Stability prediction of the software requirements specification

Complex decision-making is a prominent aspect of Requirements Engineering. This work presents the Bayesian network Requisites that predicts whether the requirements specification documents have to be revised. We show how to validate Requisites by means of metrics obtained from a large complex software project. Besides, this Bayesian network has been integrated into a software tool by defining a communication interface inside a multilayer architecture to add this a new decision making functionality. It provides requirements engineers a way of exploring the software requirement specification by combining requirement metrics and the probability values estimated by the Bayesian network

Personalized Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks: An AI-Enabled and Big Data-Driven Multi-Objective Optimization

The design and optimization of wireless networks have mostly been based on strong mathematical and theoretical modeling. Nonetheless, as novel applications emerge in the era of 5G and beyond, unprecedented levels of complexity will be encountered in the design and optimization of the network. As a result, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is envisioned for wireless network design and optimization due to the flexibility and adaptability it offers in solving extremely complex problems in real-time. One of the main future applications of AI is enabling user-level personalization for numerous use cases. AI will revolutionize the way we interact with computers in which computers will be able to sense commands and emotions from humans in a non-intrusive manner, making the entire process transparent to users. By leveraging this capability, and accelerated by the advances in computing technologies, wireless networks can be redesigned to enable the personalization of network services to the user level in real-time. While current wireless networks are being optimized to achieve a predefined set of quality requirements, the personalization technology advocated in this article is supported by an intelligent big data-driven layer designed to micro-manage the scarce network resources. This layer provides the intelligence required to decide the necessary service quality that achieves the target satisfaction level for each user. Due to its dynamic and flexible design, personalized networks are expected to achieve unprecedented improvements in optimizing two contradicting objectives in wireless networks: saving resources and improving user satisfaction levels

Systems biology analysis of drivers underlying hallmarks of cancer cell metabolism.

Malignant transformation is often accompanied by significant metabolic changes. To identify drivers underlying these changes, we calculated metabolic flux states for the NCI60 cell line collection and correlated the variance between metabolic states of these lines with their other properties. The analysis revealed a remarkably consistent structure underlying high flux metabolism. The three primary uptake pathways, glucose, glutamine and serine, are each characterized by three features: (1) metabolite uptake sufficient for the stoichiometric requirement to sustain observed growth, (2) overflow metabolism, which scales with excess nutrient uptake over the basal growth requirement, and (3) redox production, which also scales with nutrient uptake but greatly exceeds the requirement for growth. We discovered that resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs in these lines broadly correlates with the amount of glucose uptake. These results support an interpretation of the Warburg effect and glutamine addiction as features of a growth state that provides resistance to metabolic stress through excess redox and energy production. Furthermore, overflow metabolism observed may indicate that mitochondrial catabolic capacity is a key constraint setting an upper limit on the rate of cofactor production possible. These results provide a greater context within which the metabolic alterations in cancer can be understood

The Bridge to Inclusion: An Appreciative Strategic Planning Process for the Cultural Awareness Coalition of Midland, Michigan

Inclusive communities are places where all citizens feel a sense of acceptance and belonging. In Midland, MI, a dedicated group of citizens has made a community-wide culture of inclusion their priority. These are the members of the Midland Cultural Awareness Coalition (CAC), a community-based initiative which has attracted a diverse group of stakeholders from a broad cross-section of Midland County. This spring, CAC leaders have collaborated with a team of graduate students (Team Black) enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology program (MAPP). As part of their semester-long course in Applying Positive Interventions in Institutions, Team Black identified CAC’s organizational strengths, identified opportunities, and drew upon their knowledge of positive psychology to create an application that would best support the CAC in pursuit of their vision. The team conducted a situation analysis and researched the academic literature in the fields of coalition effectiveness, goal-setting, inclusion and diversity, bonding and bridging social capital, psychological safety and psychological capital. Team Black recommends the CAC embark upon an Appreciative Inquiry-informed strategic planning process. This process will empower the coalition, engage the community, and provide a bridge from where the CAC is today, to where they hope to be tomorrow. The desired outcomes of this process include: engaging a broader network of stakeholders, creating a common language around inclusion, clarifying the organization’s goal hierarchy, and establishing clear priorities for investing the coalition’s limited human and financial resources

Tracking water for human activities: from the ivory tower to the ground

Water policy requires well established metrics for success. Precise metrics allow for quantifying progress and adjusting processes to produce the desired outcomes. We analyze the different schools of thought, nomenclatures and indicators developed for tracking water for human activities. After comparing a variety of terms related to water accounting used to serve the different purposes (environmental vs. ecological economics), we found that the different approaches to water tracking utilize identical terms to refer to distinctive concepts. The characterization of widely used terms such as 'water use' varies across different branches of literature. Different approaches to water measurement and its efficiency have an impact on water allocation. Our paper points out that the current definitions and methods for tracking water for human activities may offer contradictory advice over whether progress is being made towards desirable objectives, which may differ across stakeholders. This review aims at helping the transfer of academic results to empirical decision-making by discerning the differences among the variety of indicators available in the literature and their empirical implications. The ambiguity in the water terminology should be clarified before policy decisions can be useful in practice for guiding actions.The project leading to these results has received funding from ‘la Caixa’ and Caja Navarra Foundation, under agreement LCF/PR/PR13/51080004. Two of the authors, Sesma-Martín and Rubio-Varas, must also acknowledge the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as financing entities, through the research project reference HAR2017-86086-R (AEI/ERDF, EU). Sesma-Martín also benefits from the research contract reference 1295/2019, assigned to the History and Economics Group from UPNA

Organizational Effectiveness Literature Review

Provides an overview and analysis of recent literature related to organizational effectiveness and management in nonprofit organizations. Prepared for the foundation's Organizational Effectiveness and Philanthropy Program

Detecting web requirements conflicts and inconsistencies under a model-based perspective

Web requirements engineering is an essential phase in the software project life cycle for the project results. This phase covers different activities and tasks that in many situations, depending on the analyst’s experience or intuition, help getting accurate specifications. One of these tasks is the conciliation of requirements in projects with different groups of users. This article presents an approach for the systematic conciliation of requirements in big projects dealing with a model-based approach. The article presents a possible implementation of the approach in the context of the NDT (Navigational Development Techniques) Methodology and shows the empirical evaluation in a real project by analysing the improvements obtained with our approach. The paper presents interesting results that demonstrate that we can get a reduction in the time required to find conflicts between requirements, which implies a reduction in the global development costs.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

Detecting web requirements conflicts and inconsistencies under a model-based perspective

Web requirements engineering is an essential phase in the software project life cycle for the project results. This phase covers different activities and tasks that in many situations, depending on the analyst’s experience or intuition, help getting accurate specifications. One of these tasks is the conciliation of requirements in projects with different groups of users. This article presents an approach for the systematic conciliation of requirements in big projects dealing with a model-based approach. The article presents a possible implementation of the approach in the context of the NDT (Navigational Development Techniques) Methodology and shows the empirical evaluation in a real project by analysing the improvements obtained with our approach. The paper presents interesting results that demonstrate that we can get a reduction in the time required to find conflicts between requirements, which implies a reduction in the global development costs.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad