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Although human skills are heavily involved in the Requirements Engineering process, in particular, in requirements elicitation, analysis and specification, still methodology and formalism play a determining role in providing clarity and enabling analysis. In this paper, we propose a method for deriving formal specifications, which are applicable to dependable software systems. First, we clarify what the method itself is. Computer science has a proliferation of languages and methods, but the difference between the two is not always clear. This is a conceptual contribution. Furthermore, we propose the idea of Layered Fault Tolerant Specification (LFTS). The principle consists in layering specifications in (at least) two different layers: one for normal behaviors and others (if more than one) for abnormal behaviors. Abnormal behaviors are described in terms of an Error Injector (EI), which represent a model of the expected erroneous interference coming from the environment. This structure has been inspired by the notion of an idealized Fault Tolerant component, but the combination of LFTS and EI using rely guarantee thinking to describe interference is our second contribution. The overall result is the definition of a method for the specification of systems that do not run in isolation but in the real, physical world. We propose an approach that is pragmatic to its target audience: techniques must scale and be usable by non-experts, if they are to make it into an industrial setting. This article is making tentative steps, but the recent trends in Software Engineering such as Microservices, smart and software-defined buildings, M2M micropayments and Devops are relevant fields continue the investigation concerning dependability and rely guarantee thinking.

In this paper we study the rotational oscillations of the nitrous bases forming a central pair in a short DNA fragment consisting of three base pairs. A simple mechanical analog of the fragment where the bases are imitated by pendulums and the interactions between pendulums — by springs, has been constructed. We derived Lagrangian of the model system and the nonlinear equations of motions. We found solutions in the homogeneous case when the fragment considered consists of identical base pairs: Adenine-Thymine (AT- pair) or Guanine-Cytosine (GC-pair). The trajectories of the model system in the configuration space were also constructed.

The problem has been considered, to what extent the kinetic models of cellular metabolism fit the matter which they describe. Foundations of stoichiometry of the whole metabolism and its large regions have been stated. A bioenergetic representation of stoichiometry based on a universal unit of chemical compound reductivity, viz., redoxon, has been described. Equations of mass-energy balance (bioenergetic variant of stoichiometry) have been derived for metabolic flows including those of protons possessing high electrochemical potential μ_H⁺, and high-energy compounds. Interrelations have been obtained which determine the biomass yield, rate of uptake of energy source for cell growth and other important physiological quantities as functions of biochemical characteristics of cellular energetics. The maximum biomass energy yield values have been calculated for different energy sources utilized by cells. These values coincide with those measured experimentally.

The paper has a goal to identify a set of parameters of the environment and infrastructure with the most significant impact on institutional-matrices that dominate in different countries. Parameters of environmental conditions includes raw statistical indices, which were directly derived from the databases of open access, as well as complex integral indicators that were by method of principal components. Efficiency of discussed parameters in task of dominant institutional matrices type recognition (X or Y type) was evaluated by a number of methods based on machine learning. It was revealed that greatest informational content is associated with parameters characterizing risk of natural disasters, level of urbanization and the development of transport infrastructure, the monthly averages and seasonal variations of temperature and precipitation.

In single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), patients with bone disorders receive a radiopharmaceutical (RP) that accumulates selectively in pathological lesions. Accurate quantification of RP uptake plays a critical role in disease staging, prognosis, and the development of personalized treatment strategies. Traditionally, the accuracy of quantitative assessment is evaluated through in vitro clinical trials using the standardized physical NEMA IEC phantom, which contains six spheres simulating lesions of various sizes. However, such experiments are limited by high costs and radiation exposure to researchers. This study proposes an alternative in silico approach based on numerical simulation using a digital twin of the NEMA IEC phantom. The computational framework allows for extensive testing under varying conditions without physical constraints. Analogous to clinical protocols, we calculated the recovery coefficient (RC_max), defined as the ratio of the maximum activity in a lesion to its known true value. The simulation settings were tailored to clinical SPECT/CT protocols involving ^99mTc for patients with bone-related diseases. For the first time, we systematically analyzed the impact of lesion-to-background ratios and post-reconstruction filtering on RC_max values. Numerical experiments revealed the presence of edge artifacts in reconstructed lesion images, consistent with those observed in both real NEMA IEC phantom studies and patient scans. These artifacts introduce instability into the iterative reconstruction process and lead to errors in activity quantification. Our results demonstrate that post-filtering helps suppress edge artifacts and stabilizes the solution. However, it also significantly underestimates activity in small lesions. To address this issue, we introduce post-reconstruction correction factors derived from our simulations to improve the accuracy of quantification in lesions smaller than 20 mm in diameter.

