LittleDarwin: a Feature-Rich and Extensible Mutation Testing Framework for Large and Complex Java Systems

Mutation testing is a well-studied method for increasing the quality of a test suite. We designed LittleDarwin as a mutation testing framework able to cope with large and complex Java software systems, while still being easily extensible with new experimental components. LittleDarwin addresses two existing problems in the domain of mutation testing: having a tool able to work within an industrial setting, and yet, be open to extension for cutting edge techniques provided by academia. LittleDarwin already offers higher-order mutation, null type mutants, mutant sampling, manual mutation, and mutant subsumption analysis. There is no tool today available with all these features that is able to work with typical industrial software systems.Comment: Pre-proceedings of the 7th IPM International Conference on Fundamentals of Software Engineerin

Ginseng: A panacea linking East Asia and North America?

The Supplement title: The Art and Science of Traditional Medicine Part 3: The Global Impact of Traditional Medicinepostprin

Class mutation operators for C++ object-oriented systems

Mutation testing is a fault injection testing technique around which a great variety of studies and tools for different programming languages have been developed. Nevertheless, the mutation testing research with respect to C++ is pending. This paper proposes a set of class mutation operators related to this language and its particular object-oriented (OO) features. In addition, an implementation technique to apply mutation testing based on the traversal of the abstract syntax tree (AST) is presented. Finally, an experiment is conducted to study the operator behaviour with different C++ programs, suggesting their usefulness in the creation of complete test suites. The analysis includes a Web service (WS) library, one of the domains where this technique can prove useful, considering its challenging testing phase and that C++ is still a reference language for critical distributed systems WS

Work‒family interface in the context of career success: A qualitative inquiry

Work–family researchers are increasingly recognizing the need to expand their focus to advance the field. One population largely neglected by work‒family researchers is individuals who have been extremely successful in their careers. In addition, organizational career scholars have largely neglected the interplay between employees’ work and family lives. This study contributes to the work‒family literature by studying work‒family interface (WFI) in the context of career success. We sought to explore the lived experiences of 28 distinguished professors who are among the top 2‒5% scholars in their field, to provide an in-depth understanding of their WFI and the prominent factors affecting it over their careers. Our findings have theoretical implications for both work‒family and career success literature

The Role of Lactic Acid Adsorption by Ion Exchange Chromatography

Background: The polyacrylic resin Amberlite IRA-67 is a promising adsorbent for lactic acid extraction from aqueous solution, but little systematic research has been devoted to the separation efficiency of lactic acid under different operating conditions. Methodology/Principal Findings: In this paper, we investigated the effects of temperature, resin dose and lactic acid loading concentration on the adsorption of lactic acid by Amberlite IRA-67 in batch kinetic experiments. The obtained kinetic data followed the pseudo-second order model well and both the equilibrium and ultimate adsorption slightly decreased with the increase of the temperature at 293–323K and 42.5 g/liter lactic acid loading concentration. The adsorption was a chemically heterogeneous process with a mean free energy value of 12.18 kJ/mol. According to the Boyd _ plot, the lactic acid uptake process was primarily found to be an intraparticle diffusion at a lower concentration (,50 g/liter) but a film diffusion at a higher concentration (.70 g/liter). The values of effective diffusion coefficient D i increased with temperature. By using our Equation (21), the negative values of DGu and DHu revealed that the adsorption process was spontaneous and exothermic. Moreover, the negative value of DSu reflected the decrease of solid-liquid interface randomness at the solid-liquid interface when adsorbing lactic acid on IRA-67. Conclusions/Significance: With the weakly basic resin IRA-67, in situ product removal of lactic acid can be accomplishe

Measurement of the Branching Fraction of J/psi --> pi+ pi- pi0

Using 58 million J/psi and 14 million psi' decays obtained by the BESII experiment, the branching fraction of J/psi --> pi+ pi- pi0 is determined. The result is (2.10+/-0.12)X10^{-2}, which is significantly higher than previous measurements.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, RevTex

Search for K_S K_L in psi'' decays

K_S K_L from psi'' decays is searched for using the psi'' data collected by BESII at BEPC, the upper limit of the branching fraction is determined to be B(psi''--> K_S K_L) < 2.1\times 10^{-4} at 90% C. L. The measurement is compared with the prediction of the S- and D-wave mixing model of the charmonia, based on the measurements of the branching fractions of J/psi-->K_S K_L and psi'-->K_S K_L.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

First observation of psi(2S)-->K_S K_L

The decay psi(2S)-->K_S K_L is observed for the first time using psi(2S) data collected with the Beijing Spectrometer (BESII) at the Beijing Electron Positron Collider (BEPC); the branching ratio is determined to be B(psi(2S)-->K_S K_L) = (5.24\pm 0.47 \pm 0.48)\times 10^{-5}. Compared with J/psi-->K_S K_L, the psi(2S) branching ratio is enhanced relative to the prediction of the perturbative QCD ``12%'' rule. The result, together with the branching ratios of psi(2S) decays to other pseudoscalar meson pairs (\pi^+\pi^- and K^+K^-), is used to investigate the relative phase between the three-gluon and the one-photon annihilation amplitudes of psi(2S) decays.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Study of psi(2S) decays to X J/psi

Using J/psi -> mu^+ mu^- decays from a sample of approximately 4 million psi(2S) events collected with the BESI detector, the branching fractions of psi(2S) -> eta J/psi, pi^0 pi^0 J/psi, and anything J/psi normalized to that of psi(2S) -> pi^+ pi^- J/psi are measured. The results are B(psi(2S) -> eta J/psi)/B(psi(2S) -> pi^+ pi^- J/psi) = 0.098 \pm 0.005 \pm 0.010, B(psi(2S) -> pi^0 pi^0 J/psi)/B(psi(2S) -> pi^+ pi^- J/psi) = 0.570 \pm 0.009 \pm 0.026, and B(psi(2S) -> anything J/psi)/B(psi(2S) -> pi^+ pi^- J/psi) = 1.867 \pm 0.026 \pm 0.055.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Cutting improves the productivity of lucerne-rich stands used in the revegetation of degraded arable land in a semi-arid environment

Understanding the relationships between vegetative and environmental variables is important for revegetation and ecosystem management on the Loess Plateau, China. Lucerne (Medicago sativa L.) has been widely used in the region to improve revegetation, soil and water conservation, and to enhance livestock production. However, there is little information on how environmental factors influence long-term succession in lucerne-rich vegetation. Our objective was to identify the main environmental variables controlling the succession process in lucerne-rich vegetation such that native species are not suppressed after sowing on the Loess Plateau. Vegetation and soil surveys were performed in 31 lucerne fields (three lucerne fields without any management from 2003-2013 and 28 fields containing 11-year-old lucerne with one cutting each year). Time after planting was the most important factor affecting plant species succession. Cutting significantly affected revegetation characteristics, such as aboveground biomass, plant density and diversity. Soil moisture content, soil organic carbon, soil available phosphorus and slope aspect were key environmental factors affecting plant species composition and aboveground biomass, density and diversity. Long-term cutting can cause self-thinning in lucerne, maintain the stability of lucerne production and slow its degradation. For effective management of lucerne fields, phosphate fertilizer should be applied and cutting performed