Experimental comparison of the comprehensibility of a Z specification and its implementation in Java

Comprehensibility is often raised as a problem with formal notations, yet formal methods practitioners dispute this. In a survey, one interviewee said 'formal specifications are no more difficult to understand than code'. Measurement of comprehension is necessarily comparative and a useful comparison for a specification is against its implementation. Practitioners have an intuitive feel for the comprehension of code. A quantified comparison will transfer this feeling to formal specifications. We performed an experiment to compare the comprehension of a Z specification with that of its implementation in Java. The results indicate there is little difference in comprehensibility between the two. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Enterprise intelligence: searching for a single version of the truth

Multiple versions of information and associated problems are well documented in both academic research and industry best practices. Many solutions have proposed a single version of the truth, with Business intelligence being adopted by many organizations. Business Intelligence (BI), however, is largely based on the collection of data, processing and presentation of information to meet different stakeholders’ requirement. This paper reviews the promise of Enterprise Intelligence, which promises to support decision-making based on a defined strategic understanding of the organizations goals and a unified version of the truth.

Searching for happiness across cultures

Three experiments examined the cultural relativity of emotion recognition using the visual search task. Caucasian-English and Japanese participants were required to search for an angry or happy discrepant face target against an array of competing distractor faces. Both cultural groups performed the task with displays that consisted of Caucasian and Japanese faces in order to investigate the effects of racial congruence on emotion detection performance. Under high perceptual load conditions, both cultural groups detected the happy face more efficiently than the angry face. When perceptual load was reduced such that target detection could be achieved by feature-matching, the English group continued to show a happiness advantage in search performance that was more strongly pronounced for other race faces. Japanese participants showed search time equivalence for happy and angry targets. Experiment 3 encouraged participants to adopt a perceptual based strategy for target detection by removing the term 'emotion' from the instructions. Whilst this manipulation did not alter the happiness advantage displayed by our English group, it reinstated it for our Japanese group, who showed a detection advantage for happiness only for other race faces. The results demonstrate cultural and linguistic modifiers on the perceptual saliency of the emotional signal and provide new converging evidence from cognitive psychology for the interactionist perspective on emotional expression recognition.

Fibroblast growth factor 2 maintains the neurogenic capacity of embryonic neural progenitor cells in vitro but changes their neuronal subtype specification

Many in vitro systems used to examine multipotential neural progenitor cells (NPCs) rely on mitogens including fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) for their continued expansion. However, FGF2 has also been shown to alter the expression of transcription factors (TFs) that determine cell fate. Here, we report that NPCs from the embryonic telencephalon grown without FGF2 retain many of their in vivo characteristics, making them a good model for investigating molecular mechanisms involved in cell fate specification and differentiation. However, exposure of cortical NPCs to FGF2 results in a profound change in the types of neurons generated, switching them from a glutamatergic to a GABAergic phenotype. This change closely correlates with the dramatic upregulation of TFs more characteristic of ventral telencephalic NPCs. In addition, exposure of cortical NPCs to FGF2 maintains their neurogenic potential in vitro, and NPCs spontaneously undergo differentiation following FGF2 withdrawal. These results highlight the importance of TFs in determining the types of neurons generated by NPCs in vitro. In addition, they show that FGF2, as well as acting as a mitogen, changes the developmental capabilities of NPCs. These findings have implications for the cell fate specification of in vitro-expanded NPCs and their ability to generate specific cell types for therapeutic applications. Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest is found at the end of this article.

Linear vs. log-linear unit-root specification: an application of mis-specification encompassing

The objective of this paper is to apply the mis-specification (M-S) encompassing perspective to the problem of choosing between linear and log-linear unit-root models. A simple M-S encompassing test, based on an auxiliary regression stemming from the conditional second moment, is proposed and its empirical size and power are investigated using Monte Carlo simulations. It is shown that by focusing on the conditional process the sampling distributions of the relevant statistics are well behaved under both the null and alternative hypotheses. The proposed M-S encompassing test is illustrated using US total disposable income quarterly data.

Can portmanteau nonlinearity tests serve as general mis-specification tests?

