Unit testing is an attractive quality management tool in the software development process, however, practical obstacles make it difficult to use unit tests for performance testing. We present Stochastic Performance Logic, a formalism for expressing performance requirements, together with interpretations that facilitate performance evaluation in the unit test context. The formalism and the inter...

The species of the family Ectobiidae range from small to large in size, and are found in tropical forests, hidden in leaf litter. This is the largest family among the cockroaches, with about 1,740 described species (Bell et al., 2007). In the Ectobiidae, the subfamilies Pseudophyllodromiinae and Blattellinae are differentiated by the position of the hook-shaped phallomere on the right or the le...

To reduce their risk of being eaten, prey may change their morphology or behavior in response to predators, which can result in slower growth and lower fitness. To minimize costs, prey limit anti-predator responses to risky situations, which requires prey to reliably detect cues indicative of predation risk. The purpose of this study was to ascertain how different types of risk cues would affec...

Parasitoid wasps are convenient subjects for testing sex allocation theory. However, their intricate life histories are often insufficiently captured in simple analytical models. In the polyembryonic wasp Copidosoma koehleri, a clone of genetically identical offspring develops from each egg. Male clones contain fewer individuals than female clones. Some female larvae develop into soldiers that ...

Assessment of plastic and heritable components of phenotypic variation is crucial for understanding the evolution of adaptive character traits in heterogeneous environments. We assessed the above in relation to adaptive shell morphology of the rocky intertidal snail Nucella lapillus by reciprocal transplantation of snails between two shores differing in wave action and rearing snails of the sam...

The new species named Cochliopodium spiniferum was isolated from a low-saline habitat at the White Sea (north-western Russia). It is identical in the light-microscopical features to Cochliopodium sp. 3 described by Bark in 1973. In contrast, the scales comprising the tectum of these amoebae are different. This is the first evident case when two cochliopodiums are identical in LM, but differ in ...

The goal of the 79th Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology on Cognition held on May 28-June 2, 2014 was to survey recent advances in cognitive neuroscience and assess future prospects. The symposium succeeded beyond the dreams of the organizers and the participants were treated to an extraordinarily rich feast of 58 long talks, six short talks, and 137 posters. Equally important t...

Background: Safety culture and attitude form an integral part of organizations' cultures and their improved levels are influential in the prevention of occupational accidents and injuries. The present study was conducted to assess the safety culture and attitude of workers in the mining industry in Iran. Materials and Methods: The present cross-sectional study was conducted on 172 workers em...

Cholescintigraphy with (99m)Tc-hepatobiliary radiopharmaceuticals has been an important, clinically useful diagnostic imaging study for almost 4 decades. It continues to be in much clinical demand; however, the indications, methodology, and interpretative criteria have evolved over the years. This review will emphasize state-of-the-art methodology and diagnostic criteria for various clinical in...

The incidence of pancreatic carcinoma has markedly increased over the past several decades and now it ranks as the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. Despite the high mortality rate associated with pancreatic cancer, its etiology is poorly understood. The landscape in treatment of pancreatic adenocarcinoma changed in 2010 with the comparison of 5-fluorouracil, le...