The Optimisation of Stochastic Grammars to Enable Cost-Effective Probabilistic Structural Testing

The effectiveness of probabilistic structural testing depends on the characteristics of the probability distribution from which test inputs are sampled at random. Metaheuristic search has been shown to be a practical method of optimis- ing the characteristics of such distributions. However, the applicability of the existing search-based algorithm is lim- ited by the requirement that the software’s inputs must be a fixed number of numeric values. In this paper we relax this limitation by means of a new representation for the probability distribution. The repre- sentation is based on stochastic context-free grammars but incorporates two novel extensions: conditional production weights and the aggregation of terminal symbols represent- ing numeric values. We demonstrate that an algorithm which combines the new representation with hill-climbing search is able to effi- ciently derive probability distributions suitable for testing software with structurally-complex input domains

Continued monitoring of LMXBs with the Faulkes Telescopes

The Faulkes Telescope Project is an educational and research arm of the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGTN). It has two 2-metre robotic telescopes, located at Haleakala on Maui (FT North) and Siding Spring in Australia (FT South). It is planned for these telescopes to be complemented by a research network of eighteen 1-metre telescopes, along with an educational network of twenty-eight 0.4-metre telescopes, providing 24 hour coverage of both northern and southern hemispheres. We have been conducting a monitoring project of 13 low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) using FT North since early 2006. The introduction of FT South has allowed us to extend this to monitor a total of 30 LMXBs (see target list, Section 4). New instrumentation will allow us to expand this project to include both infrared wavelengths (z and y band) and spectroscopy. Brighter targets (~ 16 - 18 mag.) are imaged weekly in V, R and i’ bands (SNR ~ 50), while fainter ones (> 18 mag.) are observed only in i’ band (SNR ~ 20). We alter this cadence in response to our own analysis or Astronomers Telegrams (ATels)

{presence} an interactive dance event

{presence} was an interactive dance event that performed at the Hamilton Gardens as part of the Hamilton Fringe Festival 2015 A collaborative partnership between Joe Citizen and Black Sheep Productions, with Kent Macpherson, Megan Berry, Rob Thorne, Aaron Chesham (ACLX), and Jaimee Cruse. {presence} was an experiment that sought to celebrate women and womanhood through a live interactive performance. It combined contemporary dance, taonga pūoro, contemporary music, body-mediated interactive lighting components, and wireless sensor networks

Subdomain-based test data generation

Abstract Considerable effort is required to test software thoroughly. Even with automated test data generation tools, it is still necessary to evaluate the output of each test case and identify unexpected results. Manual effort can be reduced by restricting the range of inputs testers need to consider to regions that are more likely to reveal faults, thus reducing the number of test cases overall, and therefore reducing the effort needed to create oracles. This article describes and evaluates search-based techniques, using evolution strategies and subset selection, for identifying regions of the input domain (known as subdomains) such that test cases sampled at random from within these regions can be used efficiently to find faults. The fault finding capability of each subdomain is evaluated using mutation analysis, a technique that is based on faults programmers are likely to make. The resulting subdomains kill more mutants than random testing (up to six times as many in one case) with the same number or fewer test cases. Optimised subdomains can be used as a starting point for program analysis and regression testing. They can easily be comprehended by a human test engineer, so may be used to provide information about the software under test and design further highly efficient test suites