Proceedings of the Workshop on Membrane Computing, WMC 2016.

yesThis Workshop on Membrane Computing, at the Conference of Unconventional Computation and Natural Computation (UCNC), 12th July 2016, Manchester, UK, is the second event of this type after the Workshop at UCNC 2015 in Auckland, New Zealand*. Following the tradition of the 2015 Workshop the Proceedings are published as technical report. The Workshop consisted of one invited talk and six contributed presentations (three full papers and three extended abstracts) covering a broad spectrum of topics in Membrane Computing, from computational and complexity theory to formal verification, simulation and applications in robotics. All these papers – see below, but the last extended abstract, are included in this volume. The invited talk given by Rudolf Freund, “P SystemsWorking in Set Modes”, presented a general overview on basic topics in the theory of Membrane Computing as well as new developments and future research directions in this area. Radu Nicolescu in “Distributed and Parallel Dynamic Programming Algorithms Modelled on cP Systems” presented an interesting dynamic programming algorithm in a distributed and parallel setting based on P systems enriched with adequate data structure and programming concepts representation. Omar Belingheri, Antonio E. Porreca and Claudio Zandron showed in “P Systems with Hybrid Sets” that P systems with negative multiplicities of objects are less powerful than Turing machines. Artiom Alhazov, Rudolf Freund and Sergiu Ivanov presented in “Extended Spiking Neural P Systems with States” new results regading the newly introduced topic of spiking neural P systems where states are considered. “Selection Criteria for Statistical Model Checker”, by Mehmet E. Bakir and Mike Stannett, presented some early experiments in selecting adequate statistical model checkers for biological systems modelled with P systems. In “Towards Agent-Based Simulation of Kernel P Systems using FLAME and FLAME GPU”, Raluca Lefticaru, Luis F. Macías-Ramos, Ionuţ M. Niculescu, Laurenţiu Mierlă presented some of the advatages of implementing kernel P systems simulations in FLAME. Andrei G. Florea and Cătălin Buiu, in “An Efficient Implementation and Integration of a P Colony Simulator for Swarm Robotics Applications" presented an interesting and efficient implementation based on P colonies for swarms of Kilobot robots. *http://ucnc15.wordpress.fos.auckland.ac.nz/workshop-on-membrane-computingwmc- at-the-conference-on-unconventional-computation-natural-computation

Testing Non-deterministic Stream X-machine Models and P systems

AbstractUnder certain well defined conditions, the stream X-machine testing method can produce a test set that is guaranteed to determine the correctness of an implementation. The testing method has originally assumed that an implementation of each processing function or relation is proven to be correct before the actual testing can take place. Such a limitation has been removed in a subsequent paper, but only for deterministic X-machines. This paper extends this result to non-deterministic stream X-machines and considers a conformance relationship between a specification and an implementation, rather than mere equivalence. Furthermore, it shows how this method can be applied to test a P system by building a suitable stream X-machine from the derivation tree associated with a partial computation

METHOD TO ASSESS THE EXTREME HYDROLOGICAL EVENTS IN DANUBE FLUVIAL DELTA

Method to assess the extreme hydrological events in Danube fluvial Delta. In this paper the subject is about of testing a method for Romania to assess the extreme hydrological events. In this paper through hydrological extreme events it should be understood as the extreme droughts and the extreme flooding. The place to be tested this method for Romania is the Danube Delta, fluvial delta to be more precisely. The importance of the area consists in the fact that is the third Delta of the Europe (after the Volga’s and Kuban’s). The method that is supposed to be tested on a specific part of the delta is aiming to rise the knowledge about the extreme hydrological events (drought and flooding) and to be able to respond in an appropriate way to these. For this paper it will be taken into account the hydrological events occurred in 2003 (the exceptional drought) and in 2006 (the exceptional flood). To do the analysis there were used satellite images (LANDSAT) from the period that was taken into account and additional there were used the hypsometrical model of the Danube Delta for the specific area. The first two datasets (2003 and 2006 satellite images) give information about were the border of the water (in drought period and respective in flooding one) reached. The second dataset (the delta’s hypsometry) give information about the altitude of the terrain in order to establish which areas, at a certain water level, are flooded. The result of these datasets combination is the calibration of the hypsometrical model of the Danube Delta, in that region, regarding the hydrological events in the sense of building-up the hydrograds as isolines. The new approach of this matter can be more concrete and makes easier to see on the cartographic support the hydrologic events. The information obtained from these datasets makes the awareness regarding the extreme hydrological events to be higher and respective the measures taken to mitigate these will be more efficient

