A catalog of bright calibrator stars for 200-meter baseline near-infrared stellar interferometry

We present in this paper a catalog of reference stars suitable for calibrating infrared interferometric observations. In the K band, visibilities can be calibrated with a precision of 1% on baselines up to 200 meters for the whole sky, and up to 300 meters for some part of the sky. This work, extending to longer baselines a previous catalog compiled by Borde et al. (2002), is particularly well adapted to hectometric-class interferometers such as the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI, Glindemann et al. 2003) or the CHARA array (ten Brummelaar et al. 2003) when observing well resolved, high surface brightness objects (K<8). We use the absolute spectro-photometric calibration method introduced by Cohen et al. (1999) to derive the angular diameters of our new set of 948 G8--M0 calibrator stars extracted from IRAS, 2MASS and MSX catalogs. Angular stellar diameters range from 0.6 mas to 1.8 mas (median is 1.1 mas) with a median precision of 1.35%. For both the northern and southern hemispheres, the closest calibrator star is always less than 10 degree away.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, submitted to A&A. The full catalog can be found in http://calys.obspm.fr/~merand/Files/MerandEtAlCatalogue.tx

A Survey on Software Testing Techniques using Genetic Algorithm

The overall aim of the software industry is to ensure delivery of high quality software to the end user. To ensure high quality software, it is required to test software. Testing ensures that software meets user specifications and requirements. However, the field of software testing has a number of underlying issues like effective generation of test cases, prioritisation of test cases etc which need to be tackled. These issues demand on effort, time and cost of the testing. Different techniques and methodologies have been proposed for taking care of these issues. Use of evolutionary algorithms for automatic test generation has been an area of interest for many researchers. Genetic Algorithm (GA) is one such form of evolutionary algorithms. In this research paper, we present a survey of GA approach for addressing the various issues encountered during software testing.Comment: 13 Page

Towards the Usage of MBT at ETSI

In 2012 the Specialists Task Force (STF) 442 appointed by the European Telcommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) explored the possibilities of using Model Based Testing (MBT) for test development in standardization. STF 442 performed two case studies and developed an MBT-methodology for ETSI. The case studies were based on the ETSI-standards GeoNetworking protocol (ETSI TS 102 636) and the Diameter-based Rx protocol (ETSI TS 129 214). Models have been developed for parts of both standards and four different MBT-tools have been employed for generating test cases from the models. The case studies were successful in the sense that all the tools were able to produce the test suites having the same test adequacy as the corresponding manually developed conformance test suites. The MBT-methodology developed by STF 442 is based on the experiences with the case studies. It focusses on integrating MBT into the sophisticated standardization process at ETSI. This paper summarizes the results of the STF 442 work.Comment: In Proceedings MBT 2013, arXiv:1303.037

Modeling the object-oriented software process: OPEN and the unified process

A short introduction to software process modeling is presented, particularly object-oriented modeling. Two major industrial process models are discussed: the OPEN model and the Unified Process model. In more detail, the quality assurance in the Unified Process tool (formally called Objectory) is reviewed

Metamodel Instance Generation: A systematic literature review

Modelling and thus metamodelling have become increasingly important in Software Engineering through the use of Model Driven Engineering. In this paper we present a systematic literature review of instance generation techniques for metamodels, i.e. the process of automatically generating models from a given metamodel. We start by presenting a set of research questions that our review is intended to answer. We then identify the main topics that are related to metamodel instance generation techniques, and use these to initiate our literature search. This search resulted in the identification of 34 key papers in the area, and each of these is reviewed here and discussed in detail. The outcome is that we are able to identify a knowledge gap in this field, and we offer suggestions as to some potential directions for future research.Comment: 25 page

Apex Peptide Elution Chain Selection: A New Strategy for Selecting Precursors in 2D-LC-MALDI-TOF/TOF Experiments on Complex Biological Samples

LC-MALDI provides an often overlooked opportunity to exploit the separation between LC-MS and MS/MS stages of a 2D-LC-MS-based proteomics experiment, that is, by making a smarter selection for precursor fragmentation. Apex Peptide Elution Chain Selection (APECS) is a simple and powerful method for intensity-based peptide selection in a complex sample separated by 2D-LC, using a MALDI-TOF/TOF instrument. It removes the peptide redundancy present in the adjacent first-dimension (typically strong cation exchange, SCX) fractions by constructing peptide elution profiles that link the precursor ions of the same peptide across SCX fractions. Subsequently, the precursor ion most likely to fragment successfully in a given profile is selected for fragmentation analysis, selecting on precursor intensity and absence of adjacent ions that may cofragment. To make the method independent of experiment-specific tolerance criteria, we introduce the concept of the branching factor, which measures the likelihood of false clustering of precursor ions based on past experiments. By validation with a complex proteome sample of Arabidopsis thaliana, APECS identified an equivalent number of peptides as a conventional data-dependent acquisition method but with a 35% smaller work load. Consequently, reduced sample depletion allowed further selection of lower signal-to-noise ratio precursor ions, leading to a larger number of identified unique peptides.

