A duct system is the part of an HVAC system that most homeowners don’t consider, yet it determines how well their equipment works.

The latest version of the ProMaster work van from Ram, the truck division of Stellantis, offers many features previously only available on consumer vehicles.

The Charlotte Mecklenburg School System (CMSS), the 19th largest in the U.S. with a $1.3 billion operating budget, recently decided to take action to identify school system buildings that might be exhibiting air leakage.

Spectronics Corporation is a 60-year-old company with a new generation of Made in the USA refrigerant leak detection dye — AR-GLO 5.

Taking home the golden honors in the Testing and Monitoring category of this year’s Dealer Design Awards is the T6 Electrical Tester from Fluke Corp. The product, first introduced to the marketplace in September 2017, went through years of research before launching.

These products work with the Fieldpiece Job Link System App for on-the-go testing and reporting for HVACR electrical tests.

In preparing for the refrigerant transition, contractors and distributors should review their inventory and become educated on the regulations.

Just because an HVAC technician installs a system according to current codes and standards, it doesn’t always mean it’s safe.

Fluke Corp.’s Fluke Connect received the gold award in the Testing & Monitoring category of the 2015 Dealer Design Awards.

Many new testing and monitoring products were on display last month at the AHR Expo in Orlando, Florida, where manufacturers showcased and demonstrated their newest, smartest products.

Last year was a notable one for Testo Inc. as the test and measurement manufacturing company celebrated its 60th anniversary. However, 2018 promises to be just as momentous as Testo US will reach its 35th anniversary milestone.

Badger Meter won Gold in the Testing and Monitoring category for its Dynasonics® TFX-5000 ultrasonic clamp-on meter, which measures volumetric flow and heating/cooling energy rates in clean liquids, as well as those with small amounts of suspended solids or aeration, such as surface water or raw sewage.

Contractors are seeking tools that are equipped to handle A2L refrigerants, offer Bluetooth and wireless compatibility, operate efficiently, save the user time, and are safe to utilize.

Due to a lack of training, time constraints, and numerous other reasons, many HVAC contracting companies are not performing combustion testing, potentially compromising customers’ safety.

In this episode we talk with Gerard Meszaros about problems and challenges doing unit testing in real-world projects. Starting from a short discussion about the importance of automated unit testing we spend most of this episode to talk about every day problems doing unit testing and how those problems can be solved. Based on this book on xunit testing patterns, Gerard talks about his experiences with unit test smells as an analogy to code smells. He describes an impressive set of unit testing patterns to overcome those difficult testing situations and illustrates them with nice examples everybody doing unit testing will feel familiar with.

This episode covers the topic of agile testing. Michael interviews Lisa Crispin as an practionier and book author on agile testing. We cover several topics ranging from the role of the tester in agile teams, over test automation strategy and regression testing, to continuous integration.

In this episode we talk with Kent Beck about automated unit testing and JUnit.

Felienne talks with Alexander Tarlinder on how to test as a developer. What can and should developers test?

Bill Venners speaks to Matthew Farwell about Property Based Tests, how they can be used, when they should not be used. We also cover how to define a property, how to generate the data required for a property based test.

What is code coverage, how can you measure it, and what are the pitfalls of this metric? Diomidis Spinellis talks with Marc Hoffmann, a key developer of the JaCoCo code coverage library for Java, on how code test coverage can improve software reliability

Pete Koomen, Co-founder and CTO at Optimizely discusses A/B testing. Edaena Salinas spoke with Pete about how A/B testing is used in software products, and how A/B tests can be written. Pete explained the components of A/B testing and lessons learned from running over 200,000 A/B tests.

Arnon Axelrod speaks with SE Radio’s Simon Crossley about test automation, a large complex subject that most listeners will have at least some familiarity with. Axelrod has worked in software engineering and test automation in several high-tech companie...

Abhinav Asthana, a founding partner and CEO of the API development tool Postman, discusses API design and testing, where to start, which types of APIs to offer, what tools you can use, what features to expose and what is his favorite API to reference.

