Software test automation : a design and tool selection approach for a heterogeneous environment

textThis report describes a design approach for implementing a software test automation solution that can accommodate existing test processes in an organization. The process of implementing a software test automation solution is a large undertaking and requires careful planning to avoid unsuccessful implementations. This report outlines a design that can integrate with existing business and development processes in an organization, and recommends automation and development frameworks for achieving the test automation goals. Considerations for a heterogeneous test environment with varying types of supported operating systems, such as Windows and Linux, and multiple test execution environments, such as Java and .NET, have been made in this design and in the tool selections for the system implementation. The report also describes some of the challenges and caveats of automation in a heterogeneous environment along with recommended solutions to these challenges.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Will Mortality Rate of HIV-Infected Patients Decrease After Starting Antiretroviral Therapy (ART)?

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Background: Many authors have indicated that HIV-infected patients mortality risk is higher immediately following the start of Antiretroviral Therapy. However, mortality rate of HIV-infected patients is expected to decrease after starting Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) potentially complicating accurate statistical estimation of patient survival and, more generally, effective monitoring of the evolution of the worldwide epidemic. Method: In this thesis, we determine if mortality of HIV-patients increases or decreases after the initiation of ART therapy using flexible survival modelling techniques. To achieve this objective, this study uses semi-parametric statistical models for fitting and estimating survival time using different covariates. A combination of the Weibull distribution with splines is compared to the usual Weibull, exponential, and gamma distribution parametric models, and the Cox semi-parametric model. The objective of this study is to compare these models to find the best fitting model so that it can then be used to improve modeling of the survival time and explore the pattern of change in mortality rates for a cohort of HIV-infected patients recruited in a care and treatment program in Uganda. Results: The analysis shows that flexible survival Weibull models are better than usualoff-parametric and semi-parametric model fitting according to the AIC criterion. Conclusion: The mortality of HIV-patients is high right after the initiation of ART therapy and decreases rapidly subsequently

Application of clustering in managing unstructured textual data in relational database / Wael Mohamed Shaher Yafooz

Huge reliance on computer usage in everyday life, leads to a continuous increase of large data applications in textual forms. The data are reposited to a secondary storage for future usage. Therefore, a relational database (RDB) is most commonly used as a backbone in most application software for organising such data into structured form. The RDB has robust and powerful structures for managing, organising, and retrieving the data. However, the database structure can still contain large amounts of unstructured textual data. Dealing with unstructured textual data leads to three basic issues; users encounter difficulties to find useful information, inaccurate information retrieval and insufficient performance of query processing. Attempts have been made to resolve all of these issues by using several methods such as: full text searching, text indexing, a database schema management, database data model, and query-based techniques. However, the front-end approach, in the form of software applications, are still needed to organise the unstructured textual information in the RDB. This study proposes a Textual Virtual Schema Model (TVSM) as the back-end approach to reorganising textual data inside relational databases, while performing automatic semantic linking and clustering assignments

The Effect of Talent Management Strategies Achievement on Organizational Agility with Governmental Institutions Employees in the Governorate of MA'AN

This study aimed at identifying the effect of talent management strategies carrying out, on organizational agility among governmental employees in the governorate of MA'AN. The population of the study consists of employees working at upper and middle management levels in government agencies in the governorate of MA'AN. They were (112) manager. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, a questionnaire has been developed, and distributed over the study's participants. Results revealed the presence of talent management strategies' effect in accordance with its variables on organizational agility. Based upon the results, the study recommends the following: It is necessary for governmental institutions to be concerned with talent management, and activate it due to its effect on enhancing organizational agility, as it is shown in the participants' responses

THE IMPACT OF THE PROPOSED MATHEMATICS ENRICHMENT PROGRAM ON THE UAE STUDENTS’ MATHEMATICAL LITERACY IN LIGHT OF THE PISA FRAMEWORK

