Vérification dynamique ciblée et interactive de programmes grâce à une architecture modulaire

Le cycle de développement d’une application contient plusieurs phases, de l’écriture au soutien technique suivant la publication. Une phase particulièrement importante est la vérification du programme. Il s’agit de vérifier que le programme produit répond à la spécification au sens large, c’est à dire qu’il présente le comportement prévu sans bogue, quel que soit le scénario et les entrées présentées. De nombreux outils sont disponibles pour assister l’utilisateur dans cette tâche. Parmi ceux-ci, on trouve les outils de vérification formelle qui permettent de modéliser le déroulement d’un programme et d’en prouver mathématiquement la validité. Les analyses statiques peinent cependant à vérifier des programmes complexes, et une autre famille d’outils est souvent nécessaire. Ce sont les outils dynamiques, qui vérifient l’intégrité du programme pendant son exécution. Dans ce domaine, on trouve surtout des outils spécialisés et efficaces, mais peu flexibles. En effet, en l’absence d’une structure commune, beaucoup d’outils réécrivent intégralement toutes les fonctionnalités de base, et ce coût de développement fait qu’ils se limitent souvent aux fonctionnalités strictement nécessaires. Peu d’outils proposent ainsi une instrumentation dynamique ou une interface graphique.----------ABSTRACT: The development cycle of an application covers multiple different stages, from code writing to technical support. One crucial phase is program verification and debugging. During this stage, the developers need to make sure that the program they deliver corresponds to both its explicit and implicit specification, meaning that it has to behave correctly and without any bug whatever input is given to it. Multiple tools exist to assist the developers. Among them, formal verification is a method which proves mathematically the validity of a program by modeling its behavior. However, this type of static analysis struggle to analyse properly complex programs, and developers often also rely on dynamic tools, which check the integrity of a running program. A large number of specialized tools exist in that domain, but they often go for a lean approach, with little flexibility and adaptability. This is partly due to the lack of a common framework for high performance runtime verification tools. Most tools have to reprogram every functionality from the ground up, which means they often limit their scope to what is strictly necessary to reduce development costs. Features such as dynamic instrumentation or even a graphical user interface are seldom available. As part of this research project, we propose a solution to this problem, taking example on the recent development in integrated development environments. The goal is to provide modularity in order to share underlying features as much as possible. This removes the need for rewriting those basic features and enables developers to focus on more advanced tasks, which in turn produces better verification tools

Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation does not affect verbal memory performance in healthy volunteers

Introduction: Invasive vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) improves word recognition memory in patients with epilepsy. Recent studies with transcutaneous VNS (tVNS) have also shown positive effects on various subdomains of cognitive functioning in healthy volunteers. In this randomized, controlled, crossover study, we investigated the effect of tVNS on a word recognition memory paradigm in healthy volunteers to further investigate the potential of tVNS in the treatment of cognitive disorders. Methods: We included 41 healthy participants aged between 18 and 30 years (young age group) and 24 healthy participants aged between 45 and 80 years (older age group). Each participant completed a word recognition memory paradigm during three different conditions: true tVNS, sham, and control. During true tVNS, stimulation was delivered at the cymba conchae. Sham stimulation was delivered by stimulating the earlobe. In the control condition, no stimulation was given. In each condition, participants were asked to remember highlighted words from three test paragraphs. Accuracy scores were calculated for immediate recall after each test paragraph and for delayed recognition at the end of the paradigm. We hypothesized that highlighted words from paragraphs in the true tVNS condition would be more accurately recalled and/or recognized compared to highlighted words from paragraphs in the sham or control condition. Results: In this randomized study, tVNS did not affect the accuracy scores for immediate recall or delayed recognition in both age groups. The younger group showed significantly higher accuracy scores than the older group. The accuracy scores improved over time, and the most recently learned words were better recognized. Participants rated true tVNS as significantly more painful; however, pain was not found to affect accuracy scores. Conclusion: In this study, tVNS did not affect verbal memory performance in healthy volunteers. Our results could not replicate the positive effects of invasive VNS on word recognition memory in epilepsy patients. Future research with the aim of improving cognitive function should focus on the rational identification of optimized and individualized stimulation settings primarily in patients with cognitive deficits

Maximizing CRISPR/Cas9 phenotype penetrance applying predictive modeling of editing outcomes in Xenopus and zebrafish embryos