Kim Carter of BinaryMist discusses Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) and how the OWASP purpleteam project can improve early defect detection. Host Justin spoke with Carter about how DAST can provide meaningful feedback loops to developers...

Paul Butcher of AdaCore discusses Fuzz Testing, an automated testing technique used to find security vulnerabilities and other software flaws. Host Philip Winston spoke with Butcher about negative testing, brute-force fuzz testing...

In this episode, we explore the popular pytest python testing tool with author Brian Okken, author of Python Testing with pytest. We start by discussing why pytest is so popular in the Python community: its focus on simplicity, readability, and developer ease-of-use; what makes pytest unique; the setup and teardown of tests using fixtures, parameterization, and the plugin ecosystem; mocking; why we should design for testing, and how to reduce the need for mocking; how to set up a project for testability; test-driven development, and designing your tests so that they support refactoring. Finally, we consider some complementary tools that can improve the python testing experience.

Phillip Mayhew of GameDriver discusses test automation for games and game-like applications. Host Philip Winston spoke with Mayhew about the increasing role of test automation in modern game development, the impact on the QA role, how to run tests...

Simon Bennetts, a distinguished engineer at Jit, discusses one of the flagship projects of OWASP: the Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP) open source security testing tool. As ZAP’s primary maintainer, Simon traces the tool's origins and shares some anecdotes with SE Radio host Priyanka Raghavan on why there was a need for it. They take a deep dive into ZAP’s features and its ability to integrate with CI/CD, as well as shift security left. Bennetts also considers what it takes to build a successful open source project before spending time on ZAP’s ability to script to provide richer results. Finally, the conversation ends with some questions on ZAP’s future in this AI-powered world of bots.

Gregory Kapfhammer, associate professor at Allegheny College, discusses the common problem of ‘flaky tests’ with SE Radio’s Nikhil Krishna. Flaky tests are test cases that unreliably pass or fail even when no changes are made to the source code under test or to the test suite itself, which means that developers can’t tell whether the failures indicate bugs that needs to be resolved.  Flaky tests can hinder continuous integration and continuous development by undermining trust in the CI/CD environment. This episode examines sources of flaky tests, including physical factors such as CPU or memory changes, as well as program-related factors such as performance issues. Gregory also describes some common areas that are prone to flaky tests and ways to detect them. They discuss tooling to detect and automatically mark flaky tests, as well as how to tackle these issues to make tests more reliable and even ways to write code so that it's less susceptible to flaky tests.

Zac Hatfield-Dodds, the Assurance Team Lead at Anthropic, speaks with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about property-based testing techniques and how to use them in an open-source tool called Hypothesis. They discuss how to define properties for a Python function and implement a test case in Hypothesis. They also explore some of the advanced features in Hypothesis that can automatically generate a test case and perform fuzzing campaigns.

Llewelyn Falco, creator approval tests, talks with SE Radio host Sam Taggart about testing code in general and the various types of testing that developers perform. Llewelyn elaborates on how approval tests can help test code at a higher level than traditional unit tests. They also discuss using approval tests to help get legacy code under test. This episode sponsored by Data Annotation.

Rishi Singh, founder and CEO at Sapient.ai, speaks with SE radio’s Kanchan Shringi about using generative AI to help developers automate test code generation. They start by identifying key problems that developers are looking for in an automated test-generation solution. The discussion explores the capabilities and limitations of today’s large language models in achieving that goal, and then delves into how Sapient.ai has built wrappers around LLMs in an effort to improve the quality of the generated tests. Rishi also suggests how to validate the generated tests and outlines his vision of the future for this rapidly evolving area. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine. This episode is sponsored by WorkOS.

Goran Petrovic, a Staff Software Engineer at Google, speaks with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about how to perform mutation testing on large software systems. They explore the design and implementation of the mutation testing infrastructure at Google, discussing the strategies for ensuring that it enhances both developer productivity and software quality. They also investigate the findings from experiments that quantify how mutation testing enables software engineers at Google to write better tests that can detect defects and increase confidence in software correctness. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Itamar Friedman, the CEO and co-founder of CodiumAI, speaks with host Gregory M. Kapfhammer about how to use generative AI techniques to support automated software testing. Their discussion centers around the design and use of Cover-Agent, an open-source implementation of the automated test augmentation tool described in the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE) paper entitled “Automated Unit Test Improvement using Large Language Models at Meta“ by Alshahwan et al. The episode explores how large-language models (LLMs) can aid testers by automatically generating test cases that increase the code coverage of an existing testing suite. They also investigate other automated testing topics, including how Cover-Agent compares to different LLM-based tools and the strengths and weaknesses of using LLM-based approaches in software testing.

Today we're going to perform some AMD TRX40 motherboard VRM thermal testing using the powerful 64-core Threadripper 3990X. To apply load we're using Blender with the system running at stock and overclocked to 3.8 GHz. The typical power draw for this system is around 450 watts, but once overclocked we are hitting as much as 850 watts. Toasty!... [PCSTATS]

High-profile, disruptive protests can lead to increased polarization—but often still yield increased public support for the protest’s goals, even if the tactics are criticized.

Feeling a bit bored? Well don't worry we've got you covered, test your knowledge with our huge quizzes to try out during the holidays.

Title: Test Your Spelling 3
Topic: General
Level: Intermediate
Information: Choose the correct answer.
Link: https://www.usingenglish.com/quizzes/577.html

John Kleeman shared on Questionmark's Blog the ten benefits of quizzes and tests in educational practice as proposed by psychology experts Henry L. Roediger III, Adam L. Putnam and Megan A. Smith in a recent paper, “Ten Benefits of Testing and Their Applications to Educational Practice”.

Here is John's summary and understanding of the paper:

1. Retrieval aids later retention. There is clear evidence from psychological experiments that practicing retrieval of something after learning it, for instance by taking a quiz or test, makes you more likely to retain it for the long term.
2. Testing identifies gaps in knowledge.
3. Testing causes students to learn more from the next study episode. Essentially it reduces forgetting which makes the next related study area more productive.
4. Testing produces better organization of knowledge by helping the brain organize material in clusters to allow better retrieval.
5. Testing improves transfer of knowledge to new contexts. There are several experiments referenced in the paper where tests and quizzes help transfer and application of knowledge.
6. Testing can facilitate retrieval of material that was not tested. Surprisingly there are circumstances where quizzes or tests, particularly if delayed, can help people retrieve/retain information that was related to that asked but not actually asked in the questions.
7. Testing improves metacognitive monitoring – by giving students scores or self-assessments, they can better predict their knowledge and be more confident about what they know and what they need to know.
8. Testing prevents interference from prior material when learning new material. If you have a test after learning one set of material before learning another set of material, it can make it less likely that the second session will
9. Testing provides feedback to instructors and lets them know what is learned or what is not.
10. Frequent testing encourages students to study. Having frequent quizzes and tests motivates study and reduces procrastination.

I just read a great post by John Kleeman on the Questionmark Blog that I wanted to share with you concerning test anxiety. We have previously discussed test anxiety (here and here), but it is interesting to read Kleeman's take on the difference in test anxiety between online and paper and pencil assessments. Here is the post in its entirety:

I’ve been reading about test anxiety (concern or worry by participants sufficiently severe that it impacts test performance). I’d like to share some tips on how online assessment sponsors can reduce its likelihood.

When creating and delivering tests, you seek to accurately measure knowledge, skills or abilities. Often you want to check competence or mastery for workplace or compliance reasons. If some of your participants have severe test anxiety, this doesn’t just disrupt them, it makes your test less accurate in measuring real performance. You might end up failing someone who is competent, just because anxiety affects their test performance.

Many studies (for example here) report that online tests cause less test anxiety than paper ones. Here are some suggestions on reducing test anxiety:

1. Some people have anxiety about a test because they haven’t mastered the subject being tested. Provide a clear description of what each test covers before the time of the test, and provide study resources or instruction to allow people to master the subject.

