Quality of manual data collection in Java software: an empirical investigation

Data collection, both automatic and manual, lies at the heart of all empirical studies. The quality of data collected from software informs decisions on maintenance, testing and wider issues such as the need for system re-engineering. While of the two types stated, automatic data collection is preferable, there are numerous occasions when manual data collection is unavoidable. Yet, very little evidence exists to assess the error-proneness of the latter. Herein, we investigate the extent to which manual data collection for Java software compared with its automatic counterpart for the same data. We investigate three hypotheses relating to the difference between automated and manual data collection. Five Java systems were used to support our investigation. Results showed that, as expected, manual data collection was error-prone, but nowhere near the extent we had initially envisaged. Key indicators of mistakes in manual data collection were found to be poor developer coding style, poor adherence to sound OO coding principles, and the existence of relatively large classes in some systems. Some interesting results were found relating to the collection of public class features and the types of error made during manual data collection. The study thus offers an insight into some of the typical problems associated with collecting data manually; more significantly, it highlights the problems that poorly written systems have on the quality of visually extracted data.     

Two topographic maps for data visualisation

We review a new form of self-organizing map which is based on a nonlinear projection of latent points into data space, identical to that performed in the Generative Topographic Mapping (GTM) [Bishop et al. (1997) Neurl Comput 10(1): 215–234]. But whereas the GTM is an extension of a mixture of experts, our new model is an extension of a product of experts [Hinton (2000) Technical report GCNU TR 2000-004, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College, London]. We show visualisation results on some real data sets and compare with the GTM. We then introduce a second mapping based on harmonic averages and show that it too creates a topographic mapping of the data. We compare these mappings on real and artificial data sets. Responsible editor: Soumen Chakrabarti.     

Environment as a first class abstraction in multiagent systems

The current practice in multiagent systems typically associates the environment with resources that are external to agents and their communication infrastructure. Advanced uses of the environment include infrastructures for indirect coordination, such as digital pheromones, or support for governed interaction in electronic institutions. Yet, in general, the notion of environment is not well defined. Functionalities of the environment are often dealt with implicitly or in an ad hoc manner. This is not only poor engineering practice, it also hinders engineers to exploit the full potential of the environment in multiagent systems. In this paper, we put forward the environment as an explicit part of multiagent systems.We give a definition stating that the environment in a multiagent system is a first-class abstraction with dual roles: (1) the environment provides the surrounding conditions for agents to exist, which implies that the environment is an essential part of every multiagent system, and (2) the environment provides an exploitable design abstraction for building multiagent system applications. We discuss the responsibilities of such an environment in multiagent systems and we present a reference model for the environment that can serve as a basis for environment engineering. To illustrate the power of the environment as a design abstraction, we show how the environment is successfully exploited in a real world application. Considering the environment as a first-class abstraction in multiagent systems opens up new horizons for research and development in multiagent systems.     

A globally convergent algorithm for transportation continuous network design problem

The continuous network design problem (CNDP) is characterized by a bilevel programming model, in which the upper level problem is generally to minimize the total system cost under limited expenditure, while at the lower level the network users make choices with regard to route conditions following the user equilibrium principle. In this paper, the bilevel programming model for CNDP is transformed into a single level convex programming problem by virtue of an optimal-value function tool and the relationship between System Optimum (SO) and User Equilibrium (UE). By exploring the inherent nature of the CNDP, the optimal-value function for the lower level user equilibrium problem is proved to be continuously differentiable and its derivative in link capacity enhancement can be obtained efficiently by implementing user equilibrium assignment subroutine. However, the reaction (or response) function between the upper and lower level problem is implicit and its gradient is difficult to obtain. Although, here we approximately express the gradient with the difference concept at each iteration, based on the method of successive averages (MSA), we propose a globally convergent algorithm to solve the single level convex programming problem. Comparing with widely used heuristic algorithms, such as sensitivity analysis based (SAB) method, the proposed algorithm needs not strong hypothesis conditions and complex computation for the inverse matrix. Finally, a numerical example is presented to compare the proposed method with some existing algorithms.     

Self-assembly of highly oriented palladium-based nanowires on mica surface

The self-assembly of various nanostructures is recently attracting a great deal of research attention. In this paper, we demonstrate that a palladium chloride aqueous solution, mixed with a proper ammonia solution, can produce Tetra-amminepalladous chloride (Pd(NH₃)₄Cl₂·H₂O) nanowires. These nanowires can spontaneously form the two-dimensional hexagon-oriented Pd(NH₃)₄Cl₂·H₂O arrays on mica surfaces. We can control the length and height of these nanowires by adjusting their deposit time on the mica substrate. This method can be potentially used in making sensors or in making templates to wire and position nanodevices.     

Synthesis and applications of fluoroalkyl end-capped cooligomers having fullerene and mixed fullerenes in the main chain

Fluoroalkanoyl peroxides reacted with FULLERENES [fullerene (C₆₀) and commercially available fullerenes (Nanom Mix^TR and Nanom Black^TR)] and radical polymerizable comonomers such as acrylic acid, N,N-dimethylacrylamide, N-(1,1-dimethyl-3-oxobutyl)acrylamide, and acryloylmorpholine to afford fluoroalkyl end-capped cooligomers having FULLERENES in the main chain under very mild conditions. Fluoroalkyl end-capped Nanom Mix and Nanom Black cooligomers thus obtained were found to exhibit a similar solubility to that of the corresponding fluoroalkyl end-capped cooligomers having fullerene in the main chain. These fluorinated FULLERENES cooligomers were found to form the nanometer size-controlled self-assembled cooligomeric aggregates in aqueous solutions. These fluoroalkyl end-capped FULLERENES cooligomers were more effective for solubilizing fullerene, Nanom Mix and Nanom Black into water, compared to those of the corresponding fluoroalkyl end-capped homooligomers having no FULLERENES in the main chain. Fluoroalkyl end-capped fullerene- and Nanom Mix-acrylic acid cooligomers were found to exhibit fluorescence spectra related to fullerene and Nanom Mix in cooligomers, respectively, in aqueous solutions. Additionally, these fluorinated fullerene- and Nanom Mix-acrylic acid cooligomers were able to increase chemiluminescence intensity related to luminol, effectively, compared to the corresponding fluorinated acrylic acid homooligomers.     

Network and device-level impacts: performance and reliability of active I/O storage systems

Distributed active storage architectures are designed to offload user-level processing to the peripheral from the host servers. In this paper, we report preliminary investigation on performance and fault recovery designs, as impacted by emerging storage interconnect protocols and state-of-the-art storage devices. Empirical results obtained using validated device-level and interconnect data demonstrate the significance of the said parameters on the overall system performance and reliability.     

劣化环丁砜再生技术的工业应用

为解决国内外环丁砜抽提芳烃工艺中环丁砜的劣化问题，在不添加单乙醇胺的前提下，采用阴离子交换树脂处理劣化的环丁砜，可使系统的pH值从3．4升到5．5左右，离子交换树脂需30d左右再生一次，降低了设备的腐蚀，减少了装置的堵塞，使系统运行稳定，取得了可观的社会效益和经济效益。     

土体中毛细水压力的研究

该文从毛细水产生负孔隙水压力概念入手 ,对较难确定的孔隙水压力系数以及较抽象的地下连续墙时效稳定分析等问题进行了定量计算 ,以期对工程实践有一定的指导作用