Abstract: A Cyber-Physical System (CPS) comprises physical as well as software subsystems. Simulation-based approaches are typically used to support design and Verification and Validation (V&V) of CPSs in several domains such as: aerospace, defence, automotive, smart grid and healthcare. Accordingly, many simulation-based tools are available to support CPS design. This, on one side, enables designers to choose the toolchain that best suits their needs, on the other side poses huge interoperability challenges when one needs to simulate CPSs whose subsystems have been designed and modelled using different toolchains. To overcome such an interoperability problem, in 2010 the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) has been proposed as an open standard to support both Model Exchange (ME) and Co-Simulation (CS) of simulation models created with different toolchains. FMI has been adopted by several modelling and simulation environments. Models adhering to such a standard are called Functional Mock-up Units (FMUs). Indeed FMUs play an essential role in defining complex CPSs through, e.g., the System Structure and Parametrization (SSP) standard. Simulation-based V&V of CPSs typically requires exploring different simulation scenarios (i.e., exogenous input sequences to the CPS under design). Many such scenarios have a shared prefix. Accordingly, to avoid simulating many times such shared prefixes, the simulator state at the end of a shared prefix is saved and then restored and used as a start state for the simulation of the next scenario. In this context, an important FMI feature is the capability to save and restore the internal FMU state on demand. This is crucial to increase efficiency of simulation-based V&V. Unfortunately, the implementation of this feature is not mandatory and it is available only within some commercial software. As a result, the interoperability enabled by the FMI standard cannot be fully exploited for V&V when using open-source simulation environments. This motivates developing such a feature for open-source CPS simulation environments. Accordingly, in this paper, we focus on JModelica, an open-source modelling and simulation environment for CPSs based on an open standard modelling language, namely Modelica. We describe how we have endowed JModelica with our open-source implementation of the FMI 2.0 functions needed to save and restore internal states of FMUs for ME. Furthermore, we present experimental results evaluating, through 934 benchmark models, correctness and efficiency of our extended JModelica. Our experimental results show that simulation-based V&V is, on average, 22 times faster with our get/set functionality than without it.

Abstract: In Silico Clinical Trials (ISCT), i.e. clinical experimental campaigns carried out by means of computer simulations, hold the promise to decrease time and cost for the safety and efficacy assessment of pharmacological treatments, reduce the need for animal and human testing, and enable precision medicine. In this paper we present methods and an algorithm that, by means of extensive computer simulation-based experimental campaigns (ISCT) guided by intelligent search, optimise a pharmacological treatment for an individual patient (precision medicine ). We show the effectiveness of our approach on a case study involving a real pharmacological treatment, namely the downregulation phase of a complex clinical protocol for assisted reproduction in humans.

Abstract: Advances in the use of neuroimaging in combination with A.I., and specifically the use of machine learning techniques, have led to the development of brain-reading technologies which, in the nearby future, could have many applications, such as lie detection, neuromarketing or brain-computer interfaces. Some of these could, in principle, also be used in forensic psychiatry. The application of these methods in forensic psychiatry could, for instance, be helpful to increase the accuracy of risk assessment and to identify possible interventions. This technique could be referred to as ‘A.I. neuroprediction,’ and involves identifying potential neurocognitive markers for the prediction of recidivism. However, the future implications of this technique and the role of neuroscience and A.I. in violence risk assessment remain to be established. In this paper, we review and analyze the literature concerning the use of brain-reading A.I. for neuroprediction of violence and rearrest to identify possibilities and challenges in the future use of these techniques in the fields of forensic psychiatry and criminal justice, considering legal implications and ethical issues. The analysis suggests that additional research is required on A.I. neuroprediction techniques, and there is still a great need to understand how they can be implemented in risk assessment in the field of forensic psychiatry. Besides the alluring potential of A.I. neuroprediction, we argue that its use in criminal justice and forensic psychiatry should be subjected to thorough harms/benefits analyses not only when these technologies will be fully available, but also while they are being researched and developed.