MaskD : a tool for measuring masking fault-tolerance

Fil: Putruele, Luciano. Universidad Nacional de Rı́o Cuarto. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físico-Químicas y Naturales. Departamento de Computación; Argentina.Fil: Putruele, Luciano. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina.Fil: Demasi, Ramiro Adrián. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física y Computación; Argentina.Fil: Demasi, Ramiro Adrián. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina.Fil: Castro, Pablo Francisco. Universidad Nacional de Rı́o Cuarto. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físico-Químicas y Naturales. Departamento de Computación; Argentina.Fil: Castro, Pablo Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina.Fil: D'Argenio, Pedro Ruben. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física y Computación; Argentina.Fil: D'Argenio, Pedro Ruben. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina.Fil: D'Argenio, Pedro Ruben. Saarland University. Saarland Informatics Campus; Germany.We present MaskD, an automated tool designed to measure the level of fault-tolerance provided by software components. The tool focuses on measuring masking fault-tolerance, that is, the kind of fault-tolerance that allows systems to mask faults in such a way that they cannot be observed by the users. The tool takes as input a nominal model (which serves as a specification) and its fault-tolerant implementation, described by means of a guarded-command language, and automatically computes the masking distance between them. This value can be understood as the level of fault-tolerance provided by the implementation. The tool is based on a sound and complete framework we have introduced in previous work. We present the ideas behind the tool by means of a simple example and report experiments realized on more complex case studies.This work was supported by ANPCyT PICT-2017-3894 (RAFTSys), ANPCyT PICT 2019-03134, SeCyT-UNC 33620180100354CB (ARES), and EU Grant agreement ID: 101008233 (MISSION).publishedVersionFil: Putruele, Luciano. Universidad Nacional de Rı́o Cuarto. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físico-Químicas y Naturales. Departamento de Computación; Argentina.Fil: Putruele, Luciano. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina.Fil: Demasi, Ramiro Adrián. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física y Computación; Argentina.Fil: Demasi, Ramiro Adrián. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina.Fil: Castro, Pablo Francisco. Universidad Nacional de Rı́o Cuarto. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físico-Químicas y Naturales. Departamento de Computación; Argentina.Fil: Castro, Pablo Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina.Fil: D'Argenio, Pedro Ruben. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física y Computación; Argentina.Fil: D'Argenio, Pedro Ruben. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina.Fil: D'Argenio, Pedro Ruben. Saarland University. Saarland Informatics Campus; Germany

Quantifying Masking Fault-Tolerance via Fair Stochastic Games

We introduce a formal notion of masking fault-tolerance between probabilistic transition systems using stochastic games. These games are inspired in bisimulation games, but they also take into account the possible faulty behavior of systems. When no faults are present, these games boil down to probabilistic bisimulation games. Since these games could be infinite, we propose a symbolic way of representing them so that they can be solved in polynomial time. In particular, we use this notion of masking to quantify the level of masking fault-tolerance exhibited by almost-sure failing systems, i.e., those systems that eventually fail with probability 1. The level of masking fault-tolerance of almost-sure failing systems can be calculated by solving a collection of functional equations. We produce this metric in a setting in which one of the player behaves in a strong fair way (mimicking the idea of fair environments).Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS2023, arXiv:2309.05788. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2207.0204

Mortality from gastrointestinal congenital anomalies at 264 hospitals in 74 low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries: a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study

