Execution Conditions Research Articles

G2I: A principled approach to leveraging the goal-to-information nexus in BDI agents

Abstract In a number of settings, information requirements must be guided by the current goals of an agent. This paper shows how information requirements can be systematically derived from goals by examining the executability conditions of plans and actions that help achieve that goal. We extend the standard BDI framework by annotating beliefs, plans and actions with probabilities and propose the use of information-seeking actions to meet the information requirements. We show how agents can use such information-seeking actions, which can be expensive to execute (often at the cost of other mission-critical actions), to increase the expected utility of their goals, and thereby present a novel variant of the standard BDI framework.

Fiscal Waivers and State 'Innovation' in Health Care

This Article describes how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has used fiscal waiver authorities—delegated power to alter federal payments to states under Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—to influence state health policy choices. It highlights how the agency uses its fiscal waiver authorities to shape which reforms states choose to pursue, in some cases inspiring genuine state innovation and in others encouraging states to adopt reforms favored by HHS or discouraging states from adopting disfavored reforms. Moreover, while HHS has sometimes influenced state policy making in ways that further the substantive goals of the ACA and Medicaid (such as by facilitating reinsurance programs that make coverage more affordable), at other times it has done so in ways that undermine those goals (such as by incentivizing states to cut benefits and eligibility or by stifling state single payer and public option experiments). This Article theorizes fiscal waiver authorities as a double-edged tool from the perspectives of health policy, federalism, and administrative law. Fiscal waiver authorities are a distinctively valuable tool from the standpoint of health policy because they share federal savings, using delegated scorekeeping to overcome the “tyranny of the budget” and its adverse effects on health reform. But the informality currently surrounding the agency’s use of executive conditions on waiver approvals makes fiscal waiver authorities ripe for leveraging and abuse, raising health policy, federalism, and administrative law concerns. This Article concludes by offering concrete prescriptions for the next phase of health reform, which is poised to rely heavily on either existing fiscal waivers or new ones. It recommends that HHS bring greater formality to its process for approving, denying, or negotiating state waiver requests and cautions that if the agency does not do so then courts may force such formality on it by way of non-delegation, federalism, or administrative law doctrine. It also suggests the development of a Pioneer Pathway with greater predictability and fiscal flexibility to facilitate health-promoting state innovations.

Alkali Comet Assay in Genotoxicity Tests.

DNA damage detected by the in vivo comet assay is an initial factor for Clastogenicity and gene mutation, and it is considered that the potential for carcinogenesis can be evaluated. However, there is a problem that the test results were not stable because the results fluctuated largely depending on the test execution conditions. Therefore, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) test guideline have described the conditions under which tests should be conducted in order to obtain stable data. Herein, I describe an in vivo comet assay that is based on recently approved the OECD test guideline (TG 489).

Oversize Yield in Underground Mine Development

Stoping, which is the initial link in the chain of the production processes of coal-face operation, significantly determines the performance of handling and mining-and-conveyor equipment, as well as losses and ore contamination. The size of the broken ore determines the cost of its mechanical crushing before lifting. Besides, the quality of breaking has a direct effect on the efficiency of ore enrichment. This influence manifests itself mainly in a significant increase in the cost of mechanical crushing and grinding of the ore, which are the most energy-consuming processes in ore dressing. The share of breaking in the direct financial costs of hard ore development, depending on the rock strength, reaches 20 – 35 %. Assuming that the main purpose of blasting operations in the mine is the destruction of the rock massif with creating the conditions for high-performance execution of the subsequent production processes of ore extraction, one should be careful about cost savings on breaking. The fact is that the proposed activities that reduce the cost of drilling and blasting may result in general deterioration of the quality of breaking. Therefore, the criterion of efficiency of any variant of blast hole drilling is to be an integrated indicator of the overall economic result of the entire production process chain, from coal-face operation to enrichment. Naturally, under certain conditions, when the effect of the results of stoping has local nature, the calculations can be made not for the entire production complex. This work analyzes the existing methods of calculating the parameters of blast hole drilling (BHD) in longhole stoping and considers the mining factors that affect the efficiency of stoping in similar geological conditions, namely, the oversize yield and the cost of coal-face operation. In practice, there are no methods for calculating the parameters of BHD that would be recognized as uniform and quite satisfying the needs of enterprises in all regions and types of mining. Depending on the local conditions, the home-developed methods proven by the practice are used, which are improved with experience. This work shows the experience in ore stoping at the Zapolyarny mine, and provides the results of industrial observations of the actual oversize yield.

