Software testing design and implementation in a small software company

Monet ohjelmistoyritykset ovat alkaneet kiinnittää yhä enemmän huomiota ohjelmistotuotteidensa laatuun. Tämä on johtanut siihen, että useimmat niistä ovat valinneet ohjelmistotestauksen välineeksi, jolla tätä laatua voidaan parantaa. Testausta ei pidä rajoittaa ainoastaan ohjelmistotuotteeseen itseensä, vaan sen tulisi kattaa koko ohjelmiston kehitysprosessi. Validaatiotestauksessa keskitytään varmistamaan, että lopputuote täyttää sille asetetut vaatimukset, kun taas verifikaatiotestausta käytetään ennaltaehkäisevänä testauksena, jolla pyritään poistamaan virheitä jo ennenkuin ne pääsevät lähdekoodiin asti. Työ, johon tämä diplomityö perustuu, tehtiin alkukevään ja kesän aikana vuonna 2003 Necsom Oy:n toimeksiannosta. Necsom on pieni suomalainen ohjelmistoyritys, jonka tutkimus- ja kehitysyksikkö toimii Lappeenrannassa.Tässä diplomityössä tutustutaan aluksi ohjelmistotestaukseen sekä eri tapoihin sen organisoimiseksi. Tämän lisäksi annetaan yleisiä ohjeita testisuunnitelmien ja testaustapausten tekoon, joita onnistunut ja tehokas testaus edellyttää. Kun tämä teoria on käyty läpi, esitetään esimerkkinä kuinka sisäinen ohjelmistotestaus toteutettiin Necsomilla. Lopuksi esitetään johtopäätökset, joihin päädyttiin käytännön testausprosessin seuraamisen jälkeen ja annetaan jatkotoimenpide-ehdotuksia.

Design and physicochemical stability studies of paediatric oral formulations of sildenafil

Abstract Personalized medicine is a challenging research area in paediatric treatments. Elaborating new paediatric formulations when no commercial forms are available is a common practice in pharmacy laboratories; among these, oral liquid formulations are the most common. But due to the lack of specialized equipment, frequently studies to assure the efficiency and safety of the final medicine cannot be carried out. Thus the purpose of this work was the development, characterization and stability evaluation of two oral formulations of sildenafil for the treatment of neonatal persistent pulmonary hypertension. After the establishment of a standard operating procedure (SOP) and elaboration, the physicochemical stability parameters appearance, pH, particle size, rheological behaviour and drug content of formulations were evaluated at three different temperatures for 90 days. Equally, prediction of long term stability, as well as, microbiological stability was performed. Formulations resulted in a suspension and a solution slightly coloured exhibiting fruity odour. Formulation I (suspension) exhibited the best physicochemical properties including Newtonian behaviour and uniformity of API content above 90% to assure an exact dosification process.

A measure of stability as a criterion for the verification and analysis of simulation models

The aim of this study is to define a new statistic, PVL, based on the relative distance between the likelihood associated with the simulation replications and the likelihood of the conceptual model. Our results coming from several simulation experiments of a clinical trial show that the PVL statistic range can be a good measure of stability to establish when a computational model verifies the underlying conceptual model. PVL improves also the analysis of simulation replications because only one statistic is associated with all the simulation replications. As well it presents several verification scenarios, obtained by altering the simulation model, that show the usefulness of PVL. Further simulation experiments suggest that a 0 to 20 % range may define adequate limits for the verification problem, if considered from the viewpoint of an equivalence test.

Design and Validation of a Novel Generic Platform for the Production of Tetravalent IgG1-like Bispecific Antibodies.

