Multiscale Bone Remodelling with Spatial P Systems

Many biological phenomena are inherently multiscale, i.e. they are characterized by interactions involving different spatial and temporal scales simultaneously. Though several approaches have been proposed to provide "multilayer" models, only Complex Automata, derived from Cellular Automata, naturally embed spatial information and realize multiscaling with well-established inter-scale integration schemas. Spatial P systems, a variant of P systems in which a more geometric concept of space has been added, have several characteristics in common with Cellular Automata. We propose such a formalism as a basis to rephrase the Complex Automata multiscaling approach and, in this perspective, provide a 2-scale Spatial P system describing bone remodelling. The proposed model not only results to be highly faithful and expressive in a multiscale scenario, but also highlights the need of a deep and formal expressiveness study involving Complex Automata, Spatial P systems and other promising multiscale approaches, such as our shape-based one already resulted to be highly faithful.Comment: In Proceedings MeCBIC 2010, arXiv:1011.005

Off-chain trading for micro grid systems

As micro grids and blockchain gained the interest and attention of both academia and the industry, the interaction between the two technologies seems inevitable. However, there are challenges to overcome in order to actually realize the integration between micro grids and blockchains. In this article, we review the solutions proposed to enhance micro grids with blockchains. We discuss the scalability challenges and the opportunities derived from the off-chaining computing techniques. In this context, we draft a design to implement a micro grid-based peer-to-peer local energy market, powered by an off-chain computing protocol called DIVERSITY. DIVERSITY aims to shift the computational burden from a main blockchain to an intermediate layer of nodes, aggregating data and executing smart contracts off-chain. We simulate different data logging approaches, and it is found that DIVERSITY allows an actual saving on fees and power consumption derived from using a public blockchain platform, such as Ethereum, in order to assure a truly decentralized renewable energy distribution at a lower cost

Analysis and verification of ECA rules in intelligent environments

Intelligent Environments (IEs) are physical spaces where Information Technology (IT) and other pervasive computing technologies are combined in order to achieve specific goals for the users and the environment. IEs have the goal of enriching user experience, increasing awareness of the environment. A number of applications are currently being deployed in domains ranging from smart homes to e-health and autonomous vehicles. Quite often IE support human activities, thus essential requirements to be ensured are correctness, reliability, safety and security. In this paper we present how a set of techniques and tools that have been developed for the verification of software can be employed in the verification of IE described by means of event-condition-action rules. More precisely, we reduce the problem of verifying key properties of these rules to satisfiability and termination problems that can be addressed using state-of-the-art Satisfiability Modulo Theory (SMT) solvers and program analysers. Our approach has been implemented in a tool called vIRONy. Our approach has been validated on a number of case studies from the literature

Symbolic verification of event–condition–action rules in intelligent environments

In this paper we show how state-of-the art SMT-based techniques for software verification can be employed in the verification of event–condition–action rules in intelligent environments. Moreover, we exploit the specific features of intelligent environments to optimise the verification process. We compare our approach with previous work in a detailed evaluation section, showing how it improves both performance and expressivity of the language for event–condition–action rules

A Catalogue of Inter-Parameter Dependencies in RESTful Web APIs

Web services often impose dependency constraints that re strict the way in which two or more input parameters can be combined to form valid calls to the service. Unfortunately, current specification languages for web services like the OpenAPI Specification provide no support for the formal description of such dependencies, which makes it hardly possible to automatically discover and interact with services without human intervention. Researchers and practitioners are openly requesting support for modelling and validating dependencies among in put parameters in web APIs, but this is not possible unless we share a deep understanding of how dependencies emerge in practice—the aim of this work. In this paper, we present a thorough study on the presence of dependency constraints among input parameters in web APIs in in dustry. The study is based on a review of more than 2.5K operations from 40 real-world RESTful APIs from multiple application domains. Overall, our findings show that input dependencies are the norm, rather than the exception, with 85% of the reviewed APIs having some kind of dependency among their input parameters. As the main outcome of our study, we present a catalogue of seven types of dependencies consistently found in RESTful web APIsMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad BELI (TIN2015-70560-R)Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades Horatio RTI2018-101204-B-C21Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte FPU17/0407

Automated analysis of inter-parameter dependencies in web APIs

Web services often impose constraintsthat restrict the way in which two or more input parameters can be combined to form valid calls to the service, i.e. inter-parameter dependencies. Current web API specification languages like the OpenAPI Specification (OAS) pro vide no support for the formal description of such dependencies, making it hardly possible to interact with the services without human intervention. We propose specifying and automatically ana lyzing inter-parameter dependencies in web APIs. To this end, we propose a domain-specific language to describe these dependencies, a constraint programming-aided tool supporting their automated analysis, and an OAS extension integrating our approach and eas ing its adoption. Together, these contributions open a new range of possibilities in areas such as source code generation and testin

A Theory of Encodings and Expressiveness (Extended Abstract)

This paper proposes a definition of what it means for one system description language to encode another one, thereby enabling an ordering of system description languages with respect to expressive power. I compare the proposed definition with other definitions of encoding and expressiveness found in the literature, and illustrate it on a well-known case study: the encoding of the synchronous in the asynchronous backslashpi $-calculus

IRON: Reliable domain specific language for programming IoT devices

A domain-specific language (DSL) is a programming language that is specialized to a particular application domain. IRON is a DSL for the IoT domain which allows not only to program in an easy way using the Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rules but also to prevent incorrect actions. In this paper, we formally describe the semantics of IRON. The anomalies that IRON prevents are: (i) the presence of cycles that determine the non-termination, (ii) the ambiguous actions that do not allow the definition of a final configuration, (iii) the breaking of invariances. In addition to the formal description of IRON, an interpreter was created in a host language (LUA) that captures and manages the three anomalies. This provides a general scheme for the implementation of languages based on ECA rules

Energy saving and collision-free motion planning for oblivious robots

In distributed computing, many tasks have been studied involving mobile entities - also called robots - with weak capabilities. A well-known scenario is that in which robots operate in Look-Compute-Move (LCM) cycles. During each cycle, a robot acquires a snapshot of the surrounding environment (Look phase), then executes an appropriate algorithm by using the obtained snapshot as input (Compute phase), and finally moves toward a desired destination, if any (Move phase). In this context, we consider robots that have to visit a partially ordered set of locations. A solution to the problem is the assignment to each robot of a trajectory to follow in order to visit the required locations. The resolution of the task is subject to two main constraints. Robots have to minimize the energy spent to accomplish an assigned trajectory, and they have to avoid collisions among each other. The minimization of the energy is expressed in terms of the number of turns a robot has to perform in between two different locations. This equals the number of bends the assigned trajectory contains in between such locations. In general, the problem is known to require Ω(n) bends per connection, with n being the number of locations, even if considering just two robots involved. We study the case where the locations that a single robot has to visit are represented as colored points in the Euclidean plane, and only two colors are provided. This means the partial order among the locations is just based on two colors per robot. In this case, we provide a constructive solution for two robots with five bends per connection

Blockchain and IoT Integration for Society 5.0

The integration of Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) will have many implications in the Society 5.0. Blockchain technology has the potential to deal with issues that are related to data ownership, data integrity and data market monopolies. Public blockchains support the implementation of the data democratisation vision where everybody has access to data and there are no gatekeepers that make use of isolated data silos. Smart contracts can be used to provide contract transparency and allow citizens to manage their own data and the deriving economic value. This paper describes a novel blockchain-based security protocol that has been applied to a bicycle rental case study. This has been designed and implemented with the Society 5.0 vision in mind. Users store their own rental data by using a public blockchain. This eliminates the need of a centralised authority, provides data immutability and allows users to agree on transparent smart contract to manage their insurance, their payments and their own rental data. The smart lock protocol has been implemented in a real industrial product that uses the Ethereum public blockchain