Method and apparatus of simulating zero gravity conditions Patent

Development of apparatus for simulating zero gravity condition

And most of us go Pro in something other than Sports - Hiring Preferences and their Effect on the Labor Market for Collegiate Football Players

This paper analyzes the labor market for collegiate football players and argues that professional football teams have discriminating preferences when making their hiring decisions. An empirical analysis of panel data of 32 NFL teams in recent seasons is carried out to test the effects of such preferences on the performance of teams. The results provide strong evidence that certain criteria, which do have a high influence on a player’s chances to start a career in Professional Football, have actually little influence on team-efficiency whatsoever. Consequently, this implies that discrimination in the form of hiring preferences create a sub-optimal result in terms of building a team, as well as for the overall labor market in Professional Football.Labor market in sports, discrimination in hiring, production efficiency, stochastic production frontier

Approval-Based Shortlisting

Shortlisting is the task of reducing a long list of alternatives to a (smaller) set of best or most suitable alternatives from which a final winner will be chosen. Shortlisting is often used in the nomination process of awards or in recommender systems to display featured objects. In this paper, we analyze shortlisting methods that are based on approval data, a common type of preferences. Furthermore, we assume that the size of the shortlist, i.e., the number of best or most suitable alternatives, is not fixed but determined by the shortlisting method. We axiomatically analyze established and new shortlisting methods and complement this analysis with an experimental evaluation based on biased voters and noisy quality estimates. Our results lead to recommendations which shortlisting methods to use, depending on the desired properties

Potential Errors and Test Assessment in Software Product Line Engineering

Software product lines (SPL) are a method for the development of variant-rich software systems. Compared to non-variable systems, testing SPLs is extensive due to an increasingly amount of possible products. Different approaches exist for testing SPLs, but there is less research for assessing the quality of these tests by means of error detection capability. Such test assessment is based on error injection into correct version of the system under test. However to our knowledge, potential errors in SPL engineering have never been systematically identified before. This article presents an overview over existing paradigms for specifying software product lines and the errors that can occur during the respective specification processes. For assessment of test quality, we leverage mutation testing techniques to SPL engineering and implement the identified errors as mutation operators. This allows us to run existing tests against defective products for the purpose of test assessment. From the results, we draw conclusions about the error-proneness of the surveyed SPL design paradigms and how quality of SPL tests can be improved.Comment: In Proceedings MBT 2015, arXiv:1504.0192

A stochastic framework for multiscale strength prediction using adaptive discontinuity layout optimisation (ADLO)

The prediction of strength properties of matrix-inclusion materials, which in general are random in nature due to their spatial distribution and variation of pores, particles, and matrix-inclusion interfaces, plays an important role with regard to the reliability of materials and structures. The recently developed discontinuity layout optimisation (DLO) [18] and adaptive discontinuity layout optimisation (ADLO) [4], which can be used for determination of strength properties of materials [3, 4] and structures [9], are included in a stochastic framework, using random variables. Therefore different material properties, influencing the overall strength of the matrix-inclusion material (e.g. matrix and inclusion strength, number and distribution of pores/particles) in a considered RVE are assumed to follow certain probability distributions [12]. A sensitivity study for the identification of material parameters showing the largest influence on the strength of the considered matrix-inclusion materials is performed. The obtained results provide first insight into the nature of the reliability of strength properties of matrix-inclusion materials, paving the way to a better understanding and finally improvement of the effective strength properties of matrix-inclusion materials