We have designed and validated a novel generic platform for production of tetravalent IgG1-like chimeric bispecific Abs. The VH-CH1-hinge domains of mAb2 are fused through a peptidic linker to the N terminus of mAb1 H chain, and paired mutations at the CH1-CL interface mAb1 are introduced that force the correct pairing of the two different free L chains. Two different sets of these CH1-CL interface mutations, called CR3 and MUT4, were designed and tested, and prototypic bispecific Abs directed against CD5 and HLA-DR were produced (CD5xDR). Two different hinge sequences between mAb1 and mAb2 were also tested in the CD5xDR-CR3 or -MUT4 background, leading to bispecific Ab (BsAbs) with a more rigid or flexible structure. All four Abs produced bound with good specificity and affinity to CD5 and HLA-DR present either on the same target or on different cells. Indeed, the BsAbs were able to efficiently redirect killing of HLA-DR(+) leukemic cells by human CD5(+) cytokine-induced killer T cells. Finally, all BsAbs had a functional Fc, as shown by their capacity to activate human complement and NK cells and to mediate phagocytosis. CD5xDR-CR3 was chosen as the best format because it had overall the highest functional activity and was very stable in vitro in both neutral buffer and in serum. In vivo, CD5xDR-CR3 was shown to have significant therapeutic activity in a xenograft model of human leukemia.

Aetiologies of pulseless electrical activity in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests:A retrospective study and analysis of specific causes

Background: Pulseless electrical activity (PEA) cardiac arrest is defined as a cardiac arrest (CA) presenting with a residual organized electrical activity on the electrocardiogram. In the last decades, the incidence of PEA has regularly increased, compared to other types of CA like ventricular fibrillation or pulseless ventricular tachycardia. PEA is frequently induced by reversible conditions. The "4 (or 5) H" & "4 (or 5) T" are proposed as a mnemonic to asses for Hypoxia, Hypovolemia, Hypo- /Hyperkalaemia, Hypothermia, Thrombosis (cardiac or pulmonary), cardiac Tamponade, Toxins, and Tension pneumothorax. Other pathologies (intracranial haemorrhage, severe sepsis, myocardial contraction dysfunction) have been identified as potential causes for PEA, but their respective probability and frequencies are unclear and they are not yet included into the resuscitation guidelines. The aim of this study was to analyse the aetiologies of PEA out-of-hospital CA, in order to evaluate the relative frequencies of each cause and therefore to improve the management of patients suffering a PEA cardiac arrest. Method: This retrospective study was based on data routinely and prospectively collected for each PEMS intervention. All adult patients treated from January 1st 2002 to December 2012 31st by the PEMS for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, with PEA as the first recorded rhythm, and admitted to the emergency department (ED) of the Lausanne University Hospital were included. The aetiologies of PEA cardiac arrest were classified into subgroups, based on the classical H&T's classification, supplemented by four other subgroups analysis: trauma, intra-cranial haemorrhage (ICH), non-ischemic cardiomyopathy (NIC) and undetermined cause. Results: 1866 OHCA were treated by the PEMS. PEA was the first recorded rhythm in 240 adult patients (13.8 %). After exclusion of 96 patients, 144 patients with a PEA cardiac arrest admitted to the ED were included in the analysis. The mean age was 63.8 ± 20.0 years, 58.3% were men and the survival rate at 48 hours was 29%. 32 different causes of OHCA PEA were established for 119 patients. For 25 patients (17.4 %), we were unable to attribute a specific cause for the PEA cardiac arrest. Hypoxia (23.6 %), acute coronary syndrome (12.5%) and trauma (12.5 %) were the three most frequent causes. Pulmonary embolism, Hypovolemia, Intoxication and Hyperkaliemia occurs in less than 10% of the cases (7.6 %, 5.6 %, 3.5%, respectively 2.1 %). Non ischemic cardiomyopathy and intra-cranial haemorrhage occur in 8.3 % and 6.9 %, respectively. Conclusions: According to our results, intra-cranial haemorrhage and non-ischemic cardiomyopathy represent noticeable causes of PEA in OHCA, with a prevalence equalling or exceeding the frequency of classical 4 H's and 4 T's aetiologies. These two pathologies are potentially accessible to simple diagnostic procedures (native CT-scan or echocardiography) and should be included into the 4 H's and 4 T's mnemonic.