The Complex Approach of the C-lightVer System to the Automated Error Localization in C-programs

The C-lightVer system for the deductive verification of C programs is being developed at the IIS SB RAS. Based on the two-level architecture of the system, the C-light input language is translated into the intermediate C-kernel language. The meta generator of the correctness conditions receives the C-kernel program and Hoare logic for the C-kernel as input. To solve the well-known problem of determining loop invariants, the definite iteration approach was chosen. The body of the definite iteration loop is executed once for each element of the finite dimensional data structure, and the inference rule for them uses the substitution operation rep, which represents the action of the cycle in symbolic form. Also, in our meta generator, the method of semantic markup of correctness conditions has been implemented and expanded. It allows to generate explanations for unproven conditions and simplifies the errors localization. Finally, if the theorem prover fails to determine the truth of the condition, we can focus on proving its falsity. Thus a method of proving the falsity of the correctness conditions in the ACL2 system was developed. The need for more detailed explanations of the correctness conditions containing the replacement operation rep has led to a change of the algorithms for generating the replacement operation, and the generation of explanations for unproven correctness conditions. Modifications of these algorithms are presented in the article. They allow marking rep definition with semantic labels, extracting semantic labels from rep definition and generating description of break execution condition.

Trust and the intent to cooperate in energy performance contracting for public buildings in China

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the key factors in generating trust, and the effects of trust on the intention to cooperate in energy performance contracting (EPC), from the perspective of energy saving companies (ESCOs).Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey was undertaken to collect the data from the experienced project managers in ESCOs. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results revealed that competence, integrity, communication, reciprocity and contract had positive effects on calculative trust and relational trust. Both calculative trust and relational trust, in turn, were found to have positive effects on the intention to cooperate.Research limitations/implicationsThe conclusions are derived from the Chinese cultural background and may apply to a certain geographical scope. In addition, this study focused on the perspective of ESCOs but did not consider that of facility owners.Practical implicationsThis research would supply guidance for facility owners or users to cultivate trust from ESCOs and achieve cooperation in EPC.Originality/valueMost of the existing studies have focused on the perspective of facility owners while few have attempted to investigate the perspective of ESCOs. This study contributes to the knowledge body relating to EPC by investigating the relationship between trust and the intention to cooperate from the perspective of ESCOs. In addition, most EPC studies recognized trust as a condition for the successful execution of EPC projects but failed to consider the role of trust in setting up the cooperation relationship prior to project execution.

Facilitating program performance profiling via evolutionary symbolic execution

SummaryPerformance profiling can benefit from test cases that hit high‐cost executions of programs. In this paper, we investigate the problem of automatically generating test cases that trigger the worst‐case execution of programs and propose a novel technique that solves this problem with an unprecedented combination of symbolic execution and evolutionary algorithms. Our technique, which we refer to as ‘Evolutionary Symbolic Execution’, embraces the execution cost of the program paths as the fitness function to pursue the worst execution. It defines an original set of evolutionary operators, based on symbolic execution, which suitably sample the possible program paths to make the search process effective. Specifically, our technique defines a memetic algorithm that (i) incrementally evolves by steering symbolic execution to traverse new program paths that comply with execution conditions combined and refined from the currently collected worse program paths and (ii) periodically applies local optimizations to the execution conditions of the worst currently identified program path to further speed up the identification of the worst path. We report on a set of initial experiments indicating that our technique succeeds in generating good worst‐case test cases for programs with which existing approaches cannot cope. Also, we show that, as far as the problem of generating worst‐case test cases is concerned, the distinguishing evolutionary operators based on symbolic execution that we define in this paper are more effective than traditional operators that directly manipulate the program inputs.

Psychosocial and Ergonomic Conditions at Work: Influence on the Probability of a Workplace Accident.

Today, the economic and social importance of occupational accidents is undeniable worldwide. Hence, research aimed at reducing this type of accident is considered a discipline of great interest for society in general. In this environment, working conditions play a fundamental role in the occurrence of accidents, and from their study, results can be obtained that provide information for decision-making that guarantee optimum conditions for the development of the employees' tasks. Organizing the conditions of work execution is also a task that constitutes an essential aspect for a firm's productivity, therefore, affecting their viability and results. In this work, a model is proposed for the study of different groups of working conditions and their influence on the probability of occupational accidents, in accordance with the data provided by the 7th National Survey of Working Conditions (VII NSWC). The survey sampled 8892 workers active in all sectors of national production and is the last nation-wide survey administered in Spain. Bayesian networks (BNs) are used to generate a network that analyzes working conditions in all areas (27 variables have been included in addition to those corresponding to the sector and accident), and then, more specifically, the relationship that is established between ergonomic factors in the workplace, psychosocial factors of the worker, and the probability of an accident. The results are achieved through the network obtained by highlighting some of the proposed variables. The dependencies generated by the chosen variables are analyzed, and subsequently, the probability of accident for each of the productive sectors is determined. It is concluded that the ergonomic risks associated with physical strains in the workplace, together with the lack of job satisfaction on the employer's behalf, both pose a very significant increase in the probability of being involved in an occupational accident, above the other variables of study.