A number of recent papers have employed the BDS test as a general test for mis-specification for linear and nonlinear models. We show that for a particular class of conditionally heteroscedastic models, the BDS test is unable to detect a common mis-specification. Our results also demonstrate that specific rather than portmanteau diagnostics are required to detect neglected asymmetry in volatility. However for both classes of tests reasonable power is only obtained using very large sample sizes.

Crossbred cow adoption and its correlates: countable adoption specification search in Sri Lanka's small holder dairy sector

Considerable specification choice confronts countable adoption investigations and there is need to measure, formally, the evidence in favor of competing formulations. This article presents alternative countable adoption specifications—hitherto neglected in the agricultural-economics literature—and assesses formally their usefulness to practitioners. Reference to the left side of de Finetti's (1937) famous representation theorem motivates Bayesian unification of agricultural adoption studies and facilitates comparisons with conventional binary-choice specifications. Such comparisons have not previously been considered. The various formulations and the specific techniques are highlighted in an application to crossbred cow adoption in Sri Lanka's small-holder dairy sector.

Multinational companies and productivity spillovers: is there a specification error?

Recent empirical works on the within-sector impact of inward investments on domestic firms’ productivity have found rather robust evidence of no (or even negative) effects. We suggest that, among other reasons, a specification error might explain some of these results. A more general specification, which includes the usual one as a special case, is proposed. Using data on Italian manufacturing firms in 1992–2000, we find positive externalities only once we allow for the more flexible specification.

Perspectives on the specification of Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) technology in construction projects

Innovative, low carbon technologies are already available for use in the construction of buildings, but the impact of their specification on construction projects is unclear. This exploratory research identifies issues which arise following the specification of BIPV in non-residential construction projects. Rather than treating the inclusion of a new technology as a technical problem, the research explores the issue from a socio-technical perspective to understand the accommodations which the project team makes and their effect on the building and the technology. The paper is part of a larger research project which uses a Social Construction of Technology Approach (SCOT) to explore the accommodations made to working practices and design when Building Integrated PhotoVoltaic (BIPV) technology is introduced. The approach explores how the requirements of the technology from different groups of actors (Relevant Social Groups or RSG's) give rise to problems and create solutions. As such it rejects the notion of a rational linear view of innovation diffusion; instead it suggests that the variety and composition of the Relevant Social Groups set the agenda for problem solving and solutions as the project progresses. The research explores the experiences of three people who have extensive histories of involvement with BIPV in construction, looks at how SCOT can inform our understanding of the issues involved and identifies themes and issues in the specification of BIPV on construction projects. A key finding concerns the alignment of inflection points at which interviewees have found themselves changing from one RSG to another as new problems and solutions are identified. The points at which they change RSG often occurred at points which mirror conventional construction categories (in terms of project specification, tender, design and construction).

Still searching for graves: an analytical strategy for interpreting geophysical data used in the search for “unmarked” graves

Searching for and mapping the physical extent of unmarked graves using geophysical techniques has proven difficult in many cases. The success of individual geophysical techniques for detecting graves depends on a site-by-site basis. Significantly, detection of graves often results from measured contrasts that are linked to the background soils rather than the type of archaeological feature associated with the grave. It is evident that investigation of buried remains should be considered within a 3D space as the variation in burial environment can be extremely varied through the grave. Within this paper, we demonstrate the need for a multi-method survey strategy to investigate unmarked graves, as applied at a “planned” but unmarked pauper’s cemetery. The outcome from this case study provides new insights into the strategy that is required at such sites. Perhaps the most significant conclusion is that unmarked graves are best understood in terms of characterization rather than identification. In this paper, we argue for a methodological approach that, while following the current trends to use multiple techniques, is fundamentally dependent on a structured approach to the analysis of the data. The ramifications of this case study illustrate the necessity of an integrated strategy to provide a more holistic understanding of unmarked graves that may help aid in management of these unseen but important aspects of our heritage. It is concluded that the search for graves is still a current debate and one that will be solved by methodological rather than technique-based arguments.

