An industrial study of applying input space partitioning to test financial calculation engines

This paper presents results from an industrial study that applied input space partitioning and semi-automated requirements modeling to large-scale industrial software, specifically financial calculation engines. Calculation engines are used in financial service applications such as banking, mortgage, insurance, and trading to compute complex, multi-conditional formulas to make high risk financial decisions. They form the heart of financial applications, and can cause severe economic harm if incorrect. Controllability and observability of these calculation engines are low, so robust and sophisticated test methods are needed to ensure the results are valid. However, the industry norm is to use pure human-based, requirements-driven test design, usually with very little automation. The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), commonly known as Freddie Mac, concerned that these test design techniques may lead to ineffective and inefficient testing, partnered with a university to use high quality, sophisticated test design on several ongoing projects. The goal was to determine if such test design can be cost-effective on this type of critical software. In this study, input space partitioning, along with automation, were applied with the help of several special-purpose tools to validate the effectiveness of input space partitioning. Results showed that these techniques were far more effective (finding more software faults) and more efficient (requiring fewer tests and less labor), and the managers reported that the testing cycle was reduced from five human days to 0.5. This study convinced upper management to begin infusing this approach into other software development projects.     

State of the academic field of IS in India

The field of information systems (IS) remains ill-defined, facing problems of recognition and identity crisis. Several papers and debates have been dedicated on this topic for over three decades. The focus of these debates have largely centered on the state of the IS field in Americas and Europe and with a limited study conducted in the Asia–Pacific context. This study attempts to assess the field in the Indian context and highlight the challenges and issues faced by IS faculties in India. Based on literature survey of the seminal papers in the field, we identified the salient topics of interest to IS researchers: identity of the IS field; diversity of the field; research approaches, methods and rigor; reference disciplines; journals and conferences; and IS course and curriculum. A two-phase study was carried out to explore the interest generated by the IS field in India. In the first phase, secondary data review of leading business schools in India was carried out to understand their focus on IS as an academic discipline. In the second phase, we conducted interviews of IS researchers from the premium business schools in India. In our study, we analyze the research focus of IS faculties in B-schools in India, analyze the composition of the faculty pool and the nature of research work undertaken by them. Our study points at the restricted focus of IS researchers in India around a few narrow areas, with a significant breadth of topics not being explored for research. We found the identity struggle of the field to be prominent, which was further compounded by the limited number of active, IS researchers. The growing importance of qualitative techniques in IS research, the challenges of developing a sound base in multiple reference disciplines and the need for making IS course interesting for business school students were some of the other significant observations. Our study also highlighted the paradox of the success of the IT industry in India leading to reduced enrollment of IS courses in B-Schools. We conclude by providing recommendations to B-school deans and directors.     

Memetic cooperative coevolution of Elman recurrent neural networks

Cooperative coevolution decomposes an optimisation problem into subcomponents and collectively solves them using evolutionary algorithms. Memetic algorithms provides enhancement to evolutionary algorithms with local search. Recently, the incorporation of local search into a memetic cooperative coevolution method has shown to be efficient for training feedforward networks on pattern classification problems. This paper applies the memetic cooperative coevolution method for training recurrent neural networks on grammatical inference problems. The results show that the proposed method achieves better performance in terms of optimisation time and robustness.     

Effect of thiophosphoryl compounds as accelerators and coupling agents on the vulcanization of NR‐XNBR blend

The effect of a number of thiophosphoryl compounds [viz., bis(isobutyl) thiophosphoryl di‐, tri‐, and tetrasulfides and bis(dicyclohexyl) thiophopsphoryl di‐, tri‐, and tetrasulfides] on natural rubber (NR)‐carboxylated nitrile rubber (XNBR) blend was studied. All these thiophosphoryl compounds are capable of forming interrubber links leading to covulcanized blends which exhibit a fair degree of synergism with respect to physical properties, the maximum being obtained at the 25% NR and 75% XNBR blend composition. This is an obvious claim that the blend under investigation is technologically compatible, having some degree of interrubber interaction which is enhanced in case of two‐stage vulcanization. The existence of interrubber interaction is judged by the swelling experiment. The blend morphology assessed by SEM micrographs corroborates the foregoing observations and accounts for the significant improvement in physical properties of the blend vulcanizates, particularly in two‐stage vulcanization. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 86: 3286‐3299, 2002     

Targeting and design of water networks for fixed flowrate and fixed contaminant load operations

Water-using processes are typically modeled as either fixed flowrate operations or fixed contaminant load operations. A new method for targeting the minimum freshwater and pinch in a single-contaminant water network is proposed, which can be applied to both kinds of operations. The method consists of plotting separate source and demand composites with flowrate as the horizontal axis and contaminant load unusually as the vertical axis. It is elegant, non-iterative, and can handle hybrid problems where both kinds of operations coexist.To design minimum freshwater networks for fixed flowrate problems, an algorithm is presented based on a newly developed principle of nearest neighbors. The principle simply states that the source streams to be chosen to satisfy a particular water demand must be the nearest available neighbors in terms of contaminant concentration.To design minimum freshwater networks for fixed contaminant load problems, the nearest neighbors algorithm is applied to process units that lie across the pinch. Units that lie entirely on one side of the pinch are satisfied by the cleanest source available on that side of the pinch. In other words, below-pinch units are satisfied by freshwater and above-pinch units are satisfied by the cleanest available stream above the pinch. Designs based on this methodology, apart from meeting the minimum freshwater target, also minimize the water flowing through the process units resulting in reduced network capital cost.     