Creating a research network for a successful e-portfolio design and implementation

The presence of e-portfolios in educational centres, companies and administrations has emergedstrongly during the last years by creating very different practices coming from different objectives and purposes. This situation has led researchers and practitioners to design and implement e-portfolios with little reference to previous knowledge of them; consequently, developments are disparate with many of the processes and dimensions used both in development and use being unnecessary complex. In order to minimize the inconveniences, unify these developmental processes and improve the resultsof implementation and use of e-portfolios, it seemed necessary to create a network of researchers, teachers and trainers coming from different universities and institutions of different kinds who are interested in the investigation and the practice of e-portfolios in Spain. Therefore, The Network on e-portfoliowas created in 2006, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and led by the UniversitatOberta de Catalunya. Besides the goals associatedwith the creation of this network and which wewanted to share with other European researchers and experts of other continents, we will also present in this paper some data concerned with the first study carried out on the use of e-portfolios in our country that shows where we are and which trends are the most important for the near future.

Reduction and Analysis Methods of Indigo

Throughout history indigo was derived from various plants for example Dyer’s Woad (Isatis tinctoria L.) in Europe. In the 19th century were the synthetic dyes developed and nowadays indigo is mainly synthesized from by-products of fossil fuels. Indigo is a so-called vat dye, which means that it needs to be reduced to its water soluble leucoform before dyeing. Nowadays, most of the industrial reduction is performed chemically by sodium dithionite. However, this is considered environmentally unfavourable because of waste waters contaminating degradation products. Therefore there has been interest to find new possibilities to reduce indigo. Possible alternatives for the application of dithionite as the reducing agent are biologically induced reduction and electrochemical reduction. Glucose and other reducing sugars have recently been suggested as possible environmentally friendly alternatives as reducing agents for sulphur dyes and there have also been interest in using glucose to reduce indigo. In spite of the development of several types of processes, very little is known about the mechanism and kinetics associated with the reduction of indigo. This study aims at investigating the reduction and electrochemical analysis methods of indigo and give insight on the reduction mechanism of indigo. Anthraquinone as well as it’s derivative 1,8-dihydroxyanthraquinone were discovered to act as catalysts for the glucose induced reduction of indigo. Anthraquinone introduces a strong catalytic effect which is explained by invoking a molecular “wedge effect” during co-intercalation of Na+ and anthraquinone into the layered indigo crystal. The study includes also research on the extraction of plant-derived indigo from woad and the examination of the effect of this method to the yield and purity of indigo. The purity has been conventionally studied spectrophotometrically and a new hydrodynamic electrode system is introduced in this study. A vibrating probe is used in following electrochemically the leuco-indigo formation with glucose as a reducing agent.

Reconstruction and analysis of surface variation using photometric stereo

In many industrial applications, accurate and fast surface reconstruction is essential for quality control. Variation in surface finishing parameters, such as surface roughness, can reflect defects in a manufacturing process, non-optimal product operational efficiency, and reduced life expectancy of the product. This thesis considers reconstruction and analysis of high-frequency variation, that is roughness, on planar surfaces. Standard roughness measures in industry are calculated from surface topography. A fast and non-contact method to obtain surface topography is to apply photometric stereo in the estimation of surface gradients and to reconstruct the surface by integrating the gradient fields. Alternatively, visual methods, such as statistical measures, fractal dimension and distance transforms, can be used to characterize surface roughness directly from gray-scale images. In this thesis, the accuracy of distance transforms, statistical measures, and fractal dimension are evaluated in the estimation of surface roughness from gray-scale images and topographies. The results are contrasted to standard industry roughness measures. In distance transforms, the key idea is that distance values calculated along a highly varying surface are greater than distances calculated along a smoother surface. Statistical measures and fractal dimension are common surface roughness measures. In the experiments, skewness and variance of brightness distribution, fractal dimension, and distance transforms exhibited strong linear correlations to standard industry roughness measures. One of the key strengths of photometric stereo method is the acquisition of higher frequency variation of surfaces. In this thesis, the reconstruction of planar high-frequency varying surfaces is studied in the presence of imaging noise and blur. Two Wiener filterbased methods are proposed of which one is optimal in the sense of surface power spectral density given the spectral properties of the imaging noise and blur. Experiments show that the proposed methods preserve the inherent high-frequency variation in the reconstructed surfaces, whereas traditional reconstruction methods typically handle incorrect measurements by smoothing, which dampens the high-frequency variation.

