a backtracking search tool for constructing combinatorial test suites

Combinatorial testing is an important testing method. It requires the test cases to cover various combinations of parameters of the system under test. The test generation problem for combinatorial testing can be modeled as constructing a matrix which has certain properties. This paper first discusses two combinatorial testing criteria: covering array and orthogonal array, and then proposes a backtracking search algorithm to construct matrices satisfying them. Several search heuristics and symmetry breaking techniques are used to reduce the search time. This paper also introduces some techniques to generate large covering array instances from smaller ones. All the techniques have been implemented in a tool called EXACT (EXhaustive seArch of Combinatorial Test suites). A new optimal covering array is found by this tool.

关于蜕变测试和特殊用例测试的实例研究

提出了基于蜕变测试方法的集成测试环境MTest,进而为检验蜕变测试方法的能力和效率,以稀疏矩阵乘法程序为例设计了一组实验.该实验基于变异分析技术,分别以mutation score和错误发现率为度量指标,定量地分析和对比了特殊用例测试,以特殊测试用例和随机测试用例为源测试用例的蜕变测试这3种方法的测试能力和效率.该实验可在MTest测试环境下自动完成.实验结果表明,蜕变测试与特殊用例测试之间是互补的,而且就蜕变测试的源测试用例而言,随机测试用例在测试能力和效率上优于特殊测试用例.

Public Administration, Science and Risk Assessment: A Case Study of the U.K. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Crisis

The bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) outbreak in the United Kingdom is regarded as one of the worst public policy crises the British government has experienced during the postwar era. In material terms, it has led to the slaughter of 3.3 million cattle and estimated economic losses of £3.7 billion. In administrative terms, the crisis brought about the dissolution of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. This article examines the istitutional context in which decisions about the scientific evidence on BSE were made. The authors argue that a centralized system in which government agencies control science for government is inherently vulnerable to alliances of experts and interest groups that undermine the credible assessment of public health and safety risks. Specific societal conditions may encourage risk-opportunistic behavior among policy makers that is conducive to delays and inaction until such time as the evidence of a health risk becomes overwhelming.

Enhancing design space exploration by extending CPU/GPU specifications onto FPGAs

The design cycle for complex special-purpose computing systems is extremely costly and time-consuming. It involves a multiparametric design space exploration for optimization, followed by design verification. Designers of special purpose VLSI implementations often need to explore parameters, such as optimal bitwidth and data representation, through time-consuming Monte Carlo simulations. A prominent example of this simulation-based exploration process is the design of decoders for error correcting systems, such as the Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes adopted by modern communication standards, which involves thousands of Monte Carlo runs for each design point. Currently, high-performance computing offers a wide set of acceleration options that range from multicore CPUs to Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The exploitation of diverse target architectures is typically associated with developing multiple code versions, often using distinct programming paradigms. In this context, we evaluate the concept of retargeting a single OpenCL program to multiple platforms, thereby significantly reducing design time. A single OpenCL-based parallel kernel is used without modifications or code tuning on multicore CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs. We use SOpenCL (Silicon to OpenCL), a tool that automatically converts OpenCL kernels to RTL in order to introduce FPGAs as a potential platform to efficiently execute simulations coded in OpenCL. We use LDPC decoding simulations as a case study. Experimental results were obtained by testing a variety of regular and irregular LDPC codes that range from short/medium (e.g., 8,000 bit) to long length (e.g., 64,800 bit) DVB-S2 codes. We observe that, depending on the design parameters to be simulated, on the dimension and phase of the design, the GPU or FPGA may suit different purposes more conveniently, thus providing different acceleration factors over conventional multicore CPUs.

Sustainable concrete: design and testing

Producing concrete with secondary raw materials is an excellent way to contribute to a moresustainable world, provided that this concrete has at least the same performance during itsservice life as concrete made with the primary raw materials it replaces. Secondary rawmaterials for Light Weight (LW) aggregates (rigid polyurethane foams, shredded tire rubberand mixed plastic scraps) have been combined with secondary raw materials for the binder(fly ash, slag and perlite tailings) making sustainable concretes that were investigated fortheir suitability as LW, highly insulating concrete for four different types of applications.Compliance to desired engineering properties (workability, setting time) was not alwaysfeasible: it was mostly the low workability of the mixtures that limited their application.Contrary to well established cements, steering the workability by adding water was not anoption for these binders that rely on alkali-activation. Eight successful mixtures have beentested further. The results have shown that it is possible to produce a non-structuralsustainable concrete with good mechanical and thermal insulation properties.Design of concrete made with novel materials is currently not feasible without extensiveexperimentation as no design rules exist other than empirically derived rules based ontraditional materials. As a radical different approach, a flexible concrete mix design has beendeveloped with which the concrete can be modelled in the fresh and hardened state. Thenumerical concrete mix design method proves a promising tool in designing concrete forperformance demands such as elasticity parameters and thermal conductivity

Software for wireless broadband system design

The paper looks at the software of leading companies in the field of wireless broadband systems development. The basic characteristics of appropriate software and design systems are shown including the most typical examples for their implementation.