The Struve Geodetic Arc: the development of the triangulation, technical possibilities, and the initiation of the project

Abstract. The determination of parameters of the Earth's ellipsoid is quite a difficult task that gives no rest to scientists to this day. One of the more famous works is the Struve Geodetic Arc, which was stretched from the Black Sea to the Arctic Ocean by employing the method of a triangulation network and which is included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site list. However, until this project was implemented, many steps of scientific and technological advancement had to be taken, the entirety of which created the conditions for the realization of this project. A study of the method of triangulation measurements, the development of geodetic devices, the state politics of the Russian Empire in the 17th–19th centuries in the field of geodesy, and the development of triangulation during this period are presented in the article. Moreover, a study of the origins of the Struve Geodetic Arc project that led to such a grand result is conducted. The obtained results reveal that certain factors predetermined the favourable conditions for the successful execution of the project of this geodetic arc.

Research on deformed slope parameters inversion based on equivalent conversion of soil pressure and application

In this paper, a structural surface parameter inversion method for equivalent conversion of soil pressure is proposed. It can avoid the adverse effects of low overburden parameters, most dangerous sliding surface and relatively concentrated deformation limited to the overburden location. On this basis, we obtain the real inverse shear strength parameters of the deformation control structural surface. It can provide a reliable basis for evaluating the whole stability and protecting design of deformed slope. This paper analyzes and compares two kinds of supporting schemes for the deformed slope. The stability meets the requirements. In the actual situation, the design schemes can be selected according to the execution conditions, excavation and support sequence, and economic conditions

Application of Simulator Complexes as an Innovation Method for Improving the Preparedness of Fire Rescue Department Members of Emercom of Russia for Emergency Response

The paper describes the necessity to use simulator complexes simulating the extreme conditions of execution of professional applied tasks as an innovation method for developing professionally important qualities of fire rescue department members of the EMERCOM of Russia. The main parameters of professionally important qualities of fire rescue department members of the EMERCOM of Russia are shown in detail. The level of importance of professionally important qualities and their characteristics were evaluated. The importance of professional training and also the necessity to constantly develop and improve the practical skills and knowledges of fire rescue department members of the EMERCOM of Russia by means of systematic trainings using simulators and simulator complexes were grounded. The innovation methods of education were described basing upon the simulator complexes simulating the extreme conditions of execution of professional and applied tasks by a member of the fire rescue department of the EMERCOM of Russia.

ПРО СОЦІАЛЬНО-ПРАВОВУ ПРИРОДУ ЗАБОРОН ЩОДО ПРОДУКТІВ ХАРЧУВАННЯ ДЛЯ ЗАСУДЖЕНИХ, ПОЗБАВЛЕНИХ ВОЛІ, ЯКІ ВОНИ МАЮТЬ ПРАВО ЗБЕРІГАТИ ПРИ СОБ

У статті піддано аналізу ті норми кримінально-виконавчого права, що стосуються встановлення заборон стосовно продуктів харчування, виробів і речовин, які засуджені можуть отримувати в посилках (передачах), купувати в крамницях установ виконання покарань та зберігати при собі, а також розроблено науково обґрунтовані пропозиції щодо зменшення їх переліку на нормативно-правовому рівні.

Sand Compaction Pile Method and Its Applications

A unique ground improvement method developed in Japan, the sand compaction pile (SCP) method, improves soft ground by using vibration to install sand or any other similar material into soft ground via a casing pipe and forms sand piles in the ground. The vibratory SCP method is applied to not only cohesive ground, but sandy ground as well and is the most typically used liquefaction countermeasure method in Japan. This report gives an outline of non-vibratory SCP and injection-type SCP, which were developed from the vibratory SCP method to meet current requirements such as environmental friendliness and downsizing, and how they are used, what materials are used, and case studies regarding their application. In addition, as a result of analyzing the improvement effect as a liquefaction countermeasure, the improvement effects of non-vibratory SCP and injection-type SCP are equivalent to that of vibratory SCP. From these, it is confirmed that the SCP method can be applied in various execution conditions as a liquefaction countermeasure and it is expected that the method can be widely utilized in countries all over the world.

Automatically Verifying Temporal Properties of Pointer Programs with Cyclic Proof

In this article, we investigate the automated verification of temporal properties of heap-aware programs. We propose a deductive reasoning approach based on cyclic proof. Judgements in our proof system assert that a program has a certain temporal property over memory state assertions, written in separation logic with user-defined inductive predicates, while the proof rules of the system unfold temporal modalities and predicate definitions as well as symbolically executing programs. Cyclic proofs in our system are, as usual, finite proof graphs subject to a natural, decidable soundness condition, encoding a form of proof by infinite descent. We present a proof system tailored to proving CTL properties of nondeterministic pointer programs, and then adapt this system to handle fair execution conditions. We show both versions of the system to be sound, and provide an implementation of each in the Cyclist theorem prover, yielding an automated tool that is capable of automatically discovering proofs of (fair) temporal properties of pointer programs. Experimental evaluation of our tool indicates that our approach is viable, and offers an interesting alternative to traditional model checking techniques.

Anticipatory effect of execution on observation: an approach using ExoPinch finger robot

Background/aimThis study aims to explore the mirror neuron system (MNS) involvement using mu (8–12 Hz)/beta (15–25 Hz) band suppression in an action observation-execution paradigm.Materials and methodsElectrophysiological (EEG) data from 16 electrodes were recorded while 8 participants observed video clips of a hand squeezing a spring. Specifically, the effect of anticipated execution on observation was studied. For this purpose, a fully actuated finger exoskeleton robot was utilized to synchronize observation and execution and to control the execution condition for the participants. Anticipatory effect was created with a randomized robot accompany session.ResultsThe results showed that the observational condition (with or without anticipation) interacted with hemisphere at central channels near somatosensory cortex. Additionally, we explored the response of MNS on the kinetics features of visual stimuli (hard or soft spring).ConclusionThe results showed an interaction effect of kinetics features and hemisphere at frontal channels corresponding nearly to the ventral premotor cortex area of the brain. The activation of mirror neurons in this area plays a crucial role in observational learning. Based on our results, we propose that specific type of visual stimuli can be combined with the functional abilities of the MNS in the action observation based treatment of hand motor dysfunction of stroke patients to have a positive additional impact.

Influence of acute combined physical and cognitive exercise on cognitive function: an NIRS study.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of different types of acute exercise on cognitive function and cerebral oxygenation. A within-subject design was adopted. In total, 20 healthy older adults were enrolled in the study. They came to the laboratory individually on four separate days and completed four conditions of activity. Four conditions were sedentary reading control (RC), cognitive exercise (CE), physical exercise (PE) and cognitive + physical exercise (CE + PE). During these visits, participants completed the Stroop task before and immediately after the experimental condition, which consisted of 15 min of aerobic exercise, verbal fluency task (VFT), and dual task. The Stroop task included the following two conditions: a naming condition and an executive condition. The fNIRS is an optical method using near-infrared light to measure relative changes of oxygenated (O2Hb) and deoxygenated (HHb) hemoglobin in the cortex. The results indicate that acute exercise facilitates performance for executive tasks, not only combined cognition, but also the different results between combined exercise and single exercise. The fNIRS findings showed that acute single exercise influences oxygenation for executive tasks but not for naming tasks. Greater improvement was observed in the post-exercise session of combined exercise during the modified Stroop. These findings demonstrate that acute single exercise, single cognition exercise, and combined exercise enhanced the performance of the inhibition control task. Only acute combined exercise has a general facilitative effect on inhibition control. Combined exercise was shown to be superior to single exercise for task-efficient cerebral oxygenation and improved oxygen utilization during cortical activation in older individuals. Also, to maximize the performance of cognition it may be important for older adults to take part in more cognitive demand exercise or take more kinds of exercise.

