Major Vendors Research Articles

BLACKBOX TESTING OF WEB SERVICE

Web Services and Service Oriented Computing (SOC) paradigm have received significant attention due to its wide spread adoption and promotion by major IT vendors. As more and more Service-Oriented Softwares are built to-day testing of web service have becomes crucial point. Web services are distributed, loosly coupled, autonomous, reusuable, discoverable, hides internal logic (Abstraction),minimize retaining information (Statelessness) and adhere to Service Level Aggrement (SLA).These inherent characterestics imposes great challenges to the tester.In this paper we try to impose hierarchical structure on Web Service Description Language(WSDL) in order to uncover more and more errors before its final deployment through blackbox testing.Our approach differes from others by imposing hierarchical structure on WSDL, finding various dependencies like data dependency, control dependency, and generation of Web Service Dependence Graph(WSDG) which are essential for testing.

The Image Gently ALARA CT summit on new CT technologies for children.

Under the leadership of Drs. Marilyn J. Goske, Sjirk J. Westraand Donald P. Frush and Mr. Keith J. Strauss, and with theadministrative assistance of Ms. Angela Davis, the Alliance forRadiation Safety in Pediatric Imaging and the Society forPediatric Radiology organized the third ALARA CT meetingand second Image Gently CT meeting intoa singleconference,titled “The Image Gently ALARA CT Summit: How to UseNew CT Technologies for Children. ” The meeting, conductedin Orlando, FL, on Feb. 21–22, featured 21 course facultymembers (including 9 pediatric radiologists, 2 adult radiolo-gists, 8 medical imaging physicists, a pediatrician and a radio-logic technologist), who collectively presented 30 lectures.Highlights of the meeting included four non-commercialrapid-fire presentations that paired pediatric radiologists withmedical imaging physicists to discuss the advantages and disad-vantages of the four major CT vendors ’ equipment. More than140 attendees filled the conference room at the Hyatt RegencyOrlando International Airport hotel. Conference presentationswere divided into sections covering CT scanner operations,patient dose and potential risks, management of patient dose,quality improvement, and training and communication.The meeting provided an overview about why and when touse CT in children from a radiologist ’s perspective and wascomplementedbyapediatricemergencyroomphysician ’sview.The meeting paid particular attention to CTscanner operations.Detailed lectures on automatic exposure control and iterativereconstruction were included. The conference was rounded outwith a discussion of the challenges in the scientific fieldresulting from the lack of standardized nomenclature.Twosessionswerededicatedtothecomplexityofradiationdose, and updates were provided on the latest understandingabout radiation risk. A point–counterpoint session presentedthe challenges of pediatric protocol development and com-paredscanner-specificprotocolswithuniversalprotocols.Theconcept of optimizing image quality in relation to CT dosewas discussed. Individual dose tracking was also presented.The audience was introduced to the American College ofRadiology’s adult and pediatric dose index registries as a toolfor quality improvement in their practice.One session reviewed practical approaches to implementingquality improvement into pediatric CT practice. The last day ’sformal session presented the art of communication with parentsand referring providers. By including a pediatric emergencyroomspecialist, themeetingemphasized theimportanceofcom-munication among pediatric specialists in the care of children.The meeting was highly interact ive, with robust questions fromthe audience after each session.The“ImageGentlyALARACTSummit:HowtoUseNewCT Technologies for Children” provided an exciting andinformativeforum fortheaudiencetointeractwiththefacultyandcollectin-depthinformationaboutcurrenttopicsrelatedtoradiation safety as it applies to the practice of pediatric CT.This peer-reviewed supplement to the journal PediatricRadiology includes a summary of the presentations as reviewarticles. It is our hope that this supplement will allow thecontent of the meeting to reach a broad audience and willbenefit the readership and members of the Society forPediatric Radiology and beyond.

Incidence of Revision Surgery in a Large Cohort of Patients With Thoracic Surgical Three-Column Paddle Leads: A Retrospective Case Review.

