Software fault characteristics: A synthesis of the literature

Faults continue to be a significant problem in software. Understanding the nature of these faults is important for practitioners and researchers. There are many published fault characteristics schemes but no one scheme dominates. Consequently it is difficult for practitioners to effectively evaluate the nature of faults in their software systems, and it is difficult for researchers to compare the types of faults found by different fault detection techniques. In this paper we synthesise previous fault characteristics schemes into one comprehensive scheme. Our scheme provides a richer view of faults than the previous schemes published and presents a comprehensive, unified approach which accommodates the many previous schemes. A characteristics-based view of faults should be considered by future researchers in the analysis of software faults and in the design and evaluation of new fault detection tools. We recommend that our fault characteristics scheme be used as a benchmark scheme

A Case of Spontaneous Gangrene in an Infant.

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Health visitors' work in a multi-ethnic society: A qualitative study of social exclusion

Health visiting is adopting an enabling model of practice, which may promote social inclusion, but is under pressure to justify itself. The article focuses on health visitors’ work with Pakistani women and comparable white women in Glasgow, examining the nature of health visiting and women’s responses to it. Health visitors’ perspectives involve the appreciation of cultural differences, building relationships with clients, and some stereotyping of clients. Techniques include highly valued home visiting, and processes of negotiation with clients. Problems faced include difficulties with interpreters, lack of training, relationships with other professions, recent changes in the NHS, and issues of stress and personal safety. Women’s views of health visitors are generally positive, especially concerning home visits, time spent with clients, and gate-keeping access to GPs. Negative views came mostly from white women, and concerned the more controlling models of health visiting. Thus, enabling health visiting practice was widely appreciated, and could act as an inclusionary force, facilitating access to and use of health services. Exclusion was operating at institutional level, towards minorities and women of lower socio-economic groups, but was being actively resisted by practitioners

BugVis:Commit slicing for fault visualisation

In this paper we present BugVis, our tool which allows the visualisation of the lifetime of a code fault. The commit history of thefault from insertion to fix is visualised. Unlike previous similartools, BugVis visualises only the lines of each commit involved inthe fault. The visualisation creates a commit slice throughout thehistory of the fault which enables comprehension of the evolutionof the code involved in the fault

Tides of change : place meanings in the Broughton Archipelago

Rural Vancouver Island is in a state of transition from reliance on traditional resource based industries such as commercial fisheries and forestry (Robinson & Mazzoni, 2003) to a more diversified economy which includes tourism and aquaculture. Long standing patterns of life become threatened in remote coastal communities like Echo Bay and the greater Broughton Archipelago as traditional meanings of “places” become “unmoored” in an increasingly globalized world (W illiams & McIntyre, 2003). “Place” or “sense of place” are the perceived fusion of social history, community identity, scenic beauty, family heritage and spiritual values that give meaning to a place (Williams & Stewart, 1998). They are also the connection between social experiences and geographic areas (Galliano & Loeffler, 1999) such as people and their ties to the Broughton Archipelago. Understanding the concepts of “place” can enable natural resource managers to interpret more clearly the relationships people have to the land (Kruger, 2005). However, inclusion of “place” in the dominantly technical milieu of planning often poses interesting problems in appropriate and sensitive representation. In this qualitive study, an interview technique derived from T obias’ (2000) map biography was employed. By locating places on maps during the interview process, a map-based interview enabled narrative data to spatially represent sense of place or landscape meanings and values. When combined with phenomenological interviews that sought the “essence” of “lived experience” of the Broughton Archipelago, map-based interviews provided a perceptive and creative medium for the elicitation of landscape values and sense of place. Voices from these interviews resound with images of socioeconomic and environmental transformation. Phenomenological literature such life histories, historical fiction and place histories specific to the Broughton Archipelago were also employed to provide a historical perspective of the area in order to ground it in the present. As the greater story of place meanings in the Broughton Archipelago unfolds, salmon emerge as a symbol o f the cultural landscape, ecology and economy of the Broughton Archipelago. Moreover the salmon surface as a metaphor for traditional rural livelihoods and a way of life but also for globalization and its processes. Such symbols become more important when threatened and the consequences of the loss of salmon challenge the resiliency of a complex social ecological system in the Broughton Archipelago. A call for adaptive management emphasizes feedback from the environment and the state of the resource through social and ecological memory over time to develop policy. Moreover, social networks that inform each other from a wide range of local and international governance create an overall adaptive governance system

Authors' Reply to “Comments on 'Researcher Bias: The Use of Machine Learning in Software Defect Prediction' ”

IEEE In 2014 we published a meta-analysis of software defect prediction studies [1]. This suggested that the most important factor in determining results was Research Group i.e., who conducts the experiment is more important than the classifier algorithms being investigated. A recent re-analysis [2] sought to argue that the effect is less strong than originally claimed since there is a relationship between Research Group and Dataset. In this response we show (i) the re-analysis is based on a small (21%) subset of our original data, (ii) using the same re-analysis approach with a larger subset shows that Research Group is more important than type of Classifier and (iii) however the data are analysed there is compelling evidence that who conducts the research has an effect on the results. This means that the problem of researcher bias remains. Addressing it should be seen as a matter of priority amongst those of us who conduct and publish experiments comparing the performance of competing software defect prediction systems