Erlang Code Evolution Control

During the software lifecycle, a program can evolve several times for different reasons such as the optimisation of a bottle-neck, the refactoring of an obscure function, etc. These code changes often involve several functions or modules, so it can be difficult to know whether the correct behaviour of the previous releases has been preserved in the new release. Most developers rely on a previously defined test suite to check this behaviour preservation. We propose here an alternative approach to automatically obtain a test suite that specifically focusses on comparing the old and new versions of the code. Our test case generation is directed by a sophisticated combination of several already existing tools such as TypEr, CutEr, and PropEr; and other ideas such as allowing the programmer to chose an expression of interest that must preserve the behaviour, or the recording of the sequences of values to which this expression is evaluated. All the presented work has been implemented in an open-source tool that is publicly available on GitHub.Comment: Pre-proceedings paper presented at the 27th International Symposium on Logic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation (LOPSTR 2017), Namur, Belgium, 10-12 October 2017 (arXiv:1708.07854

The non-stationary influence of geography on the spatial agglomeration of production in the EU

In this paper, we investigate the relative importance of geographic features on the location of production in the EU. Specifically, we want to quantify how much of the spatial pattern of GDP can be attributed to only exogenous first nature elements (physical and political geography) and how much can be derived from endogenous second nature factors (man-made agglomeration economies). In order to disentangle both effects empirically, and to learn how they are interrelated, we control for second nature. We use a methodology based on an analysis of variance (ANOVA), which is applied to a panel of 1,171 European NUT-3 in 2006. We demonstrate that -due to a high degree of spatial non-stationarity present in the data- results can be biased if spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity, as well as multicollinearity and endogeneity, are not properly taken into account

O impacto da mindfulness disposicional na relação entre a personalidade e satisfação com a carreira

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada no ISPA – Instituto Universitário para obtenção de grau de Mestre na especialidade de Psicologia Social e das OrganizaçõesO presente estudo teve como objetivo não só verificar o impacto que a Personalidade tem na Satisfação com a Carreira, mas também explorar o possível efeito mediador ou moderador que a Mindfulness Disposicional poderá ter nessa relação. Pretendeu-se também fazer um estudo comparativo entre duas escalas de mindfulness. Na presente investigação colaboraram 287 participantes (180 do sexo feminino e 107 do sexo masculino), com idades compreendidas entre os 18 e os 69 anos. A participação foi voluntária, através do preenchimento de um questionário online. De forma a mensurar a Personalidade, foi utilizada a escala proposta por Rammstedt e John (2007) – BFI-10 – traduzida e adaptada para a língua portuguesa por Bártolo-Ribeiro (2017). A Satisfação com a Carreira foi avaliada através da escala unidimensional proposta por Greenhaus, Parasureman e Wormley (1990), adaptada para a língua portuguesa por Ribeiro (2013). A Mindfulness Disposicional foi avaliada numa vertente mais cognitiva, numa escala proposta por Pierson e colaboradores (2012)- Langer Scale – e devidamente traduzida e adaptada para a língua portuguesa por Silva (2017); e numa perspetiva mais tradicional, apresentada por Cardaciotto, Herbert, Forman, Moitra, Farrow (2008) – Philadelpia Mindfulness Scale (PHLMS)- e adaptada à população portuguesa por Teixeira, Ferreira e Graça Pereira (2017). Os resultados apontam para uma relação positiva e significativa existente entre a a Personalidade (Conscienciosidade e Amabilidade) e a Satisfação na Carreira. Foi também verificado o efeito moderador que a Mindfulness (através da escala de langer) apresenta na relação entre a Conscienciosidade e a Satisfação na Carreira. Ainda se constatou a existência de uma mediação total pelo Engagement da escala de Langer, na relação entre a Amabilidade e a Satisfação com a Carreira. As escalas de Mindfulness não apresentaram uma correlação significativa entre si.The present study aimed not only to verify the impact of Career Satisfaction in Personality, but also to explore the possible mediating or moderating effect of Disposional Mindfulness. It was also intended to make a comparative study between two mindfulness scales. In the present investigation, 287 participants (180 female and 107 male), aged between 18 and 69 years, collaborated. Participation was voluntary, by completing an online questionnaire. In order to measure Personality, a scale proposed by Rammstedt and John (2007) - BFI-10 - was translated and adapted to Portuguese by Bártolo-Ribeiro (2017). Career Satisfaction was assessed through the one-dimensional scale proposed by Greenhaus, Parasureman and Wormley (1990), and adapted to Portuguese by Ribeiro (2013). Dispositional Mindfulness was assessed on a more cognitive basis, on a scale proposed by Pierson et al. (2012) - Langer Scale - and translated to Portuguese by Silva (2017); and a more traditional perspective, proposed by Cardaciotto, Herbert, Forman, Moitra, Farrow (2008) - Philadelpia Mindfulness Scale (PHLMS) - and adapted to portuguese by Teixeira, Ferreira and Graça Pereira (2017). The results point out to a positive and significant relationship between Personality (Consciousness and Agreeableness) and Career Satisfaction. Mindfulness (from the Langer scale) showed a moderating effect on the relationship between personality and career satisfaction. In addition, it was found that there is a full mediation by Langer Scale Engagement in the relationship between Agreeableness and Career Satisfaction. Mindfulness scales did not show a significant correlation with each other