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) revision surgery remains common, with a negative impact on cost-effectiveness and outcomes. The primary goal in this report was to retrospectively study the need for revision surgery in a large cohort of patients with newly implanted thoracic surgical three-column paddle leads, focusing on a method of implantation to reduce the need for revision surgery. Clinical outcomes were also assessed. The outcomes in 126 patients who received initial surgical paddle SCS implants for back and/or leg pain from 2008 to 2012 were retrospectively analyzed. A disinterested third party performed chart reviews and telephone interviews. A single surgeon with a consistent method performed all implants, with no lead anchoring. All three major commercial vendors were utilized. There were no paddle electrode lead revisions required for spontaneous fracture, migration, or infection at an average chart-review follow-up period of 20 months. With subsequent telephone interviews, a 65% clinical success rate was seen at 29 months. Significant suboptimal stimulation with body-position changes (SSBPC) was reported in less than 10% of patients. All results were vendor-independent. This report, the largest to date on patients with three-column paddle leads, shows low electrode revision rates with expected clinical success rates. Clinically relevant SSBPC was uncommon.

3D Printing Job Editor for Workflow Visualization Design and Implementation

This paper presents design and development of a viewing and editing tool, namely 3DPJ Editor, for Workflow visualization of 3D Print Job files. 3D Print Job (3DPJ) is an XML based format for 3D Printing job purposed to enable automation and integration of multiple vendor systems in a 3D Printing manufacture environment. The paper also shows preliminary 3DPJ format for further development of 3D Printing manufacture community with multiple vendors. The 3DPJ Format tries to separate content information and meta-data of 3D Print Jobs, in order to integrate different processes into one standard 3D Printing Workflow. The complete specification of 3DPJ should be further complex and comprehensive, and it should be gradually adopted by major 3D Printer vendors.

Coronary artery calcification scoring with state-of-the-art CT scanners from different vendors has substantial effect on risk classification.

To determine the intervendor variability of Agatston scoring determined with state-of-the-art computed tomographic (CT) systems from the four major vendors in an ex vivo setup and to simulate the subsequent effects on cardiovascular risk reclassification in a large population-based cohort. Research ethics board approval was not necessary because cadaveric hearts from individuals who donated their bodies to science were used. Agatston scores obtained with CT scanners from four different vendors were compared. Fifteen ex vivo human hearts were placed in a phantom resembling an average human adult. Hearts were scanned at equal radiation dose settings for the systems of all four vendors. Agatston scores were quantified semiautomatically with software used clinically. The ex vivo Agatston scores were used to simulate the effects of different CT scanners on reclassification of 432 individuals aged 55 years or older from a population-based study who were at intermediate cardiovascular risk based on Framingham risk scores. The Friedman test was used to evaluate overall differences, and post hoc analyses were performed by using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test with Bonferroni correction. Agatston scores differed substantially when CT scanners from different vendors were used, with median Agatston scores ranging from 332 (interquartile range, 114-1135) to 469 (interquartile range, 183-1381; P < .05). Simulation showed that these differences resulted in a change in cardiovascular risk classification in 0.5%-6.5% of individuals at intermediate risk when a CT scanner from a different vendor was used. Among individuals at intermediate cardiovascular risk, state-of the-art CT scanners made by different vendors produced substantially different Agatston scores, which can result in reclassification of patients to the high- or low-risk categories in up to 6.5% of cases.

143. Vendor-specific commensal gut microbiota differentially affect immune function and behavior in mice

The commensal gut microbiota plays a central role in the ontogeny of the mucosal immune system and, as a consequence, peripheral immunity. Considering the well- recognized link between inflammation, and various behavioral traits, it follows that the gut microbiota may influence behavior via changes in peripheral immunity. Using robust next-generation sequencing, we detected consistent vendor- and housing density-dependent differences in the composition of the gut microbiota of several inbred mouse strains. These varying but distinct microbial communities correlate with circulating levels of glucocorticoids and several surrogate markers of increased systemic immune tone, including production of inflammatory cytokines and changes in the leukogram. To investigate a causal relationship between these dependent variables and characteristics of the gut microbiota, isogenic mice harboring distinct gut microbial compositions were generated and prospectively subjected to a battery of assays to assess peripheral immune tone and behavioral phenotype. Significant differences in anxiety-related behavior and neuroimmune correlates of stress were detected between groups of genetically identical mice colonized with microbial populations that differ significantly between two major animal vendors. These results support the hypothesis that the composition of the gut microbiota is causally related to different behavioral responses to stress, and that this effect is mediated by changes in peripheral immune tone. These results also underscore the need to consider the gut microbiota as an important intercurrent variable in behavioral research.

