The Language Evolver Lever — Tool Demonstration —

Since many domains are constantly evolving, the associated domain specific languages (DSL) inevitably have to evolve too, to retain their value. But the evolution of a DSL can be very expensive, since existing words of the language (i.e. programs) and tools have to be adapted according to the changes of the DSL itself. In such cases, these costs seriously limit the adoption of DSLs.This paper presents Lever, a tool for the evolutionary development of DSLs. Lever aims at making evolutionary changes to a DSL much cheaper by automating the adaptation of the DSL parser as well as existing words and providing additional support for the correct adaptation of existing tools (e.g. program generators). This way, Lever simplifies DSL maintenance and paves the ground for bottom-up DSL development.     

“Klimaschutz-Büroturm” geplant

AktuellSun-Tower

“Klimaschutz-Büroturm” geplant     

Microbial degradation of nitrilotriacetate (NTA) during river water/groundwater infiltration: Laboratory column studies

In laboratory column experiments with aquifer material collected from a natural river water/groundwater infiltration site, the effects of changes in NTA concentration (0.06–3.40 μM), temperature (5–20°C), and redox conditions on the microbial degradation of NTA during infiltration have been investigated. Under both aerobic and denitrifying conditions, NTA was rapidly mineralized and supported microbial growth as a sole carbon and energy source. The presence of other degradable organic compounds and of trace metals had no significant effect on the total rate of NTA elimination after a 21.8 cm flow distance. At concentrations between 0.02 and 0.05 μM, NTA degradation was still rapid (apparent pseudo first-order rate constants of up to 15 d⁻¹). From the results of the column experiments it may be concluded that under environmental conditions typical for Switzerland, very low residual NTA concentrations (< 0.01 μM) should be present at all times of the year in the groundwater after only a few meters of infiltration, even when concentrations of NTA in river water reach 3–4 μM. This conclusion is corroborated by results of field measurements.     

Ligand-exchange detection of phosphorylated peptides using liquid chromatography electrospray mass spectrometry

Electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) is used to selectively detect analytes with a high affinity for metal ions. The detection method is based on the selective monitoring of a competing ligand at its specific m/z value that is released during the ligand-exchange reaction of a metal-ligand complex with analyte(s) eluting from a reversed-phase liquid chromatography column. The ligand-exchange reaction proceeds in a postcolumn reaction detection system placed prior to the inlet of the electrospray MS interface. The feasibility of metal affinity detection by ESI-MS is demonstrated using phosphorylated peptides and iron(III)methylcalcein blue as reactant, as a model system. Methylcalcein blue (MCB) released upon interaction with phosphorylated peptides is detected at m/z 278. The ligand-exchange detection is coupled to a C8 reversed-phase column to separate several nonphosphorylated enkephalins and the phosphorylated peptides pp60 c-src (P) and M2170. Detection limits of 2 microM were obtained for pp60 c-src (P) and M2170. The linearity of the detection method is tested in the range of 2-80 micromol/L phosphorylated compounds (r(2) = 0.9996), and a relative standard deviation of less than 8% (n = 3) for all MCB responses of the different concentrations of phosphorylated compounds was obtained. The presented method showed specificity for phosphorylated peptides and may prove a useful tool for studying other ligand-exchange reactions and metal-protein interactions.     

Assessing energy tax systems: The effects of energy taxation in Switzerland

The Swiss Federal Administration has recently proposed the urgent introduction of an energy tax. In this article the authors describe the range of tax structures which could be designed from various combinations of basic components. The fiscal, economic and administrative repercussions of various energy tax structures are traced through and compared with those of a value added tax. The authors examine, in particular, the effects of an energy tax in Switzerland and the interactions between such a tax and federal fiscal policies. The choice of a particular energy tax structure is a normative decision which must be left to the political process. The authors hope that this article will be useful in making such processes more transparent, more rational and more effective.     

Testing real-time embedded systems using high level architecture

This work proposes an environment for testing of heterogeneous embedded systems by means of distributed co-simulation. The test occurs in real-time, co-simulating the system software and hardware platform using the high level architecture (HLA) as a middleware. The novelty of this approach is not only providing support for simulations, but allowing the synchronous integration of heterogeneous simulators with a physical real-time environment. In this work we use the Ptolemy framework as a simulation platform. The approach of co-simulation based on HLA allows different simulators and physical devices to inter-operate, for example robots can operate and be tested with a Ptolemy simulations. Case studies are presented to prove the concept, showing the successful integration between Ptolemy and the HLA and test systems using Robot-in-the-loop. The integration of real-time devices through robot operating system was also presented. The approach proved to be able to detect logical and physical design flaws.