FIDUCIARY GAME RULES AND THE GOVERNANCE NATURE IN THE COMPANY

The author considers features of relationships between the fiduciary (management, board of director) and shareholders (beneficiaries). The nature of fiduciary relations is connected with «a critical resource» (assets) of the beneficiary. In the company economic interests of various participants (shareholders, management) face. Delegation discretion the shareholder to the management will allow to build together with the shareholder effective economic strategy of the company, under condition of execution of fiduciary duties. The management possesses administrative immunity within the limits of application of the business judgment rule. Actions of the management at transaction fulfilment should have real character, possess economic sense, a rationality and to promote achievement of economic benefit in the form of increase to shareholder value. The special attention is given to the fiduciary nature of interaction. Imposing of fiduciary duties on the management allows the beneficiary to protect the company from destruction of shareholder value. The shareholder should specify such game rules that the management was unable break them or, at least, cost of their infringement would be above reception of personal benefit. Fiduciary principles allow to soften the conflict between management and the shareholder. Besides, the fiduciary mechanism possesses a preventive element, keeping the company from destruction. The given obligation of loyalty protects resources of the shareholder from wrongful acts from the management. Fiduciary principles allow to balance economic interests between a management and shareholders.

Joint Mode Selection and Resource Allocation for D2D-Enabled NOMA Cellular Networks

The 5G cellular network employs non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) to enhance network connectivity and capacity, and device-to-device (D2D) communications to improve spectrum efficiency. However, the underlay D2D communications may destroy the execution condition for the successive interference cancellation (SIC) decoding of NOMA cellular networks by introducing the extra interference, which degrades the cellular transmission reliability. Thus, we develop the interlay mode as a special D2D mode for NOMA system, which enables the power domain multiplexing of the D2D pair and cellular users to eliminate the strong interference between them by the SIC decoding. When D2D pair conducts the selection between the interlay mode and underlay mode, the SIC decoding constraint should be satisfied at both D2D receiver and NOMA base station. In order to maximize the system sum rate while meeting the SIC decoding constraint, we propose a joint D2D mode selection and resource allocation scheme with interlay mode, which can be formulated as a combinatorial optimization problem. To tackle the combinatorial nature of mode selection and spectrum assignment, we first prove that the original problem can be reformulated as a maximum weight clique problem, and then propose a graph-based algorithm by applying branch-and-bound method to obtain its optimal solution. Finally, simulation results are provided to demonstrate that the interlay mode along with the proposed algorithms can coordinate D2D communications and NOMA cellular network to significantly improve the system sum rate and the D2D access rate.

How does task switching affect arithmetic strategy use in children with low mathematics achievement? Evidence from computational estimation

Although an increasing number of studies have suggested that students with low mathematics achievement (LMA) tend to perform worse in arithmetic strategy use than children with typical development, the potential reasons remain unclear. Accordingly, the current study investigated the potential impact of task switching on strategy use for children with LMA in computational estimation. In order to determine whether the differences in strategy use by children with LMA were due to a developmental delay or a developmental defect, 21 sixth-graders with LMA, 20 sixth-grader age-matched normal students (AM), and 21 fifth-grade math achievement–matched normal students (MM) were selected. The combination of choice/no-choice method and switching paradigm was employed. Results showed that task switching had significant effects on rounding-down strategy in the strategy execution condition for all groups. However, its effect on rounding-up strategy was significant only for the LMA group. In addition, the AM group outperformed significantly the LMA and MM groups on strategy choice, but the latter two groups did not significantly differ. These results suggest that strategy switch costs were influenced by participants and strategy characteristics. Moreover, poor performance of strategy choice in LMA children was likely due to a developmental delay rather than a defect.

Cache-conscious off-line real-time scheduling for multi-core platforms: algorithms and implementation

Most schedulability analysis techniques for multi-core architectures assume a single worst-case execution time (WCET) per task, which is valid in all execution conditions. This assumption is too pessimistic for parallel applications running on multi-core architectures with local instruction or data caches, for which the WCET of a task depends on the cache contents at the beginning of its execution, itself depending on the tasks that were executed immediately before the task under study. In this paper, we propose two scheduling techniques for multi-core architectures equipped with local instruction and data caches. The two techniques schedule a parallel application modeled as a task graph, and generate a static partitioned non-preemptive schedule, that takes benefit of cache reuse between pairs of consecutive tasks. We propose an exact method, using an integer linear programming formulation, as well as a heuristic method based on list scheduling. The efficiency of the techniques is demonstrated through an implementation of these cache-conscious schedules on a real multi-core hardware: a 16-core cluster of the Kalray MPPA-256, Andey generation. We point out implementation issues that arise when implementing the schedules on this particular platform. In addition, we propose strategies to adapt the schedules to the identified implementation factors. An experimental evaluation reveals that our proposed scheduling methods significantly reduce the length of schedules as compared to cache-agnostic scheduling methods. Furthermore, our experiments show that among the identified implementation factors, shared bus contention has the most impact.