Verilog HDL Simulator Technology: A Survey

Digital logic design has become increasingly complex in multi-billion transistor VLSI. In order to model such a circuit, Verilog has emerged to be one of the most widely used Hardware Description Languages in digital VLSI design. Verilog's ability to model a circuit at different abstraction levels makes it a preferred mode of design entry starting from the conceptual stage till obtaining the final gate level netlist. At every stage along the development, simulations are inevitably needed to verify circuit correctness. Various forms of software and hardware assisted digital logic simulators were developed ever since the adoption of Verilog in the industry. With increasing circuit design density and complexity, major simulator vendors are struggling to improve simulation throughput in order to maintain quality and engineering cost of product development. Researchers are actively studying new improvements and approaches to keep simulators relevant. This paper surveys the research activities in Verilog simulator technologies as well as comparing every technology's strengths and weaknesses.

MRMPROBS suite for metabolomics using large-scale MRM assays

We developed new software environment for the metabolome analysis of large-scale multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) assays. It supports the data format of four major mass spectrometer vendors and mzML common data format. This program provides a process pipeline from the raw-format import to high-dimensional statistical analyses. The novel aspect is graphical user interface-based visualization to perform peak quantification, to interpolate missing values and to normalize peaks interactively based on quality control samples. Together with the software platform, the MRM standard library of 301 metabolites with 775 transitions is also available, which contributes to the reliable peak identification by using retention time and ion abundances. MRMPROBS is available for Windows OS under the creative-commons by-attribution license at http://prime.psc.riken.jp.

Arterial Spin–Labeled Perfusion Imaging in Acute Ischemic Stroke

Arterial spin labeling (ASL) is an MRI method that enables the measurement of tissue perfusion without the use of exogenous contrast agents by magnetically tagging the water in inflowing blood.1 It was first proposed in the early 1990s and, since then, has been primarily a research technique. Recent advances in pulse sequence design and the more widespread availability of higher-field (ie, 3T) MRI scanners, both of which improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the technique dramatically, have resulted in increased adoption in the clinical neuroimaging community. All 3 major MRI vendors now support some form of ASL imaging as a product. At first glance, it would seem that ASL is a particularly ill-suited technique to image acute ischemic stroke. The ASL signal is roughly proportional to cerebral blood flow (CBF), which is markedly decreased in the core of large vessel ischemic stroke. Furthermore, what CBF does remain is often supplied by circuitous collateral routes, leading to longer arterial arrival times. Because the magnetic label decays with the blood T1 (typically between 1.2 and 1.8 s at clinical magnetic field strengths), the ASL signal will not accurately represent CBF in these regions under normal operating conditions. Finally, there is extensive research and clinical experience with another MRI perfusion method, bolus dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC), which can be acquired relatively rapidly in the acute setting. Remarkably, despite these limitations, an increasing number of studies are showing that there is a place for ASL in the workup of acute ischemic stroke with MRI. In this review, I highlight recommended imaging parameters for ASL stroke studies, discuss typical image quality and artifacts, review the recent clinical literature of ASL in stroke (particularly vis a vis the more routine and accepted method of DSC), mention limitations, and finally discuss the future of this promising …

Report on the first international workshop on cloud intelligence (Cloud-I 2012)

