10,005 research outputs found

    Perfect is the enemy of test oracle

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    Automation of test oracles is one of the most challenging facets of software testing, but remains comparatively less addressed compared to automated test input generation. Test oracles rely on a ground-truth that can distinguish between the correct and buggy behavior to determine whether a test fails (detects a bug) or passes. What makes the oracle problem challenging and undecidable is the assumption that the ground-truth should know the exact expected, correct, or buggy behavior. However, we argue that one can still build an accurate oracle without knowing the exact correct or buggy behavior, but how these two might differ. This paper presents SEER, a learning-based approach that in the absence of test assertions or other types of oracle, can determine whether a unit test passes or fails on a given method under test (MUT). To build the ground-truth, SEER jointly embeds unit tests and the implementation of MUTs into a unified vector space, in such a way that the neural representation of tests are similar to that of MUTs they pass on them, but dissimilar to MUTs they fail on them. The classifier built on top of this vector representation serves as the oracle to generate "fail" labels, when test inputs detect a bug in MUT or "pass" labels, otherwise. Our extensive experiments on applying SEER to more than 5K unit tests from a diverse set of open-source Java projects show that the produced oracle is (1) effective in predicting the fail or pass labels, achieving an overall accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 measure of 93%, 86%, 94%, and 90%, (2) generalizable, predicting the labels for the unit test of projects that were not in training or validation set with negligible performance drop, and (3) efficient, detecting the existence of bugs in only 6.5 milliseconds on average.Comment: Published in ESEC/FSE 202

    Anuário científico da Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa - 2021

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    É com grande prazer que apresentamos a mais recente edição (a 11.ª) do Anuário Científico da Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa. Como instituição de ensino superior, temos o compromisso de promover e incentivar a pesquisa científica em todas as áreas do conhecimento que contemplam a nossa missão. Esta publicação tem como objetivo divulgar toda a produção científica desenvolvida pelos Professores, Investigadores, Estudantes e Pessoal não Docente da ESTeSL durante 2021. Este Anuário é, assim, o reflexo do trabalho árduo e dedicado da nossa comunidade, que se empenhou na produção de conteúdo científico de elevada qualidade e partilhada com a Sociedade na forma de livros, capítulos de livros, artigos publicados em revistas nacionais e internacionais, resumos de comunicações orais e pósteres, bem como resultado dos trabalhos de 1º e 2º ciclo. Com isto, o conteúdo desta publicação abrange uma ampla variedade de tópicos, desde temas mais fundamentais até estudos de aplicação prática em contextos específicos de Saúde, refletindo desta forma a pluralidade e diversidade de áreas que definem, e tornam única, a ESTeSL. Acreditamos que a investigação e pesquisa científica é um eixo fundamental para o desenvolvimento da sociedade e é por isso que incentivamos os nossos estudantes a envolverem-se em atividades de pesquisa e prática baseada na evidência desde o início dos seus estudos na ESTeSL. Esta publicação é um exemplo do sucesso desses esforços, sendo a maior de sempre, o que faz com que estejamos muito orgulhosos em partilhar os resultados e descobertas dos nossos investigadores com a comunidade científica e o público em geral. Esperamos que este Anuário inspire e motive outros estudantes, profissionais de saúde, professores e outros colaboradores a continuarem a explorar novas ideias e contribuir para o avanço da ciência e da tecnologia no corpo de conhecimento próprio das áreas que compõe a ESTeSL. Agradecemos a todos os envolvidos na produção deste anuário e desejamos uma leitura inspiradora e agradável.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Generalized Weak Supervision for Neural Information Retrieval

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    Neural ranking models (NRMs) have demonstrated effective performance in several information retrieval (IR) tasks. However, training NRMs often requires large-scale training data, which is difficult and expensive to obtain. To address this issue, one can train NRMs via weak supervision, where a large dataset is automatically generated using an existing ranking model (called the weak labeler) for training NRMs. Weakly supervised NRMs can generalize from the observed data and significantly outperform the weak labeler. This paper generalizes this idea through an iterative re-labeling process, demonstrating that weakly supervised models can iteratively play the role of weak labeler and significantly improve ranking performance without using manually labeled data. The proposed Generalized Weak Supervision (GWS) solution is generic and orthogonal to the ranking model architecture. This paper offers four implementations of GWS: self-labeling, cross-labeling, joint cross- and self-labeling, and greedy multi-labeling. GWS also benefits from a query importance weighting mechanism based on query performance prediction methods to reduce noise in the generated training data. We further draw a theoretical connection between self-labeling and Expectation-Maximization. Our experiments on two passage retrieval benchmarks suggest that all implementations of GWS lead to substantial improvements compared to weak supervision in all cases

    Educating Sub-Saharan Africa:Assessing Mobile Application Use in a Higher Learning Engineering Programme

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    In the institution where I teach, insufficient laboratory equipment for engineering education pushed students to learn via mobile phones or devices. Using mobile technologies to learn and practice is not the issue, but the more important question lies in finding out where and how they use mobile tools for learning. Through the lens of Kearney et al.’s (2012) pedagogical model, using authenticity, personalisation, and collaboration as constructs, this case study adopts a mixed-method approach to investigate the mobile learning activities of students and find out their experiences of what works and what does not work. Four questions are borne out of the over-arching research question, ‘How do students studying at a University in Nigeria perceive mobile learning in electrical and electronic engineering education?’ The first three questions are answered from qualitative, interview data analysed using thematic analysis. The fourth question investigates their collaborations on two mobile social networks using social network and message analysis. The study found how students’ mobile learning relates to the real-world practice of engineering and explained ways of adapting and overcoming the mobile tools’ limitations, and the nature of the collaborations that the students adopted, naturally, when they learn in mobile social networks. It found that mobile engineering learning can be possibly located in an offline mobile zone. It also demonstrates that investigating the effectiveness of mobile learning in the mobile social environment is possible by examining users’ interactions. The study shows how mobile learning personalisation that leads to impactful engineering learning can be achieved. The study shows how to manage most interface and technical challenges associated with mobile engineering learning and provides a new guide for educators on where and how mobile learning can be harnessed. And it revealed how engineering education can be successfully implemented through mobile tools

