Testing software components for integration: a survey of issues and techniques

Component‐based development has emerged as a system engineering approach that promises rapid software development with fewer resources. Yet, improved reuse and reduced cost benefits from software components can only be achieved in practice if the components provide reliable services, thereby rendering component analysis and testing a key activity. This paper discusses various issues that can arise in component testing by the component user at the stage of its integration within the target system. The crucial problem is the lack of information for analysis and testing of externally developed components. Several testing techniques for component integration have recently been proposed. These techniques are surveyed here and classified according to a proposed set of relevant attributes. The paper thus provides a comprehensive overview which can be useful as introductory reading for newcomers in this research field, as well as to stimulate further investigation. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multilevel modeling of self-esteem change during acute inpatient stroke rehabilitation.

Objective: To explore self-esteem change during inpatient stroke rehabilitation and moderators of change. Research Method: One hundred twenty survivors of stroke serially completed the State Self-Esteem Scale (SSES) during inpatient rehabilitation, as well as measures of mood and perceived recovery as potential moderators of change. Age, gender, prior stroke, prestroke depression, stroke laterality, and admission Functional Independence Measure (FIM) self-care, mobility, and cognitive scores were also included as moderators. Results: Multilevel modeling of the repeated administrations of the SSES indicated that self-esteem significantly improved during rehabilitation. Female gender, left hemisphere stroke, prior stroke, and lower admission FIM cognitive scores were associated with lower self-esteem ratings at admission, but only age and admission FIM self-care and mobility scores were associated with self-esteem change. Older individuals showed less self-esteem improvement than younger individuals, and higher self-care and mobility scores at admission were associated with greater self-esteem improvement. While mood change significantly covaried with self-esteem, the rate of mood change did not appear to influence rate of self-esteem change. Greater improvement in self-esteem over time was related to lower levels of perceived recovery, but this was likely because of the relationship between perceived recovery and self-esteem at rehabilitation admission. Implications: These results suggest that self-esteem improves during inpatient rehabilitation, and this change may be partially dependent on functional status. Implications for facilitating self-esteem change by the clinician are discussed, as well as future research directions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-esteem level and stability, admission functional status, and depressive symptoms in acute inpatient stroke rehabilitation.

Objectives: Explore the relationship of self-esteem level, self-esteem stability, and admission functional status on discharge depressive symptoms in acute stroke rehabilitation. Research Method: One hundred twenty stroke survivors serially completed a measure of state self-esteem during inpatient rehabilitation and completed a measure of depressive symptoms at discharge. Functional status was rated at admission using the Functional Independence Measure (FIM). Regressions explored main effects and interactions of self-esteem level and stability and admission FIM self-care, mobility, and cognitive functioning on discharge depressive symptoms. Results: After controlling for potential moderating variables, self-esteem level interacted with FIM self-care and cognitive functioning to predict discharge depressive symptoms, such that survivors with lower self-rated self-esteem and poorer functional status indicated higher levels of depressive symptoms. Self-esteem stability interacted with FIM mobility functioning, such that self-esteem instability in the presence of lower mobility functioning at admission was related to higher depressive symptoms at discharge. Implications: These results suggest that self-esteem variables may moderate the relationship between functional status and depressive symptoms. Self-esteem level and stability may differentially moderate functional domains, although this conclusion requires further empirical support. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Palyno‐morphological investigations of subtropical endangered flora of Capparidaceae through light and scanning electron microscopy

The research was performed to investigate pollen morphology of endangered species of Capparidaceae in subtropical regions of Pakistan. The distinguishing characters were investigated by using light microscope and scanning electron microscope. Palynological study is comprised of pollen shape, pollen type, exine sculpturing, polar and equatorial diameter, length and width of colpi, mesocolpium, and exine thickness. In polar view, Cleome viscosa exhibited the highest pollen size 26.4 (32.7–24.5 μm) ±0.776 whereas Capparis spinosa appeared to be the lowest 12.6 (14.5?10.7 μm) ±0.400. In equatorial view, Cleome viscosa had the largest pollen size 17.1 (20.0–15.0 μm) ±0.606 and Capparis spinosa had the smallest pollen size 9.7 (12.50–8.00 μm) ±0.394. The maximum fertility percentage has been observed in Capparis spinosa, that is, 98.96% and minimum in Cleome viscosa, that is, 82.93%. Diagnostic key has been constructed to state the essential diagnostic features by means of which the taxa can be identified. Remarkable variations have been observed in pollen size, shape, and exine sculpturing. All the selected species were tricolporate. Prolate to subprolate pollen were observed. There is a great variation existed in exine sculpturing such as in Capparis decidua and C. sp. nova sculpturing is reticulate, in Capparis himalayensis sculpturing is Scabrate granulate, in Capparis spinosa sculpturing is Psilate, in Cleome viscosa sculpturing is regulate‐reticulate, in Dipterygium glaucum sculpturing is regulate and in Gynandropsis gynandra sculpturing is striate‐regulate. On the basis of overall characteristics of pollen it seems that palynology of this family is helpful at the generic and specific level.     