Business intelligence (BI) is a broad field related to integrating, storing and analyzing data to help decisionmakers in many domains (from “real” business to administration, health, and environment) make better decisions. Front-end analytics methods include reporting, on-line analytical processing (OLAP), and data mining. With the increasing success of cloud computing, cloud BI “as a service” offerings have started appearing, both from cloud start-ups and major BI industry vendors. Beyond porting BI features into the cloud, which already implies numerous issues (e.g., BigData/NoSQL database modeling and storage, data localization, security and privacy, performance, cost and usage models...), this trend also poses new, broader challenges for making data analytics available to small and middle-size enterprises (SMEs), non-governmental organizations, Web communities (e.g., supported by social networks), and even the average citizen; this vision presumably requiring a mixture of both private and open data. Thus, Cloud Intelligence is not only a current technological and research challenge, but also an important economic and societal stake, since people increasingly demand open data, which must be easily accessible on the Web, possibly mixed with private data, and analyzed with intelligible on-line tools with advanced collaborative features enabling users to share and reuse BI concepts and analyses in large scale fashion. Analysis results can then be be shared world-wide. The Second International Workshop on Cloud Intelligence (Cloud-I 2013) [3] was held in conjunction with VLDB 2013 in Riva del Garda, Italy on August 26, 2013. In continuation of the first edition, it brought together researchers and engineers from academia and industry to discuss and exchange ideas related to Cloud Intelligence. The workshop featured a joint keynote with the BIRTE workshop and two research sessions, the latter including a panel discussion. The topics of this year’s accepted papers mainly focused on MapReduce-based computations and indexing.

QuickProbs—A Fast Multiple Sequence Alignment Algorithm Designed for Graphics Processors

Multiple sequence alignment is a crucial task in a number of biological analyses like secondary structure prediction, domain searching, phylogeny, etc. MSAProbs is currently the most accurate alignment algorithm, but its effectiveness is obtained at the expense of computational time. In the paper we present QuickProbs, the variant of MSAProbs customised for graphics processors. We selected the two most time consuming stages of MSAProbs to be redesigned for GPU execution: the posterior matrices calculation and the consistency transformation. Experiments on three popular benchmarks (BAliBASE, PREFAB, OXBench-X) on quad-core PC equipped with high-end graphics card show QuickProbs to be 5.7 to 9.7 times faster than original CPU-parallel MSAProbs. Additional tests performed on several protein families from Pfam database give overall speed-up of 6.7. Compared to other algorithms like MAFFT, MUSCLE, or ClustalW, QuickProbs proved to be much more accurate at similar speed. Additionally we introduce a tuned variant of QuickProbs which is significantly more accurate on sets of distantly related sequences than MSAProbs without exceeding its computation time. The GPU part of QuickProbs was implemented in OpenCL, thus the package is suitable for graphics processors produced by all major vendors.

Comparison of High Level FPGA Hardware Design for Solving Tri-diagonal Linear Systems

Reconfigurable computing devices can increase the performance of compute intensive algorithms by implementing application specific co-processor architectures. The power cost for this performance gain is often an order of magnitude less than that of modern CPUs and GPUs. Exploiting the potential of reconfigurable devices such as Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) is typically a complex and tedious hardware engineering task. Recently the major FPGA vendors (Altera, and Xilinx) have released their own high-level design tools, which have great potential for rapid development of FPGA based custom accelerators. In this paper, we will evaluate Altera's OpenCL Software Development Kit, and Xilinx's Vivado High Level Sythesis tool. These tools will be compared for their performance, logic utilisation, and ease of development for the test case of a tri-diagonal linear system solver.

A Platform Independent Access Control Metamodel for Web Services

Web services provide platform independent communication through an XML-based standard family. The major software vendors released their own SOA products implementing these standards. However, the configuration of the WS-* protocols differs from product to product. Matching these configurations between different products can be a very tedious task. Security protocols are among the most complicated protocols to configure, especially if access control is also required. Although the XACML standard aims to solve this task, its rules and policies described in XML are not very user friendly, and XACML has a very poor support in the major SOA products. Therefore, we have developed a platform independent metamodel for describing distributed systems of web services. From models described in this metamodel the platform specific configurations and program codes can be easily generated for the various SOA products, increasing the productivity of the development. This article introduces an access control extension to this metamodel.