Mathematical literacy is an important skill that students must possess, as it helps students understand and use mathematics in the real world. The main aim of this dissertation is to investigate the impact of a proposed mathematical enrichment program developed based on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) framework. This assessment is particularly important because it is on the National Agenda as the UAE aspires to be among the top 20 countries in the world in PISA by 2021. An explanatory mixed method design was adopted to achieve the purpose of this study. Subjects included were 102 grade 10 students taken from two schools. In the first phase, a nonequivalent pre–posttest quasi-experimental research method was conducted. Mathematical literacy test and motivation scale were used to collect data. There was a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups with an effect size above the mean as indicated by the covariate analysis. Female students recorded greater improvement than male students in all areas of mathematical literacy except for reasoning. However, there was no significant difference in motivation to learn mathematics between the experimental and control groups, nor between male and female students. The second phase included qualitative data collected by a perceptions survey. The students showed positive feelings towards their participation in the mathematical enrichment program as revealed by the thematic analysis. The study suggested that to improve students’ mathematical literacy, schools should carefully implement the mathematics enrichment program. Findings from this study are expected to serve a larger goal of informing mathematics leaders in the UAE on how to improve the students’ mathematical literacy. This study was one step up to fill in some of the gaps in the literature, and in the long term, much remains to be investigated and learned about mathematical literacy

The Role of the Administrative Process Elements in the Development of the Administrative Reform in the Palestinian National Authority Institutions in the West Bank

This study aimed to identify the impact of the use of administrative elements on the development of administrative reform system in the Palestinian National Authority institutions in the West Bank, and to achieve this goal, use the systematic descriptive study, analytical and descriptive Correlative, and the researcher developed a questionnaire as a tool for data collection, distributed to a sample been selected Hssah randomly composed of "374" of the civilian workers in the public institutions employees. After the restoration of questionnaires from respondents were processed statistically using the Statistical Package "spss" for the analysis and interpretation of data, where it was used repetition to clarify the distribution of respondents by personal variables to respondents, and calculate averages and standard deviation to answer questions about the study, and test the "T" to examine the hypothesis by sex , and testing of variance to examine the hypothesis of the study analysis by age and educational qualification and years of experience variables and job title. Pearson also used the test to detect the relationship between the independent variables (administrative and variable elements of the (administrative reform development). The study found the most important the following results: 1)The results of the study strongly the consent of the respondents in the use of administrative elements and using them in the development process of administrative reform in the Palestinian National Authority institutions in the West Bank, with a mean (4.256) 2) The results of the answers respondents a positive relationship between the elements of the employment administration (regulatory plans and programs, and implementation, and the structure of administrative reform device, and follow-up and performance monitoring during implementation of the administrative reform process), and the development of the administrative reform process. 3) The results of the study showed the presence of statistically significant differences in the answers of respondents about the importance of the employment elements of management in the development of administrative reform by sex, in favor of males. 4)The results of the study showed a lack of statistically significant differences in the answers of respondents about the importance of the employment elements of management in the development of administrative reform by variables (age, educational qualification, years of experience, and job title)) The study recommends the Palestinian National Authority by using the administrative process and elements employed in the process of administrative reform development

A hybrid deep learning and NLP based system to predict the spread of Covid-19 and unexpected side effects on people

The aim of this paper is to deeply analyze the unexpected side effects of people during the Covid-19 pandemic using the RNN based NLP sentiment analysis model. The normalized correlation values that is obtained by computing the cases values between the people behavior extracted and covid-19 reported case also has values close to 1 million by the end of June 2020 provided in dataset. In this research work, with more time, we would like to continue from the results we have achieved by training the RNN with NLP based sentiment analysis model for more extended periods of time for predicting the behavior of people during Covid-19 pandemic with 76.71% of accuracy which is high as compared to the CNN, such as days or weeks, in order to see how results can improve. The advancement in this field created an urge in me to research more on the techniques and methodologies developed for covid-19 extraction. During the outbreak of an epidemic, it is of immense interest to monitor the effects of containment measures and forecast of outbreak including epidemic peak affecting the behavior of people. To confront the change in behavior, a simple RNN based NLP sentiment analysis model is used to simulate the number of affected patients of Coronavirus disease. Our initial problem formulation involved investigating the ideal conditions and preprocessing for working with a specific NLP task: predicting the behavior during the specific time of May 20 – June 20 in 2020 for all four traits of common people during the Covid-19 pandemic

