Benefitting from the Grey Literature in Software Engineering Research

Researchers generally place the most trust in peer-reviewed, published information, such as journals and conference papers. By contrast, software engineering (SE) practitioners typically do not have the time, access or expertise to review and benefit from such publications. As a result, practitioners are more likely to turn to other sources of information that they trust, e.g., trade magazines, online blog-posts, survey results or technical reports, collectively referred to as Grey Literature (GL). Furthermore, practitioners also share their ideas and experiences as GL, which can serve as a valuable data source for research. While GL itself is not a new topic in SE, using, benefitting and synthesizing knowledge from the GL in SE is a contemporary topic in empirical SE research and we are seeing that researchers are increasingly benefitting from the knowledge available within GL. The goal of this chapter is to provide an overview to GL in SE, together with insights on how SE researchers can effectively use and benefit from the knowledge and evidence available in the vast amount of GL

Preparing for future e-waste from photovoltaic modules: a circular economy approach

[EN] The increasing adoption rate of photovoltaic power generation shows that renewable energies have a bright future. Yet, this could be overshadowed by the unintended consequence of increased generation of Waste of Electric and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) at the installations End-of-Life (EoL) stage. As countries find themselves dealing with the increasing WEEE issue, they may adopt different practices which, if wrongly implemented, could potentially backfire, creating additional issues especially among vulnerable social groups. This work proposes improving the WEEE management system by including the Informal Recyclers in the equation, benefitting social groups and material recovery through by delivering materials along different streams in the closed-loop supply chain. The proposed model intends to support the circular economy approach on waste management systems.The authors would like to thank the Instituto Brasileiro de Desenvolvimento e Sustentabilidade (IABS) for their interest and support on our research. Additionally, we would like to thank the projects funding David Hidalgo-Carvajal’s research: the WEDISTRICT project [founded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N°857801], the “Campus UPM Circulares” project within the UPM Research Program [Programa Propio UPM 2020. Acción Estratégica en Ciencia y Tecnología], and “The Circular and Regenerative Campus” community from the EELISA European University Alliance.Hidalgo-Carvajal, D.; Carrasco-Gallego, R. (2022). Preparing for future e-waste from photovoltaic modules: a circular economy approach. International Journal of Production Management and Engineering. 10(2):131-141. https://doi.org/10.4995/ijpme.2022.16712OJS13114110

INPUT SELECTION BY EPR-MOGA

The growing availability of field data, from information and communication technologies (ICTs) in "smart'' urban infrastructures, allows data modeling to understand complex phenomena and to support management decisions. Among the analyzed phenomena, those related to storm water quality modeling have recently been gaining interest in the scientific literature. Nonetheless, the large amount of available data poses the problem of selecting relevant variables to describe a phenomenon and enable robust data modeling. This paper presents a procedure for the selection of relevant input variables using the multi-objective evolutionary polynomial regression (EPR-MOGA) paradigm. The procedure is based on scrutinizing the explanatory variables that appear inside the set of EPR-MOGA symbolic model expressions of increasing complexity and goodness of fit to target output. The strategy also enables the selection to be validated by engineering judgement. In such context, the multiple case study extension of EPR-MOGA, called MCS-EPR-MOGA, is adopted. The application of the proposed procedure to modeling storm water quality parameters in two French catchments shows that it was able to significantly reduce the number of explanatory variables for successive analyses. Finally, the EPR-MOGA models obtained after the input selection are compared with those obtained by using the same technique without benefitting from input selection and with those obtained in previous works where other data-modeling techniques were used on the same data. The comparison highlights the effectiveness of both EPR-MOGA and the input selection procedure

Robot life: simulation and participation in the study of evolution and social behavior.

This paper explores the case of using robots to simulate evolution, in particular the case of Hamilton's Law. The uses of robots raises several questions that this paper seeks to address. The first concerns the role of the robots in biological research: do they simulate something (life, evolution, sociality) or do they participate in something? The second question concerns the physicality of the robots: what difference does embodiment make to the role of the robot in these experiments. Thirdly, how do life, embodiment and social behavior relate in contemporary biology and why is it possible for robots to illuminate this relation? These questions are provoked by a strange similarity that has not been noted before: between the problem of simulation in philosophy of science, and Deleuze's reading of Plato on the relationship of ideas, copies and simulacra

Towards new renewable energy policies in urban areas : the re-definition of optimum inclination of photovoltaic panels

The optimum inclination and orientation of fixed Photovoltaic (PV) panels has long been defined in terms of maximizing the annual electricity yield per capacity installed according to the hemisphere and latitude where the PV system is located. Such optimum setup would thus also maximize the output per system cost, but it would not maximize the output per unit of available area, and it would not necessarily optimize the contribution of photovoltaic electricity vis-à-vis overall electricity demand patterns. This study seeks to draw the attention of policy-makers to the fact that incentivizing lower-than-optimum PV panel tilt angles can be an inexpensive strategy to substantially increase the renewable electricity yield in a given area. It also discusses how such strategy can be incorporated into an overall supply/demand grid management and renewable energy integration plan.peer-reviewe

Playing with the future: social irrealism and the politics of aesthetics

In this paper we wish to explore the political possibilities of video games. Numerous scholars now take seriously the place of popular culture in the remaking of our geographies, but video games still lag behind. For us, this tendency reflects a general response to them as imaginary spaces that are separate from everyday life and 'real' politics. It is this disconnect between abstraction and lived experience that we complicate by defining play as an event of what Brian Massumi calls lived abstraction. We wish to short-circuit the barriers that prevent the aesthetic resonating with the political and argue that through their enactment, video games can animate fantastical futures that require the player to make, and reflect upon, profound ethical decisions that can be antagonistic to prevailing political imaginations. We refer to this as social irrealism to demonstrate that reality can be understood through the impossible and the imagined