Does Test-Driven Development Really Improve Software Design Quality?

Support for test-driven development [TDD] is growing in many development contexts beyond its common association with extreme programming. By focusing on how TDD influences design characteristics, we hope to raise awareness of TDD as a design approach and assist others in decisions on whether and how to adopt TDD. Our results indicate that test-first programmers are more likely to write software in more and smaller units that are less complex and more highly tested. We weren't able to confirm claims that TDD improves cohesion while lowering coupling, but we anticipate ways to clarify the questions these design characteristics raised. In particular, we're working to eliminate the confounding factor of accessor usage in the cohesion metrics.     

How Does Subjective Well-Being Evolve with Age? A Literature Review

This literature review provides an overview of the theoretical and empirical research in several disciplines on the relation between ageing and subjective well-being, i.e., how subjective well-being evolves across the lifespan. Because of the different methodologies, data sets and samples used, comparison among disciplines and studies is difficult. However, extant studies do show either a U-shaped, inverted U-shaped or linear relation between ageing and subjective well-being.     

A Review of Exploratory Factor Analysis Decisions and Overview of Current Practices: What We Are Doing and How Can We Improve?

Authors within the fields of cyberpsychology and human?computer interaction have demonstrated a particular interest in measurement and scale creation, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is an extremely important statistical method for these areas of research. Unfortunately, EFA requires several statistical and methodological decisions to which the best choices are often unclear. The current article reviews five primary decisions and provides direct suggestions for best practices. These decisions are (a) the data inspection techniques, (b) the factor analytic method, (c) the factor retention method, (d) the factor rotation method, and (e) the factor loading cutoff. Then the article reviews authors’ choices for these five EFA decisions in every relevant article within seven cyberpsychology and/or human–computer interaction journals. The results demonstrate that authors do not employ the recommended best practices for most decisions. Particularly, most authors do not inspect their data for violations of assumptions, apply inappropriate factor analytic methods, utilize outdated factor retention methods, and omit the justification for their factor rotation methods. Further, many authors omit altogether their EFA decisions. To rectify these concerns, the current article provides a step-by-step guide and checklist that authors can reference to ensure the use of recommended best practices. Together, the current article identifies concerns with current research and provides direct solutions to these concerns.     

Information and Communication Technologies： A Way to Reduce Digital Illiteracy

The teaching-learning process may have several obstacles; one of those would be a cultural situation of students. When the author refers to cultural situation, the author means the language or dialect that they speak. In the state of Puebla, Mexico, there are primary schools where the courses are taught to students who do not speak Spanish and they only speak their own dialect. On the other hand, the use of information and communication technologies in primary schools in Puebla is a fact but a main concern in schools is that the languages in which they are operated are Spanish. To analyze this situation, the author finds that turns out to be very important and with a negative effect on both the implementation and acceptance of a multimedia program in these schools, generating a technological gap between students. The government efforts are decimated because of this cultural divide prevalent in many communities in the state of Puebla and the increase of this situation when considering the illiterate population.     

Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction and Data Visualization： A Review

Dimensionality reduction and data visualization are useful and important processes in pattern recognition.Many techniques have been developed in the recent years.The self-organizing map (SOM) can be an efficient method for this purpose.This paper reviews recent advances in this area and related approaches such as multidimensional scaling (MDS),nonlinear PCA,principal manifolds,as well as the connections of the SOM and its recent variant,the visualization induced SOM (ViSOM),with these approaches. The SOM is shown to produce a quantized,qualitative scaling and while the ViSOM a quantitative or metric scaling and approximates principal curve/surface.The SOM can also be regarded as a generalized MDS to relate two metric spaces by forming a topological mapping between them.The relationships among various recently proposed techniques such as ViSOM,Isomap,LLE,and eigenmap are discussed and compared.     

Does a Creative Designer Necessarily Translate into the Creative Design of a Product? Exploring Factors Facilitating the Creativity of a New Product

Product creativity is a rarely studied topic in the area of new product development; nevertheless, its importance has been recognized by many researchers in a variety of fields. In this research, two studies were conducted: the first was quantitative and the second was qualitative. These studies examined the relationships among five variables: analogical thinking ability, creative self‐efficacy, length of experience, team climate for creativity and product creativity. The results of a multiple regression indicated that analogical thinking ability is an antecedent of design creativity, and that creative self‐efficacy is a mediator between them. The results also showed that length of experience and team climate for creativity have significant moderating effects. These findings indicate that both person‐based (i.e., ability, self‐efficacy and length of experience) and situation‐based (team climate) variables are key factors in developing the creative design of a new product.     

Does Employee Relationship Quality Influence Employee Well‐Being? An Empirical Analysis Based on Manufacturing and Service Industries

This study developed employee well‐being (EWB) and employee‐relationship scales (including six parts, employee‐superior, employee‐subordinate, employee‐organization, employee‐coworker, employee‐family, and employee‐friend) through considering the management situation in China and the integrity of the construct. According to an empirical analysis based on manufacturing and service industries (N = 571), this study explored the influence of employee relationship quality (ERQ) on EWB through Pearson correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. According to the results, in terms of relationships inside work, the dimensions of all ERQ types had positive correlations with EWB. The degree of stability of a relationship outside work, such as employee‐family and the employee‐friend, was found to have negative effects on EWB. Regardless of whether they are general employees or leadership employees, the employee‐superior relationship was the principal factor that influenced EWB. These results provide new insights into employee relationship management and EWB promotion.     

Older Adults’ Physical Activity and Exergames: A Systematic Review

Exertion games, also referred to as exergames, have become popular because they combine physical activity (PA) with game mechanics, such as actions, challenges, and achievements. Exergames have been also used to encourage PA among older adults, as technological interventions to help achieve the latters’ health and wellness goals and as aids to rehabilitation. To the best of our knowledge, no systematic review of empirical studies on exergaming and older adults’ PA has been reported in the literature. Our review indicates that exergames make a measurable contribution to the improvement of health and wellness goals of older adults. Our systematic review identifies 9 categories and 19 themes of exergame applications in the domain of older adults’ PA. We aggregate these categories and themes into three broader exergaming clusters, of “training,” “rehabilitation,” and “wellness.” Additionally, we outline pathways for future empirical research into applying exergames as health and wellness interventions for older adults through physical activities.     

Does culture influence m-banking use and individual performance?

We show evidence on the influence of culture on m-banking use and individual performance, by using a combination of the task-technology fit (TTF) model and two of Hofstede’s cross-cultural dimension scales: uncertainty avoidance and individualism. On the basis of a sample of 204 m-banking users, we show that individualism moderates the relationship between TTF and use, and uncertainty avoidance moderates the relationship between TTF and individual performance. The remaining constructs, which represent the core of the TTF model, can still empirically explain TTF, use, and individual performance of m-banking. Strategies grounded in these factors are suggested for m-banking service providers to better attract and retain users.     

Does Facebook make you lonely?: A meta analysis

This meta-analysis explores the relationship between Facebook use and loneliness. Examination of the literature containing quantitative measurements of both Facebook use and loneliness, including close variations of the definition of loneliness, produced a sample of 18 research effects (N = 8798) for review. This study asks two main questions: (1) Does using Facebook increase or decrease loneliness?; and (2) What causes what?: Does Facebook make its users lonely (or less lonely), or do lonely people (or less lonely people) use Facebook? First, researchers observed a significant overall average effect in the positive relationship between Facebook use and loneliness. Researchers also point to measurements of Facebook use as well as measurements of loneliness (and its variations) as possible moderating features or sources of variability in the relationship. Testing the relationship between Facebook use and loneliness in the context of two causal models revealed that (a) the first model outlining a path from elements of loneliness to Facebook use was not an adequate explanation of the data; whereas, (b) testing the relationship for a path in the second model from elements of Facebook use to loneliness showed results consistent with the data.     

A Review of “Reference Sources for Small and Medium-sized Libraries”

SUMMARY

In the summer of 1999, the libraries at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) embarked on a Web redesign project. Essential to the new Web site were the development of a database of resources, Sage, and the creation of various in-house tools, which are used to enter and edit database resources. Tools were also created which assist in the creation and maintenance of various Web sites. With the completion of the project, UCSD students, faculty and staff can easily locate the resources and library information they need and library staff have more tools for Web site management.     

Mesh Quality: A Function of Geometry, Error Estimates or Both?

The issue of mesh quality for unstructured triangular and tetrahedral meshes is considered. The theoretical background to finite element methods is used to understand the basis of present-day geometrical mesh quality indicators. A survey of more recent research in the development of finite element methods describes work on anisotropic meshing algorithms, and on providing good error estimates that reveal the relationship between the error and both the mesh and the solution gradients. The reality of solving complex three-dimensional problems is that such indicators are presently not available for many problems of interest. A simple tetrahedral mesh quality measure using both geometrical and solution information is described. Some of the issues in mesh quality for unstructured tetrahedral meshes are illustrated by means of two simple examples.     

Review Article. The sea surface thermal boundary layer and its relevance to the measurement of sea surface temperature by airborne and spaceborne radiometers†

This review examines the importance of the thermal boundary layer of the ocean to the measurement of sea surface temperature (SST) by satcllitc-bornc infrared (IR) radiometers. Attention is focused on the difference between the temperature of the top 01mm which is observed by radiometers, and the temperature found at depths between a few centimetres and one metre, which is that recorded as bulk SST by ship measurement techniques. The question addressed is whether corrections for this effect are necessary in the light of the accuracy of IR radiometers, and the demands made by the application of SST data.

A brief preview is made of the accuracy of the best presently available sensor for space observations of SST, the AVHRR, the associated atmospheric corrections and other sources of error. Current knowledge of the thermal boundary layer of the ocean is then presented in a thorough review of the scientific literature. The evidence of field observations suggests that the surface skin can be typically 0.1-0.5 degK cooler than the water a few centimetres deeper. Theoretical models of the effect are available and there is some understanding of the dependence of spatial and temporal variability of the skin effect on other environmental parameters, but there is a need for more systematic observation before prediction of the effect can confidently be achieved.

The existing and potential applications of SST in oceanography and meteorology are summarized, with emphasis on the required accuracy, in certain areas 0 2 degK being desirable. Following a survey of the likely capabilities of the next generation of spaceborne IR radiometers (notably the ATSR) it is concluded that while the inaccuracies of present systems tend to be greater than the skin effect, if future systems meet their specification then the skin temperature deviation will become a significant factor in the calibration procedure. In the light of this, the review concludes with some remarks regarding the value of further studies of the thermal skin effect.