Saving safety from counterexamples

Saving lives, saving from death, saving from dying: reflections on 'over-valuing' identifiable victims.

Learning Regular Sets from Queries and Counterexamples

The problem of identifying an unknown regular set from examples of its members and nonmembers is addressed. It is assumed that the regular set is presented by a minimaMy adequate Teacher, which can answer membership queries about the set and can also test a conjecture and indicate whether it is equal to the unknown set and provide a counterexample if not. (A counterexample is a string in the sy...

Generating error traces from verification-condition counterexamples

A technique for finding errors in computer programs is to translate a given program and its correctness criteria into a logical formula in mathematics and then let an automatic theorem prover check the validity of the formula. This approach gives the tool designer much flexibility in which conditions are to be checked, and the technique can reason about as many aspects of the given program as t...

Saving varicella from suicide

JCB • VOLUME 168 • NUMBER 3 • 2005 348 Saving varicella from suicide aricella zoster virus (VZV) causes both varicella (chickenpox) and zoster (shingles). VZV spreads throughout the body, but it does so slowly, and virus only emerges extracellularly in the skin where it can spread to other hosts. That behavior is now explained by Zhenglun Zhu (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA), Jason Chen, An...

Saving myelin from microglia

The blood clotting protein fibrinogen can inadvertently promote multiple sclerosis (MS) when it leaks from the blood into the brain. According to Adams et al. (page 571), it does so by activating microglia and sending these cells into phagocytic overdrive. Interrupting this interaction may yield a treatment for MS that doesn’t interfere with blood clotting. The neurological dysfunction seen in ...