Color and Selected Properties of PbO─BiO1.5─GaO1.5 Glasses

The density; molar volume; thermal expansion coefficient; dissolution rate in water, HC1, and NaOH; glass transition and crystallization temperatures; and the absorption edge in the ultraviolet-visible and infrared were measured for PbO─BiO1.5─GaO1.5 glasses. The range of compositions investigated was x PbO (100 − (x + y) )BiO_1.5. yGaO_1.5 for x between 20 and 60 cat% and y of 20, 25, 30, and 35 cat%. The glass-forming tendency increased with increased GaO_1.5 and decreased with increased PbO or BiO_1.5. The compositional dependence of these properties was consistent with the weight, size, charge, and bond strength of the cations. The Ga^{3 +} ions in these glasses are believed to act primarily as network-forming cations, whereas the majority of the Bi³⁺ and Pb²⁺ ions behave as network-modifying cations. It is suggested that a small friction of the lead ions are present as Pb⁴⁺. Depending upon melting conditions, these glasses ranged in color from brown to yellow. Various attempts, including containerless melting, were made to obtain colorless glasses, but no conditions were found which totally eliminated the color. The least color (pale yellow) was obtained when the glasses were melted in an air or nitrogen atmosphere in an alumina or gold crucible.     

IR studies on preoxidized PAN fibres

IR absorption spectra of preoxidized PAN fibres have been studied in the spectral region 2–15 μ. Observed frequencies have been assigned to the different modes of vibration. The neighbouring frequencies appearing in the stretching mode region of the nitrile group has been interpreted in terms of Fermi-resonance and a basis for the correlation between their intensity ratio and the degree of oxidation has also been discussed.     

Physical properties of natural and modified cotton cellulose grafted with acrylate monomers

Natural, cyanoethylated, and formaldehyde-crosslinked cotton cellulose has been grafted with methyl, ethyl, and n-butyl acrylate and methyl methacrylate monomers. Various physical properties such as density, moisture regain, birefringence, and mechanical properties were studied. The results indicate that the density and moisture regain of the grafted fibers are less than those of natural cotton. The birefringence of grafted fibers is also less than that of natural cotton. The variation in birefringence with percent graft-on depends on the monomer. Parameters such as orientation factor, helix angle, and refractive power of fibers were calculated from the birefringence data and the results discussed. It was observed that due to grafting of both natural and crosslinked cotton, there is a decrease in tensile strength, increase in elongation at break, and decrease in the initial modulus. Attempts are made to understand these changes in the properties of cotton in terms of the changes occurring in the fine structure of the fiber.     

Effect of structure on the thermal behaviour of ethynyl-terminated imide resins

A series of ethynyl-terminated aromatic imide monomers containing phosphine oxide in the backbone were synthesized by the reaction of tris(3-aminophenyl) phosphine oxide (TAP) or bis(3-aminophenyl)methyl phosphine oxide (BAP) with pyromellitic dianhydride (PMDA) or 3, 3′,4, 4′-benzophenone tetracarboxylic acid dianhydride (BTDA) or 4, 4′-perfluoroisopropylidenebis(phthalic anhydride), and 3-ethynyl aniline. Structural characterization was done by infrared, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and elemental analysis. Thermal characterization was done by differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis. The decomposition temperatures of cured resins were above 500°C in nitrogen atmosphere. Char yield at 800°C ranged from 52–63.5%.     

Interpolymer complex microparticles based on polymethacrylic acid‐chitosan for oral insulin delivery

In the present study, microparticles composed of polymethacrylic acid‐chitosan (PMAA‐CS) were prepared by a novel interionic gelation method. Free‐radical polymerization of methacrylic acid was carried out in the presence of CS, using a water‐soluble initiator, and application of these microparticles toward oral insulin delivery was evaluated. Microparticles obtained were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) studies. From SEM studies, it was observed that microparticles had an aggregated morphology with size ～20 μm, while FTIR confirmed the presence of ionic interaction between PMAA and CS chains. Protein loading was done by diffusion filling method, and from in vitro release study, it was observed that insulin‐loaded microparticles displayed a pH depended release profile at alkaline/acidic pH. Microparticles exhibited sustained release of insulin for 3–4 h at neutral pH, and enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) proved that encapsulated protein maintained 100% biological activity at neutral pH. Preliminary study suggests that these microparticles can serve as good candidate for oral protein delivery. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 99: 506–512, 2006