The Impact of Adopting the International Financial Reporting Standards on the Disclosure of the Social Responsibility Accounting in the Jordanian Pharmaceutical Joint-Stock Public Companies

This study aimed to identify the extent of the impact of international financial reporting standards in the disclosure of social responsibility accounting in the Jordanian Pharmaceutical Joint-stock Public Companies. To achieve the objectives of the study, a questionnaire has been designed  and distributed by hand to the Finance Manager, Finance and Accounting  Departments, Administrative Managers working the managerial departments, internal auditors in the Jordanian Pharmaceutical Joint-stock Public Companies which are listed in the Amman Stock Exchange up to 31-12-2013, which were (7) seven companies. 63 questionnaires were distributed of which 55 were adopted for the purposes of statistical analysis, i.e. (87.3%) approximately of the distributed questionnaires. The results of the study showed that conceptions of Finance and Administrative Managers and Internal auditors about the application of the IFRS and Social Responsibility Accounting were holistically high, while the impact of applying IFRS in the dimension of protection the environment, as deemed a social responsibility dimension which was less affected than the other dimensions. The study recommended the need to increase the interest of Jordanian Pharmaceutical Joint-stock Public Companies towards the protection of environment and their personnel and the contribution in the welfare of the society. Keywords: International Financial Reporting Standards, the social responsibility accounting, Jordanian Pharmaceutical Joint-stock Public Companie

Investigation of Self-Regulated Learning Strategies and Motivational Beliefs in Mathematics Achievement

This study aimed to investigate how mathematics achievement can be explained in terms of motivational beliefs (intrinsic goal orientation, extrinsic goal orientation, task value, control and learning beliefs, self-efficacy for learning and performance, and test anxiety), cognitive and metacognitive (rehearsal, elaboration, organization, metacognitive self-regulatory, time and study environment, effort regulation, peer learning, and help seeking). In addition, it sought to investigate any statistically significant differences between male and female students on motivational beliefs, self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies, and achievement in mathematics. The study was conducted in Al Ain, with 402 students of 12th scientific stream grades (199 males, 203 females) from 6 public schools. In this study, an adapted version of Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) that was developed By Pintrich, Smith, Garcia, and Mackeachie (1991) and the mathematics final test of the first term of academic year 2011-2012 were used as measuring instruments. Independent sample t-test was applied to examine the two means of males and females at an alpha level of .05 to determine any statistical significance between them on motivational beliefs, SRL strategies, and achievement. Additionally, Pearson correlation was applied to investigate the relation between motivational beliefs and self-regulated learning strategies. There was no statistically significant mean difference between males and females with respect to all motivational beliefs. Nevertheless, it was found that there are statistically significant mean differences regarding the effort regulation strategy in addition to mathematics achievement in favor of females, and peer learning in favor of males. Additionally, multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine which of the motivational beliefs and SRL strategies can be considered as good predictors of mathematics achievement. The results showed that there were five significant predictor variables of students\u27 mathematics achievement including: self-efficacy, extrinsic goal orientation, effort regulation, time and study environment, and peer learning. The most important educational implication of the current research results is that it is important to teach learners how to engage in self-regulation and how to improve their motivational beliefs. This kind of teaching could improve the students\u27 mathematics achievement. Additional research on the students\u27 motivational beliefs and SRL strategies in other subjects is recommended to get results that can be generalized for the UAE

On the existence and uniqueness of solutions of a class of fractional differential equations

AbstractIn this paper, we investigate the existence and uniqueness of solutions for the following class of multi-order fractional differential equationsDβ1γ1,δ1⋯Dβnγn,δnu(t):=∏i=1nDβiγi,δiu(t):=Dβi,nγi,δiu(t)=f(t,u(t)),t∈[0,1],u(0)=0,∑i=1nδi⩽1,γi>0,βi>0,1⩽i⩽n, where Dβi,nγi,δi denotes the generalized Erdélyi–Kober operator of fractional derivative of order δi. Moreover, some properties concerning the positive, maximal, minimal, and continuation of solutions are obtained