A Testbed for Animating Multi-Agent Systems

This document describes the current state of the development and implementation of a test-bed for animating multi-agent systems, where each Agent is to be specified by a theory of multi-modal logic and its behaviour is determined by a form of symbolic execution called animation. The particular setting for the animator is a robotics scenario of industrial relevance, namely the automated Paintshop wherein robots collect, paint and deliver cars. The test-bed is being developed under ECL i PS e v3.4.5 (v3.5) and Tcl/Tk v7.3/v3.6, and the target platform is an ICL DRS6000. 200 MEDLAR II Deliverable V.2--2 1 Introduction The advent of large-scale industrial use of robotics has resulted in the need for platforms to investigate and optimise the programming and behaviour of machines in such environments. For some time, it has been assumed that scaled-down versions of physical situations (with actual robots operating in them, offered the most natural facilities in which to carry out exper..

EUROPA Parallel C++ Version 2.1

This paper presents the definition of EUROPA: a framework within which parallel C++ environments can be developed and standardised. EUROPA (also called EC++) sets out a framework which will add portability to parallel C++ systems and will run across a variety of hardware architectures, while encompassing as wide a set of parallel computing models and paradigms as possible, both standard models and user extensible models. This is done entirely within standard C++, i.e. without syntactic extensions to C++

Vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 breakthrough infections in patients with cancer (UKCCEP): a population-based test-negative case-control study.

BACKGROUND People with cancer are at increased risk of hospitalisation and death following infection with SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, we aimed to conduct one of the first evaluations of vaccine effectiveness against breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infections in patients with cancer at a population level. METHODS In this population-based test-negative case-control study of the UK Coronavirus Cancer Evaluation Project (UKCCEP), we extracted data from the UKCCEP registry on all SARS-CoV-2 PCR test results (from the Second Generation Surveillance System), vaccination records (from the National Immunisation Management Service), patient demographics, and cancer records from England, UK, from Dec 8, 2020, to Oct 15, 2021. Adults (aged ≥18 years) with cancer in the UKCCEP registry were identified via Public Health England's Rapid Cancer Registration Dataset between Jan 1, 2018, and April 30, 2021, and comprised the cancer cohort. We constructed a control population cohort from adults with PCR tests in the UKCCEP registry who were not contained within the Rapid Cancer Registration Dataset. The coprimary endpoints were overall vaccine effectiveness against breakthrough infections after the second dose (positive PCR COVID-19 test) and vaccine effectiveness against breakthrough infections at 3-6 months after the second dose in the cancer cohort and control population. FINDINGS The cancer cohort comprised 377 194 individuals, of whom 42 882 had breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infections. The control population consisted of 28 010 955 individuals, of whom 5 748 708 had SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infections. Overall vaccine effectiveness was 69·8% (95% CI 69·8-69·9) in the control population and 65·5% (65·1-65·9) in the cancer cohort. Vaccine effectiveness at 3-6 months was lower in the cancer cohort (47·0%, 46·3-47·6) than in the control population (61·4%, 61·4-61·5). INTERPRETATION COVID-19 vaccination is effective for individuals with cancer, conferring varying levels of protection against breakthrough infections. However, vaccine effectiveness is lower in patients with cancer than in the general population. COVID-19 vaccination for patients with cancer should be used in conjunction with non-pharmacological strategies and community-based antiviral treatment programmes to reduce the risk that COVID-19 poses to patients with cancer. FUNDING University of Oxford, University of Southampton, University of Birmingham, Department of Health and Social Care, and Blood Cancer UK