Theory as a source of software and system requirements

Requirements Engineering - Today, when undertaking requirements elicitation, engineers attend to the needs and wants of the user groups considered relevant for the software system. However, answers...     

Physico-mechanical properties of particleboard made from heat-treated rubberwood particles

Physico-mechanical properties of particleboard fabricated from heat-treated rubberwood particles were investigated. Reduction in water absorption and mass loss were observed in heat-treated rubberwood particles, and it was associated with the properties of particleboard. The density and moisture content of the particleboard decreased with increasing treatment temperature and time. Heat treatment of particles improved the dimensional stability of the particleboard, but the mechanical properties were adversely affected.     

Aspect-Oriented Software Development in Practice: Tales from AOSD-Europe

Aspect-oriented software development techniques provide a means to modularize crosscutting concerns in software systems. A survey of industrial projects reveals the benefits and potential pitfalls of aspect-oriented technologies.     

In vitro and In vivo studies on intragastric soya protein–polysaccharide gels in a beverage matrix

Intragastric gelation is a mechanism whereby a consumed liquid food gels under the acidic gastric condition. It was hypothesised that intragastric gelation would result in satiety due to delayed gastric emptying. Three treatment beverages that is soya protein isolate (SPI) with λ‐carrageenan (SPI‐LC; high viscosity, gelling), guar gum (SPI‐GG; high viscosity) and no polysaccharide (SPI; low viscosity) were given to twenty participants in a randomised 3 × 3 double‐blind within‐subject crossover design trial and asked to rate their hunger and fullness scores (visual analogue scale; VAS) before and up to 60 min after consumption of the beverage. Results show that there were no significant effects on hunger, fullness and energy intake after consuming the SPI‐LC (gelling) beverage compared to the SPI‐GG beverage, but did evoke weak satiety signals up to 20 min after consumption when compared to the control (low‐viscosity) SPI beverage. Therefore, intragastric gelation does not result in satiety in this study.     

Effects of Brain Size on Adult Neurogenesis in Shrews

Shrews are small animals found in many different habitats. Like other mammals, adult neurogenesis occurs in the subventricular zone of the lateral ventricle (SVZ) and the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampal formation. We asked whether the number of new generated cells in shrews depends on their brain size. We examined Crocidura russula and Neomys fodiens, weighing 10–22 g, and Crocidura olivieri and Suncus murinus that weigh three times more. We found that the density of proliferated cells in the SVZ was approximately at the same level in all species. These cells migrated from the SVZ through the rostral migratory stream to the olfactory bulb (OB). In this pathway, a low level of neurogenesis occurred in C. olivieri compared to three other species of shrews. In the DG, the rate of adult neurogenesis was regulated differently. Specifically, the lowest density of newly generated neurons was observed in C. russula, which had a substantial number of new neurons in the OB compared with C. olivieri. We suggest that the number of newly generated neurons in an adult shrew’s brain is independent of the brain size, and molecular mechanisms of neurogenesis appeared to be different in two neurogenic structures.     

Neonatal serotonin depletion modifies development but not plasticity in rat barrel cortex

Effects of serotonin depletion (induced by neonatal injection of 5,7-dihydroxytryptamine) upon dimensions of cortical barrels and their metabolic activation, and upon effects of neonatal vibrissectomy sparing row C, were examined in 1-month-old rats. Dimensions of row C barrels, and of [14C]2-deoxyglucose (2-DG) labelling in the cortex obtained after stimulation of the row C vibrissae, were measured. Serotonin depletion did not change dimensions of barrels, but reduced the extent of 2-DG labelling of cortical representation of the row C whiskers by 30%. Vibrissectomy sparing this row resulted in an expansion of the row C barrels and of 2-DG labelling in the barrel cortex that were similar in both control and serotonin-depleted rats.     

Effect of vitamin E (Tri E<Superscript>®</Superscript>) on antioxidant enzymes and DNA damage in rats following eight weeks exercise

Background

Exercise is beneficial to health, but during exercise the body generates reactive oxygen species (ROS) which are known to result in oxidative stress. The present study analysed the effects of vitamin E (Tri E^®) on antioxidant enzymes; superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), catalase (Cat) activity and DNA damage in rats undergoing eight weeks exercise.

Methods

Twenty four Sprague-Dawley rats (weighing 320-370 gm) were divided into four groups; a control group of sedentary rats which were given a normal diet, second group of sedentary rats with oral supplementation of 30 mg/kg/d of Tri E^®, third group comprised of exercised rats on a normal diet, and the fourth group of exercised rats with oral supplementation of 30 mg/kg/d of Tri E^®. The exercising rats were trained on a treadmill for 30 minutes per day for 8 weeks. Blood samples were taken before and after 8 weeks of the study to determine SOD, GPx, Cat activities and DNA damage.

Results

SOD activity decreased significantly in all the groups compared to baseline, however both exercised groups showed significant reduction in SOD activity as compared to the sedentary groups. Sedentary control groups showed significantly higher GPx and Cat activity compared to baseline and exercised groups. The supplemented groups, both exercised and non exercised groups, showed significant decrease in Cat activity as compared to their control groups with normal diet. DNA damage was significantly higher in exercising rats as compared to sedentary control. However in exercising groups, the DNA damage in supplemented group is significantly lower as compared to the non-supplemented group.

Conclusions

In conclusion, antioxidant enzymes activity were generally reduced in rats supplemented with Tri E^® probably due to its synergistic anti-oxidative defence, as evidenced by the decrease in DNA damage in Tri E^® supplemented exercise group.

     

EA-Analyzer: automating conflict detection in a large set of textual aspect-oriented requirements

One of the aims of Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering is to address the composability and subsequent analysis of crosscutting and non-crosscutting concerns during requirements engineering. A composition definition explicitly represents interdependencies and interactions between concerns. Subsequent analysis of such compositions helps to reveal conflicting dependencies that need to be resolved in requirements. However, detecting conflicts in a large set of textual aspect-oriented requirements is a difficult task as a large number of explicitly defined interdependencies need to be analyzed. This paper presents EA-Analyzer, the first automated tool for identifying conflicts in aspect-oriented requirements specified in natural-language text. The tool is based on a novel application of a Bayesian learning method. We present an empirical evaluation of the tool with three industrial-strength requirements documents from different domains and a fourth academic case study used as a de facto benchmark in several areas of the aspect-oriented community. This evaluation shows that the tool achieves up to 93.90 % accuracy regardless of the documents chosen as the training and validation sets.     

Formal semantic conflict detection in aspect-oriented requirements

The goal of Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering is to identify possible crosscutting concerns, and to develop composition specifications, which can be used to reason about potential conflicts in the requirements. Recent work in AORE has moved from a syntactic approach to composition, which leads to fragile compositions and increased coupling between aspect and base concerns, to a semantic composition approach, based on semantics of the natural language itself. However, such compositions are at present only informally specified, and as such precise conflict detection between the requirements compositions is difficult. We present an approach for the formalisation of these semantic-based compositions which means that logical conflicts between compositions can be precisely identified and understood semantically. We show that the approach can be supported by off-the-shelf tools, meaning it is scalable and feasible for even large requirements specifications.