A Socio-Economic Linkage of Urban Informal Sector to Formal and Other Informal Sectors in Hawassa Town: Intensifying Growth from the Street

A comprehensive survey pertaining to vendors and the role vendors’ play in economic links between urban informal and formal sectors in Hawasa town is not studied so far. Hence, the main purpose of this study has been to identify major vendor activities and examine the types and intensification of socio-economic linkages these vendor activities do have with formal and other informal sectors to stimulate growth in the country in general and in study town in particular. To this end, it had an overall objective of proposing viable government policy interventions aimed at enhancing the productivity and socio-economic intensification of vendor operations. In order to achieve this objective a sample of 140 street vendors were selected from parent population and relevant data were gathered mainly through questionnaires and analyzed using cross tabulations and percentages. The survey revealed the transfer of resource in the form of wage from wage earners to street vending, consumption linkage. The study also found that there was nearly no closer linkage between vendor enterprise and formal financial institutions. The latter lent little loans to street enterprise owners.

The Role of Iterative Reconstruction Techniques in Cardiovascular CT

Iterative reconstruction (IR) techniques for cardiovascular computed tomography (CT) have enjoyed a resurgence of interest in recent years as computer power has increased enough to enable reasonably timely reconstructions. The major purported benefit of current IR techniques involves image noise reduction, which both provides improved image quality and enables radiation dose reductions. Several widely available products have been released by the major CT vendors that vary in their underlying techniques but, according to the current literature, give similar results. Future algorithms should both refine current IR techniques and expand the role of IR to additional cardiovascular CT applications. This review examines the technical basis of IR, the IR products available commercially, the current data on IR in cardiovascular CT, and the future directions of the field.

A Research on KVM I/O Performance

With open source, stable performance, simple structure, integrated in Linux kernel, and good performance, KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) gets wide attention from major IT vendors and academia circles. However, virtualization technology will introduce additional overhead, especially in the I/O virtualization. The current researches about KVM have been carried out mostly focused on the performance comparison and analysis between virtualization solutions. There is no systematic study of the KVM I/O performance. In this paper, the I/O architecture in KVM is firstly studied, and then the disk and network performance of fully virtualization KVM and Para-virtualization KVM with all the different configurations are systemically tested and analyzed. Both the KVM I/O performance and the influences of the different configuration options on the performance are figured out in this paper. These are quite important and useful for the users and designers.

An experimental study of data retention behavior in modern DRAM devices

DRAM cells store data in the form of charge on a capacitor. This charge leaks off over time, eventually causing data to be lost. To prevent this data loss from occurring, DRAM cells must be periodically refreshed. Unfortunately, DRAM refresh operations waste energy and also degrade system performance by interfering with memory requests. These problems are expected to worsen as DRAM density increases. The amount of time that a DRAM cell can safely retain data without being refreshed is called the cell's retention time . In current systems, all DRAM cells are refreshed at the rate required to guarantee the integrity of the cell with the shortest retention time, resulting in unnecessary refreshes for cells with longer retention times. Prior work has proposed to reduce unnecessary refreshes by exploiting differences in retention time among DRAM cells; however, such mechanisms require knowledge of each cell's retention time. In this paper, we present a comprehensive quantitative study of retention behavior in modern DRAMs. Using a temperature-controlled FPGA-based testing platform, we collect retention time information from 248 commodity DDR3 DRAM chips from five major DRAM vendors. We observe two significant phenomena: data pattern dependence , where the retention time of each DRAM cell is significantly affected by the data stored in other DRAM cells, and variable retention time , where the retention time of some DRAM cells changes unpredictably over time. We discuss possible physical explanations for these phenomena, how their magnitude may be affected by DRAM technology scaling, and their ramifications for DRAM retention time profiling mechanisms.