Lobbying by Trade Associations on EU Climate Policy

Climate change has been recognised as one of the greatest challenges of the 21st Century. Its impacts, and they way that we choose to deal with them will profoundly affect how business and society operates. This report focuses on European Union (EU) climate policy – the governance structures, rules and regulations that have been put in place at the EU level to attempt to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Specifically, it focuses on how trade associations representing industrial sectors or broader business interest have lobbied on EU climate policy, and the impact that they have had on the policymaking process. The report then goes on to discuss whether the impacts of this lobbying align with the stated policies of the companies that are members of these trade associations.

Suporte a testes automáticos em aplicações web geradas com a OutSystems Platform

Dissertação de natureza científica para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática e de Computadores

El trabajo en equipo en el Proceso Administrativo y de Compras en OPL Carga de Bucaramanga

El proceso administrativo y de compras de OPL Carga tiene algunas falencias entre ellas: fallas en la Comunicación entre el personal operativo, no se realizan llamadas internas usando con frecuencia el email, produciendo la saturación de solicitudes las cuales terminan sin ser resueltas en cuanto a roles se refiere, no hay enfoque de procesos en vista que no se tiene claras las tareas de cada cargo, adicionalmente no hay claridad en los subprocesos, perjudicando el proceso con el aumento de costos, pérdida de tiempo, las responsabilidades de los funcionario no todas las veces se ejecutan en el tiempo asignado, el liderazgo compartido presenta ambigüedades. Objetivos: Definir el trabajo en equipo en el proceso administrativo y de compras en OPL carga de Bucaramanga. La investigación que a realizar es de tipo descriptivo, busca descubrir las falencias o características que permiten diseñar y desarrollar un modelo de solución para los problemas del equipo de OPL Carga S.A.S. Materiales y métodos: La investigación efectuada es de tipo descriptivo, el objetivo es definir el modelo del trabajo en equipo y describir las falencias en el proceso administrativo y de compras en OPL carga de Bucaramanga, que permitan obtener un diagnóstico integral que conlleve a la implementación de estrategias de solución. Resultados: Se identificaron las falencias en los siguientes aspectos: Variable comunicación, rendimiento, destrezas complementarias, propósito significativo y meta específicas de los funcionarios en OPL carga sección administrativa. Conclusiones: El modelo de trabajo en equipo que OPL aplica es jerárquico, en el que se ofrece estabilidad, seguridad, se toman decisiones en forma piramidal, mediante la planeación de tareas, la colaboración, igualdad y respeto por los miembros, trabajando en pro de la solución de problemas. Se construyó un plano conceptual que permitió exponer la interpretación que la estudiante tiene de las teorías, investigaciones y antecedentes válidos para la comprensión del problema investigado. Área comunicacional: Coordinar acciones tendientes para que los funcionarios respondan a tiempo los emails atenientes a su trabajo. Área condiciones de trabajo: Clarificar y diseñar las reglas de comportamiento al interior de los equipos de trabajo que redunden en el mejoramiento del mismo y la búsqueda de soluciones oportunas. Área metas específicas: Procurar mediante auditorías el cumplimiento de las metas y objetivos propuestos por cada equipo de trabajo.

Last charge of the knights? Iraq, Afghanistan and the special relationship

At the heart of the ‘special relationship’ ideology, there is supposed to be a grand bargain. In exchange for paying the ‘blood price’ as America's ally, Britain will be rewarded with exceptional influence over American foreign policy and its strategic behaviour. Soldiers and statesman continue to articulate this idea. Since 9/11, the notion of Britain playing ‘Greece’ to America's ‘Rome’ gained new life thanks to Anglophiles on both sides of the Atlantic. One potent version of this ideology was that the more seasoned British would teach Americans how to fight ‘small wars’ in Iraq and Afghanistan, thereby bolstering their role as tutor to the superpower. Britain does derive benefits from the Anglo-American alliance and has made momentous contributions to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet British solidarity and sacrifices have not purchased special influence in Washington. This is partly due to Atlanticist ideology, which sets Britain unrealistic standards by which it is judged, and partly because the notion of ‘special influence’ is misleading as it loses sight of the complexities of American policy-making. The overall result of expeditionary wars has been to strain British credibility in American eyes and to display its lack of consistent influence both over high policy and the design and execution of US military campaigns. While there may be good arguments in favour of the UK continuing its efforts in Afghanistan, the notion that the war fortifies Britain's vicarious world status is a dangerous illusion that leads to repeated overstretch and disappointment. Now that Britain is in the foothills of a strategic defence review, it is important that the British abandon this false consciousness.