Age-related changes in human cervical, thoracal and lumbar intervertebral disc exhibit a strong intra-individual correlation

Introduction: Intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration is characterized as a multifactorial disease, in which the hereditary background is thought to be of high importance. Accordingly, one would expect all spinal levels (lumbar/cervical/thoracal) to be affected by above-average disc degeneration in genetically predisposed individuals. The aim of this study, therefore, was to analyze the amount of degenerative changes in different spine levels in humans from different ages. Materials and methods: In detail, the presence, localization and abundance of histomorphological changes in the annulus fibrosus (AF) and nucleus pulposus (NP) in the cervical (C5/C6), thoracic (T2/T3) and lumbar (L2/L3) spine were investigated in complete autopsy IVD specimens (47 individuals) covering a complete age range (0-95years). Results: Results indicate that the highest degree of histo-degenerative changes were observed in the NP in all spine levels and showed an age-related expression pattern. With regard to the different spine levels, lumbar disc specimen showed significantly more degenerative changes compared to cervical and thoracic discs, whereas no statistical difference was observed between cervical and thoracic discs. In summary, highest grades of degeneration were observed in lumbar discs (especially in the NP). Intra-individual correlations between the degeneration score in the different levels showed a significant individual concordance. Conclusions: The intra-individual correlation of degenerative changes in all three examined spine regions further supports the notion that individual, i.e. genetic factors are strong predisposing factor for the development of age-related disc alteration

The non-stationary influence of geography on the spatial agglomeration of production in the EU

In this paper, we investigate the relative importance of geographic features on the location of production in the EU. Specifically, we want to quantify how much of the spatial pattern of GDP can be attributed to only exogenous first nature elements (physical and political geography) and how much can be derived from endogenous second nature factors (man-made agglomeration economies). In order to disentangle both effects empirically, and to learn how they are interrelated, we control for second nature. We use a methodology based on an analysis of variance (ANOVA), which is applied to a panel of 1,171 European NUT-3 in 2006. We demonstrate that -due to a high degree of spatial non-stationarity present in the data- results can be biased if spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity, as well as multicollinearity and endogeneity, are not properly taken into account

Understanding of Navy Technical Language via Statistical Parsing

A key problem in indexing technical information is the interpretation of technical words and word senses, expressions not used in everyday language. This is important for captions on technical images, whose often pithy descriptions can be valuable to decipher. We describe the natural-language processing for MARIE-2, a natural-language information retrieval system for multimedia captions. Our approach is to provide general tools for lexicon enhancement with the specialized words and word senses, and to learn word usage information (both on word senses and word-sense pairs) from a training corpus with a statistical parser. Innovations of our approach are in statistical inheritance of binary co-occurrence probabilities and in weighting of sentence subsequences. MARIE-2 was trained and tested on 616 captions (with 1009 distinct sentences) from the photograph library of a Navy laboratory. The captions had extensive nominal compounds, code phrases, abbreviations, and acronyms, but few verbs, abstract nouns, conjunctions, and pronouns. Experimental results fit a processing time in seconds of 0.0858n2.876 and a number of tries before finding the best interpretation of 1.809n1.668 where n is the number of words in the sentence. Use of statistics from previous parses definitely helped in reparsing the same sentences, helped accuracy in parsing of new sentences, and did not hurt time to parse new sentences. Word-sense statistics helped dramatically; statistics on word-sense pairs generally helped but not always

Desenvolvimento de um modelo hidrológico distribuído por meio de células voronoi com consideração das profundidades do solo

