Making Property-Based Testing Easier to Read for Humans

Software stakeholders who do not have a technical profile (i.e. users, clients) but do want to take part in the development and/or quality assurance process of software, have an unmet need for communication on what is being tested during the development life-cycle. The transformation of test properties and models into semi-natural language representations is one way of responding to such need. Our research has demonstrated that these transformations are challenging but feasible, and they have been implemented into a prototype tool called readSpec. The readSpec tool transforms universally-quantified test properties and stateful test models - the two kinds of test artifacts used in property-based testing - into plain text interpretations. The tool has been successfully evaluated on the PBT artifacts produced and used within the FP7 PROWESS project by industrial partners

On the role of dynamic stress concentrations and fracture mechanics in the longitudinal tensile failure of fibre-reinforced composites

This paper investigates the role of dynamic stress concentrations, and of fracture mechanics-driven growth of critical clusters of fibres, on the longitudinal tensile failure of fibre-reinforced composites. For this purpose, we developed a semi-analytical fibre bundle model to simulate the longitudinal tensile failure of large composite bundles of continuous fibres. The model uses shear-lag to calculate the stress recovery along broken fibres, and an efficient field superposition method to calculate the stress concentration on the intact fibres, which has been validated against analytical and Finite Element (FE) results from the literature. The baseline version of the model uses static equilibrium stress states, and considers fibre failure driven by strength of materials (stress overload) as the only damage theory which can drive bundle failure. Like other models in the literature, the baseline model fails to capture the correct size effect (decreasing composite strength with bundle size) shown by experimental results. Two model variants have been developed which include dynamics stress concentrations and a fracture mechanics failure criterion respectively. To the knowledge of the authors, it is the first attempt in the literature to investigate these two effects in a fibre bundle model by direct simulation of large composite bundles. It is shown that, although the dynamic stress concentration significantly decreases the predicted bundle strength, it does not allow to predict the correct trend of the size effect. Finally, the results suggest that fracture mechanics may be the physical mechanism which is necessary to include to correctly predict the decreasing composite strength with bundle size shown by experimental results

AI-driven web API testing

Testing of web APIs is nowadays more critical than ever before, as they are the current standard for software integration. A bug in an organization’s web API could have a huge impact both in ternally (services relying on that API) and externally (third-party applications and end users). Most existing tools and testing ap proaches require writing tests or instrumenting the system under test (SUT). The main aim of this dissertation is to take web API testing to an unprecedented level of automation and thoroughness. To this end, we plan to apply artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for the autonomous detection of software failures. Specifically, the idea is to develop intelligent programs (we call them “bots”) ca pable of generating hundreds, thousands or even millions of test inputs and to evaluate whether the test outputs are correct based on: 1) patterns learned from previous executions of the SUT; and 2) knowledge gained from analyzing thousands of similar programs. Evaluation results of our initial prototype are promising, with bugs being automatically detected in some real-world APIs.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad BELI (TIN2015-70560-R)Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades RTI2018-101204-B-C21 (HORATIO)Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte FPU17/0407

Quantum Optics and Photonics

Contains reports on nine research projects.U.S. Air Force - Office of Scientific Research (Contract F49620-82-C-0091)U.S. Air Force - Rome Air Development CenterJoint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAAG29-83-K-0003)National Science Foundation Grant (Grant PHY 82-710369

Typologies of post-divorce coparenting and parental well-being, parenting quality and children’s psychological adjustment

First published online: 30 October 2015The aim of this study was to identify post-divorce coparenting profiles and examine whether these profiles differentiate between levels of parents’ well-being, parenting practices, and children’s psychological problems. Cluster analysis was conducted with Portuguese heterosexual divorced parents (N = 314) to yield distinct postdivorce coparenting patterns. Clusters were based on parents’ self-reported coparenting relationship assessed along four dimensions: agreement, exposure to conflict, undermining/support, and division of labor. A three cluster solution was found and replicated. Parents in the highconflict coparenting group exhibited significantly lower life satisfaction, as well as significantly higher divorce-related negative affect and inconsistent parenting than parents in undermining and cooperative coparenting clusters. The cooperative coparenting group reported higher levels of positive family functioning and lower externalizing and internalizing problems in their children. These results suggested that a positive coparenting alliance may be a protective factor for individual and family outcomes after parental divorce

Quantum Optics and Photonics

Contains reports on five research projects.Joint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAALO3-86-K-0002)National Science Foundation (Grant PHY 82-10369)U.S. Air Force - Office of Scientific Research (Contract F49620-82-C-0091)U.S. Air Force - Rome Air Development Cente

Locking bandwidth of two laterally coupled semiconductor lasers subject to optical injection

We report here for the first time (to our knowledge), a new and universal mechanism by which a two-element laser array is locked to external optical injection and admits stably injection-locked states within a nontrivial trapezoidal region. The rate equations for the system are studied both analytically and numerically. We derive a simple mathematical expression for the locking conditions, which reveals that two parallel saddle-node bifurcation branches, not reported for conventional single lasers subject to optical injection, delimit the injection locking range and its width. Important parameters are the linewidth enhancement factor, the laser separation, and the frequency offset between the two laterally-coupled lasers; the influence of these parameters on locking conditions is explored comprehensively. Our analytic approximations are validated numerically by using a path continuation technique as well as direct numerical integration of the rate equations. More importantly, our results are not restricted by waveguiding structures and uncover a generic locking behavior in the lateral arrays in the presence of injection

Parents’ marital status and child physical abuse potential: the mediation of depression symptoms

Informed by a social interactional framework of stress and parenting, the aim of this study was to examine the mediating effect of depression symptoms on the asso- ciation between parents’ marital status (married and divorced parents) and child physical abuse potential, in a Portuguese community sample. It was hypothesized that the possible observed differences between divorced and married parents in the child physical abuse potential would be explained by their depression symptoms. Parents (N = 892) were assessed in their marital status, severity of depression symptoms and child physical abuse potential. Results showed that, when compared with married parents, divorced parents had higher child physical abuse potential. However, parents’ depression symptomatology was found as a mediator of the effect of marital status differences on child physical abuse potential. The influence of the status of divorced parents on the increase of child physical abuse potential was explained by the increase of the parents’ depression symptoms. This finding suggested that parents’ divorced status had no longer an effect on child physical abuse potential when parents’ depression symptomatology was tested as a mediator vari- able. The present mediation model explained 47 % of the variability in the child physical abuse potential score. Prac- tical implications of these findings for prevention and psy- chological intervention are also discussed.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio