Academic literature on the topic 'IBM Rational Functional Tester'

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common functional gastrointestinal disorder which accounts for a substantial proportion of a gastroenterologist’s time in the outpatient clinic. However, there is variability in approaches to diagnosis and investigation between physicians, dependent on expertise. Many patients express disappointment over the lack of a patient-centred approach. Consequently, there have been calls for the care of patients with IBS to be standardised, a process which aims to promote high-quality and high-value care. Making an early diagnosis, based on a clinical assessment of symptoms, while limiting use of investigations, are key tenets of this process. Exhaustive investigation to exclude all organic pathology is unnecessary, and may be counterproductive. Routine blood tests in suspected IBS have low yield, but are an acceptable part of routine practice. All patients should have coeliac serology tested, regardless of their predominant stool form. Patients with diarrhoea should have a faecal calprotectin measured, and should proceed to colonoscopy to exclude inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) if this is positive. Beyond this, the need for investigations should be made on a case-by-case basis, contingent on the reporting of known risk factors for organic pathology. Colonoscopy should be considered in any patient with alarm features for colorectal cancer, and in those whose clinical features are suggestive of microscopic colitis. A 23-seleno-25-homotaurocholic acid (SeHCAT) scan should be considered in patients with IBS-D, a third of whom may actually have bile acid diarrhoea. There is no role for routine hydrogen breath tests for lactose malabsorption or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

Context: The deep squat (DS) test is a component of the functional movement screen, which is used to assess the quality of fundamental movement patterns; however, the accuracy of the DS has not been studied. The DS is a complex, total body movement pattern with evaluation required at several points along the kinematic chain. Objective: To assess the accuracy of DS scoring by an athletic trainer, physical therapist, and exercise science professional via a comparative analysis with kinematic data (KD) and to identify scoring criteria that would improve agreement between raters and KD scores. Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: Motion analysis laboratory. Participants: A rater from each of 3 movement science disciplines rated the DS of 23 male college athletes (20.3 [1.2] y; 70.5 [3.5] kg). Interventions: Subjects were outfitted with reflective markers and asked to perform the DS. The DS performance was scored by 3 raters and kinematic analysis. Subsequently, the optimal set of criteria that minimized the difference between mode rater score and KD was determined via a Nelder–Mead simplex optimization routine. Main Outcome Measures: Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated using SPSS (version 23; IBM, Armonk, NY) to determine tester agreement with the KD score and between the mode score and KD score. Results: Agreement was poor for the athletic trainer (ICC = .387), physical therapist (ICC = .298), exercise science professional (ICC = .378), and raters’ DS scores when compared with the KD. Agreement was poor for the mode score when compared with KD prior to optimization and good following optimization (ICC = .830), thereby allowing identification of specific scoring errors. Conclusions: Agreement for DS scores is poor when compared with KD; however, it may be improved with optimization of DS scoring criteria.

Software industry has adopted automated testing widely. The most common method adopted is graphical user interface test automation for the functional scenarios to reduce manual testing and increase the repeatability. Reducing execution time and redundancy to achieve quality “go/no go decisions” provides rational for the executive management to allocate funds to adopt automation and invest in the setup including people, process, and tools to achieve faster time to market. There are a variety of practices engaged by testers, like frameworks, tools, methods, procedures, models, and technologies to achieve automation. Nonetheless, the actual effectiveness in terms of return on investment (ROI) is not known, though there are various formulas to calculate ROI of test automation. The factors that determine the ROI are maturity of test automation, purpose, or intent, picking right tests for automation, knowledge of the tester to derive test coverage, domain expertise, defining right metrics like defects found by automation runs, cost versus reduction of time, labor versus quality of scripts, repeatability, and results. These factors form the base of the questions designed for the survey. The paper presents a survey and analysis to understand the ROI of test automation from industry test professionals from both product and services organizations.

Abstract Intro Malnutrition represents a frequent problem in cancer patients. However, data on the prevalence and the clinical impact of malnutrition in older patients with hematological malignancies are so far rare. Objectives Objective of this study was to investigate prospectively the nutritional status at baseline in older patients with blood cancer and to analyze the impact of malnutrition on clinical performance and outcome. Goal was to form a rational basis for interventions and practice guidelines in this continuously growing group of patients. Methods In 149 newly diagnosed patients with a hematological malignancy aged ≥ 70 years from the Department of Internal Medicine V (Haematology and Oncology), Innsbruck Medical University, different nutritional parameters including loss of appetite, recent weight loss, Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), body mass index, serum albumin and the inflammation marker C-reactive protein (CRP) were assessed and compared with status in multidimensional geriatric assessment and with overall survival (OS). SPSS (IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY, USA) was used for all statistical analyses. Two-year overall survival was analyzed with Kaplan-Meier methods and the log rank test. Hazard ratios were first analyzed in a univariate Cox proportional hazard regression. Parameters statistically significant in the univariate analyses were then included in the multivariate Cox regressions, additionally assessing the significance of the parameters with a bootstrapped model. Canoco 5.10 was used for principal component analyses (PCA). Results A moderate or severe decrease of appetite was reported by 23 % and 40% of patients. Moreover, a recent weight loss of 1-3 or >3kg was present in 19 and 31% and a BMI <23kg/m2 was found in 29% of patients. Based on MNA-evaluation, 44% revealed a risk of malnutrition and 14% of manifest malnutrition. Prevalence of lowered serum albumin <3.5 g/dL was detected in 14% of patients. Geriatric impairments >3 were detected in about one third of the patients (36%). PCA demonstrated clustering of impairments in performance status and in IADL as well as of low appetite, low serum albumin, fatigue and depression in the first principal component accounting for a variability of 24%. Loss of appetite, recent weight loss, impaired MNA, low serum albumin and elevated CRP were significantly associated with shortened OS. Recent weight loss >3kg and low BMI remained significant predictive parameters for OS in a Cox regression analysis (HR: 2.01 (1.19-3.38), p=0.009 and HR: 2.46 (1.53-3.96), p<0.001, respectively). Conclusion These analyses reveal malnutrition at initial diagnosis in a relevant proportion of older patients with a hematological malignancy. Importantly, impaired nutritional status is associated with shortened overall survival. The correlation between malnutrition, fatigue, impaired performance and functional capacities, and inflammation might suggest an underlying common pathway. Thus, assessment of nutritional status is essential in studies and in daily practice and forms the basis for interventions to improve nutritional status. More robust data on the clinical impact of malnutrition in hematological malignancies and the effect of geriatric interventions on essential oncologic and non-oncologic outcomes such as survival and quality of life are needed. Disclosures Stauder: Celgene: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Novartis: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Teva: Research Funding.

AbstractSplit inteins are powerful tools for seamless ligation of synthetic split proteins. Yet, their use remains limited because the already intricate split site identification problem is often complicated by the requirement of extein junction sequences. To address this, we augment a mini-Mu transposon-based screening approach and devise the intein-assisted bisection mapping (IBM) method. IBM robustly reveals clusters of split sites on five proteins, converting them into AND or NAND logic gates. We further show that the use of inteins expands functional sequence space for splitting a protein. We also demonstrate the utility of our approach over rational inference of split sites from secondary structure alignment of homologous proteins, and that basal activities of highly active proteins can be mitigated by splitting them. Our work offers a generalizable and systematic route towards creating split protein-intein fusions for synthetic biology.

In software development process, there can be misunderstandings, communication problems between individual members of the development team and mistakes when writing code or designing applications. These problems need to be resolved before the application is released into the production environment. To discover these errors it is necessary to properly test the software product. All these activities are engaged in discipline called Software Quality Assurance (SQA), which is an integral part of the software development process. The thesis discusses this discipline and procedures for software testing using the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. The main objective of this work is to create comprehensive methodology for automated testing of web and Windows applications in Microsoft Visual Studio and to verify that procedures in practice. The reader will learn the theoretical basis of software testing at the beginning of the thesis. In next chapter, there are described various features that Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 offers for software testing. Following chapter describes the applications testing in IBM Rational Functional Tester, which is suitable for Windows applications testing (Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 does not support this kind of tests). In other part of the work -- Case Study -- the reader will learn web and Windows applications testing. Case study can serve as a basis for further methodological manual for teams engaged in software testing. The usage of instruments for testing is explained in real examples. At the end of the work there are set out recommendations for the team collaboration using Microsoft Team Foundation Server, and there are also compared the testing instruments and reviewed functions that will come up with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

This thesis aims to extend the MMSP methodology with performance testing intended for the Competence Center for Quality management on VŠE. Through general introduction to performance testing, definition of terms and metrics, detailed description of the preparation and implementation of performance testing and to it tightly connected testing known as operability. Processed functionality will be demonstrated on a selected tool intended for a performance testing and the functionality of the application will be veryfied at the Competence Centre. The methodology should bring order to the team and elevate it to a level that is requested by customers. The work is aimed both at professional audience in the field of testing, where focus is on explaining methodology for performance testing, and also at small testing teams in general, for which it describes how to approach small team testing. Access to methodology could also help centers in other areas to be able to add more added value to their services. My knowledge comes from QA teams of Sun Microsystems, VŠE Competency center on project for IBM and CZNIC registrar of domain names .CZ, which takes care of Czech domain operation.