodextrin (BCD) (beta-cyclodextrin-BCD-OH and diamino butane monosubstituted beta-cyclodextrin-BCD-NH2). The successful synthesis of the BCD-modified silica was confirmed by FT-IR and TGA. Using contact angle measurements, BET analysis and SEM characterization, a possible formation mechanism for the generation of silica particles bearing BCD derivatives on their surface was highlighted. The obtained modified silica displayed the capacity to remove bisphenol A (BPA) from wastewater due to the presence of the BCD moieties on the surface of the silica. The kinetic analysis showed that the adsorption reached equilibrium after 180 min for both materials with qe values of 107 mg BPA/g for SiO2-BCD-OH and 112 mg BPA/g for SiO2-BCD-NH2. The process followed Ho’s pseudo-second-order adsorption model sustaining the presence of adsorption sites with different activities. The fitting of the Freundlich isotherm model on the experimental results was also evaluated, confirming the BCD influence on the materials’ adsorption properties