Electrocatalytic hydrogenation of cyclohexanone: Simple dynamic cell design

The electrocatalytic hydrogenation of cyclohexanone has been investigated with catalytic powder particles made of metal nanoaggregates deposited on a nonconductive material such as activated carbon and alumina. The catalytic powder particles were suspended in the solution under vigorous stirring conditions. The brief contact of the powder particles with a porous carbon cathode was sufficient to form adsorbed hydrogen on the metallic nanoaggregates through water electrolysis and initiate the electrohydrogenation process. It is demonstrated that the key parameters of the electrohydrogenation process are both the nature of the metallic nanoaggregates and the nature of the non-conductive material. The hydrodynamics of the solution under vigorous stirring conditions have also been studied for the particular cell used in the present study.     

Doubling the engineer's utility

The big challenge for military forces and their industrial supporters since the end of the cold war is how to convert technologies once viewed as exclusively military to serve civilian ends as well. The authors discuss a case of dual use in which a rigorous military method for designing complex computer systems appears suited to complicated civilian projects. The method is supported by a new language, CaRT-Spec, which is application independent and therefore suitable for both military and civilian applications     

On coherence, random-self-reducibility, and self-correction

We study three types of self‐reducibility that are motivated by the theory of program verification. A set A is random‐self‐reducible if one can determine whether an input x is in A by making random queries to an A‐oracle. The distribution of each query may depend only on the length of x. A set B is self‐correctable over a distribution if one can convert a program that is correct on most of the probability mass of to a probabilistic program that is correct everywhere. A set C is coherent if one can determine whether an input x is in C by asking questions to an oracle for C–{x}.?We first show that adaptive coherence is more powerful than nonadaptive coherence, even if the nonadaptive querier is nonuniform. Blum et al.(1993) showed that every random‐self‐reducible function is self‐correctable. It is unknown, however, whether self‐correctability implies random‐self‐reducibility. We show, assuming a reasonable complexity‐theoretic hypothesis, that certain hard, sparse, tally sets exist, and that there is a self‐correctable function which is not random‐self‐reducible. For easily samplable distributions, however, we show that constructing a self‐correctable function that is not random‐self‐reducible is as hard as proving that P is different from PP. Received: 14 June, 1996     

Software in the new millennium: a virtual roundtable

What will software look like in the future? To answer this question, we conducted a survey of our editorial and industrial advisory boards, as well as a few outsiders. We constructed a set of 13 questions that we thought reflected the original query. We then circulated these questions to our boards, with a request to respond to the questions, or be extend them with additional are questions as appropriate. The answers were far ranging and sometimes surprising.     

Antipatterns in the Creation of Intelligent Systems

A design pattern is a named problem-solution pair that enables large-scale reuse of software architectures or their components. Ideally, patterns explicitly capture expert knowledge, design trade-offs, and design rationale and make these lessons learned widely available for off-the-shelf use. They can also enhance developers' vocabulary - for example, by easing the transition to object-oriented programming. Conventionally, patterns consist of four elements: a name, the problem to be solved, the solution to the problem (often termed the refactored solution), and the consequences of the solution. Numerous sets of patterns (collectively known as pattern languages) exist for software design, analysis, management, and so on. Shortly after the notion of design patterns emerged, practitioners began discussing problem-solution pairs in which the solution did more harm than good. These have come to be known as antipatterns, and they are well known in the design and management communities     

A systematic literature review on Internet of things in education: Benefits and challenges

With close to 20.4 billion devices connected to the Internet to be deployed by 2020, Internet of things (IoT) is already being leveraged in diverse sectors. Now, because of the ubiquitous nature of IoT devices, schools and academic institutions are looking to incorporate IoT in educational activities. With the increased use of IoT in the education domain, it is of utmost importance to study how this technology with its distinguished system functions such as sensing and decision making can support and challenge the pedagogical processes for all interrelated actors (faculty, students, and staff) as well as all involved assets (e.g., libraries, classrooms, and labs). Although there have been several contributions on the inclusion of IoT into the education domain, there is still a lack of consolidated and coherent views on this subject. Hence, we are motivated to close the gap of knowledge and embarked on mapping out the published studies available. This study presents the results of a systematic literature review focusing on the benefits and the challenges faced in education in integrating IoT into the curriculum and educational environments. Different mapping views of the extracted studies are provided as long as a summary of the already implemented tools and a list of gap research questions yet to be investigated.     

Pavlov's Bugs: Matching Repair Policies with Rewards

Software maintenance engineers devote a significant amount of work to repairing user-identified errors. But user, maintainer, and manager perceptions of an error's importance can vary, and bug-repair assignment policies can adversely affect those perceptions.     

The certainty of uncertainty in real-time systems

Identifying and managing uncertainty is an essential part of the engineering of complex systems. But when dealing with real-time systems, special forms of uncertainty provide even greater challenges. Why should this be? The short answer is that real-time systems must add the assurance of temporal correctness to the already difficult task of sensor interface and device control. But the problem is really more complicated than that. In this article, the author examines the nature of uncertainty in real-time systems. While looking briefly at some traditional mathematical models of uncertainty, emphasis on this article is on the identification of uncertainty through telltale behaviors and "code smells." Then, techniques for managing, mitigating, or eliminating the uncertainty will be given.     

Unidimensional and multidimensional models of dyadic adjustment: A hierarchical reconciliation.

The theoretical structure underlying the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) has recently been questioned on the basis of factor analyses demonstrating the presence of a single unrotated factor accounting for a large proportion of variance. These findings instigated a rather heated debate between proponents of unidimensional and multidimensional models of dyadic adjustment. We tested the proposition that these seemingly contradictory conceptions can be integrated under a hierarchical model. The sample consisted of 408 married or cohabiting subjects who completed the DAS. The results of first-order and second-order confirmatory factor analyses show the value of a hierarchical conceptualization of dyadic adjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The NASA automated requirements measurement tool: a reconstruction

In the late 1990s the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Software Assurance Technology Center (SATC) developed a tool to automatically analyze a requirements document and produce a detailed quality report. The report was based on statistical analysis of word frequencies at various structural levels of the document. The Automated Requirements Measurement (ARM) tool was further enhanced to include additional functionality such as custom definitions of quality indicators inputs for document analysis. By 2011 work on the ARM tool was discontinued. This paper describes the reverse-engineering and reproduction of the functionality of ARM. Recreating the functionality of this tool yielded valuable insight into certain quality metrics and provides a benchmark tool for future research. In addition to recreating and working with the ARM tool, this paper explores both existing and potential definitions of quality metrics in requirements specifications. Automated requirements analysis is a convergence of various fields of research, including text mining, quality analysis, and natural language processing. Informed by tangential areas of research in document understanding and data mining, recommendations are made for future areas of research and development in automated requirements analysis.