A property-driven methodology for formal analysis of synthetic biology systems

yesThis paper proposes a formal methodology to analyse bio-systems, in particular synthetic biology systems. An integrative analysis perspective combining different model checking approaches based on different property categories is provided. The methodology is applied to the synthetic pulse generator system and several verification experiments are carried out to demonstrate the use of our approach to formally analyse various aspects of synthetic biology systems.EPSR

NEW VARIETIES OF APPLES WITH GENETIC DISEASE RESISTANCE, OBTAINED AT VOINESTI DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH STATION FOR FRUIT GROWING

The research carried out at Voinesti research-development station for fruit growing, considered highlighting the performance characteristics of some apple varieties with genetic resistance to diseases, approved in the period 2004 - 2020. The vigour of growth in the 10th year of the trees, grafted on the M.9 rootstock, is well defined by the trunk circumference, which records values between 14.9cm for the Cezar variety and 18.4cm for the Redix variety. The volume of the crown calculated per surface unit, at the plot of 2,857 trees/ha, was 6,520 mc/ha for the Brumar variety, being of low-medium vigour, and 8,800 mc/ha for the Redix varieties, being more vigorous. The productivity during the full fruiting period of the 10 apple varieties with genetic resistance to diseases, cultivated in a high density system, was between 28 - 45t/ha, the most productive being the Iris, Real, Remar, Valery, Brumar and Cezar varieties with productions of over 35 t/ha. The biomass of the fruits was between 155 and 180g, smaller fruits being recorded in the varieties Iris, Inedit, Voinicel and Revidar and larger in the varieties Cezar, Valery, Remar and Redix with fruits over 170g that correspond to market requirements. The apple varieties approved at SCDP Voinesti between 2004 and 2020 meet the demands of the producer, sensitive to economic efficiency, with high production potential, with quality fruits, which will certainly meet the ever-growing consumer demands

European Construction in the Conception of the Lisbon Treaty

The Lisbon Treaty that became valid on December, 1st 2009, represents a basic juridical document for the future of the European Union. By means of it, it is continued the reform process of the European construction started by the Amsterdam and Nice Treaty, it is accomplished the crossing of the institutional impasse after the failure of ratifying the Constitutional Treaty and it is accomplished a clarification of the relations between the European Union and the member states, mainly by explicitly establishing the competences of each of them. The Lisbon Treaty is not a European constitution . This thing proved that it is not possible, at least in this moment. However, it tries to accomplish a deeper integration, an increased involvement of the citizen’s role in the European construction by himself and by means of the European Parliament and of he National Parliaments, a democratization of the decisional process, in its ensemble and the reinforcement of the role of actor of the European Union on the international stage .Lisbon Treaty, European Construction, member states, European Union, protocol

Search Based Software Engineering in Membrane Computing

This paper presents a testing approach for kernel P Systems (kP systems), based on test data generation for a given scenario. This method uses Genetic Algorithms to generate the input sets needed to trigger the given computation steps

An Approximate Algorithm Combining P Systems and Ant Colony Optimization for Traveling Salesman Problems

This paper proposes an approximate optimization algorithm combining P systems with ant colony optimization, called ACOPS, to solve traveling salesman prob- lems, which are well-known and extensively studied NP-complete combinatorial optimization problems. ACOPS uses the pheromone model and pheromone update rules defined by ant colony optimization algorithms, and the hierarchical membrane structure and transformation/communication rules of P systems. First, the parameter setting of the ACOPS is discussed. Second, extensive experiments and statistical analysis are investigated. It is shown that the ACOPS is superior to Nishida's algorithms and its counterpart ant colony optimization algorithms, in terms of the quality of solutions and the number of function evaluations