Mobolic: An automated approach to exercising mobile application GUIs using symbiosis of online testing technique and customated input generation

The increasingly prevalent use of mobile devices has raised the popularity of mobile applications. Therefore, automated testing of mobile applications has become an extremely important task. However, it is still a challenge to automatically generate tests with high coverage for mobile applications due to their specific nontrivial structure and the highly interactive nature of graphical user interfaces (GUIs). In this paper, we propose a novel automated GUI testing technique for mobile applications, namely, Mobolic. In this approach, tests with high coverage are automatically generated and executed by combining the online testing technique and customated input generation. Employing the online testing technique, Mobolic systematically explores the app GUI without falling in a loop. It generates relevant events “on the fly” that are followed by an immediate execution. In addition, involving the customated input generation, Mobolic automatically generates relevant user inputs such as user‐predefined, concrete, or random ones. We implemented Mobolic and evaluated its performance on 10 real‐world open‐source Android applications. Our experimental results show the effectiveness and efficiency of Mobolic in terms of achieved code coverage and overall exercising time.     

Novel Approach for Automatic Region of Interest and Seed Point Detection in CT Images Based on Temporal and Spatial Data

Accurately finding the region of interest is a very vital step for segmenting organs in medical image processing. We propose a novel approach of automatically identifying region of interest in Computed Tomography Image (CT) images based on temporal and spatial data . Our method is a 3 stages approach, 1) We extract organ features from the CT images by adopting the Hounsfield filter. 2)We use these filtered features and introduce our novel approach of selecting observable feature candidates by calculating contours’ area and automatically detect a seed point. 3) We use a novel approach to track the growing region changes across the CT image sequence in detecting region of interest, given a seed point as our input. We used quantitative and qualitative analysis to measure the accuracy against the given ground truth and our results presented a better performance than other generic approaches for automatic region of interest detection of organs in abdominal CT images. With the results presented in this research work, our proposed novel sequence approach method has been proven to be superior in terms of accuracy, automation and robustness.     

Space-time topology optimization for additive manufacturing

Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization - A general method of lifetime distribution selection for multi-level complete and censored testing data is developed. To alleviate the scarcity of...     

Learning to live in a smart home

ABSTRACT

Smart homes promise to significantly enhance domestic comfort, convenience, security and leisure whilst simultaneously reducing energy use through optimized home energy management. Their ability to achieve these multiple aims rests fundamentally on how they are used by householders, yet very little is currently known about this topic. The few studies that have explored the use of smart homes have tended to focus on special-interest groups and be quite short-term. This paper reports on new in-depth qualitative data that explore the domestication of a range of smart home technologies in 10 households participating in a nine-month field trial. Four core themes emerge: (1) smart home technologies are both technically and socially disruptive; (2) smart homes require forms of adaptation and familiarization from householders that can limit their use; (3) learning to use smart home technologies is a demanding and time-consuming task for which there is currently very little support available; and (4) there is little evidence that smart home technologies will generate substantial energy savings and, indeed, there is a risk that they may generate forms of energy intensification. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for policy, design and further research.     

Product development, innovation networks, infrastructure and agglomeration economies

The continuos inflow of new products is a fundamental condition for a well-functioning market economy. It has been argued that new products are the outcome of a process which is based upon the principle “novelty by combination”. This characterization applies well to the type of product development analyzed in this paper, which comprises the development of new products and the renewal of old products in the Swedish engineering industry through the adoption of a specific type of innovation, namely the incorporation of information technology based components and their pertinent software, i.e. microelectronics. According to the theoretical perspective presented in the paper, a new or a renewed product may result from “random collisions” or from a cautious matching between technical opportunities and customer needs. A necessary condition for such “collisions” or matching to occur is communication and, hence, communication in innovation networks is one key factor in product development. The empirical part of the paper contains an empirical test of the role of establishment characteristics, innovation networks, infrastructure endowment and agglomeration economies for the first use of micro-electronics in product development at the plant level. The empirical results seem to confirm the importance of innovation networks as well as of infrastructure endowment and agglomeration economies for an early use of micro-electronics in product development. Received: October 1994 / Accepted in revised form: November 1996     

Improvement in Strength and Ductility of Asymmetric-Cryorolled Copper Sheets Under Low-Temperature Annealing

Ultrafine-grained copper sheets have potential micro-electro-mechanical applications. Copper sheets were fabricated using asymmetric rolling and asymmetric cryorolling, respectively, and they were annealed at 373 K for 1 hour. The asymmetric-cryorolled sheet has higher strength compared to the asymmetric-rolled sheet. Low-temperature annealing results in improved strength and ductility for the asymmetric-cryorolled sheet, while the strength was reduced for the asymmetric-rolled sheet. The asymmetric-cryorolled sheets have better thermal stability compared to asymmetric-rolled sheets due to their laminate structure.     