2. Test anxiety can also feed on unknowns, for instance on unfamiliarity with the test or believing untrue myths. Share information about the test’s purpose and what you do to make it fair. Also share information about the content: how many questions, how the scoring works, how much time is available and so on. Explain what happens if someone fails – for instance is it possible to retake?

3. It’s hugely valuable to provide practice tests that participants can try out before the real test. This will tell them where they are strong and weak and allow them to gain confidence in a less stressful environment prior to the real test. See my article 10 reasons why practice tests help make perfect exams for other reasons why practice tests are useful.

4. Give participants an opportunity to practice using the same type of computer, mouse, keyboard and user interface as will be used for the real test. This familiarizes them with the test environment and reduces potential anxiety, particularly for those who are less computer literate. If you are using Questionmark to deliver the test, make practice sessions available with the same template settings and the same types of questions. (Sometimes this is done with a fun quiz on a different topic, just to get people accustomed to the user interface.)

5. If you provide guidance to test-takers, point to self-help resources for people who have test anxiety. ETS provide a good resource here for instance. Another resource from the University of California is here.

6. Some self-help resources suggest breathing exercises or other exercises people can follow to reduce tension for people who are anxious about tests. Provide an environment where this is practical and train your test administrators and proctors about the prevalence of test anxiety.

7. If you have a way of encouraging test takers to sleep, take exercise and eat healthily, all these things aid a rational approach to taking a test and reducing anxiety.

8. If it works in your programme, consider whether it’s worth having a series of tests rather than a single test, so there is not a single “make or break” moment for participants. A series of tests can have other benefits too. It makes cheating harder, and by spreading out learning and revision, it can make participants retain the learning better.

9. People with disabilities are more likely to suffer test anxiety. Ensure that your program of accommodations takes this into account. See this helpful article on reducing test anxiety for people with disabilities.

10. Above all, create good quality, fair tests. If you follow good practice in authoring your questions and assessments, then there is less to be anxious about, as the test will be a good measure of performance. See Questionmark’s white paper “Five Steps to Better Tests” for some helpful advice in creating tests.

Many Questionmark users provide very effective practice quizzes and tests which help reduce test anxiety, and I hope these tips are helpful, too.

I’d love to hear additional input or suggestions.

The CareerTech Testing Center (CTTC) works closely with instructors, industry representatives and credentialing entities to identify and develop assessments and assessment preparation materials that are aligned with recognized industry standards.

This technical article discusses the essentials of transformer differential protection and restricted earth fault protection schemes, contrasting the two and elaborating on why the latter is necessary. Furthermore, it reveals the outcomes of stability tests performed on a 502 MVA... Read more

The post Mastering stability test of power transformer: Differential and Restricted Earth Fault (REF) protection appeared first on EEP - Electrical Engineering Portal.

Substation earthing, or grounding, is essential for electrical safety and reliability in substations, which are critical nodes in the power distribution network. Proper earthing ensures safe dissipation of fault currents into the ground, preventing dangerous voltage build-ups that could cause... Read more

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At the beginning of my career in 2005, I had the opportunity to work at a 500kV substation with the National Transmission and Dispatch Company in Pakistan. During this time, I was introduced to various tools and techniques that were... Read more

The post Mechanical Check, Visual Inspection and Electrical Test of the Substation Grounding System (2) appeared first on EEP - Electrical Engineering Portal.

Generator field winding is an integral part of the generator set which is responsible for generating the magnetic field that induces the stator emf when the rotor rotates. Regulation of current in this winding with the help of an AVR... Read more

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Welcome to the third and final part of our comprehensive series on current transformers (CTs) and their secondary circuits. In Parts 1 and 2, we covered various aspects of CT operation, secondary injection testing, burden calculations, CT circuit connections, safety... Read more

The post Advice and warnings for proper handling, earthing and testing of current transformers appeared first on EEP - Electrical Engineering Portal.

The objective of this technical article is to provide certain criteria and time intervals for conducting insulation tests on electric motors, generators and other electrical equipment. Testing is done to ensure that the equipment is intact and to provide a... Read more

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