Evolutionary testing of autonomous software agents

A system built in terms of autonomous software agents may require even greater correctness assurance than one that is merely reacting to the immediate control of its users. Agents make substantial decisions for themselves, so thorough testing is an important consideration. However, autonomy also makes testing harder; by their nature, autonomous agents may react in different ways to the same inputs over time, because, for instance they have changeable goals and knowledge. For this reason, we argue that testing of autonomous agents requires a procedure that caters for a wide range of test case contexts, and that can search for the most demanding of these test cases, even when they are not apparent to the agents’ developers. In this paper, we address this problem, introducing and evaluating an approach to testing autonomous agents that uses evolutionary optimisation to generate demanding test cases. We propose a methodology to derive objective (fitness) functions that drive evolutionary algorithms, and evaluate the overall approach with two simulated autonomous agents. The obtained results show that our approach is effective in finding good test cases automatically

Biogas Production from Vietnamese Animal Manure, Plant Residues and Organic Waste: Influence of Biomass Composition on Methane Yield

Anaerobic digestion is an efficient and renewable energy technology that can produce biogas from a variety of biomasses such as animal manure, food waste and plant residues. In developing countries this technology is widely used for the production of biogas using local biomasses, but there is little information about the value of these biomasses for energy production. This study was therefore carried out with the objective of estimating the biogas production potential of typical Vietnamese biomasses such as animal manure, slaughterhouse waste and plant residues, and developing a model that relates methane (CH4) production to the chemical characteristics of the biomass. The biochemical methane potential (BMP) and biomass characteristics were measured. Results showed that piglet manure produced the highest CH4 yield of 443 normal litter (NL) CH4 kg−1 volatile solids (VS) compared to 222 from cows, 177 from sows, 172 from rabbits, 169 from goats and 153 from buffaloes. Methane production from duckweed (Spirodela polyrrhiza) was higher than from lawn grass and water spinach at 340, 220, and 110.6 NL CH4 kg−1 VS, respectively. The BMP experiment also demonstrated that the CH4 production was inhibited with chicken manure, slaughterhouse waste, cassava residue and shoe-making waste. Statistical analysis showed that lipid and lignin are the most significant predictors of BMP. The model was developed from knowledge that the BMP was related to biomass content of lipid, lignin and protein from manure and plant residues as a percentage of VS with coefficient of determination (R-square) at 0.95. This model was applied to calculate the CH4 yield for a household with 17 fattening pigs in the highlands and lowlands of northern Vietnam

Оценка эффективности работы солнечной электростанции на крыше здания в Ханое

Vietnam is a country of a great solar potential; solar technology is growing rapidly in Vietnam and investors are very interested in building solar power plants. Construction of the rooftop solar power stations can help owners reduce monthly electricity costs and even get economic benefits by selling excess electricity coming from a solar power plant (PV) to the utility grid. In this study, the design results of a rooftop grid-tied solar power station with the capacity of 26 kWp for a commercial building were introduced to have a basis to assess the operation ability of solar power station under solar radiation conditions in Hanoi city, Vietnam. The simulation results using the PVsyst program have made it possible to calculate the solar energy potential in Hanoi city, the power generation and efficiency of the grid-tied solar power station. Solar power has been applied in Vietnam since the 1990s but is mainly used for areas that were far from national power grid such as mountainous areas, islands. Small scale grid-tied solar power has been developed since 2010 and mainly is used for residential applications or small and medium scale consumers. The total capacity of electricity produced by solar power plants in Vietnam by 2017 was only about 8 MW; this value is very low as compared to the potential of solar power in Vietnam. This is due to the absence of the government support for the policy of developing solar power. In accordance with the current roadmap of raising electricity prices in Vietnam, construction investment of rooftop solar power stations is economically feasible while contributing to environmental protection and counteracting climate change phenomenon by reducing the amount of CO2 emitted into the environment.Вьетнам – страна с огромным солнечным потенциалом, в которой могут быстро развиваться солнечные технологии. Инвесторы заинтересованы в строительстве солнечных электростанций на крышах, установка которых поможет владельцам снизить ежемесячные расходы на электроэнергию и даже получить экономическую выгоду, продавая избыточную электроэнергию, поступающую от них в электрическую сеть. В исследовании представлены результаты моделирования с использованием программы PVsyst солнечной электростанции мощностью 26 кВтп на крыше коммерческого здания в Ханое, что дает возможность оценить ее работоспособность в условиях солнечной радиации в северо-восточном регионе Вьетнама. Результаты позволили рассчитать потенциал солнечной энергии, количество вырабатываемой электроэнергии и эффективность солнечной электростанции, подключенной к сети. Солнечная энергия используется во Вьетнаме с 1990-х гг., но в основном в районах, удаленных от государственной электросети, таких как горные местности, острова. Также с 2010 г. солнечная энергия используется в отдельных жилых кварталах для удовлетворения потребности в электроэнергии мелких и средних потребителей. Общая мощность произведенной солнечными электростанциями электрической энергии во Вьетнаме к 2017 г. составила около 8 МВт, что очень незначительно. Это связано с отсутствием политики поддержки развития солнечной энергетики со стороны правительства. В соответствии с текущим графиком повышения цен на электроэнергию во Вьетнаме инвестиции в строительство на крышах зданий солнечных электростанций, подключенных к сети, могут быть экономически целесообразными, внося при этом положительный вклад в защиту окружающей среды и борьбу с изменением климата за счет сокращения выбросов CO2