Seřizování regulátorů PID pro lineární dynamické systémy metodou “Hrubé síly a od oka”

For PID controllers in control loops, which in practice still prevails, it is necessary to determine controller parameter values which assure sufficient quality and robustness of control. A lot of PID tuning methods is described and well established in daily use. They are often based either on behavior of closed control loop or on a mathematic model of the controlled plant (and its L-transfer function), which allow to determine controller parameters by direct calculation. With increasing computing power of HW and SW aids it could be beneficial to use a method for determining the optimal setting of PID controller by simulation of control loop behavior for various meaningful combinations of controller parameter values (state space search). Proposed method “brute force and visual” of PID controller tuning is based on repeated simulation of control process as a reaction to Heaviside step of desired value and disturbing value for varying parameters of controller’s P, I, D components. For discrete controller also impact of sampling period T was considered. For each of the individual simulation runs there is kept a diagram as an image file as well as the control optimality criterion value. After execution of all the simulation runs for parameter values from the considered searched state space the simulation outputs are sorted by value of the selected control optimality criterion. The parameters of the individual simulation which has scored best are used for setting of the real controller and evaluated in the real control loop. From the simulations available for wide combination of parameter values it is possible to estimate position of isles of stability and choose the PID controller values by an expert choice.Při návrhu parametrů PID regulátoru (které jsou v praxi dosud nejobvyklejší) pro regulační obvody je zapotřebí stanovit parametry regulátoru tak, aby zajišťovaly dostatečnou kvalitu a robustnost regulace. Je definováno a v praxi zavedeno mnoho seřizovacích metod pro nastavení PID regulátorů vycházejících z chování uzavřeného regulačního obvodu či naopak z matematického modelu regulované soustavy (a jejího L-přenosu), které umožňují stanovit parametry regulátoru přímým výpočtem. S rostoucím výkonem HW a SW nástrojů může ale být výhodné použít přístup, který nalezne optimální hodnoty nastavení regulačního procesu na základě simulací a analýzy chování regulačního obvodu pro různé kombinace možných parametrů regulátoru. Navržená metoda seřízení PID regulátoru lineárního dynamického systému „hrubou silou a od oka“ je založena na opakované simulaci regulačního pochodu při skoku řídící veličiny a poruchové veličiny pro měnící se konstanty regulátoru P, I, D, (a v případě číslicového regulátoru i vzorkovací periodu T) pro smysluplné rozpětí hodnot – odtud „hrubou silou“ v názvu metody. Z každého běhu simulace je uložen diagram průběhů zajímavých veličin (žádaná veličina, regulovaná veličina, porucha) jako obrazový soubor a jsou pro tuto simulaci vypočteny hodnoty ukazatelů kvality regulace. Po provedení simulací pro všechny hodnoty parametrů z uvažovaného stavového prostoru jsou výstupy simulací setříděny podle ukazatelů kvality regulace; simulace s parametry regulace, která skórovala podle ukazatelů kvality regulace nejlépe, je pak podkladem pro nastavení parametrů regulátoru a ověření v reálném regulačním obvodu. Protože máme k dispozici vizualizované podoby průběhů regulačního procesu pro mnoho kombinací vstupů, můžeme odhadnout i polohu a podobu „ostrovů stability“ a pro dosažení robustnější regulace volit parametry regulátoru i expertní volbou, tedy „od oka“

A Model-Driven approach for functional test case generation

Test phase is one of the most critical phases in software engineering life cycle to assure the final system quality. In this context, functional system test cases verify that the system under test fulfills its functional specification. Thus, these test cases are frequently designed from the different scenarios and alternatives depicted in functional requirements. The objective of this paper is to introduce a systematic process based on the Model-Driven paradigm to automate the generation of functional test cases from functional requirements. For this aim, a set of metamodels and transformations and also a specific language domain to use them is presented. The paper finishes stating learned lessons from the trenches as well as relevant future work and conclusions that draw new research lines in the test cases generation context.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-