108,555 research outputs found
LABEL DESIGNING FOR MINIMALLY PROCESSED TILAPIA AIMING THE TRACEABILITY OF THE PRODUCTIVE CHAIN
The aim of this study was to develop label for Nile tilapia minimally processed. Analyses were performed to quantify the nutritional components of the fillets; and information about freshness, date of processing and batch specification was collected. Such data were essential for designing labels providing information about the traceability system and presenting codes for quality identification such as the Quick Response Code (QR Code), which allows the electronic encoding of the product on a database. Mandatory food labeling associated with the use of QR Code are tools that convey information to consumers about food quality and the entire production chain. One hundred sixty-two potential consumers were surveyed about the general characteristics of the product packaged in poly nylon film type, vacuum-packed, used for the packaging of traced fresh-cut fillets of tilapia minimally processed and kept under refrigeration (0±1oC). According to the Spearman correlation the variables packaging, general appearance and willingness to purchase the product presented a correlation, with coefficients estimated at 0.437, 0.466 and 0.497 respectively
Cross-level Validation of Topological Quantum Circuits
Quantum computing promises a new approach to solving difficult computational
problems, and the quest of building a quantum computer has started. While the
first attempts on construction were succesful, scalability has never been
achieved, due to the inherent fragile nature of the quantum bits (qubits). From
the multitude of approaches to achieve scalability topological quantum
computing (TQC) is the most promising one, by being based on an flexible
approach to error-correction and making use of the straightforward
measurement-based computing technique. TQC circuits are defined within a large,
uniform, 3-dimensional lattice of physical qubits produced by the hardware and
the physical volume of this lattice directly relates to the resources required
for computation. Circuit optimization may result in non-intuitive mismatches
between circuit specification and implementation. In this paper we introduce
the first method for cross-level validation of TQC circuits. The specification
of the circuit is expressed based on the stabilizer formalism, and the
stabilizer table is checked by mapping the topology on the physical qubit
level, followed by quantum circuit simulation. Simulation results show that
cross-level validation of error-corrected circuits is feasible.Comment: 12 Pages, 5 Figures. Comments Welcome. RC2014, Springer Lecture Notes
on Computer Science (LNCS) 8507, pp. 189-200. Springer International
Publishing, Switzerland (2014), Y. Shigeru and M.Shin-ichi (Eds.
Test Set Diameter: Quantifying the Diversity of Sets of Test Cases
A common and natural intuition among software testers is that test cases need
to differ if a software system is to be tested properly and its quality
ensured. Consequently, much research has gone into formulating distance
measures for how test cases, their inputs and/or their outputs differ. However,
common to these proposals is that they are data type specific and/or calculate
the diversity only between pairs of test inputs, traces or outputs.
We propose a new metric to measure the diversity of sets of tests: the test
set diameter (TSDm). It extends our earlier, pairwise test diversity metrics
based on recent advances in information theory regarding the calculation of the
normalized compression distance (NCD) for multisets. An advantage is that TSDm
can be applied regardless of data type and on any test-related information, not
only the test inputs. A downside is the increased computational time compared
to competing approaches.
Our experiments on four different systems show that the test set diameter can
help select test sets with higher structural and fault coverage than random
selection even when only applied to test inputs. This can enable early test
design and selection, prior to even having a software system to test, and
complement other types of test automation and analysis. We argue that this
quantification of test set diversity creates a number of opportunities to
better understand software quality and provides practical ways to increase it.Comment: In submissio
Using formal methods to develop WS-BPEL applications
In recent years, WS-BPEL has become a de facto standard language for orchestration of Web Services. However, there are still some well-known difficulties that make programming
in WS-BPEL a tricky task. In this paper, we firstly point out major loose points of the WS-BPEL specification by means of many examples, some of which are also exploited
to test and compare the behaviour of three of the most known freely available WS-BPEL engines. We show that, as a matter of fact, these engines implement different
semantics, which undermines portability of WS-BPEL programs over different platforms. Then we introduce Blite, a prototypical orchestration language equipped with a formal
operational semantics, which is closely inspired by, but simpler than, WS-BPEL. Indeed, Blite is designed around some of WS-BPEL distinctive features like partner links, process termination, message correlation, long-running business transactions and compensation handlers. Finally, we present BliteC, a software tool supporting a rapid and easy development of WS-BPEL applications via translation of service orchestrations written in Blite into executable WS-BPEL programs. We illustrate our approach by means of a running example borrowed from the official specification of WS-BPEL
Contracts in Practice
Contracts are a form of lightweight formal specification embedded in the
program text. Being executable parts of the code, they encourage programmers to
devote proper attention to specifications, and help maintain consistency
between specification and implementation as the program evolves. The present
study investigates how contracts are used in the practice of software
development. Based on an extensive empirical analysis of 21 contract-equipped
Eiffel, C#, and Java projects totaling more than 260 million lines of code over
7700 revisions, it explores, among other questions: 1) which kinds of contract
elements (preconditions, postconditions, class invariants) are used more often;
2) how contracts evolve over time; 3) the relationship between implementation
changes and contract changes; and 4) the role of inheritance in the process. It
has found, among other results, that: the percentage of program elements that
include contracts is above 33% for most projects and tends to be stable over
time; there is no strong preference for a certain type of contract element;
contracts are quite stable compared to implementations; and inheritance does
not significantly affect qualitative trends of contract usage
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