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Given a partially observable dynamic system and a diagnoser observing its evolution over time, diagnosability analysis formally verifies (at design time) if the diagnosis system will be able to infer (at runtime) the required information on the hidden part of the dynamic state. Diagnosability directly depends on the availability of observations, and can be guaranteed by different sets of sensors, possibly associated with different costs. In this paper, we tackle the problem of synthesizing observability requirements, i.e. automatically discovering a set of observations that is sufficient to guarantee diagnosability. We propose a novel approach with the following characterizing features. First, it fully covers a comprehensive formal framework for diagnosability analysis, and enables ranking configurations of observables in terms of cost, minimality, and diagnosability delay. Second, we propose two complementary algorithms for the synthesis of observables. Third, we describe an efficient implementation that takes full advantage of mature symbolic model checking techniques. The proposed approach is thoroughly evaluated over a comprehensive suite of benchmarks taken from the aerospace domain.

ISBN 978-952-7426-46-3 (pdf)ISBN 978-952-7426-47-0 (print); International audience

Timed Failure Propagation Graphs (TFPGs) are a formalism used in industry to describe failure propagation in a dynamic partially observable system. TFPGs are commonly used to perform model-based diagnosis. As in any model-based diagnosis approach, however, the quality of the diagnosis strongly depends on the quality of the model. Approaches to certify the quality of the TFPG are limited and mainly rely on testing. In this work we address this problem by leveraging efficient Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) engines to perform exhaustive reasoning on TFPGs. We apply model-checking techniques to certify that a given TFPG satisfies (or not) a property of interest. Moreover, we discuss the problem of refinement and diagnosability testing and empirically show that our technique can be used to efficiently solve them.

This paper presents the 'Ontologica' system, a forefront project born from a joint effort between university and industry in the design of advanced information systems. The aim of the project is twofold: to adopt ontologies and new technologies to manage the Centralized Traffic Control logic in a railway and all the rules making the physical elements of a rail station acting as desired; to improve the user interface with a mechanism to interact with the system using natural language queries. The first results we obtained are very promising. In this paper we discuss them, with the 'Ontologica' rationale and architecture. © 2012 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved

A working group was established by the EUFORGEN Steering Committee to develop the pan-European genetic conservation strategy for forest trees. For each species, the strategy calls for a core network of dynamic conservation units. These units are not interconnected by geneflow, but together capture the current genetic diversity across the European continent. Method: The working group selected 14 pilot tree species representing four categories, depending on their geographical distribution (wide vs restricted) and their ecology (stand-forming vs scattered). The group also created a map of eight environmental zones by amalgamating some of the zones of an accepted environmental zoning classification for Europe. It then sought to identify at least one conservation unit per country for each environmental zone in that country, using a set of criteria to determine the most appropriate unit. This process resulted in the identification of 1836 dynamic conservation units, covering a total area of 205,803 ha and encompassing 2173 populations. Gaps in conservation efforts: To identify gaps in existing conservation efforts, the group compared species distribution maps in each environmental zone in each country with the location of the conservation units. Any species with no unit in an appropriate environmental zone in that country was recorded as a gap, and units were also noted where there was an information gap in the EUFGIS database. Genetic Conservation Strategy: The EUFORGEN Steering Committee will promote implementation, identify additional units once gaps have been filled and will monitor progress. A particular concern is the effect of climate change on phenology, but the detailed effects on long-lived tree species are likely to be variable, complex and difficult to predict. As a result, conservation should focus on the most vulnerable populations and species, for example those near the edge of their environmental limits, which often harbour high genetic diversity. Monitoring such populations should help to reveal key changes in a timely fashion, and management may then be needed to mitigate the effects of climate change.

International audience; Dynamic conservation of forest genetic resources (FGR) means maintaining the genetic diversity of trees within an evolutionary process and allowing generation turnover in the forest. We assessed the network of forests areas managed for the dynamic conservation of FGR (conservation units) across Europe (33 countries). On the basis of information available in the European Information System on FGR (EUFGIS Portal), species distribution maps, and environmental stratification of the continent, we developed ecogeographic indicators, a marginality index, and demographic indicators to assess and monitor forest conservation efforts. The pan-European network has 1967 conservation units, 2737 populations of target trees, and 86 species of target trees. We detected a poor coincidence between FGR conservation and other biodiversity conservation objectives within this network. We identified 2 complementary strategies: a species-oriented strategy in which national conservation networks are specifically designed for key target species and a site-oriented strategy in which multiple-target units include so-called secondary species conserved within a few sites. The network is highly unbalanced in terms of species representation, and 7 key target species are conserved in 60% of the conservation units. We performed specific gap analyses for 11 tree species, including assessment of ecogeographic, demographic, and genetic criteria. For each species, we identified gaps, particularly in the marginal parts of their distribution range, and found multiple redundant conservation units in other areas. The Mediterranean forests and to a lesser extent the boreal forests are underrepresented. Monitoring the conservation efficiency of each unit remains challenging; however

International audience; Safety-critical systems are increasingly difficult to com- prehend due to their rising complexity. Methodologies, tools and modeling formalisms have been developed to overcome this. Component-based design is an im- portant paradigm that is shared by many of them.

International audience; This paper aims at presenting methods and tools that are developed in the ISAAC project (Improvement of Safety Activities on Aeronautical Complex Systems, www.isaac-fp6.org), a European Community funded project, to support the safety assessment of complex embedded systems. The ISAAC methodology proposes to base as much of the safety analyses as is feasibly possible on simulable and formally verifiable system models that include fault models and can be shared both by safety and design engineers. On one hand, tools were developed to support safety assessment of Simulink, SCADE, Statemate, NuSMV and AltaRica models. On the other hand, formal models are coupled with additional models to address the problems of common cause analysis and human error analysis.

Recently identified mutations affecting different domains of the RET proto-oncogene are associated with Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia type 2A (MEN 2A) and type 2B (MEN 2B), familial and sporadic Medullary Thyroid Carcinomas (MTC) and Hirschsprung disease (HSCR). In order to facilitate the screening for RET mutations, and to study possible genotype-phenotype correlations, we established exon-intron junctions and extended the intronic sequences flanking the 20 exons of this gene. This made it possible to design primers and to develop PCR conditions useful for SSCP analysis of the whole RET coding sequence. Nine conformational variants were observed which after sequencing turned out to be 8 silent mutations and a conservative amino acid substitution. Restriction analysis performed on DNA samples from unrelated controls confirmed the polymorphic nature of six of these nucleotide changes and made it possible to estimate the frequency of the corresponding alleles.

This paper presents the "Ontologica" system, a forefront project born from a joint effort between the Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and System Engineering of Genoa university and Ansaldo STS from the same city in the design of advanced information systems. The aim of the project is twofold: the adoption of ontologies to manage the Centralized Traffic Control CTC logics of a railway system; the improvement of the user interface through the exploitation of natural language queries. Being Ansaldo STS a leader in the railway and metro scope, this project aims to develop a system to be tested on a real and large dataset before being adopted in the railway stations using the CTC system. The first results we obtained are very promising and the system is currently under testing and improvement. In this paper we present the "Ontologica" rationale and architecture with some usage examples.

This paper discusses some of the challenges raised by multilinguality in the Public Administration field and shows how the MUSE system addresses them by combining speech to text, text to speech, and machine translation techniques, utilizing domain ontologies throughout a complex system designed as a Multi-Agent System and deployed by exploiting resources in the Cloud. The design of MUSE is finished and its implementation and unit testing are under way. On completion of these two stages, MUSE will be experimented in the Registry Office of Genoa Municipality which is supporting this activity by providing the authors with data, advice on the domain, and the opportunity to test MUSE on the field. The final purpose of this work is to make MUSE’s services available to all the foreign citizens interacting with Genoa Municipality’s Registry Office. The two languages currently supported are Spanish and Italian. Due to the high modularity of MUSE’s architecture, a limited effort will be required to add other languages in the future, if the on site experimentation will be successful.