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Naert, T., Tulkens, D., Edwards, N. A., Carron, M., Shaidani, N. I., Wlizla, M., Boel, A., Demuynck, S., Horb, M. E., Coucke, P., Willaert, A., Zorn, A. M., & Vleminckx, K. Maximizing CRISPR/Cas9 phenotype penetrance applying predictive modeling of editing outcomes in Xenopus and zebrafish embryos. Scientific Reports, 10(1), (2020): 14662, doi:10.1038/s41598-020-71412-0.CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing has revolutionized functional genomics in vertebrates. However, CRISPR/Cas9 edited F0 animals too often demonstrate variable phenotypic penetrance due to the mosaic nature of editing outcomes after double strand break (DSB) repair. Even with high efficiency levels of genome editing, phenotypes may be obscured by proportional presence of in-frame mutations that still produce functional protein. Recently, studies in cell culture systems have shown that the nature of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mutations can be dependent on local sequence context and can be predicted by computational methods. Here, we demonstrate that similar approaches can be used to forecast CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing outcomes in Xenopus tropicalis, Xenopus laevis, and zebrafish. We show that a publicly available neural network previously trained in mouse embryonic stem cell cultures (InDelphi-mESC) is able to accurately predict CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing outcomes in early vertebrate embryos. Our observations can have direct implications for experiment design, allowing the selection of guide RNAs with predicted repair outcome signatures enriched towards frameshift mutations, allowing maximization of CRISPR/Cas9 phenotype penetrance in the F0 generation.Research in the Vleminckx laboratory is supported by the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen) (Grants G0A1515N and G029413N), by the Belgian Science Policy (Interuniversity Attraction Poles—IAP7/07) and by the Concerted Research Actions from Ghent University (BOF15/GOA/011). Further support was obtained by the Hercules Foundation, Flanders (Grant AUGE/11/14) and the Desmoid Tumor Research Foundation and the Desmoid Tumour Foundation Canada. T.N. is funded by “Kom op tegen Kanker” (Stand up to Cancer), the Flemish cancer society and previously held PhD fellowship with VLAIO-HERMES during the course of this work. D.T. and M. C. hold a PhD fellowship from the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen). The Zorn Lab is supported by Funding from NIH National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) P01 HD093363. A.W. and A.B. are supported by the Ghent University (Universiteit Gent) Methusalem grant BOFMET2015000401 to Anne De Paepe. The National Xenopus Resource and Horb lab is supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (P40 OD010997 and R01 HD084409)

Periodontal aspects of Brånemark and IMZ implants supporting overdentures: A comparative study

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A comparative study between Brånemark implants and IMZ implants supporting overdentures: Prosthetic considerations

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Reorienting the curriculum for dental education at KU Leuven (Belgium) in terms of socio-medical, scientific and technological challenges and opportunities

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Rating of statements in an internal course evaluation: comparison between different groups of assessors

The increased concern for accountability and quality improvement is inducing universities throughout Europe to evaluate and control performance. The establishment of criteria for educational quality, a requirement for a successful evaluation, was studied as part of an evaluation of the dental education programme at the Catholic University of Leuven. Criteria suggested by different groups (members of the internal evaluation commission including graduate and postgraduate students; members of the academic staff of the School of Dentistry, Oral Pathology and Maxillo-facial Surgery, and other members of the academic staff, not directly belonging to the school), were analysed by means of ANOVA with Scheffé posthoc tests to identify intergroup differences. It was hypothesized that a closer connection to the dental curriculum or a higher responsibility in the evaluation process would result in stricter criteria. For 108 different questions (in the form of statements with a six point Likert-type scale), members of the three groups had to indicate the score below which the quality would be considered suboptimal. Except for one question, no significant differences were found between ratings given by the members of the internal evaluation commission and other members of the School. Significant differences were found between non-school members and school- and/or commission-members. This study indicates that agreement on educational quality may be presupposed within an academic faculty and between members of the internal evaluation commission. However, the study also indicated that some caution should be exercised when 'external' teachers are included in the evaluation process.status: publishe

USAGES PACIFIQUES ET MILITAIRES DE LA ZONE ECONOMIQUE EXCLUSIVE : ETUDE DES OBLIGATIONS DES ETATS COTIERS ET NON COTIERS DE TENIR DUMENT COMPTE DES DROITS DES AUTRES ETATS EN VERTU DE LA CONVENTION DES NATIONS UNIES SUR LE DROIT DE LA MER

Conférences de l’IREDIES / IREDIES Conference Papers, n°1/2018 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonn