Test Coverage Analysis by Diffing Production Logs Against Integration Test Logs

This disclosure describes tools and techniques to analyze input and configuration coverage of software by performing large scale analysis of production and integration test data in a privacy-compliant manner. Test coverage analysis is made possible for highly complex input schema or for input schema that evolve with time. The techniques uncover the input-subspace that has been thus far integration-tested and the input-subspace that remains untested (known as test-gaps). When gathering data on how a specific software input/configuration is used in production, the techniques determine not only if they are used, but also how often they are used. Such data can help a developer evaluate the severity associated with a specific test gap

Intention to Pursue a Sales Career: A Dyadic Study of Students and Parents Extended Abstract

Typical career choice selection studies generally have been one sided focusing on students or parents independently. This dyadic study aims to analyze student and their parent influencers to determine what will be the strongest influencer of a student to pursue a career in sales. “Because the dyad is arguable the fundamental unit of interpersonal interaction and relations, family relations such as a parent and their child/student have a powerful dyadic component” (Kenny et al., 2006, p1). Therefore, understanding the influencers of this career choice selection may lead to interventions for increasing the number of students to pursue a career in sales

Critical User Journey Test Coverage

In the space of software testing, making sure that all critical user scenarios or journeys (CUJs) in a product have been tested is important. A CUJ is essentially a series of steps in the product taken by users of the product to achieve a desired outcome. Ensuring CUJ coverage during testing is a difficult problem that often requires subject matter experts to identify critical scenarios and expensive manual efforts to track coverage. This disclosure describes automatic extraction of CUJs based on analysis of test logs and production logs, e.g., traffic logs at a website. Data mining techniques are applied to merge various sources of data, deduce critical user journeys, and prioritize them during testing. Code release can be gated based on test coverage of a threshold proportion of the identified CUJ

Outsourcing Mutual Fund Management: Firm Boundaries, Incentives and Performance

This paper investigates the effects of managerial outsourcing on the incentives and performance of mutual funds. We document that mutual fund families outsource the management of a significant fraction of their funds to unaffiliated advisory firms. Funds managed externally significantly under-perform those ran internally. To establish the causality of this relationship, we instrument for whether a fund is outsourced and find similar estimates. We hypothesize that contractual externalities due to firm boundaries make it more difficult to extract performance from an outsourced relationship. We verify two auxiliary predictions of this hypothesis: compared to counterparts ran internally, an outsourced fund faces higher-powered incentives in that they are more likely to be closed due to poor performance or excessive risk-taking, and an outsourced fund takes less risk in response

Nicotine dependence phenotype, time to first cigarette, and risk of head and neck cancer

BACKGROUND: A behavioral phenotype that characterizes nicotine dependence, the time to first cigarette after waking, is hypothesized to increase the risk of head and neck cancer. METHODS: A case-control study of histologically confirmed head and neck cancer was conducted that included 1055 cases and 795 controls with a history of cigarette smoking. RESULTS: The pack-years–adjusted odds ratio was 1.42 (95% confidence interval [95% CI], 1.02-1.99) for an interval of 31 minutes to 60 minutes to first cigarette after waking and 1.59 (95% CI, 1.19-2.11) for an interval of 1 minute to 30 minutes. The risk estimates were similar when smoking was modeled as total years, smoking status (current vs former), number of cigarettes smoked per day, years since quitting, and excess odds ratio. Findings were consistent for cancers of the floor of the mouth, palate, and pharynx. CONCLUSIONS: Time to first cigarette is an indicator of increased nicotine dependence, smoke uptake, and risk of head and neck cancer. This high-risk group of individuals would benefit from targeted smoking interventions

Nicotine dependence phenotype and lung cancer risk

BACKGROUND: A behavioral phenotype that characterizes nicotine dependence, the time to first cigarette after waking, is hypothesized to increase the risk of lung cancer. METHODS: A case-control study of histologically confirmed lung cancer was conducted. The current analysis included 4775 lung cancer cases and 2835 controls who were regular cigarette smokers. RESULTS: Compared with subjects who smoked their first cigarette > 60 minutes after waking, the pack-years–adjusted odds ratio was 1.31 (95% confidence interval [95% CI], 1.11-1.54) for subjects who smoked 31 minutes to 60 minutes after waking and 1.79 (95% CI, 1.56-2.07) for subjects who smoked within 30 minutes of waking. The risk estimates were similar when smoking was modeled as total years, smoking status (current vs former), number of cigarettes smoked per day, years since quitting, and excess odds ratio. The findings were consistent for all histologic types of lung cancer. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of the current study indicate that a specific nicotine dependence phenotype that is associated with the amount of smoke uptake per cigarette is independently associated with lung cancer risk. These findings may help to identify high-risk individuals who would benefit from targeted interventions

From the HINDAS Project : Excitation Functions for Residual Nuclide Production by Proton-Induced Reactions

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The importance of gas infrastructure in power systems with high wind power penetrations

Gas fired generation currently plays an integral support role ensuring security of supply in power systems with high wind power penetrations due to its technical and economic attributes. However, the increase in variable wind power has affected the gas generation output profile and is pushing the boundaries of the design and operating envelope of gas infrastructure. This paper investigates the mutual dependence and interaction between electricity generation and gas systems through the first comprehensive joined-up, multi-vector energy system analysis for Ireland. Key findings reveal the high vulnerability of the Irish power system to outages on the Irish gas system. It has been shown that the economic operation of the power system can be severely impacted by gas infrastructure outages, resulting in an average system marginal price of up to €167/MW h from €67/MW h in the base case. It has also been shown that gas infrastructure outages pose problems for the location of power system reserve provision, with a 150% increase in provision across a power system transmission bottleneck. Wind forecast error was shown to be a significant cause for concern, resulting in large swings in gas demand requiring key gas infrastructure to operate at close to 100% capacity. These findings are thought to increase in prominence as the installation of wind capacity increases towards 2020, placing further stress on both power and gas systems to maintain security of supply