Design and production of protein nanostructures for biomolecular detection

Particulate nanostructures are increasingly used for analytical purposes. Such particles are often generated by chemical synthesis from non-renewable raw materials. Generation of uniform nanoscale particles is challenging and particle surfaces must be modified to make the particles biocompatible and water-soluble. Usually nanoparticles are functionalized with binding molecules (e.g., antibodies or their fragments) and a label substance (if needed). Overall, producing nanoparticles for use in bioaffinity assays is a multistep process requiring several manufacturing and purification steps. This study describes a biological method of generating functionalized protein-based nanoparticles with specific binding activity on the particle surface and label activity inside the particles. Traditional chemical bioconjugation of the particle and specific binding molecules is replaced with genetic fusion of the binding molecule gene and particle backbone gene. The entity of the particle shell and binding moieties are synthesized from generic raw materials by bacteria, and fermentation is combined with a simple purification method based on inclusion bodies. The label activity is introduced during the purification. The process results in particles that are ready-to-use as reagents in bioaffinity. Apoferritin was used as particle body and the system was demonstrated using three different binding moieties: a small protein, a peptide and a single chain Fv antibody fragment that represents a complex protein including disulfide bridge.If needed, Eu3+ was used as label substance. The results showed that production system resulted in pure protein preparations, and the particles were of homogeneous size when visualized with transmission electron microscopy. Passively introduced label was stably associated with the particles, and binding molecules genetically fused to the particle specifically bound target molecules. Functionality of the particles in bioaffinity assays were successfully demonstrated with two types of assays; as labels and in particle-enhanced agglutination assay. This biological production procedure features many advantages that make the process especially suited for applications that have frequent and recurring requirements for homogeneous functional particles. The production process of ready, functional and watersoluble particles follows principles of “green chemistry”, is upscalable, fast and cost-effective.

Design and physicochemical stability studies of paediatric oral formulations of sildenafil

Personalized medicine is a challenging research area in paediatric treatments. Elaborating new paediatric formulations when no commercial forms are available is a common practice in pharmacy laboratories; among these, oral liquid formulations are the most common. But due to the lack of specialized equipment, frequently studies to assure the efficiency and safety of the final medicine cannot be carried out. Thus the purpose of this work was the development, characterization and stability evaluation of two oral formulations of sildenafil for the treatment of neonatal persistent pulmonary hypertension. After the establishment of a standard operating procedure (SOP) and elaboration, the physicochemical stability parameters appearance, pH, particle size, rheological behaviour and drug content of formulations were evaluated at three different temperatures for 90 days. Equally, prediction of long term stability, as well as, microbiological stability was performed. Formulations resulted in a suspension and a solution slightly coloured exhibiting fruity odour. Formulation I (suspension) exhibited the best physicochemical properties including Newtonian behaviour and uniformity of API content above 90% to assure an exact dosification process.

Design and Comparison оf Mixed Hinf/H2 Controller fоr АMB System

This master’s thesis is focused on the active magnetic bearings control, specifically the robust control. As carrying out of such kind of control used mixed H2/Hinf controller. So the goal of this work is to design it using Robust Control Toolbox™ in MATLAB and compare it performance and robustness with Hinf robust controller characteristics. But only one degree-of-freedom controller considered.

