Realizing quality improvement through test driven development: results and experiences of four industrial teams

Test-driven development (TDD) is a software development practice that has been used sporadically for decades. With this practice, a software engineer cycles minute-by-minute between writing failing unit tests and writing implementation code to pass those tests. Test-driven development has recently re-emerged as a critical enabling practice of agile software development methodologies. However, little empirical evidence supports or refutes the utility of this practice in an industrial context. Case studies were conducted with three development teams at Microsoft and one at IBM that have adopted TDD. The results of the case studies indicate that the pre-release defect density of the four products decreased between 40% and 90% relative to similar projects that did not use the TDD practice. Subjectively, the teams experienced a 15–35% increase in initial development time after adopting TDD.

Patterns of international scientific co-operation in Puerto Rico

Scientific activity has been increasing in Puerto Rico in recent years, a development mirrored not only by the amount of papers published, but by the international links established for scientific co-operation. The purpose of the present study is to identify and discuss the patterns of such co-operation, along with the trends in scientific research conducted in that context at Puerto Rican institutions. The methodology includes an analysis of the main areas of research addressed, defined as the area of specialization of the journals publishing papers indexed in the Science Citation Index (CD-ROM version) from 1980 to 1999. A total of 7271 studies, appearing in 1240 scientific journals, were selected to study the co-operation established between Puerto Rican institutions and organizations in other countries. The findings showed a high rate of international co-operation: 46.07% of the papers published were co-authored by researchers from other countries. The country accounting for the highest percentage of joint research was the USA, followed by Germany, United Kingdom, Canada and Italy. The close relationship between the Puerto Rican and US scientific systems is not unusual, inasmuch as the economic and socio-political bonds between them play an essential role in Puerto Rican scientific activity. The results also revealed substantial differences between the nineteen eighties and the nineties in terms of the nature of the links established, as well as growing internationalization of scientific research conducted on the island over the twenty-year period studied.     

Trajectories of Alcohol and Drug Use and Dependence From Adolescence to Adulthood: The Effects of Familial Alcoholism and Personality.

This study describes trajectories of substance use and dependence from adolescence to adulthood. Identified consumption groups include heavy drinking/heavy drug use, moderate drinking/experimental drug use, and light drinking/rare drug use. Dependence groups include alcohol only, drug only, and comorbid groups. The heavy drinking/heavy drug use group was at risk for alcohol and drug dependence and persistent dependence and showed more familial alcoholism, negative emotionality, and low constraint. The moderate drinking/experimental drug use group was at risk for alcohol dependence but not comorbid or persistent dependence and showed less negative emotionality and higher constraint. Familial alcoholism raised risk for alcohol and drug use and dependence in part because children from alcoholic families were more impulsive and lower in agreeableness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reactions to Counterstereotypic Behavior: The Role of Backlash in Cultural Stereotype Maintenance.

Social and economic sanctions for counterstereotypical behavior have been termed the backlash effect (L. A. Rudman, 1998). The authors present a model of the role of backlash in cultural stereotype maintenance from the standpoint of both perceivers and actors. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants lost a competition to either atypical or typical men or women and subsequently showed greater tendency to sabotage deviants. Moreover, undermining deviants was associated with increased self-esteem, suggesting that backlash rewards perceivers psychologically. Experiment 3 showed that gender deviants who feared backlash resorted to strategies designed to avoid it (e.g., hiding, deception, and gender conformity). Further, perceivers who sabotaged deviants (Experiment 2) or deviants who hid their atypicality (Experiment 3) estimated greater stereotyping on the part of future perceivers, in support of the model's presumed role for backlash in stereotype maintenance. The implications of the findings for cultural stereotypes are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Heat Shock Alters the Proteomic Profile of Equine Mesenchymal Stem Cells

The aim of this research was to determine the impact of heat stress on cell differentiation in an equine mesenchymal stem cell model (EMSC) through the application of heat stress to primary EMSCs as they progressed through the cell specialization process. A proteomic analysis was performed using mass spectrometry to compare relative protein abundances among the proteomes of three cell types: progenitor EMSCs and differentiated osteoblasts and adipocytes, maintained at 37 °C and 42 °C during the process of cell differentiation. A cell-type and temperature-specific response to heat stress was observed, and many of the specific differentially expressed proteins were involved in cell-signaling pathways such as Notch and Wnt signaling, which are known to regulate cellular development. Furthermore, cytoskeletal proteins profilin, DSTN, SPECC1, and DAAM2 showed increased protein levels in osteoblasts differentiated at 42 °C as compared with 37 °C, and these cells, while they appeared to accumulate calcium, did not organize into a whorl agglomerate as is typically seen at physiological temperatures. This altered proteome composition observed suggests that heat stress could have long-term impacts on cellular development. We propose that this in vitro stem cell culture model of cell differentiation is useful for investigating molecular mechanisms that impact cell development in response to stressors.     

Molecular Framework of Mouse Endothelial Cell Dysfunction during Inflammation: A Proteomics Approach

A key aspect of cytokine-induced changes as observed in sepsis is the dysregulated activation of endothelial cells (ECs), initiating a cascade of inflammatory signaling leading to leukocyte adhesion/migration and organ damage. The therapeutic targeting of ECs has been hampered by concerns regarding organ-specific EC heterogeneity and their response to inflammation. Using in vitro and in silico analysis, we present a comprehensive analysis of the proteomic changes in mouse lung, liver and kidney ECs following exposure to a clinically relevant cocktail of proinflammatory cytokines. Mouse lung, liver and kidney ECs were incubated with TNF-α/IL-1β/IFN-γ for 4 or 24 h to model the cytokine-induced changes. Quantitative label-free global proteomics and bioinformatic analysis performed on the ECs provide a molecular framework for the EC response to inflammatory stimuli over time and organ-specific differences. Gene Ontology and PANTHER analysis suggest why some organs are more susceptible to inflammation early on, and show that, as inflammation progresses, some protein expression patterns become more uniform while additional organ-specific proteins are expressed. These findings provide an in-depth understanding of the molecular changes involved in the EC response to inflammation and can support the development of drugs targeting ECs within different organs. Data are available via ProteomeXchange (identifier PXD031804).     

If someone is watching,I'll do what I'm asked: mandatoriness,control, and information security

Information security has become increasingly important to organizations. Despite the prevalence of technical security measures, individual employees remain the key link – and frequently the weakest link – in corporate defenses. When individuals choose to disregard security policies and procedures, the organization is at risk. How, then, can organizations motivate their employees to follow security guidelines? Using an organizational control lens, we build a model to explain individual information security precaution-taking behavior. Specific hypotheses are developed and tested using a field survey. We examine elements of control and introduce the concept of ‘mandatoriness,’ which we define as the degree to which individuals perceive that compliance with existing security policies and procedures is compulsory or expected by organizational management. We find that the acts of specifying policies and evaluating behaviors are effective in convincing individuals that security policies are mandatory. The perception of mandatoriness is effective in motivating individuals to take security precautions, thus if individuals believe that management watches, they will comply.     

A multi-institutional, multinational study of programming concepts using card sort data

Abstract: This paper presents a case study of the use of a repeated single‐criterion card sort with an unusually large, diverse participant group. The study, whose goal was to elicit novice programmers' knowledge of programming concepts, involved over 20 researchers from four continents and 276 participants drawn from 20 different institutions. In this paper we present the design of the study and the unexpected result that there were few discernible systematic differences in the population. The study was one of the activities of the National Science Foundation funded Bootstrapping Research in Computer Science Education project (2003).