Calibrating software reliability models when the test environment does not match the user environment

Software failures have become the major factor that brings the system down or causes a degradation in the quality of service. For many applications, estimating the software failure rate from a user's perspective helps the development team evaluate the reliability of the software and determine the release time properly. Traditionally, software reliability growth models are applied to system test data with the hope of estimating the software failure rate in the field. Given the aggressive nature by which the software is exercised during system test, as well as unavoidable differences between the test environment and the field environment, the resulting estimate of the failure rate will not typically reflect the user‐perceived failure rate in the field. The goal of this work is to quantify the mismatch between the system test environment and the field environment. A calibration factor is proposed to map the failure rate estimated from the system test data to the failure rate that will be observed in the field. Non‐homogeneous Poisson process models are utilized to estimate the software failure rate in both the system test phase and the field. For projects that have only system test data, use of the calibration factor provides an estimate of the field failure rate that would otherwise be unavailable. For projects that have both system test data and previous field data, the calibration factor can be explicitly evaluated and used to estimate the field failure rate of future releases as their system test data becomes available. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stability radii of positive linear Volterra-Stieltjes equations

We study stability radii of linear Volterra-Stieltjes equations under multi-perturbations and affine perturbations. A lower and upper bound for the complex stability radius with respect to multi-perturbations are given. Furthermore, in some special cases concerning the structure matrices, the complex stability radius can precisely be computed via the associated transfer functions. Then, the class of positive linear Volterra-Stieltjes equations is studied in detail. It is shown that for this class, complex, real and positive stability radius under multi-perturbations or multi-affine perturbations coincide and can be computed by simple formulae expressed in terms of the system matrices. As direct consequences of the obtained results, we get some results on robust stability of positive linear integro-differential equations and of positive linear functional differential equations. To the best of our knowledge, most of the results of this paper are new.     

Diffraction by a wedge at skew incidence: integral representations of Cauchy-Carleman for the electromagnetic fields

An electromagnetic diffraction problem in a wedge shaped region is reduced to a system of coupled functional difference equations by means of Sommerfeld integrals and Malyuzhinets theorem. By introducing an integral operator it is shown that the solutions of this system of functional equations can be defined in terms of integral representations whose kernels are solutions of a singular integral equation of Cauchy-Carleman type for which an explicit solution is given.     

On bounding the effective conductivity of isotropic composite materials

In this paper inequalities for the effective conductivity of isotropic composite materials are derived. These inequalities depend on several coefficients characterizing the microstructure of composites. The obtained coefficients can be exactly calculated for models of a two-component aggregate of multisized, coated ellipsoidal inclusions, packed to fill all space. As a result, new bounds for effective conductivity, considerably narrower than those of Hashin-Shtrikman, are established for such models of composite materials.     

Determination of uranium and thorium isotopes in soil samples by coprecipitation

Summary The paper presents a procedure to prepare soil samples for U and Th isotope measurement by alpha-spectrometry after coprecipitation with LaF₃. In this procedure the reduction of U(VI) to U(IV) was performed by Zn metal in 4M HCl solution. The recoveries of chemical separation equal to e_U-chemistry = 78±4% for uranium and e_Th-chemistry = 82±4% for thorium. Canberra alpha-spectrometer was used with PIPS detectors of A-1200-37-AM Model of 1200 mm² active area. The counting efficiency of the measuring system equals to e_counting = 18% and the total efficiencies were e_U = e_counting ^.e_U-chemistry = 14.0±0.7% for uranium and e_Th = e_counting ^.e_Th-chemistry = 14.7±0.7% for thorium. The recoveries of chemical separation were rather high (about 80%), that leads to the use of a small weight of soil sample (about 0.5 g). The efficiencies were also stable, that allows analyzing the soil sample without using radiotracers. They are advantages of the sample preparation procedure of this work.     

Chemical isolation of element 106 from aqueous solutions according to model experiments with short-lived tungsten isotopes

The short-lived isotopes of W and their descendants have been isolated from the products of the bombardment of¹⁴⁴Sm with²⁴Mg by a fast continuous ion-exchange method, using HF solution media. The feasibility of this method for isolation of element 106 is discussed.     

Analysis of plane and axisymmetric flows of incompressible fluids with the stream tube method: Numerical simulation by trust-region optimization algorithm

New concepts for the study of incompressible plane or axisymmetric flows are analysed by the stream tube method. Flows without eddies and pure vortex flows are considered in a transformed domain where the mapped streamlines are rectilinear or circular. The transformation between the physical domain and the computational domain is an unknown of the problem. In order to solve the non-linear set of relevant equations, we present a new algorithm based on a trust region technique which is effective for non-convex optimization problems. Experimental results show that the new algorithm is more robust compared to the Newton-Raphson method.     

Synthesis and orientation study of a magnetically aligned liquid‐crystalline chitin/poly(acrylic acid) composite

A high magnetic field of 5 T was used to fabricate a magnetically aligned, optically anisotropic, liquid‐crystalline chitin/poly(acrylic acid) composite. The aligned mesophase was fixed by photoinitiated free‐radical polymerization. From an examination of polarized optical micrographs and an X‐ray diffraction study, a high degree of orientation of 0.70 was observed for the composite with a higher liquid‐crystalline chitin concentration (10.70 wt %); the orientation was reduced with a decreased chitin concentration at a given acrylic acid concentration. The X‐ray data for the developed composite showed a uniplanar orientation for the chitin crystallites, with its molecular long axes perpendicular to the direction of the magnetic field. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 41: 711–714, 2003