Set-Dueling-Controlled Adaptive Insertion for High-Performance Caching

The commonly used LRU replacement policy causes thrashing for memory- intensive workloads. A simple mechanism that dynamically changes the insertion policy used by LRU replacement reduces cache misses by 21 percent and requires a total storage overhead of less than 2 bytes.     

Understanding online customer repurchasing intention and the mediating role of trust – an empirical investigation in two developed countries

Although e-commerce adoption and customers’ initial purchasing behavior have been well studied in the literature, repeat purchase intention and its antecedents remain understudied. This study proposes a model to understand the extent to which trust mediates the effects of vendor-specific factors on customers’ intention to repurchase from an online vendor. The model was tested and validated in two different country settings. We found that trust fully mediates the relationships between perceived reputation, perceived capability of order fulfillment, and repurchasing intention, and partially mediates the relationship between perceived website quality and repurchasing intention in both countries. Moreover, multi-group analysis reveals no significant between-country differences of the model with regards to the antecedents and outcomes of trust, except the effect of reputation on trust. Academic and practical implications and future research are discussed.     

How Practical is a Code of Ethics for Software Engineers Interested in Quality?

Software Quality Journal -     

Decentralized sliding-mode output-feedback control of interconnected discrete-delay systems

Global decentralized discrete sliding mode control of a class of interconnected system using only output information is considered in this paper. Matched and unmatched uncertainties as well as known and unknown interconnections are treated. Bounded time-varying delays are considered within the subsystems and through interconnections. The stability of the reduced-order interconnected systems is analyzed using the Lyapunov–Kraszovskii approach and a novel reachability condition of the composite sliding surfaces is established. The resultant dynamics are proved to be globally asymptotically stable. Simulations show the efficacy of the proposed scheme.     

Statistical evaluation of water tree lengths in XLPE cables at different temperatures

Accelerated aging of two types of commercially produced medium voltage XLPE insulated cables was carried out under the combined stresses of three types consisting of ionic aqueous species, elevated electrical stress and temperature cycling. After 1000 h of aging, the water tree parameters were evaluated. Results show that external ionic species exert profound impact on the generation of bow tie and vented water trees, while impurities inherently present in the cable components also contribute significantly. Temperature cycling increases the bow tie trees by an order of magnitude, while morphology of insulation influences the level of water tree degradation. The water tree population and their lengths were subjected to Weibull and log-normal models of statistical distributions and the data were found to fit better on the log-normal model. For a better statistical inference, a computer based Monte Carlo simulation was devised and used to precisely discriminate the two models. Simulation results further confirm that both types of water trees fit better on the log-normal model. The most likely mechanism for water tree degradation is fatigue based and hence mechanistic by nature.     

Effect of cellulosic sugar degradation products (furfural and hydroxymethyl furfural) on acetone–butanol–ethanol (ABE) fermentation using Clostridium beijerinckii P260

Studies were performed to identify chemical compounds present in wheat straw hydrolysate (WSH) that enhance acetone butanol ethanol (ABE) productivity. These compounds were identified as furfural and hydroxymethyl furfural (HMF). Control experiment resulted in the production of 21.38 g L^?1 ABE with a productivity of 0.30 g L^?1 h^?1. WSH contained 0.04–0.34 g L^?1 furfural and 0.12–0.88 g L^?1 HMF. Addition of furfural to the fermentation medium at a concentration of 0.50 g L^?1 resulted in a productivity of 0.88 g L^?1 h^?1 which is 293% of the productivity obtained in control experiments. Supplementation with 1.00 g L^?1 HMF into the fermentation medium produced 25.27 g L^?1 ABE with a productivity of 0.68 g L^?1 h^?1. A combination of furfural (0.50 g L^?1) and HMF (0.50 g L^?1) also enhanced ABE production and productivity when added to the fermentation medium. Both furfural and HMF enhanced specific productivity (233–308%) of ABE. In brief, WSH contained an adequate concentration of furfural and HMF that enhanced ABE productivity, specific productivity, and product concentration.     

Hybrid model of content extraction

We present a hybrid model for content extraction from HTML documents. The model operates on Document Object Model (DOM) tree of the corresponding HTML document. It evaluates each tree node and associated statistical features like link density and text distribution across the node to predict significance of the node towards overall content provided by the document. Once significance of the nodes is determined, the formatting characteristics like fonts, styles and the position of the nodes are evaluated to identify the nodes with similar formatting as compared to the significant nodes. The proposed hybrid model is derived from two different models, i.e., one is based on statistical features and other on formatting characteristics and achieved the best accuracy. We describe the validity of model with the help of experiments conducted on the standard data sets. The results revealed that the proposed model outperformed other existing content extraction models. We present a browser based implementation of the proposed model as proof of concept and compare the implementation strategy with various state of art implementations. We also discuss various applications of the proposed model with special emphasis on open source intelligence.     

Alternative approach to compute shear amplification in high‐rise reinforced concrete core wall buildings using uncoupled modal response history analysis procedure

The seismic response of the high‐rise reinforced concrete (RC) wall structures is really complicated as several vibration modes other than the fundamental mode normally contribute significantly to the response—commonly recognized as ‘higher mode effects’. Response spectrum analysis (RSA) procedure, which can account for higher mode effects, is usually employed to compute the seismic design demand for the high‐rise structures. Recent studies show that the inelastic seismic force demands obtained from the rigorous nonlinear response history analysis procedure are much larger than the seismic force design demands obtained from the code‐based RSA procedure for the high‐rise RC wall structures. Though, the nonlinear response history analysis procedure is widely accepted for its ability to provide the most accurate estimate of nonlinear seismic responses, the obtained responses are generally so complex that it is quite difficult for engineers to grasp the overall picture of the responses and gain some insight into them and use them to understand the cause of high seismic demands. Another important issue related to the nonlinear seismic response prediction of the high‐rise RC wall structures is the realistic and accurate numerical modeling of RC walls. In this study, a simplified but reasonably accurate procedure called the uncoupled modal response history analysis procedure is used to interpret the complex nonlinear behavior of high‐rise RC wall structures. Moreover, a finite element model based on modified compression field theory is employed for accurate numerical modeling of RC walls by incorporating the axial‐flexure‐shear interaction. This study, by making use of a better computer modeling approach and an in‐depth analysis by modal decomposition, aims to resolve some of the unanswered questions regarding realistic prediction of nonlinear seismic demands of high‐rise structures.