Identifying requirements conflicts and cooperation: how quality attributes and automated traceability can help

Requirements about software attributes have numerous complex and nontrivial interdependencies. Requirements conflict with each other when they make contradicting statements about common software attributes, and they cooperate when they mutually enforce such attributes. Because software developers rarely apply formal requirements specification techniques in practice, and because reliable techniques for natural language understanding aren't available, it's generally infeasible to automatically identify conflicts and cooperation among requirements. In software development and maintenance, identifying conflicts and cooperation among requirements is challenging. Fortunately, quality attributes can help. In addition, automated traceability techniques can eliminate falsely identified conflicts and cooperation efficiently.     

Successful treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma with All-trans-retinoic acid

A 44-year-old female patient was admitted to our department with diagnosis of malignant lymphoma. The abdominal USG and CT showed multiple liver lesions with partial portal vein thrombosis, moderately increased alfa-fetoprotein (AFP), ASAT, ALAT (2x normal value), serology was negative for HBV and HCV. Liver transplantation was suggested but refused because of portal vein thrombosis. ATRA (45 mg/m2/day orally) was given on the basis of the assumption that HCC and acute promyelocytic leukaemia share similar oncogenic pathway (alter the RAR alpha and beta receptors). She was gained 15 kg-s and has resumed her work as a teacher for the last 20 months. Abdominal CT showed a complete regression of the intrahepatic tumour.     

Cis-trans isomerization of polyacetylene induced by mechanical rolling

The influence of mechanical rolling on the e.s.r. spectrum of originally cis-rich polyacetylene is investigated. Rolling decreases the peak-to-peak e.s.r. linewidth, ΔtH_pp. This phenomenon is supposed as being related to cis-trans isomerization. However, rolling only slightly increases the trans content and the spin susceptibility of the polymer. These observations can be explained by assuming that the rolling induced isomerization preferentially increases the length of the trans segments with unpaired spins. Rolling is less effective than heating in giving rise to isomerization within all-cis segments or in lengthening trans segments with no stable unpaired spins. The behaviour of ΔH_pp as a function of trans content in the case of rolling induced isomerization is different from the thermally activated process. The e.s.r. linewidth gives information only about the ‘trans macroradicals’ and not about the total cis-trans isomer ratio, that used to be employed.     

Reengineering legacy applications into software product lines: a systematic mapping

Software Product Lines (SPLs) are families of systems that share common assets allowing a disciplined reuse. Rarely SPLs start from scratch, instead they usually start from a set of existing systems that undergo a reengineering process. Many approaches to conduct the reengineering process have been proposed and documented in research literature. This scenario is a clear testament to the interest in this research area. We conducted a systematic mapping study to provide an overview of the current research on reengineering of existing systems to SPLs, identify the community activity in regarding of venues and frequency of publications in this field, and point out trends and open issues that could serve as references for future research. This study identified 119 relevant publications. These primary sources were classified in six different dimensions related to reengineering phases, strategies applied, types of systems used in the evaluation, input artefacts, output artefacts, and tool support. The analysis of the results points out the existence of a consolidate community on this topic and a wide range of strategies to deal with different phases and tasks of the reengineering process, besides the availability of some tools. We identify some open issues and areas for future research such as the implementation of automation and tool support, the use of different sources of information, need for improvements in the feature management, the definition of ways to combine different strategies and methods, lack of sophisticated refactoring, need for new metrics and measures and more robust empirical evaluation. Reengineering of existing systems into SPLs is an active research topic with real benefits in practice. This mapping study motivates new research in this field as well as the adoption of systematic reuse in software companies.     

Using the WinWin spiral model: a case study

Fifteen teams used the WinWin spiral model to prototype, plan, specify, and build multimedia applications for USC's Integrated Library System. The authors report lessons learned from this case study and how they extended the model's utility and cost-effectiveness in a second round of projects     

A stakeholder win–win approach to software engineering education

We have been applying the stakeholder win–win approach to software engineering education. The key stakeholders we are trying to simultaneously satisfy are the students; the industry recipients of our graduates; the software engineering community as parties interested in improved practices; and ourselves as instructors and teaching assistants. In order to satisfy the objectives or win conditions of these stakeholders, we have formed a strategic alliance with the USC Libraries to have software engineering student teams work with Library clients to define, develop, and transition USC digital library applications into operational use. This adds another set of key stakeholders: the Library clients of our class projects. This paper summarizes our experience in developing, conducting, and iterating the course. It concludes by evaluating the degree to which we have been able to meet the stakeholder-determined course objectives.