    The crisis of cultural authority in museums : contesting human remains in the collections of Britain

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    Museums in Britain have displayed and researched human remains since the eighteenth century. However, in the last two decades human remains in collections have become subject to claims and controversies. Firstly, human remains associated with acquisition during the colonial period have become increasingly difficult to retain and have been transfered to culturally affiliated overseas indigenous groups. Secondly, a group of British Pagans have formed to make claims on ancient human remains in collections. Thirdly, human remains that are not requested by any community group, and of all ages, have become the focus of concerns expressed about their treatment by members of the profession. A discourse arguing for 'respect' has emerged, which argues that all human remains should be treated with new care. The claims made on human remains have been vigourously but differentially contested by members of the sector, who consider the human remains to be unique research objects. This thesis charts the influences at play on the contestation over human remains and examines its construction. The academic literature tends to understand changes to museums as a result of external factors. This thesis argues that this problem is influenced by a crisis of legitimacy and establishes that there are strong internal influences. Through a weak social constructionist approach I demonstrate that the issue has been promoted by influential members of the sector as part of a broader attempt to distance themselves from their foundational role, as a consequence of a crisis of cultural authority stimulated by external and internal factors. The symbolic character of human remains in locating this problem is informed by the unique properties of dead bodies and is influenced by the significance of the body as a scientific object; its association with identity work and as a site of political struggle, in the high modem period

    AIUCD 2022 - Proceedings

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    L’undicesima edizione del Convegno Nazionale dell’AIUCD-Associazione di Informatica Umanistica ha per titolo Culture digitali. Intersezioni: filosofia, arti, media. Nel titolo è presente, in maniera esplicita, la richiesta di una riflessione, metodologica e teorica, sull’interrelazione tra tecnologie digitali, scienze dell’informazione, discipline filosofiche, mondo delle arti e cultural studies

    School inspection handbook : Updated 11 July 2022

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    Graphical scaffolding for the learning of data wrangling APIs

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    In order for students across the sciences to avail themselves of modern data streams, they must first know how to wrangle data: how to reshape ill-organised, tabular data into another format, and how to do this programmatically, in languages such as Python and R. Despite the cross-departmental demand and the ubiquity of data wrangling in analytical workflows, the research on how to optimise the instruction of it has been minimal. Although data wrangling as a programming domain presents distinctive challenges - characterised by on-the-fly syntax lookup and code example integration - it also presents opportunities. One such opportunity is how tabular data structures are easily visualised. To leverage the inherent visualisability of data wrangling, this dissertation evaluates three types of graphics that could be employed as scaffolding for novices: subgoal graphics, thumbnail graphics, and parameter graphics. Using a specially built e-learning platform, this dissertation documents a multi-institutional, randomised, and controlled experiment that investigates the pedagogical effects of these. Our results indicate that the graphics are well-received, that subgoal graphics boost the completion rate, and that thumbnail graphics improve navigability within a command menu. We also obtained several non-significant results, and indications that parameter graphics are counter-productive. We will discuss these findings in the context of general scaffolding dilemmas, and how they fit into a wider research programme on data wrangling instruction

    The fairy tale therapist

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    Creative Work: The Fairy Tale Therapist:- My original intention was to create a new form of self-help book using fairy tale characters to address psychological problems. The book I wrote does use fairy tale characters to address psychological problems, but it isn’t written as a typical self-help book. Instead, it’s the story of Helen, a therapist whose personal life suddenly and dramatically falls apart. Her solution? Not one she would suggest to her clients. She leaves everyone she knows and sets up a new practice in a small village in Wales, where her troubles start to fade. Until, that is, the fairy tale characters start coming in through her office window. Contextualising Research: The Fragility of Equilibrium in Therapy and Writing:- In this part of the thesis, I explore the methodologies, underpinning literature and the personal journey of discovery that led to the final book. I examine bibliotherapy, the self-help genre and case studies after selecting a canon of well-known self-help books. I then review classical fairy tales and I try using fairy tale characters rather than case studies as examples in a self-help book. I present these attempts and argue why this straight substitution doesn’t work well. Instead, therefore, I decided to use fairy tale characters’ dilemmas to illustrate the process of psychotherapy, so readers can better understand the aims and processes in therapy, and see inside a therapist’s mind. The resulting book ('The Fairy Tale Therapist', the creative part of my thesis), raised two further questions which I answer and explore in the critical component. Is there a concept that is central both to writing fiction and to carrying out/undergoing psychotherapy, and if so how does it achieve this? Story is the bridge that links these disciplines, and I found the key within story is the concept of equilibrium, the desire to return to a stable state an organism is disrupted by a challenge. Equilibrium is, however, elusive: once achieved, disequilibrium begins again. How might changing perspective help to better understand characters in fiction and clients in therapy/self-help? I found that by adhering to the plot but looking at what happens from a different perspective, as an author I gained a deeper understanding of characters other than the central character. I can also apply this technique to help my patients. Instead of trying to change what’s going on outside of themselves, I can challenge them to try changing the way they consider what’s going on, and in so doing help them to learn to accept—perhaps even celebrate—their circumstances
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