3,301 research outputs found
Learning a Static Analyzer from Data
To be practically useful, modern static analyzers must precisely model the
effect of both, statements in the programming language as well as frameworks
used by the program under analysis. While important, manually addressing these
challenges is difficult for at least two reasons: (i) the effects on the
overall analysis can be non-trivial, and (ii) as the size and complexity of
modern libraries increase, so is the number of cases the analysis must handle.
In this paper we present a new, automated approach for creating static
analyzers: instead of manually providing the various inference rules of the
analyzer, the key idea is to learn these rules from a dataset of programs. Our
method consists of two ingredients: (i) a synthesis algorithm capable of
learning a candidate analyzer from a given dataset, and (ii) a counter-example
guided learning procedure which generates new programs beyond those in the
initial dataset, critical for discovering corner cases and ensuring the learned
analysis generalizes to unseen programs.
We implemented and instantiated our approach to the task of learning
JavaScript static analysis rules for a subset of points-to analysis and for
allocation sites analysis. These are challenging yet important problems that
have received significant research attention. We show that our approach is
effective: our system automatically discovered practical and useful inference
rules for many cases that are tricky to manually identify and are missed by
state-of-the-art, manually tuned analyzers
Bioactive composites for bone tissue engineering
One of the major challenges of bone tissue engineering is the production of a suitable scaffold material. In this review the current composite materials options available are considered covering both the methods of both production and assessing the scaffolds. A range of production routes have been investigated ranging from the use of porogens to produce the porosity through to controlled deposition methods. The testing regimes have included mechanical testing of the materials produced through to in vivo testing of the scaffolds. While the ideal scaffold material has not yet been produced, progress is being made
Non-monotonic temperature dependent transport in graphene grown by Chemical Vapor Deposition
Temperature-dependent resistivity of graphene grown by chemical vapor
deposition (CVD) is investigated. We observe in low mobility CVD graphene
device a strong insulating behavior at low temperatures and a metallic behavior
at high temperatures manifesting a non-monotonic in the temperature dependent
resistivity.This feature is strongly affected by carrier density modulation. To
understand this anomalous temperature dependence, we introduce thermal
activation of charge carriers in electron-hole puddles induced by randomly
distributed charged impurities. Observed temperature evolution of resistivity
is then understood from the competition among thermal activation of charge
carriers, temperature-dependent screening and phonon scattering effects. Our
results imply that the transport property of transferred CVD-grown graphene is
strongly influenced by the details of the environmentComment: 7 pages, 3 figure
Magnetic interactions in transition metal doped ZnO : An abinitio study
We calculate the nature of magnetic interactions in transition-metal doped
ZnO using the local spin density approximation and LSDA+\textit{U} method of
density functional theory. We investigate the following four cases: (i) single
transition metal ion types (Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni and Cu) substituted at Zn sites,
(ii) substitutional magnetic transition metal ions combined with additional Cu
and Li dopants, (iii) substitutional magnetic transition metal ions combined
with oxygen vacancies and (iv) pairs of magnetic ion types (Co and Fe, Co and
Mn, etc.). Extensive convergence tests indicate that the calculated magnetic
ground state is unusually sensitive to the k-point mesh and energy cut-off, the
details of the geometry optimizations and the choice of the
exchange-correlation functional. We find that ferromagnetic coupling is
sometimes favorable for single type substitutional transition metal ions within
the local spin density approximation. However, the nature of magnetic
interactions changes when correlations on the transition-metal ion are treated
within the more realistic LSDA + \textit{U} method, often disfavoring the
ferromagnetic state. The magnetic configuration is sensitive to the detailed
arrangement of the ions and the amount of lattice relaxation, except in the
case of oxygen vacancies when an antiferromagnetic state is always favored.Comment: 11 pages, 17 figure
Z_3 Strings and their Interactions
We construct Z_3 vortex solutions in a model in which SU(3) is spontaneously
broken to Z_3. The model is truncated to one in which there are only two
dimensionless free parameters and the interaction of vortices within this
restricted set of models is studied numerically. We find that there is a curve
in the two dimensional space of parameters for which the energy of two
asymptotically separated vortices equals the energy of the vortices at
vanishing separation. This suggests that the inter-vortex potential for Z_3
strings might be flat for these couplings, much like the case of U(1) strings