Brexit or Bremain? Future options for UK agricultural policy and the CAP

The outcome of the UK’s referendum on continued EU membership is at the time of writing uncertain, and the consequences of a vote to remain (‘Bremain’) or leave (‘Brexit’) difficult to predict. Polarised views have been voiced about the impact of Brexit on UK agriculture, and on the nature and level of funding, of future policy. Policymakers would not have the luxury of devising a new policy from scratch. WTO rules and commitments, the nature of any future accord with the EU, budget constraints, the rather different perspectives of the UK’s devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the expectations of farmers, landowners and the environmental lobby, will all impact the policymaking process. The WTO dimension, and the UK’s future relationship with the EU, are particularly difficult to predict, and – some commentators believe – may take years to resolve. Brexit’s impact on the future CAP is also unclear. A vote to remain within the EU would not necessarily assuage the Eurosceptics’ criticisms of the EU, or the UK’s perception of the CAP. Whatever the outcome, future agricultural, food and rural land use policies will remain key preoccupations of European governments.

Fault Coverage-Driven Incremental Test Generation

In this paper, we consider a classical problem of complete test generation for deterministic finite-state machines (FSMs) in a more general setting. The first generalization is that the number of states in implementation FSMs can even be smaller than that of the specification FSM. Previous work deals only with the case when the implementation FSMs are allowed to have the same number of states as the specification FSM. This generalization provides more options to the test designer: when traditional methods trigger a test explosion for large specification machines, tests with a lower, but yet guaranteed, fault coverage can still be generated. The second generalization is that tests can be generated starting with a user-defined test suite, by incrementally extending it until the desired fault coverage is achieved. Solving the generalized test derivation problem, we formulate sufficient conditions for test suite completeness weaker than the existing ones and use them to elaborate an algorithm that can be used both for extending user-defined test suites to achieve the desired fault coverage and for test generation. We present the experimental results that indicate that the proposed algorithm allows obtaining a trade-off between the length and fault coverage of test suites.

A transformational language for mutant description

Mutation testing has been used to assess the quality of test case suites by analyzing the ability in distinguishing the artifact under testing from a set of alternative artifacts, the so-called mutants. The mutants are generated from the artifact under testing by applying a set of mutant operators, which produce artifacts with simple syntactical differences. The mutant operators are usually based on typical errors that occur during the software development and can be related to a fault model. In this paper, we propose a language-named MuDeL (MUtant DEfinition Language)-for the definition of mutant operators, aiming not only at automating the mutant generation, but also at providing precision and formality to the operator definition. The proposed language is based on concepts from transformational and logical programming paradigms, as well as from context-free grammar theory. Denotational semantics formal framework is employed to define the semantics of the MuDeL language. We also describe a system-named mudelgen-developed to support the use of this language. An executable representation of the denotational semantics of the language is used to check the correctness of the implementation of mudelgen. At the very end, a mutant generator module is produced, which can be incorporated into a specific mutant tool/environment. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

'They would never receive you without a husband' : Paradoxical barriers to antenatal care scale-up in Rwanda

OBJECTIVE: to explore perspectives and experiences of antenatal care and partner involvement among women who nearly died during pregnancy ('near-miss'). DESIGN: a study guided by naturalistic inquiry was conducted, and included extended in-community participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions. Qualitative data were collected between March 2013 and April 2014 in Kigali, Rwanda. FINDINGS: all informants were aware of the recommendations of male involvement for HIV-testing at the first antenatal care visit. However, this recommendation was seen as a clear link in the chain of delays and led to severe consequences, especially for women without engaged partners. The overall quality of antenatal services was experienced as suboptimal, potentially missing the opportunity to provide preventive measures and essential health education intended for both parents. This seemed to contribute to women's disincentive to complete all four recommended visits and men's interest in attending to ensure their partners' reception of care. However, the participants experienced a restriction of men's access during subsequent antenatal visits, which made men feel denied to their increased involvement during pregnancy. CONCLUSIONS: 'near-miss' women and their partners face paradoxical barriers to actualise the recommended antenatal care visits. The well-intended initiative of male partner involvement counterproductively causes delays or excludes women whereas supportive men are turned away from further health consultations. Currently, the suboptimal quality of antenatal care misses the opportunity to provide health education for the expectant couple or to identify and address early signs of complications IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: these findings suggest a need for increased flexibility in the antenatal care recommendations to encourage women to attend care with or without their partner, and to create open health communication about women's and men's real needs within the context of their social situations. Supportive partners should not be denied involvement at any stage of pregnancy, but should be received only upon consent of the expectant mother.