Innovation and evolution in integrated web application testing with TTCN-3

Over the last 10 years there has been continuous innovation and evolution in the technology of web applications. While originally designed as a telecom testing platform, TTCN-3 has proven to be a flexible and powerful platform for web application testing throughout this period. Major challenges to testing have been integration with unit test frameworks, service-oriented architecture, rich client interfaces, and security vulnerabilities. Through careful analysis and practical experience in industrial projects we have developed mechanisms to address each of these aspects of web application testing in TCN-3. These mechanisms are summarized here with examples drawn from our industrial experience to show how TTCN-3 provides significant advantages for testing web applications in comparison to other tools typically used in industry. We also present a significant extension to the model architecture for TTCN-3 which greatly facilitates web application testing that has been implemented by a major vendor and is now under consideration by the ETSI standards committee.

WE-G-103-09: The Impact of Mammography Physics Instrumentation On Entrance Air Kerma and Mean Glandular Dose

Purpose: Recent mammography equipment evaluations for new installations showed discrepancies in measurements of parameters related to MGD with different physics instrumentation. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the reasons for these discrepancies for two major vendors of mammography equipment. Methods: This study tested GE Essential and Hologic Dimensions units (6 target-filter combinations) with 4 instruments from 3 vendors using techniques specified by ACR and in agreement with manufacturers recommendations. Relative MGDs were calculated from measured entrance air kerma (EAK), kVp and HVL for each target-filter combination at fixed mAs for each instrument. The effect of each parameter on MGD was evaluated independently. Particular attention was paid to the relevant kVps (28–30) and target-filter combinations required for mammography phantom MGD calculations by interpolation from published dose tables. Results: EAK was found to be nearly independent of field size and varied nearly linearly with kVp for all instruments. In the range of kVps for phantom MGD measurements, a measured error as large as 1 kV had very small (0.5–1.5%) impact on decreasing MGD, whereas +5% error in HVL reduced MGD by 4%. Errors in instrument response for kVp and HVL of these magnitudes were seen and reported separately. For the 6 target-filter combinations and all instruments, the variability in calculated MDG ranged from −5.8% to +5.3%. Analysis of each relevant parameter independently for two instruments showed occasional fortuitous compensations between errors in HVL and EAK that reduced the total error in MGD from 10% to 5%. Conclusion: Discrepancies in measured EAK are likely to be attributed to the fact that NIST beams for mammography calibrations are limited to Mo/Mo. Errors reported here Result from measurements made with extreme care in a well-defined setup. Larger errors in a typical clinical setting could reasonably be expected.

SU‐C‐116‐03: Comparisons and Limitations of Physics Instrumentation in Mammography

Purpose: To evaluate discrepancies in measurements for two major vendors of mammography equipment with a few models of physics instruments, and to make known potential errors in best use of these instruments for ACR and MQSA/FDA documentation. We show variability in responses under different beam conditions and report problems encountered. A separate study shows effects on calculated mean glandular dose. Methods: Recent mammography equipment evaluations for new installations show discrepancies in measurements of kVp and HVL with different instrumentation. This study tested well‐behaved GE Essential and Hologic Dimensions units (6 target‐filter combinations) with 3 vendors and 4 instruments (3 with solid‐state detectors, SStDs) using recommended techniques, which sometime conflict. HVLs were measured two ways: (a) single‐point measurements for the SStDs, and for some instruments, (b) with standardized mammography‐grade aluminum filtration. Particular attention was paid to HVLs near values required for mammography phantom mean glandular dose calculations (28–30 kVp). Ionization chamber measurements with Al filtration, according to ACR recommendations, were used as reference HVLs for 28, 29 and 30 kVp. Results: Measurements of kVp with SStD instruments were most consistent with Mo/Mo, with a 0.18 kV average discrepancy for all instruments (discrepancy range (−0.3,+0.4). For Mo/Mo, one vendor was consistently high and 2 low, but this trend was inconsistent among other combinations. The range of discrepancies was within 1 kV for all except Mo/Rh for one instrument and W/Ag for another. Unlike kVp, HVL measurements showed large variations. Over 28‐30 kVp, discrepancies of single‐point HVLs ranged from approximately zero to nearly 15% from reference values. It was impossible to follow manufacturers or ACR HVL measurement recommendations with aluminum for 2 of the 3 SStDs. Conclusion: : All instruments appear to function well, but data show biases which affect accuracy. Users must be careful how they interpret their data, particularly for HVL.