Fused Cyclopentadithienothiophene Acceptor Enables Ultrahigh Short‐Circuit Current and High Efficiency >11% in As‐Cast Organic Solar Cells

A new method to synthesize an electron‐rich building block cyclopentadithienothiophene (9H‐thieno‐[3,2‐b]thieno[2″,3″:4′,5′]thieno[2′,3′:3,4]cyclopenta[1,2‐d]thiophene, CDTT) via a facile aromatic extension strategy is reported. By combining CDTT with 1,1‐dicyanomethylene‐3‐indanone endgroups, a promising nonfullerene small molecule acceptor (CDTTIC) is prepared. As‐cast, single‐junction nonfullerene organic solar cells based on PFBDB‐T: CDTTIC blends exhibit very high short‐circuit currents up to 26.2 mA cm^?2 in combination with power conversion efficiencies over 11% without any additional processing treatments. The high photocurrent results from the near‐infrared absorption of the CDTTIC acceptor and the well‐intermixed blend morphology of polymer donor PFBDB‐T and CDTTIC. This work demonstrates a useful fused ring extension strategy and promising solar cell results, indicating the great potential of the CDTT derivatives as electron‐rich building blocks for constructing high‐performance small molecule acceptors in organic solar cells.     

On soft topological spaces

In the present paper we introduce soft topological spaces which are defined over an initial universe with a fixed set of parameters. The notions of soft open sets, soft closed sets, soft closure, soft interior points, soft neighborhood of a point and soft separation axioms are introduced and their basic properties are investigated. It is shown that a soft topological space gives a parametrized family of topological spaces. Furthermore, with the help of an example it is established that the converse does not hold. The soft subspaces of a soft topological space are defined and inherent concepts as well as the characterization of soft open and soft closed sets in soft subspaces are investigated. Finally, soft $T_i$-spaces and notions of soft normal and soft regular spaces are discussed in detail. A sufficient condition for a soft topological space to be a soft $T_1$-space is also presented.     

SNEE: a query processor for wireless sensor networks

A wireless sensor network (WSN) can be construed as an intelligent, large-scale device for observing and measuring properties of the physical world. In recent years, the database research community has championed the view that if we construe a WSN as a database (i.e., if a significant aspect of its intelligent behavior is that it can execute declaratively-expressed queries), then one can achieve a significant reduction in the cost of engineering the software that implements a data collection program for the WSN while still achieving, through query optimization, very favorable cost:benefit ratios. This paper describes a query processing framework for WSNs that meets many desiderata associated with the view of WSN as databases. The framework is presented in the form of compiler/optimizer, called SNEE, for a continuous declarative query language over sensed data streams, called SNEEql. SNEEql can be shown to meet the expressiveness requirements of a large class of applications. SNEE can be shown to generate effective and efficient query evaluation plans. More specifically, the paper describes the following contributions: (1) a user-level syntax and physical algebra for SNEEql, an expressive continuous query language over WSNs; (2) example concrete algorithms for physical algebraic operators defined in such a way that the task of deriving memory, time and energy analytical cost-estimation models (CEMs) for them becomes straightforward by reduction to a structural traversal of the pseudocode; (3) CEMs for the concrete algorithms alluded to; (4) an architecture for the optimization of SNEEql queries, called SNEE, building on well-established distributed query processing components where possible, but making enhancements or refinements where necessary to accommodate the WSN context; (5) algorithms that instantiate the components in the SNEE architecture, thereby supporting integrated query planning that includes routing, placement and timing; and (6) an empirical performance evaluation of the resulting framework.     

Two layered Genetic Programming for mixed-attribute data classification

The important problem of data classification spans numerous real life applications. The classification problem has been tackled by using Genetic Programming in many successful ways. Most approaches focus on classification of only one type of data. However, most of the real-world data contain a mixture of categorical and continuous attributes. In this paper, we present an approach to classify mixed attribute data using Two Layered Genetic Programming (L2GP). The presented approach does not transform data into any other type and combines the properties of arithmetic expressions (using numerical data) and logical expressions (using categorical data). The outer layer contains logical functions and some nodes. These nodes contain the inner layer and are either logical or arithmetic expressions. Logical expressions give their Boolean output to the outer tree. The arithmetic expressions give a real value as their output. Positive real value is considered true and a negative value is considered false. These outputs of inner layers are used to evaluate the outer layer which determines the classification decision. The proposed classification technique has been applied on various heterogeneous data classification problems and found successful.