A mathematical model describing the dynamics of HIV-1 infection in a single lymph node during the initial period of infection development is presented. Within the framework of the model, the infection of an individual is set by a nonnegative finite function describing the rate of entry of the initial viral particles into the lymph node. The equations of the model are derived with consideration of two factors: 1) the interaction of viral particles with naive CD4+ T lymphocytes in various phases of the cell cycle; 2) contact interaction between multiplying naive CD4+ T lymphocytes and infected CD4+ T lymphocytes producing viral particles. The specific feature of intercellular contact interactions is the formation of complexes consisting of pairs of these cells. The duration of the complexes’ existence is determined by the distribution functions over finite time intervals. The model is presented as a high-dimensional system of nonlinear delay differential equations, including two equations with distributed delay, and is supplemented with non-negative initial data. In the absence of HIV-1 infection, the model is reduced to four delay differential equations describing the number of naive CD4+ T-lymphocytes in different phases of the cell cycle. The global solvability of the model (the existence and uniqueness of the solution on the semi-axis) is determined, and the non-negativity of the solution components is established. To carry out computational experiments with the model, an algorithm for numerically solving the used system of differential equations are developed based on the semi-implicit Euler scheme for the case of uniform distribution of durations of the complexes existence. The results of computational experiments aimed at approximation the numerical solution of the model to describing the kinetics of HIV-1 infection spread in its acute phase, including the eclipse phase, are presented. The variable used as the observable is the variable describing the number of viral particles per milliliter of blood on days 10–12 after the onset of acute infection. The dynamics of the observable variable is numerically studied depending on the variation of the model parameters reflecting the patterns of complex formation and the formation of cells producing viral particles. The possibility of attenuation of HIV-1 infection in the lymph node at certain values of some of the model parameters is shown.

In the paper the model for a one-dimensional non-equilibrium riverbed process is proposed. The model takes into account the suspended and bed-load sediment transport. The bed-load transport is determined by using the original formula. This formula was derived from the thin bottom layer motion equation. The formula doesn’t contain new phenomenological parameters and takes into account the influence of bed slope, granulometric and physical mechanical parameters on the bed-load transport. A number of the model test problems are solved for the verification of the proposed mathematical model. The comparison of the calculation results with the established experimental data and the results of other authors is made. It was shown, that the obtained results have a good agreement with the experimental data in spite of the relative simplicity of the proposed mathematical model.

The biomass growth yield is the ratio of the newly synthesized substance of growing cells to the amount of the consumed substrate, the source of matter and energy for cell growth. The yield is a characteristic of the efficiency of substrate conversion to cell biomass. The conversion is carried out by the cell metabolism, which is a complete aggregate of biochemical reactions occurring in the cells.

This work newly considers the problem of maximal cell growth yield prediction basing on balances of the whole living cell metabolism and its fragments called as partial metabolisms (PM). The following PM’s are used for the present consideration. During growth on any substrate we consider i) the standard constructive metabolism (SCM) which consists of identical pathways during growth of various organisms on any substrate. SCM starts from several standard compounds (nodal metabolites): glucose, acetyl-CoA 2-oxoglutarate, erythrose-4-phosphate, oxaloacetate, ribose-5- phosphate, 3-phosphoglycerate, phosphoenolpyruvate, and pyruvate, and ii) the full forward metabolism (FM) — the remaining part of the whole metabolism. The first one consumes high-energy bonds (HEB) formed by the second one. In this work we examine a generalized variant of the FM, when the possible presence of extracellular products, as well as the possibilities of both aerobic and anaerobic growth are taken into account. Instead of separate balances of each nodal metabolite formation as it was made in our previous work, this work deals at once with the whole aggregate of these metabolites. This makes the problem solution more compact and requiring a smaller number of biochemical quantities and substantially less computational time. An equation expressing the maximal biomass yield via specific amounts of HEB formed and consumed by the partial metabolisms has been derived. It includes the specific HEB consumption by SCM which is a universal biochemical parameter applicable to the wide range of organisms and growth substrates. To correctly determine this parameter, the full constructive metabolism and its forward part are considered for the growth of cells on glucose as the mostly studied substrate. We used here the found earlier properties of the elemental composition of lipid and lipid-free fractions of cell biomass. Numerical study of the effect of various interrelations between flows via different nodal metabolites has been made. It showed that the requirements of the SCM in high-energy bonds and NAD(P)H are practically constants. The found HEB-to-formed-biomass coefficient is an efficient tool for finding estimates of maximal biomass yield from substrates for which the primary metabolism is known. Calculation of ATP-to-substrate ratio necessary for the yield estimation has been made using the special computer program package, GenMetPath.

