Estimate Test Execution Effort at an Early Stage: An Empirical Study
Software testing is becoming more and more important as it is a widely used activity to ensure software quality. Test execution becomes an activity in the critical path of a project. In this case, early estimation of test execution effort can benefit both tester managers and software projects. This paper reports an empirical study on early test execution effort estimation. In the study, we propose an approach which mainly consists of two parts: test case number prediction from use cases and test effort estimation based on the test suite execution vector model which combines test case number, test execution complexity and its tester together. For each part, we evaluate it with the data of real projects from a financial software company.

title: An Adaptive MIMO System Based on Unified Belief Propagation Detection
abstract: An adaptive multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) system based on the unified belief propagation (BP) detection is proposed. A BP detector composed of a serial of component detectors is first presented. With a unified design of the BP detector, a multi-rate MIMO system adaptive to channel variations is then developed, which aims at achieving the maximal throughput performance. The usage of the unified BP detector eliminates the multiple detector modules at the receiver in conventional multi-mode adaptive MIMO systems. Further, the linear complexity to space time block length and parallel operation of the unified BP detection provide the advantages of low complexity, low detection delay and smooth switching between different data rates. With the average receiving signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) based switching mechanism, the proposed adaptive MIMO framework adaptively chooses the appropriate rate for the transmission. Simulation results are provided to show the BER and complexity performance of a specific BP detector as well as the throughput performance of the adaptive scheme.

title: A Bidirectional Adaptive Sequential Gaussian Approximation for MIMO Systems
abstract: A bidirectional adaptive detection method was proposed to prevent error propagation based on sequential Gaussian approximation algorithm for MIMO systems. Conventional sequential Gaussian approximation detection executes a tree search at the receiver, when the number of searching paths is large, error propagation is well prevented at the cost of high complexity, when few paths are searched, serious error propagation may occur. In the new method, transmitted symbols were estimated parallel both in sequential order and inverse order, and the number of searching paths was determined by comparing the results of bidirectional detection, which can effectively prevent error propagation at reduced complexity. The novel algorithm can be executed at low delay because of parallel computing, and shows good performance at low complexity.

title: Simulation of the defect removal process with queuing theory

title: DIET — A Scalable, Robust and Adaptable Multi-Agent Platform for Information Management
abstract: The complexity of the global information infrastructure demands new approaches to managing distributed information. The Decentralised Information Ecosystem Technologies (DIET) project has produced a software platform based on a lightweight, scalable, multi-agent system that can be used to support a variety of information management applications that deal with some of this complexity. This paper describes the main components of the DIET software platform, and several examples of its application. It also considers the diversity of potential applications for this technology.

title: A high-resolution electron momentum spectroscopy and density functional theory study into the complete valence electronic structure of allene
abstract: A study of the electronic structure of the complete valence shell of allene (1,2-propadiene) is reported. New high-resolution binding-energy spectra were measured in the energy regime 6–34.5 eV over a range of different target electron momenta, so that momentum distributions (MDs) could be determined for each molecular orbital. These data supersede the low-resolution work of Braidwood et al. [ (1994) 2075–2087], and also clarify some ambiguities with the earlier results. Theoretical MDs were calculated using a plane wave impulse approximation (PWIA) model for the reaction mechanism and density functional theory (DFT) for the wave function. Three basis sets, at the local spin density (LSD) approximation level and, additionally, incorporating nonlocal corrections such as the generalized gradient approximation (GGA), were studied. A critical comparison between the experimental and theoretical MDs was made, and it allowed us to determine the “optimum” wave function for allene from the basis sets we considered. This wave function is then used to derive allene's chemically interesting molecular properties. A summary of some of these results and a comparison of them with those of other workers is also presented with the level of agreement typically being good.

title: Deployment of an AEC industry sector product model
abstract: CIMsteel Integration Standard, Version 2 (CIS/2) is an industry-developed product model based on ISO-STEP technology that has been widely adopted within the steel construction industry. CIS/2 is an early success story of broad use of a product model for both data exchange and improving the productivity of those companies taking advantage of its capabilities. Here, we review the history of CIS/2, the methods and issues arising from its deployment, the benefits it has thus far realized and the research issues these activities have identified.

title: Characterizing Spatio-temporal Patterns for Disease Discrimination in Cardiac Echo Videos
abstract: Disease-specific understanding of echocardiographic sequences requires accurate characterization of spatio-temporal motion patterns. In this paper we present a method of automatic extraction and matching of spatio-temporal patterns from cardiac echo videos. Specifically, we extract cardiac regions (chambers and walls) using a variation of multiscale normalized cuts that combines motion estimates from deformable models with image intensity. We then derive spatio-temporal trajectories of region measurements such as wall motion, volume and thickness. The region trajectories are then matched to infer the similarities in disease labels of patients. Validation results on patient data sets collected from many hospitals are presented.

title: GMAC: A Game-theoretic MAC Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
abstract: The conservative nature of the 802.11 ad hoc scheme has instigated extensive research whose goal is to improve the spatial reuse and/or energy consumption of this scheme. Transmission power control (TPC) was shown to be effective in achieving this goal. Despite their demonstrated performance gains, previously proposed power-controlled channel access protocols often incur extra hardware cost (e.g., multiple transceivers). Furthermore, they do not fully exploit the potential of power control due to the heuristic nature of power allocation and “interference margin” computations. In this paper, we propose a distributed, single-channel MAC protocol (GMAC) that is inspired by game theory. In GMAC, multiple potential transmitters are first involved in an admission phase, which enables terminals to compute the transmission powers that achieve a Nash equilibrium (NE) for the given utility function. Subsequently, successful contenders can simultaneously proceed with their transmissions. Simulation results indicate that GMAC improves the network throughput over the 802.11 scheme by about 80%, and over another single-channel power-controlled MAC protocol (POWMAC) by about 40%. These gains are achieved at no extra energy cost.