Role of Polypyrimidine Tract Binding Protein in Mediating Internal Initiation of Translation of Interferon Regulatory Factor 2 RNA

BACKGROUND: Earlier we have reported translational control of interferon regulatory factor 2 (IRF2) by internal initiation (Dhar et al, Nucleic Acids Res, 2007). The results implied possible role of IRF2 in controlling the intricate balance of cellular gene expression under stress conditions in general. Here we have investigated the secondary structure of the Internal Ribosome Entry Site of IRF2 RNA and demonstrated the role of PTB protein in ribosome assembly to facilitate internal initiation. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We have probed the putative secondary structure of the IRF2 5'UTR RNA using various enzymatic and chemical modification agents to constrain the secondary structure predicted from RNA folding algorithm Mfold. The IRES activity was found to be influenced by the interaction of trans-acting factor, polypyrimidine tract binding protein (PTB). Deletion of 25 nts from the 3'terminus of the 5'untranslated region resulted in reduced binding with PTB protein and also showed significant decrease in IRES activity compared to the wild type. We have also demonstrated putative contact points of PTB on the IRF2-5'UTR using primer extension inhibition assay. Majority of the PTB toe-prints were found to be restricted to the 3'end of the IRES. Additionally, Circular Dichroism (CD) spectra analysis suggested change in the conformation of the RNA upon PTB binding. Further, binding studies using S10 extract from HeLa cells, partially silenced for PTB gene expression, resulted in reduced binding by other trans-acting factors. Finally, we have demonstrated that addition of recombinant PTB enhances ribosome assembly on IRF2 IRES suggesting possible role of PTB in mediating internal initiation of translation of IRF2 RNA. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: It appears that PTB binding to multiple sites within IRF2 5'UTR leads to a conformational change in the RNA that facilitate binding of other trans-acting factors to mediate internal initiation of translation

Failure patterns and survival outcomes in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC): a 15 year comparison of 448 non-Hispanic black and white women

Purpose: Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a distinct subtype of breast cancer with unique pathologic, molecular and clinical behavior. It occurs more frequently in young blacks and has been reported to have a shorter disease-free interval. We undertook this study to analyze the demographic characteristics, failure patterns, and survival outcomes in this disease. Methods: A total of 448 non-Hispanic black and white women were identified over a 15 year period from 1996 to 2011. Demographic and clinical information including age, race, menopausal status, stage, tumor characteristics, and treatments were collected. Fisher’s exact test and multivariable Cox regression were used to compare failure patterns and survival outcomes between races. Results: 49 % (n = 223) were black. 59 % patients were between 41 and 60 years, with 18 % ≤40 years. 57 % were premenopausal and 89 % had grade 3 tumors. Stage II (47 %) was most frequent stage at diagnosis followed by stage III (28 %). 32 % had lymphovascular invasion. Adjusting for age, stage, and grade, there was no difference in survival outcomes (OS, DFS, LFFS, and DFFS) between the two races. 62 (14 %) patients failed locally either in ipsilateral breast or chest wall, and 19 (4 %) failed in the regional lymphatics. Lung (18 %) was the most frequent distant failure site with <12 % each failing in brain, liver and bones. Conclusion: Failure patterns and survival outcomes did not differ by race in this large collection of TNBC cases. Lung was the predominate site of distant failure followed by brain, bone, and liver. Few patients failed in the regional lymphatics

