Studying high impact fix-inducing changes

As software systems continue to play an important role in our daily lives, their quality is of paramount importance. Therefore, a plethora of prior research has focused on predicting components of software that are defect-prone. One aspect of this research focuses on predicting software changes that are fix-inducing. Although the prior research on fix-inducing changes has many advantages in terms of highly accurate results, it has one main drawback: It gives the same level of impact to all fix-inducing changes. We argue that treating all fix-inducing changes the same is not ideal, since a small typo in a change is easier to address by a developer than a thread synchronization issue. Therefore, in this paper, we study high impact fix-inducing changes (HIFCs). Since the impact of a change can be measured in different ways, we first propose a measure of impact of the fix-inducing changes, which takes into account the implementation work that needs to be done by developers in later (fixing) changes. Our measure of impact for a fix-inducing change uses the amount of churn, the number of files and the number of subsystems modified by developers during an associated fix of the fix-inducing change. We perform our study using six large open source projects to build specialized models that identify HIFCs, determine the best indicators of HIFCs and examine the benefits of prioritizing HIFCs. Using change factors, we are able to predict 56 % to 77 % of HIFCs with an average false alarm (misclassification) rate of 16 %. We find that the lines of code added, the number of developers who worked on a change, and the number of prior modifications on the files modified during a change are the best indicators of HIFCs. Lastly, we observe that a specialized model for HIFCs can provide inspection effort savings of 4 % over the state-of-the-art models. We believe our results would help practitioners prioritize their efforts towards the most impactful fix-inducing changes and save inspection effort.     

Efficient retrieval of replicated data

Declustering is a common technique used to reduce query response times. Data is declustered over multiple disks and query retrieval can be parallelized. Most of the research on declustering is targeted at spatial range queries and investigates schemes with low additive error. Recently, declustering using replication has been proposed to reduce the additive overhead. Replication significantly reduces retrieval cost of arbitrary queries. In this paper, we propose a disk allocation and retrieval mechanism for arbitrary queries based on design theory. Using the proposed c-copy replicated declustering scheme, buckets can be retrieved using at most k disk accesses. Retrieval algorithm is very efficient and is asymptotically optimal with complexity for a query Q. In addition to the deterministic worst-case bound and efficient retrieval, proposed algorithm handles nonuniform data, high dimensions, supports incremental declustering and has good fault-tolerance property. Experimental results show the feasibility of the algorithm. Recommended by: Sunil Prabhakar     

Energy- and reliability-aware task scheduling onto heterogeneous MPSoC architectures

Scheduling periodic tasks onto a multiprocessor architecture under several constraints such as performance, cost, energy, and reliability is a major challenge in embedded systems. In this paper, we present an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) based framework that maps a given task set onto an Heterogeneous Multiprocessor System-on-Chip (HMPSoC) architecture. Our framework can be used with several objective functions; minimizing energy consumption, minimizing cost (i.e., the number of heterogeneous processors), and maximizing reliability of the system under performance constraints. We use Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS) for reducing energy consumption while we employ task duplication to maximize reliability. We illustrate the effectiveness of our approach through several experiments, each with a different number of tasks to be scheduled. We also propose two heuristics based on Earliest Deadline First (EDF) algorithm for minimizing energy under performance and cost constraints. Our experiments on generated task sets show that ILP-based method reduces the energy consumption up to 62% percent against a method that does not apply DVS. Heuristic methods obtain promising results when compared to optimal results generated by our ILP-based method.     

Anticonvulsant activity of furanocoumarins and the essential oil obtained from the fruits of Heracleum crenatifolium

The anticonvulsant activity of furanocoumarins, coumarin mixture and the essential oil obtained from the fruits of Heracleum crenatifolium was examined against maximal electroshock (MES)-induced seizures in mice. Bergapten showed significant anticonvulsant activity. The furanocoumarins isolated from the fruits of the plant were identified using thin-layer chromatography, melting points and spectroscopic methods (IR, MS, ¹H NMR) as isobergapten (1), pimpinellin (2), bergapten (3), isopimpinellin (4), sphondin (5) and byak-angelicol (6). The essential oil content of the fruits were found as 5.5%. Twenty-two compounds representing 99.3% of the essential oil obtained from the fruits of H. crenatifolium were determined and the major components were identified as octanol and octyl acetate (3.1% and 88.4% respectively) by GC and GC–MS.     

