In this paper we describe Echo, a novel yet practical approach to the formal verification of implementations. Echo splits verification into two major parts. The first part verifies an implementation against a lowlevel specification. The second uses a technique called reverse synthesis to extract a high-level specification from the low-level specification. The extracted specification is proved t...

The rapid development of Web2.0 leads to significant information redundancy. Especially for a complex news event, it is difficult to understand its general idea within a single coherent picture. A complex event often contains branches, intertwining narratives and side news which are all called storylines. In this paper, we propose a novel solution to tackle the challenging problem of storylines...

We propose an oscillatory model that is theoretically parsimonious, empirically efficient and biologically plausible. Building on Hollerbach’s (Biol Cybern 39:139– 156, 1981) model, our Parsimonious Oscillatory Model of Handwriting (POMH) overcomes the latter’s main shortcomings by making it possible to extract its parameters from the trace itself and by reinstating symmetry between the x and y...

The application of aspirin-like drugs in modern medicine is very broad, encompassing the treatment of inflammation, pain and a variety of cardiovascular conditions. Although anecdotal accounts of willow bark extract as an anti-inflammatory drug have occurred since written records began (for example by Hippocrates), the first convincing demonstration of a potent anti-pyretic effect of willow bar...

Ion concentration polarization (ICP) has been widely studied for collecting target analytes as it is a powerful preconcentrator method employed for charged molecules. Although the method is quite robust, simple, cheap, and yields a high preconcentration factor, a major hurdle to be addressed is extracting the preconcentrated samples without dispersing the plug. This study investigates a 3D fold...

The main purpose of this study is to reduce the production cost of cellulase by optimizing the production medium and using an alternative carbon source such as municipal solid waste residue. In the present investigation, we aim to isolate the two novel cellulase producing fungi (Aspergillus niger and Trichoderma sp.) from municipal solid waste. Municipal solid waste residue (4-5% (w/v)) and pep...

Over the past few years, the advent of microarray technology has enabled the simultaneous measurement of the expression levels of thousands of genes. When the expression levels of these genes are measured at multiple time points during an experiment, the result is a temporal expression profile. These expression profiles may be processed to extract the underlying gene regulatory network relation...

A study on the rapid identification of phthalates in polymer materials has been conducted by employing gas chromatography-mass spectrometry coupled with a pyrolyzer (Py-GC/MS). Since Py-GC/MS does not require any complex solvent-extraction process, a rapid screening of phthalates should be possible. In this study, polymer samples were directly introduced into the pyrolyzer in order to thermally...

Image segmentation methods based on Markovian assumption consist in optimizing a Gibbs energy function which depends on the observation field and the segmented field. This energy function can be represented as a sum of potentials defined on cliques which are subsets of the grid of sites. The Potts model is the most commonly used to represent the segmented field. However, this model only express...

It is a complex non-linear problem to predict mechanical properties of concrete. As a new approach, the artificial neural networks can extract rules from data, but have difficulties with convergence by the traditional algorithms. The authors defined a new convex function of the grand total error and deduced a global optimization back-propagation algorithm (GOBPA), which can solve the local mini...