A Search for Dark Higgs Bosons

Recent astrophysical and terrestrial experiments have motivated the proposal of a dark sector with GeV-scale gauge boson force carriers and new Higgs bosons. We present a search for a dark Higgs boson using 516 fb-1 of data collected with the BABAR detector. We do not observe a significant signal and we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the product of the Standard Model-dark sector mixing angle and the dark sector coupling constant.Comment: 7 pages, 5 postscript figures, published version with improved plots for b/w printin

Jet energy measurement with the ATLAS detector in proton-proton collisions at root s=7 TeV

The jet energy scale and its systematic uncertainty are determined for jets measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 38 pb-1. Jets are reconstructed with the anti-kt algorithm with distance parameters R=0. 4 or R=0. 6. Jet energy and angle corrections are determined from Monte Carlo simulations to calibrate jets with transverse momenta pT≥20 GeV and pseudorapidities {pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy systematic uncertainty is estimated using the single isolated hadron response measured in situ and in test-beams, exploiting the transverse momentum balance between central and forward jets in events with dijet topologies and studying systematic variations in Monte Carlo simulations. The jet energy uncertainty is less than 2. 5 % in the central calorimeter region ({pipe}η{pipe}<0. 8) for jets with 60≤pT<800 GeV, and is maximally 14 % for pT<30 GeV in the most forward region 3. 2≤{pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy is validated for jet transverse momenta up to 1 TeV to the level of a few percent using several in situ techniques by comparing a well-known reference such as the recoiling photon pT, the sum of the transverse momenta of tracks associated to the jet, or a system of low-pT jets recoiling against a high-pT jet. More sophisticated jet calibration schemes are presented based on calorimeter cell energy density weighting or hadronic properties of jets, aiming for an improved jet energy resolution and a reduced flavour dependence of the jet response. The systematic uncertainty of the jet energy determined from a combination of in situ techniques is consistent with the one derived from single hadron response measurements over a wide kinematic range. The nominal corrections and uncertainties are derived for isolated jets in an inclusive sample of high-pT jets. Special cases such as event topologies with close-by jets, or selections of samples with an enhanced content of jets originating from light quarks, heavy quarks or gluons are also discussed and the corresponding uncertainties are determined. © 2013 CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration

Deletion of PKBα/Akt1 Affects Thymic Development

BACKGROUND: The thymus constitutes the primary lymphoid organ for the majority of T cells. The phosphatidyl-inositol 3 kinase (PI3K) signaling pathway is involved in lymphoid development. Defects in single components of this pathway prevent thymocytes from progressing beyond early T cell developmental stages. Protein kinase B (PKB) is the main effector of the PI3K pathway. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: To determine whether PKB mediates PI3K signaling in the thymus, we characterized PKB knockout thymi. Our results reveal a significant thymic hypocellularity in PKBalpha(-/-) neonates and an accumulation of early thymocyte subsets in PKBalpha(-/-) adult mice. Using thymic grafting and fetal liver cell transfer experiments, the latter finding was specifically attributed to the lack of PKBalpha within the lymphoid component of the thymus. Microarray analyses show that the absence of PKBalpha in early thymocyte subsets modifies the expression of genes known to be involved in pre-TCR signaling, in T cell activation, and in the transduction of interferon-mediated signals. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This report highlights the specific requirements of PKBalpha for thymic development and opens up new prospects as to the mechanism downstream of PKBalpha in early thymocytes