Reusable water oxidation catalyst with dual active center for enhanced water oxidation: Iridium oxide nanoparticles immobilized on monodisperse-porous Mn5O8 microspheres

A reusable catalyst with dual active center for chemical water oxidation is synthesized for the first time by immobilization of iridium oxide nanoparticles (IrO₂ NPs) on monodisperse-porous manganese oxide microspheres acting both catalytic active center and support. Individual catalytic activity of manganese oxide microspheres is explained by multiple oxidation states of manganese which are capable of forming oxidative oxygen species. Monodisperse-porous microspheres in the form of Mn₅O₈, MnO₂ and Mn₂O₃ are used for synthesis of different catalysts and the highest activity in water oxidation is observed with the catalyst synthesized using Mn₅O₈ microspheres. The catalytic activity is correlated with the total Mn(II) and Mn(III) percentage of manganese oxide type selected for composite catalyst. The oxygen evolution up to 244 μmol is achieved in 30 min with the catalyst synthesized using Mn₅O₈ microspheres. Maximum TON and TOF numbers are obtained as 298 and 557 h^?1 with excellent reusability.     

Fracture load and microcrack comparison of crowns manufactured from tooth‐shaped and traditional blocks

This study intended to analyze microcracks and fractographic markings on the surface of all ceramic crowns after milling and compare the fracture loads. 90 crowns were manufactured from two feldspathic (Priticrown‐Pr and Vita Mark II‐Vi) and a lithium disilicate (EmaxCAD‐Em) blocks (n = 30). Two groups (n = 15) were prepared for each ceramic. In the first group, crowns were analyzed twice via the fluorescent penetrant method for microcrack detection, after the manufacturing process and thermal cycles. The load to fracture test was applied at a crosshead speed of 0.5 mm/min until catastrophic failure. Second group crowns were directly cemented onto the Co‐Cr dies following the manufacturing process and loaded to fracture. Fractographic markings were analyzed through scanning electron microscope. Spearman correlation analysis, Kruskal–Wallis H test, Mann–Whitney U test, and Wilcoxon Signed Rank test were applied (α = .05). Fracture loads of Em crowns were higher than other groups (p < .05), with and without the aging procedure. Except for second group Pr (r = ?.532), no significant relationship was found between microcrack numbers and fracture loads (p > .05). Thermal cycling did not affect microcrack numbers and fracture loads (p > .05). Tooth‐shaped multilayered Pr blocks did not provide an advantage in terms of microcrack and fracture loads.     

The effect of combined use of chitosan and PIPS on push-out bond strength of root canal filling materials

Adhesion of root canal filling materials to root dentin is important for the long-term success of the treatment. Push-out bond strength test is used to evaluate the adhesion capacity of root canal filling materials to root canal walls. The aim of the present study is to compare the bond strength of root canal filling materials to root dentin after irrigation with EDTA, chitosan and the combination of chitosan and PIPS irridation using push-out bond strength test. Forty-eight extracted teeth were resected until 13-mm long roots were obtained. Root canals were prepared with a size-25 OneShape instrument. Samples were divided into three groups each including 15 roots. Group 1: Canals were rinsed with 0.2% chitosan and subjected to laser irridation with PIPS at the same time. Group 2: Canals were rinsed with 0.2% chitosan. Group 3: Canals were rinsed with EDTA. All canals were filled with .06 tapered gutta-percha and AH-plus sealer. One-mm thick slices were taken from coronal, middle and apical one-thirds of the roots. Push-out bond strength was determined using a Universal Testing Machine. One root from each group was observed under SEM to evaluate the degree of smear removal. Statistical analysis was performed with Kruskall-Wallis test. Results showed that bond strength values were statistically similar in overall evaluation for all groups (p > .05). In segmental evaluation, group 1 revealed the highest bond strength in apical one-third compared to other groups (p < .05).