Mediated action and sexual risk: Searching for 'culture' in discourses of homosexuality and AIDS prevention in China

This paper examines the concept of ‘culture’ and its relationship to HIV prevention. Culture is here seen as the interaction between human beings and the various ‘cultural tools’ they appropriate when taking action. Among these tools are ways of speaking which encode certain meanings, ideologies and social practices. When individuals take action with regard to AIDS, what they do is mediated through voices which they borrow strategically from their environ- ment. The textual tools that are available and the ways individuals adapt and combine them work to either limit or amplify their participation in HIV prevention. What are traditionally seen as ‘cultures’ or ‘sub-cultures’, or worse, ‘risk groups’, are, in this perspective, viewed as ‘communities of practice’, groups of individuals who share particular cultural tools and ways of using them. This conceptual framework is applied to recent discourses of homosexuality and AIDS prevention in China. An instance of ‘of� cial’ discourse in the form of an AIDS education pamphlet for ‘gays’ is analysed for the voices it contains and how these voices are strategically marshalled by the authors and mixed with other voices in ways which amplify participation in AIDS prevention for some and limit it for others. This ‘offical’ discourse is then compared to the discourse of homosexually active Chinese men recently interviewed in Beijing and Fuzhou to examine which of these of� cial voices and other voices they appropriate, and how they adapt these voices in responding to HIV.

Searching for s-Process-Enhanced Metal-Poor Stars

We present preliminary results for the estimation of barium [Ba/Fe], and strontium [Sr/Fe], abundances ratios using medium-resolution spectra (1-2 angstrom). We established a calibration between the abundance ratios and line indices for Ba and Sr, using multiple regression and artificial neural network techniques. A comparison between the two techniques (showing the advantage of the latter), as well as a discussion of future work, is presented.

Searching for planar signatures in WMAP

We search for planar deviations of statistical isotropy in the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data by applying a recently introduced angular-planar statistics both to full-sky and to masked temperature maps, including in our analysis the effect of the residual foreground contamination and systematics in the foreground removing process as sources of error. We confirm earlier findings that full-sky maps exhibit anomalies at the planar (l) and angular (l) scales (l; l) = (2; 5); (4; 7); and (6; 8), which seem to be due to unremoved foregrounds since this features are present in the full-sky map but not in the masked maps. On the other hand, our test detects slightly anomalous results at the scales (l; l) = (10; 8) and (2; 9) in the masked maps but not in the full-sky one, indicating that the foreground cleaning procedure (used to generate the full-sky map) could not only be creating false anomalies but also hiding existing ones. We also find a significant trace of an anomaly in the full-sky map at the scale (l; l) = (10; 5), which is still present when we consider galactic cuts of 18.3% and 28.4%. As regards the quadrupole (l = 2), we find a coherent over-modulation over the whole celestial sphere, for all full-sky and cut-sky maps. Overall, our results seem to indicate that current CMB maps derived from WMAP data do not show significant signs of anisotropies, as measured by our angular-planar estimator. However, we have detected a curious coherence of planar modulations at angular scales of the order of the galaxy`s plane, which may be an indication of residual contaminations in the full-and cut-sky maps.

Optimal Path Searching through Specified Routes using different Algorithms

To connect different electrical, network and data devices with the minimum cost and shortest path, is a complex job. In huge buildings, where the devices are placed at different locations on different floors and only some specific routes are available to pass the cables and buses, the shortest path search becomes more complex. The aim of this thesis project is, to develop an application which indentifies the best path to connect all objects or devices by following the specific routes.To address the above issue we adopted three algorithms Greedy Algorithm, Simulated Annealing and Exhaustive search and analyzed their results. The given problem is similar to Travelling Salesman Problem. Exhaustive search is a best algorithm to solve this problem as it checks each and every possibility and give the accurate result but it is an impractical solution because of huge time consumption. If no. of objects increased from 12 it takes hours to search the shortest path. Simulated annealing is emerged with some promising results with lower time cost. As of probabilistic nature, Simulated annealing could be non optimal but it gives a near optimal solution in a reasonable duration. Greedy algorithm is not a good choice for this problem. So, simulated annealing is proved best algorithm for this problem. The project has been implemented in C-language which takes input and store output in an Excel Workbook