Summary Background Congenital anomalies are the fifth leading cause of mortality in children younger than 5 years globally. Many gastrointestinal congenital anomalies are fatal without timely access to neonatal surgical care, but few studies have been done on these conditions in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We compared outcomes of the seven most common gastrointestinal congenital anomalies in low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries globally, and identified factors associated with mortality. Methods We did a multicentre, international prospective cohort study of patients younger than 16 years, presenting to hospital for the first time with oesophageal atresia, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, intestinal atresia, gastroschisis, exomphalos, anorectal malformation, and Hirschsprung’s disease. Recruitment was of consecutive patients for a minimum of 1 month between October, 2018, and April, 2019. We collected data on patient demographics, clinical status, interventions, and outcomes using the REDCap platform. Patients were followed up for 30 days after primary intervention, or 30 days after admission if they did not receive an intervention. The primary outcome was all-cause, in-hospital mortality for all conditions combined and each condition individually, stratified by country income status. We did a complete case analysis. Findings We included 3849 patients with 3975 study conditions (560 with oesophageal atresia, 448 with congenital diaphragmatic hernia, 681 with intestinal atresia, 453 with gastroschisis, 325 with exomphalos, 991 with anorectal malformation, and 517 with Hirschsprung’s disease) from 264 hospitals (89 in high-income countries, 166 in middleincome countries, and nine in low-income countries) in 74 countries. Of the 3849 patients, 2231 (58·0%) were male. Median gestational age at birth was 38 weeks (IQR 36–39) and median bodyweight at presentation was 2·8 kg (2·3–3·3). Mortality among all patients was 37 (39·8%) of 93 in low-income countries, 583 (20·4%) of 2860 in middle-income countries, and 50 (5·6%) of 896 in high-income countries (p<0·0001 between all country income groups). Gastroschisis had the greatest difference in mortality between country income strata (nine [90·0%] of ten in lowincome countries, 97 [31·9%] of 304 in middle-income countries, and two [1·4%] of 139 in high-income countries; p≤0·0001 between all country income groups). Factors significantly associated with higher mortality for all patients combined included country income status (low-income vs high-income countries, risk ratio 2·78 [95% CI 1·88–4·11], p<0·0001; middle-income vs high-income countries, 2·11 [1·59–2·79], p<0·0001), sepsis at presentation (1·20 [1·04–1·40], p=0·016), higher American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score at primary intervention (ASA 4–5 vs ASA 1–2, 1·82 [1·40–2·35], p<0·0001; ASA 3 vs ASA 1–2, 1·58, [1·30–1·92], p<0·0001]), surgical safety checklist not used (1·39 [1·02–1·90], p=0·035), and ventilation or parenteral nutrition unavailable when needed (ventilation 1·96, [1·41–2·71], p=0·0001; parenteral nutrition 1·35, [1·05–1·74], p=0·018). Administration of parenteral nutrition (0·61, [0·47–0·79], p=0·0002) and use of a peripherally inserted central catheter (0·65 [0·50–0·86], p=0·0024) or percutaneous central line (0·69 [0·48–1·00], p=0·049) were associated with lower mortality. Interpretation Unacceptable differences in mortality exist for gastrointestinal congenital anomalies between lowincome, middle-income, and high-income countries. Improving access to quality neonatal surgical care in LMICs will be vital to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 3.2 of ending preventable deaths in neonates and children younger than 5 years by 2030

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Correction to: Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Tolerange Tool

&lt;p&gt;Tolerange is an automated tool for measuring the level of masking fault-tolerance of a stochastic system. Tolerange takes as input a nominal model and its fault-tolerant implementation model written in Prism-like notation, and produces as output the expected accumulated milestones that the implementation is able to preserve for the considered faults, this is a value in the interval [0, infinity).&lt;/p&gt

A Stochastic Game Approach to Masking Fault-Tolerance: Bisimulation and Quantification

We introduce a formal notion of masking fault-tolerance between probabilistic transition systems based on a variant of probabilistic bisimulation (named masking simulation). We also provide the corresponding probabilistic game characterization. Even though these games could be infinite, we propose a symbolic way of representing them, such that it can be decided in polynomial time if there is a masking simulation between two probabilistic transition systems. We use this notion of masking to quantify the level of masking fault-tolerance exhibited by almost-sure failing systems, i.e., those systems that eventually fail with probability 1. The level of masking fault-tolerance of almost-sure failing systems can be calculated by solving a collection of functional equations. We produce this metric in a setting in which the minimizing player behaves in a strong fair way (mimicking the idea of fair environments), and limit our study to memoryless strategies due to the infinite nature of the game. We implemented these ideas in a prototype tool, and performed an experimental evaluation

Playing Against Fair Adversaries in Stochastic Games with Total Rewards

We investigate zero-sum turn-based two-player stochastic games in which the objective of one player is to maximize the amount of rewards obtained during a play, while the other aims at minimizing it. We focus on games in which the minimizer plays in a fair way. We believe that these kinds of games enjoy interesting applications in software verification, where the maximizer plays the role of a system intending to maximize the number of "milestones" achieved, and the minimizer represents the behavior of some uncooperative but yet fair environment. Normally, to study total reward properties, games are requested to be stopping (i.e., they reach a terminal state with probability 1). We relax the property to request that the game is stopping only under a fair minimizing player. We prove that these games are determined, i.e., each state of the game has a value defined. Furthermore, we show that both players have memoryless and deterministic optimal strategies, and the game value can be computed by approximating the greatest-fixed point of a set of functional equations. We implemented our approach in a prototype tool, and evaluated it on an illustrating example and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle case study