Nanoparticle-coated organic-inorganic microparticles: experimental design and gastrointestinal tolerance evaluation

The influences of the spray-drying parameters and the type of nanoparticles (nanocapsules or nanospheres) on the characteristics of nanoparticle-coated diclofenac-loaded microparticles were investigated by using a factorial design 3². Gastrointestinal tolerance following oral administration in rats was evaluated. Formulations were selected considering the best yields, the best encapsulation efficiencies and the lowest water contents, presenting surfaces completely coated by nanostructures and a decrease in the surface areas in relation to the uncoated core. In vitro drug release demonstrated the influence of the nanoparticle-coating on the dissolution profiles of diclofenac. Nanocapsule-coated microparticles presented a protective effect on the gastrointestinal mucosa.

GPRS/EDGE Session Tracing and Analysis in Abis and AGPRS Interfaces

Efficient problem solving in cellular networks is important when enhancing the network performance and liability. Analysis of calls and packet switched sessions in protocol level between the network elements is an important part of this process. They can provide very detailed information about error situations which otherwise would be difficult to recognise. In this thesis we seek solutions for monitoring GPRS/EDGE sessions in two specific interfaces simultaneously in such manner that all information important to the users will be provided in easily understandable form. This thesis focuses on Abis and AGPRS interfaces of GSM radio network and introduces a solution for managing the correlation between these interfaces by using signalling messages and common parameters as linking elements. ~: Finally this thesis presents an implementation of GPRS/EDGE session monitoring application for Abis and AGPRS interfaces and evaluates its benefits to the end users. Application is implemented as a part of Windows based 3G/GSM network analyser.

Concentrated Winding Multiphase Permanent Magnet Machine Design and Electromagnetic Properties – Case Axial Flux Machine

Concentrated winding permanent magnet machines and their electromagnetic properties are studied in this doctoral thesis. The thesis includes a number of main tasks related to the application of permanent magnets in concentrated winding open slot machines. Suitable analytical methods are required for the first design calculations of a new machine. Concentrated winding machines differ from conventional integral slot winding machines in such a way that adapted analytical calculation methods are needed. A simple analytical model for calculating the concentrated winding axial flux machines is provided. The next three main design tasks are discussed in more detail in the thesis. The magnetic length of the rotor surface magnet machines is studied, and it is shown that the traditional methods have to be modified also in this respect. An important topic in this study has been to evaluate and minimize the rotor permanent magnet Joule losses by using segmented magnets in the calculations and experiments. Determination of the magnetizing and leakage inductances for a concentrated winding machine and the torque production capability of concentrated winding machines with different pole pair numbers are studied, and the results are compared with the corresponding properties of integral slot winding machines. The thesis introduces a new practical permanent magnet motor type for industrial use. The special features of the machine are based on the option of using concentrated winding open slot constructions of permanent magnet synchronous machines in the normal speed ranges of industrial motors, for instance up to 3000 min-1, without excessive rotor losses. By applying the analytical equations and methods introduced in the thesis, a 37 kW 2400 min-1 12-slot 10-pole axial flux machine with rotor-surfacemounted magnets is designed. The performance of the designed motor is determined by experimental measurements and finite element calculations.

Design and evaluation of a continuous flow, integrated nebulizer-hydride generator for flame atomic absorption spectrometry

An evaluation of the performance of a continuous flow hydride generator-nebulizer for flame atomic absorption spectrometry was carried out. Optimization of nebulizer gas flow rate, sample acid concentration, sample and tetrahydroborate uptake rates and reductant concentration, on the As and Se absorbance signals was carried out. A hydrogen-argon flame was used. An improvement of the analytical sensitivity relative to the conventional bead nebulizer used in flame AA was obtained (2 (As) and 4.8 (Se) µg L-1). Detection limits (3σb) of 1 (As) and 1.3 (Se) µg L-1 were obtained. Accuracy of the method was checked by analyzing an oyster tissue reference material.