2,760 research outputs found
The impact of software development companies on software engineers' responses to incomplete requirements
Cataloged from PDF version of article.It is commonly accepted that software requirements quality affects software product quality, and high-quality
software products depend on complete requirements. With incomplete requirements, depending on the requirement software
engineers attempt to fi ll gaps differently; either by getting feedback from the user or by making assumptions. Assumptions
may be explicit or implicit. Explicit assumptions are preferable to implicit assumptions because explicit assumptions can be
validated. We conduct an empirical study to determine whether the number of explicit assumptions made by software engineers
is related to the companies that the engineers work for. Using data from eight companies we investigate the responses of
251 software engineers to the same incomplete software requirement. The results of the study show a signifi cant relationship
between a software development company and the number of explicit assumptions made by the engineers who work for that
compan
Towards Identification of Relevant Variables in the observed Aerosol Optical Depth Bias between MODIS and AERONET observations
Measurements made by satellite remote sensing, Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and globally distributed Aerosol Robotic Network
(AERONET) are compared. Comparison of the two datasets measurements for aerosol
optical depth values show that there are biases between the two data products.
In this paper, we present a general framework towards identifying relevant set
of variables responsible for the observed bias. We present a general framework
to identify the possible factors influencing the bias, which might be
associated with the measurement conditions such as the solar and sensor zenith
angles, the solar and sensor azimuth, scattering angles, and surface
reflectivity at the various measured wavelengths, etc. Specifically, we
performed analysis for remote sensing Aqua-Land data set, and used machine
learning technique, neural network in this case, to perform multivariate
regression between the ground-truth and the training data sets. Finally, we
used mutual information between the observed and the predicted values as the
measure of similarity to identify the most relevant set of variables. The
search is brute force method as we have to consider all possible combinations.
The computations involves a huge number crunching exercise, and we implemented
it by writing a job-parallel program
Spectroscopic and Photometric Study of the Contact Binary BO CVn
We present the results of the study of the contact binary system BO CVn. We
have obtained physical parameters of the components based on combined analysis
of new, multi-color light curves and spectroscopic mass ratio. This is the
first time the latter has been determined for this object. We derived the
contact configuration for the system with a very high filling factor of about
88 percent. We were able to reproduce the observed light curve, namely the flat
bottom of the secondary minimum, only if a third light has been added into the
list of free parameters. The resulting third light contribution is significant,
about 20-24 percent, while the absolute parameters of components are: M1=1.16,
M2=0.39, R1=1.62 and R2=1.00 (in solar units). The O-C diagram shows an upward
parabola which, under the conservative mass transfer assumption, would
correspond to a mass transfer rate of dM/dt = 6.3 \times 10-8M\odot/yr, matter
being transferred from the less massive component to the more massive one. No
cyclic, short-period variations have been found in the O-C diagram (but
longer-term variations remain a possibility)Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication by New
Astronom
Self-avoiding walks on a bilayer Bethe lattice
We propose and study a model of polymer chains in a bilayer. Each chain is
confined in one of the layers and polymer bonds on first neighbor edges in
different layers interact. We also define and comment results for a model with
interactions between monomers on first neighbor sites of different layers. The
thermodynamic properties of the model are studied in the grand-canonical
formalism and both layers are considered to be Cayley trees. In the core region
of the trees, which we may call a bilayer Bethe lattice, we find a very rich
phase diagram in the parameter space defined by the two activities of monomers
and the Boltzmann factor associated to the interlayer interaction between bonds
or monomers. Beside critical and coexistence surfaces, there are tricritical,
bicritical and critical endpoint lines, as well as higher order multicritical
points.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figures. Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and
Experiment (in press
Are software engineers' responses to incomplete requirements related to project characteristics?