Metal hydrides are an interesting class of chemical compounds that can reversibly bind a large amount of hydrogen and are, therefore, of interest for energy applications. Understanding the factors affecting the kinetics of hydride formation and decomposition is especially important. Features of the material, experimental setup and conditions affect the mathematical description of the processes, which can undergo significant changes during the processing of experimental data. The article proposes a general approach to numerical modeling of the formation and decomposition of metal hydrides and solving inverse problems of estimating material parameters from measurement data. The models are divided into two classes: diffusive ones, that take into account the gradient of hydrogen concentration in the metal lattice, and models with fast diffusion. The former are more complex and take the form of non-classical boundary value problems of parabolic type. A rather general approach to the grid solution of such problems is described. The second ones are solved relatively simply, but can change greatly when model assumptions change. Our experience in processing experimental data shows that a flexible software tool is needed; a tool that allows, on the one hand, building models from standard blocks, freely changing them if necessary, and, on the other hand, avoiding the implementation of routine algorithms. It also should be adapted for high-performance systems of different paradigms. These conditions are satisfied by the HIMICOS library presented in the paper, which has been tested on a large number of experimental data. It allows simulating the kinetics of formation and decomposition of metal hydrides, as well as related tasks, at three levels of abstraction. At the low level, the user defines the interface procedures, such as calculating the time layer based on the previous layer or the entire history, calculating the observed value and the independent variable from the task variables, comparing the curve with the reference. Special algorithms can be used for solving quite general parabolic-type boundary value problems with free boundaries and with various quasilinear (i.e., linear with respect to the derivative only) boundary conditions, as well as calculating the distance between the curves in different metric spaces and with different normalization. This is the middle level of abstraction. At the high level, it is enough to choose a ready tested model for a particular material and modify it in relation to the experimental conditions.

Our purpose is to study the spatio-temporal population wave behavior observed in the predator-prey system. It is assumed that predators move both directionally and randomly, and prey spread only diffusely. The model does not take into account demographic processes in the predator population; it’s total number is constant and is a parameter. The variables of the model are the prey and predator densities and the predator speed, which are connected by a system of three reaction – diffusion – advection equations. The system is considered on an annular range, that is the periodic conditions are set at the boundaries of the interval. We have studied the bifurcations of wave modes arising in the system when two parameters are changed — the total number of predators and their taxis acceleration coefficient.

The main research method is a numerical analysis. The spatial approximation of the problem in partial derivatives is performed by the finite difference method. Integration of the obtained system of ordinary differential equations in time is carried out by the Runge –Kutta method. The construction of the Poincare map, calculation of Lyapunov exponents, and Fourier analysis are used for a qualitative analysis of dynamic regimes.

It is shown that, population waves can arise as a result of existence of directional movement of predators. The population dynamics in the system changes qualitatively as the total predator number increases. А stationary homogeneous regime is stable at low value of parameter, then it is replaced by self-oscillations in the form of traveling waves. The waveform becomes more complicated as the bifurcation parameter increases; its complexity occurs due to an increase in the number of temporal vibrational modes. A large taxis acceleration coefficient leads to the possibility of a transition from multi-frequency to chaotic and hyperchaotic population waves. A stationary regime without preys becomes stable with a large number of predators.