in the Bogomolnyi limit. However, we argue that the intervortex potential is
attractive at short distances and repulsive at large separations leading to the
possibility of unstable bound states of Z_3 vortices.Comment: 8 pages; mainly corrected typos in table
Pathogenicity and Immune Response of Starry Flounder, Platichthys stellatus, Infected with Vibrio anguillarum
Vibrio anguillarum is the aetiological agent of vibriosis, a disease affecting many marine fish species. The occurrence of vibriosis in starry flounder, Platichthys stellatus, grown in an aquaculture farm has demonstrated the urgent need for information on pathogenic infection and immune response for efficient disease management. This is the first study to report Vibrio anguillarum isolation and infection in starry flounder. We evaluated immune responses, serum biochemical parameters, and cumulative mortality of the fish by experimentally challenging healthy fish. The expression levels of five immune genes (TNF, TNFR, IL-6, MHCII, and CXC) were measured by real-time quantitative PCR. The transcriptional levels of the genes encoding tumor necrosis factor (TNF), TNF receptor (TNFR), interleukin-6 (IL-6), the major histocompatibility complex (MHC-II), and a chemokine (CXC) in the head-kidney of V. anguillarum infected fish were significantly upregulated compared with control fish and biochemical indices including the alanine aminotransferase, total serum protein, and glucose levels of infected fish differed significantly from those of control. Additionally, Starry flounder infected with V. anguillarum at 1.67 × 106 and 1.67 × 108CFU/mL showed 53%, and 100% mortality, respectively. This study furthers our understanding of the immune and serum biochemical alterations, and mortality induced by bacterial infections, depending on pathogen concentration. This may advance strategies for control of V. anguillarum in cultured starry flounde
Characterization of a novel reassortant H5N6 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus clade 2.3.4.4 in Korea, 2017
Interplay between pleiotropy and secondary selection determines rise and fall of mutators in stress response
Dramatic rise of mutators has been found to accompany adaptation of bacteria
in response to many kinds of stress. Two views on the evolutionary origin of
this phenomenon emerged: the pleiotropic hypothesis positing that it is a
byproduct of environmental stress or other specific stress response mechanisms
and the second order selection which states that mutators hitchhike to fixation
with unrelated beneficial alleles. Conventional population genetics models
could not fully resolve this controversy because they are based on certain
assumptions about fitness landscape. Here we address this problem using a
microscopic multiscale model, which couples physically realistic molecular
descriptions of proteins and their interactions with population genetics of
carrier organisms without assuming any a priori fitness landscape. We found
that both pleiotropy and second order selection play a crucial role at
different stages of adaptation: the supply of mutators is provided through
destabilization of error correction complexes or fluctuations of production
levels of prototypic mismatch repair proteins (pleiotropic effects), while rise
and fixation of mutators occur when there is a sufficient supply of beneficial
mutations in replication-controlling genes. This general mechanism assures a
robust and reliable adaptation of organisms to unforeseen challenges. This
study highlights physical principles underlying physical biological mechanisms
of stress response and adaptation
Data Descriptor: High content screen for identifying small-molecule LC3B-localization modulators in a renal cancer cell line
The C-Fern (Ceratopteris richardii) Genome: Insights Into Plant Genome Evolution With the First Partial Homosporous Fern Genome Assembly
Ferns are notorious for possessing large genomes and numerous chromosomes. Despite decades of speculation, the processes underlying the expansive genomes of ferns are unclear, largely due to the absence of a sequenced homosporous fern genome. The lack of this crucial resource has not only hindered investigations of evolutionary processes responsible for the unusual genome characteristics of homosporous ferns, but also impeded synthesis of genome evolution across land plants. Here, we used the model fern species Ceratopteris richardii to address the processes (e.g., polyploidy, spread of repeat elements) by which the large genomes and high chromosome numbers typical of homosporous ferns may have evolved and have been maintained. We directly compared repeat compositions in species spanning the green plant tree of life and a diversity of genome sizes, as well as both short- and long-read-based assemblies of Ceratopteris. We found evidence consistent with a single ancient polyploidy event in the evolutionary history of Ceratopteris based on both genomic and cytogenetic data, and on repeat proportions similar to those found in large flowering plant genomes. This study provides a major stepping-stone in the understanding of land plant evolutionary genomics by providing the first homosporous fern reference genome, as well as insights into the processes underlying the formation of these massive genomes
- …