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia Ambiental, Florianópolis, 2010Soil is an important element in the water cycle. Many phenomenon take place in the soil, for example: saturation, infiltration and percolation. Thus, the soil depth is a necessary parameter in many hydrological models. Besides, the knowledge about soil depths is important for land slides estimates and for hazard area mapping. The present work had the main objective to develop a distributed hydrological model, named WADII-HM, based on the hydrological model TOPMODEL, taking into account the spatial distribution of soil depths in the watershed. In addition, this study developed and implemented, using MATLAB language, a model named WADII, for geomorphological characterization of watersheds; implemented a model to spatially distribute the soils depths; implemented in C language a spatially distributed hydrological model using Voronoi cells; compared the WADII-HM model to the TOPMODEL model and validated the spatial distribution of soil depths using observed data. The methodology consisted basically in to implement the models in their computational languages, to apply the models in three watersheds: Pequeno River (106 km2); (2) Cubatão River (395 km2) e (3) Pinus I (0,10 km2) and to compare the simulations to the TOPMODEL. Precipitation and evapotranspiration data were used in three different temporal resolutions: one hour for Pequeno River watershed; twenty two hours for Cubatão River watershed and ten minutes for Pinus I watershed. The data period was divided in one data series for model calibration and another one for model validation, except to the Pinus I watershed, where the models were applied using only one data series. However, for this watershed, the WADII-HM model was validated using an observed spatial distribution of soil depths. Through the simulations and the comparisons was possible state that: (i) one of the results from the WADII model is the hydrologic matrix. Using this matrix many geomorphologic proprieties can be derived, as the cell index. The spatial distribution of this index guides the procedure for water balance estimates and flow routing for every cell; (ii) he assumption to determine the initial water content in every cell using a relationship with the specific discharge shown good results; (iii) the WADII-HM model was calibrated and validated for all the analyzed watersheds with satisfactory results. (iv) the WADII-HM and TOPMODEL models simulated the observed discharges in a similar way, some advantages for the TOPMODEL model in the validation series for the Pequeno River watershed and in the absolute error for the Pinus I watershed. Advantages for the WADII-HM model in all simulations for the Cubatão River watershed; (v) the soil depths in the Pinus I watershed were estimated and validated.O solo constitui um fundamental elemento no ciclo hidrológico. É nele onde diversos fenômenos acontecem, como por exemplo: saturação, infiltração e percolação. Desta forma, a profundidade do solo é um parâmetro necessário em muitos modelos hidrológicos. Outra importante utilidade do conhecimento da profundidade do solo é na estimativa de deslizamentos de terra e mapeamentos de área de risco. O presente trabalho teve como objetivo principal desenvolver um modelo hidrológico distribuído, denominado WADII-HM, baseado no modelo hidrológico TOPMODEL, levando em consideração a distribuição espacial das profundidades do solo na bacia. Também foram objetivos do trabalho desenvolver e implementar um modelo, denominado WADII, para caracterização morfológica de bacias hidrográficas implementado em MATLAB; implementar um modelo de predição da variação espacial das profundidades do solo em uma bacia; implementar em linguagem C um modelo hidrológico distribuído espacialmente através de células Voronoi; comparar o modelo WADII-HM com o TOPMODEL e validar a predição das profundidades do solo com dados observados em uma bacia. A metodologia consistiu basicamente na implementação dos modelos em suas respectivas linguagens computacionais, aplicação dos modelos em três bacias: (1) Rio Pequeno (106 km2), (2) Rio Cubatão (395 km2) e (3) Pinus I (0,10 km2) e comparação das simulações com o modelo TOPMODEL. Dados de precipitação e evapotranspiração foram utilizados em três diferentes resoluções temporais, sendo de uma hora para a bacia do Rio Pequeno, vinte e quatro horas para a bacia do Rio Cubatão e dez minutos para a bacia Pinus I. O período de dados para as bacias foi divido em uma série para calibração e outra série para validação do modelo, exceto para a bacia Pinus I, onde os modelos foram aplicados utilizando uma única série. Entretanto, para esta bacia, usando dados observados de profundidades do solo, o modelo WADII-HM foi validado na sua predição de profundidades do solo. Por meio das simulações e comparações foi possível estabelecer que: (i) um dos resultados do modelo geomorfológico WADII é a matriz hidrológica. Através dessa matriz várias propriedades geomorfológicas podem ser derivadas. Uma propriedade é o índice de células. A distribuição espacial deste índice orienta a sequência de cálculo de balanço hídrico e a propagação dos escoamentos de cada célula; (ii) a determinação das condições iniciais de saturação e escoamentos da bacia usando uma relação com as vazões específicas de cada célula mostrou bom resultados; (ii) o modelo WADII-HM foi calibrado e validado para todas as bacias em análise produzindo satisfatórios resultados; (iv) os modelos WADII-HM e TOPMODEL simularam os hidrogramas observados de maneira similar em todas as bacias, com vantagens para o TOPMODEL na série de validação da bacia Rio Pequeno e no erro absoluto total para a bacia Pinus I. Vantagem para o modelo WADII-HM para todas as simulações na bacia do Rio Cubatão; (v) as profundidades do solo foram estimadas e validadas para a bacia Pinus I

A distributed Petri Net controller for a dual arm testbed

This thesis describes the design and functionality of a Distributed Petri Net Controller (DPNC). The controller runs under X Windows to provide a graphical interface. The DPNC allows users to distribute a Petri Net across several host computers linked together via a TCP/IP interface. A sub-net executes on each host, interacting with the other sub-nets by passing a token vector from host to host. One host has a command window which monitors and controls the distributed controller. The input to the DPNC is a net definition file generated by Great SPN. Thus, a net may be designed, analyzed and verified using this package before implementation. The net is distributed to the hosts by tagging transitions that are host-critical with the appropriate host number. The controller will then distribute the remaining places and transitions to the hosts by generating the local nets, the local marking vectors and the global marking vector. Each transition can have one or more preconditions which must be fulfilled before the transition can fire, as well as one or more post-processes to be executed after the transition fires. These implement the actual input/output to the environment (machines, signals, etc.). The DPNC may also be used to simulate a Great SPN net since stochastic and deterministic firing rates are implemented in the controller for timed transitions