In line with the advancement of hardware technology and increasing consumer demands for new functionalities and innovations, software applications grew tremendously in term of size over the last decade. This sudden increase in size has a profound impact as far as testing is concerned. Here, more and more unwanted interactions among software systems components, hardware, and operating system are to be expected, rendering increased possibility of faults. To address this issue, many useful interaction-based testing techniques (termed t-way strategies) have been developed in the literature. As an effort to promote awareness and encourage its usage, this chapter surveys the current state-of-the-art and reviews the state-of-practices in t

Experimental research was carried out on eight reinforced concrete beams to study the embedded length of the longitudinal reinforcement. Six beams were casted using self compacted concrete, and the two other beams were casted using normal concrete. The test was carried out on beams subjected to two point loads. The strain and the slip of the main reinforcement have been measured by using grooves placed during casting the beams at certain places. The measured strain used to calculate the longitudinal stresses (bond stress) surrounding the bar reinforcement, The study was investigated the using of self compacted concrete SCC on the embedded length of reinforcing bars, and comparing the results with normal concrete. The test results show th

Investigation regarding queue length dynamics have been explored using various kinds of models including ordinary differential equations (ODEs). ODEs possess the advantageous property of having a continuous-time representation of queue length dynamics, thus its adoption in this article in modelling various scenarios as system of first-order ODEs. Specifically, a multi-server queue is considered and a numerical approach for solving first-order ODEs using MATLAB is adopted to obtain approximate solutions of the resultant models. The results display the dynamics of the queue length in each scenario, thus showing the usefulness of ODEs in analysing the behaviour of queues using system of ODEs.

This paper demonstrates an experimental and numerical study on the behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) columns with longitudinal steel embedded tubes positioned at the center of the column cross-section. A total of 12 pin-ended square sectional columns of 150 × 150 mm having a total height of 1400 mm were investigated. The considered variables were the steel tube diameters of 29, 58, and 76 mm and the load eccentricity (0, 50, and 150) mm. Accordingly, these columns were divided into three groups (four columns in each group) depending on the load eccentricity (e) to column depth (h) ratio (e/h = 0, 1/3, and 1). For each group, one column was solid (reference), and the other three columns contained steel tubes with hollow rat

Carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) is widely acknowledged as a leading advanced material structure, offering superior properties compared to traditional materials, and has found diverse applications in several industrial sectors, such as that of automobiles, aircrafts, and power plants. However, the production of CFRP composites is prone to fabrication problems, leading to structural defects arising from cycling and aging processes. Identifying these defects at an early stage is crucial to prevent service issues that could result in catastrophic failures. Hence, routine inspection and maintenance are crucial to prevent system collapse. To achieve this objective, conventional nondestructive testing (NDT) methods are utilized to i

Inhibition of T cell derived cytokine production could help suppress osteoclast differentiation in inflammatory skeletal disorders. Bisphosphonates are typically prescribed to prevent inflammatory bone loss but are not tolerated by all patients and are associated with an increased risk of osteonecrosis of the jaw. In light of this other anti-resorptives such as phytoestrogens are being considered. However the effect of phytoestrogens on T cell-induced osteoclast formation is unclear. The effect of genistein and coumestrol on activated T cell-induced osteoclastogenesis and cytokine production was therefore examined. Concentrations of genistein and coumestrol (10−7 M) previously shown to directly inhibit osteoclast formation also suppressed

Spin coating technique has been applied in this work to prepared Xerogel films doped with Rhodamine 6G laser dyes. The solid host of laser dye modifies its spectroscopic properties with respect to liquid host. During the spin coating process the dye molecules suffer from changing their environment. The effects of three parameters were studied here: the spinning speed, multilayer coating and formaldehyde addition

Objective: Atorvastatin therapy is now recommended for reduction of cardiovascular risk in type 2 diabetic patients (T2DM), based on convincing evidence of reductions in mortality and vascular events in major clinical outcome trials. The aim is to evaluate the effects of atorvastatin on proinflammatory markers (TNF-α, IL-6), HbA1c andleptin in obese patients with type 2 diabetes. Methods: Sixty fivenewly diagnosed T2DM patients were randomly allocated into 2 groups; group I treated with metformin only; in group II atorvastatin was added with metformin. Twenty healthy subjects were enrolled as control group. While maintaining their usual eating habits, fasting blood samples were collected at baseline and after 12 weeks of treatment. Results

Television white spaces (TVWSs) refer to the unused part of the spectrum under the very high frequency (VHF) and ultra-high frequency (UHF) bands. TVWS are frequencies under licenced primary users (PUs) that are not being used and are available for secondary users (SUs). There are several ways of implementing TVWS in communications, one of which is the use of TVWS database (TVWSDB). The primary purpose of TVWSDB is to protect PUs from interference with SUs. There are several geolocation databases available for this purpose. However, it is unclear if those databases have the prediction feature that gives TVWSDB the capability of decreasing the number of inquiries from SUs. With this in mind, the authors present a reinforcement learning-ba