6 research outputs found
Automatically Generating Test Cases for Safety-Critical Software via Symbolic Execution
Automated test generation based on symbolic execution can be beneficial for
systematically testing safety-critical software, to facilitate test engineers
to pursue the strict testing requirements mandated by the certification
standards, while controlling at the same time the costs of the testing process.
At the same time, the development of safety-critical software is often
constrained with programming languages or coding conventions that ban
linguistic features which are believed to downgrade the safety of the programs,
e.g., they do not allow dynamic memory allocation and variable-length arrays,
limit the way in which loops are used, forbid recursion, and bound the
complexity of control conditions. As a matter of facts, these linguistic
features are also the main efficiency-blockers for the test generation
approaches based on symbolic execution at the state of the art. This paper
contributes new evidence of the effectiveness of generating test cases with
symbolic execution for a significant class of industrial safety
critical-systems. We specifically focus on Scade, a largely adopted model-based
development language for safety-critical embedded software, and we report on a
case study in which we exploited symbolic execution to automatically generate
test cases for a set of safety-critical programs developed in Scade. To this
end, we introduce a novel test generator that we developed in a recent
industrial project on testing safety-critical railway software written in
Scade, and we report on our experience of using this test generator for testing
a set of Scade programs that belong to the development of an on-board signaling
unit for high-speed rail. The results provide empirically evidence that
symbolic execution is indeed a viable approach for generating high-quality test
suites for the safety-critical programs considered in our case study
Clinical Features, Cardiovascular Risk Profile, and Therapeutic Trajectories of Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Candidate for Oral Semaglutide Therapy in the Italian Specialist Care
Introduction: This study aimed to address therapeutic inertia in the management of type 2 diabetes (T2D) by investigating the potential of early treatment with oral semaglutide. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted between October 2021 and April 2022 among specialists treating individuals with T2D. A scientific committee designed a data collection form covering demographics, cardiovascular risk, glucose control metrics, ongoing therapies, and physician judgments on treatment appropriateness. Participants completed anonymous patient questionnaires reflecting routine clinical encounters. The preferred therapeutic regimen for each patient was also identified. Results: The analysis was conducted on 4449 patients initiating oral semaglutide. The population had a relatively short disease duration (42%  60% of patients, and more often than sitagliptin or empagliflozin. Conclusion: The study supports the potential of early implementation of oral semaglutide as a strategy to overcome therapeutic inertia and enhance T2D management
Software testing with code-based test generators:data and lessons learned from a case study with an industrial software component
A Survey of Field-based Testing Techniques
none11noField testing refers to testing techniques that operate in the field to reveal those faults that escape in-house testing. Field testing techniques are becoming increasingly popular with the growing complexity of contemporary software systems. In this article, we present the first systematic survey of field testing approaches over a body of 80 collected studies, and propose their categorization based on the environment and the system on which field testing is performed. We discuss four research questions addressing how software is tested in the field, what is tested in the field, which are the requirements, and how field tests are managed, and identify many challenging research directions.noneBertolino, Antonia; Braione, Pietro; Angelis, Guglielmo De; Gazzola, Luca; Kifetew, Fitsum; Mariani, Leonardo; Orrù, Matteo; Pezzè, Mauro; Pietrantuono, Roberto; Russo, Stefano; Tonella, PaoloBertolino, Antonia; Braione, Pietro; Angelis, Guglielmo De; Gazzola, Luca; Kifetew, Fitsum; Mariani, Leonardo; Orrù, Matteo; Pezzè, Mauro; Pietrantuono, Roberto; Russo, Stefano; Tonella, Paol
The Meningococcal ABC-Type l-Glutamate Transporter GltT Is Necessary for the Development of Experimental Meningitis in Miceâ–ż â€
Experimental animal models of bacterial meningitis are useful to study the host-pathogen interactions occurring at the cerebral level and to analyze the pathogenetic mechanisms behind this life-threatening disease. In this study, we have developed a mouse model of meningococcal meningitis based on the intracisternal inoculation of bacteria. Experiments were performed with mouse-passaged serogroup C Neisseria meningitidis. Survival and clinical parameters of infected mice and microbiological and histological analysis of the brain demonstrated the establishment of meningitis with features comparable to those of the disease in humans. When using low bacterial inocula, meningococcal replication in the brain was very efficient, with a 1,000-fold increase of viable counts in 18 h. Meningococci were also found in the blood, spleens, and livers of infected mice, and bacterial loads in different organs were dependent on the infectious dose. As glutamate uptake from the host has been implicated in meningococcal virulence, mice were infected intracisternally with an isogenic strain deficient in the ABC-type l-glutamate transporter GltT. Noticeably, the mutant was attenuated in virulence in mixed infections, indicating that wild-type bacteria outcompeted the GltT-deficient meningococci. The data show that the GltT transporter plays a role in meningitis and concomitant systemic infection, suggesting that meningococci may use l-glutamate as a nutrient source and as a precursor to synthesize the antioxidant glutathione