精制化无糖聚葡萄糖在高品质糖果中的应用

作为一种大众化的休闲食品,糖果的消费需求逐渐呈现出多样化,因而产品的市场定位也日趋细化.为迎合消费者的需求,新产品层出不穷,市场也日益丰富.功能性配料也逐渐发挥越来越重要的作用,随着人们的膳食纤维结构向着"三低"方向发展,全国糖果产销情况发生了明显变化,口味求新、求特、求营养已经成了消费者对糖果的普遍要求.功能性糖果、健康糖果成为行业普遍被提及的词语.专家普遍认为,这类糖果将成为未来糖果发展的突破口.功能型糖果的面市是传统糖果品牌向高端产品品类的延伸,反映了消费者对糖果产品的高层次、多层次需求,也是各糖果品牌差异化运作的产物.现本文根据糖果市场现状及特征,根据消费者对于健康、口味等不同方面的诉求,分析精制化无糖聚葡萄在高品质糖果中的应用.     

Codeposition of organic carbon and arsenic in Bengal Delta aquifers

We present data showing that arsenic (As) was codeposited with organic carbon (OC) in Bengal Delta sediments as As and OC concentrations are highly (p < 0.001) positively correlated in core profiles collected from widely dispersed geographical sites with different sedimentary depositional histories. Analysis of modern day depositional environments revealed that the As-OC correlations observed in cores are due to As retention and high OC inputs in vegetated zones of the deltaic environment. We hypothesize that elevated concentrations of As occur in vegetated wetland sediments due to concentration and retention of arsenate in aerated root zones and animal burrows where copious iron(III) oxides are deposited. On burial of the sediment, degradation of organic carbon from plant and animal biomass detritus provides the reducing conditions to dissolve iron(III) oxides and release arsenite into the porewater. As tubewell abstracted aquifer water is an invaluable resource on which much of Southeast Asia is now dependent, this increased understanding of the processes responsible for As buildup and release will identify, through knowledge of the palaeosedimentary environment, which sediments are at most risk of having high arsenic concentrations in porewater. Our data allow the development of a new unifying hypothesis of how As is mobilized into groundwaters in river flood plains and deltas of Southeast Asia, namely that in these highly biologically productive environments, As and OC are codeposited, and the codeposited OC drives As release from the sediments.     

Volume computed tomography air kerma index and image quality evaluation in Brazil

The aim of this study was to evaluate the image quality of 29 computed tomography (CT) scanners in Brazil and to perform estimations of patient dose and image quality of common CT examinations at these equipment. The volume CT air kerma indexes (C(VOL)) were estimated, using normalised weighted air kerma indexes, supplied by the ImPACT group. The image quality tests were performed using the phantom and accreditation protocol from the American College of Radiology (ACR). The C(VOL) values for head scans varied between 8.7 and 108 mGy. The Hi-res chest examinations presented C(VOL) values varying from 0.4 to 32 mGy. For abdominal scans, the estimated C(VOL) values varied between 4.1 and 94 mGy. This wide variation of air kerma between different centres is related to the scanner type and also to the scanning parameters. The results also showed that the image quality did not attend all ACR CT accreditation requirements.     

Impacts of HIV / AIDS on food consumption and wild food use in rural South Africa

HIV/AIDS can affect household food consumption in many ways, including through reductions in availability and quality of labour, reductions in earned income, and increased expenditure on medications. In rural South Africa, these negative effects can be buffered by social safety net programs provided by government and collection of wild foods. Despite some acknowledgement of the potential safety net role of wild foods, however, their contribution relative to other food sources in the context of HIV/AIDS remains underexplored. Here we report empirical findings from two rural communities in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to characterise food sources, intake and calories from 68 HIV/AIDS afflicted households and 87 non-afflicted households every quarter over 12 months. Results show that diets were moderately well-balanced though limited in variety, with cereal items contributing 52 % to total calorie intake. The bulk of food consumed by households was purchased, with supplementation from own production, collected wild vegetables and collected wild fruits. Up to 20 % of respondents from both HIV/ AIDS afflicted and non-afflicted households had insufficient daily caloric intake. Multivariate analyses show that, all else equal, individuals living in households afflicted by HIV/AIDS consumed fewer calories, had less diverse diets, and were more dependent on wild foods than those living in non-afflicted households. Given the detrimental effects of HIV/AIDS on income and home production, wild foods represent a free and readily available food source for vulnerable households.