Software requirements quality affects software product quality. For high-quality software products, software requirements must be complete. When faced with incomplete requirements, software engineers attempt to fill the requirements' gaps differently, either by getting feedback from the user or by making assumptions. Assumptions may be explicit or implicit. Explicit assumptions are preferable to implicit assumptions as explicit assumptions can be validated. We conduct an empirical study to determine whether the number of explicit assumptions made by software engineers is related to a project's characteristics. Using data from two CMMI Level 3 companies and 16 projects, we investigated the responses of 92 software engineers to the same incomplete software requirement. Our findings show possible relationships between projects' characteristics and the number of explicit assumptions. ©2009 IEEE
Analyzing Turkish e-government websites by eye tracking
Usability studies provide essential information about users' views and perceptions of efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction of given online services. Nowadays, e-government web sites become popular. Therefore, there is a need for usability testing to specify the usability problems and to make the services of the e-government more usable. The purpose of this study is to investigate usability of some Turkish e-government services. The study examined usability of five Turkish e-government web sites: Ministry of National Education - Student Information System (eokul), Ministry of Justice - National Judicial Network Project (UYAP), Turkish National Police: Vehicle Search System, Social Security Institute: Service Details and General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre. It was conducted with nine participants. This study is a case study with mixed design methodology, in which both quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed and combined. Quantitative data were collected through an eye-tracker, a pre-test questionnaire of participants' demographics and previous utilization of egovernment web sites and a post-test questionnaire. Qualitative data were collected through both semi-structured individual interviews and observation during test. The study results identify the usability problems encountered while using government services. The study concludes with specific recommendations for improvement of e-government services in Turkey. © 2013 IEEE
Impact of maintainability defects on code inspections
Software inspections are effective ways to detect defects early in the development process. In this paper, we analyze the impact of certain defect types on the effectiveness of code inspection. We conducted an experiment in an academic environment with 88 subjects to empirically investigate the effect of two maintainability defects, i.e., indentation and naming conventions, on the number of functional defects found, the effectiveness of functional defect detections, and the number of false positives reported during individual code inspections. Results show that in cases where both naming conventions and indentation defects exist, the participants found minimum number of defects and reported the highest number of false positives, as compared to the cases where either indentation or naming defects exist. Among maintainability defects, indentation seems to significantly impact the number of functional defects found by the inspector, while the presence of naming conventions defects seems to have no significant impact on the number of functional defects detected. The presence of maintainability defects significantly impacts the number of false positives reported. On the effectiveness of individual code inspectors we observed no significant impact originated from the presence of indentation or naming convention defects. © 2010 ACM
Estimation and Bias Correction of Aerosol Abundance using Data-driven Machine Learning and Remote Sensing
Air quality information is increasingly becoming a public health concern, since some of the aerosol particles pose harmful effects to peoples health. One widely available metric of aerosol abundance is the aerosol optical depth (AOD). The AOD is the integrated light extinction coefficient over a vertical atmospheric column of unit cross section, which represents the extent to which the aerosols in that vertical profile prevent the transmission of light by absorption or scattering. The comparison between the AOD measured from the ground-based Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) system and the satellite MODIS instruments at 550 nm shows that there is a bias between the two data products. We performed a comprehensive analysis exploring possible factors which may be contributing to the inter-instrumental bias between MODIS and AERONET. The analysis used several measured variables, including the MODIS AOD, as input in order to train a neural network in regression mode to predict the AERONET AOD values. This not only allowed us to obtain an estimate, but also allowed us to infer the optimal sets of variables that played an important role in the prediction. In addition, we applied machine learning to infer the global abundance of ground level PM2.5 from the AOD data and other ancillary satellite and meteorology products. This research is part of our goal to provide air quality information, which can also be useful for global epidemiology studies
Observations of Lick Standard Stars Using the SCORPIO Multi-Slit Unit at the SAO 6-m Telescope
We present Lick line-index measurements of standard stars from the list of
Worthey. The spectra were taken with the multi-slit unit of the SCORPIO
spectrograph at the 6-m Special Astrophysical observatory telescope. We
describe in detail our method of analysis and explain the importance of using
the Lick index system for studying extragalactic globular clusters. Our results
show that the calibration of our instrumental system to the standard Lick
system can be performed with high confidence.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure
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