RP Process Selection for Rapid Tooling in Sand Casting

The significant cycle-time improvements and geometrical capabilities of solid freeform fabrication systems have led to applications in sand casting industry for design verification and tooling. The time and cost effective deployment of rapid tooling processes using rapid prototyping technology has thus becoming an emerging area to be studied. To make full use of the advantages of rapid prototyping processes, the factors influencing the tooling approach must be identified and understood. This understanding is then used to develop a decision-making structure for RP process selection for rapid tooling in sand casting. In this manuscript we review our work in evaluating and building a framework for tooling process selection for sand castingMechanical Engineerin

A Change Support Model for Distributed Collaborative Work

Distributed collaborative software development tends to make artifacts and decisions inconsistent and uncertain. We try to solve this problem by providing an information repository to reflect the state of works precisely, by managing the states of artifacts/products made through collaborative work, and the states of decisions made through communications. In this paper, we propose models and a tool to construct the artifact-related part of the information repository, and explain the way to use the repository to resolve inconsistencies caused by concurrent changes of artifacts. We first show the model and the tool to generate the dependency relationships among UML model elements as content of the information repository. Next, we present the model and the method to generate change support workflows from the information repository. These workflows give us the way to efficiently modify the change-related artifacts for each change request. Finally, we define inconsistency patterns that enable us to be aware of the possibility of inconsistency occurrences. By combining this mechanism with version control systems, we can make changes safely. Our models and tool are useful in the maintenance phase to perform changes safely and efficiently.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, 4 table

Can the Archaeology of Manual Specialization Tell Us Anything About Language Evolution? A Survey of the State of Play

In this review and position paper we explore the neural substrates for manual specialization and their possible connection with language and speech. We focus on two contrasting hypotheses of the origins of language and manual specialization: the language-first scenario and the tool-use-first scenario. Each one makes specific predictions about hand-use in non-human primates, as well as about the necessity of an association between speech adaptations and population-level right-handedness in the archaeological and fossil records. The concept of handedness is reformulated for archaeologists in terms of manual role specialization, using Guiard's model asymmetric bimanual coordination. This focuses our attention on skilled bimanual tasks in which both upper limbs play complementary roles. We review work eliciting non-human primate hand preferences in co-ordinated bimanual tasks, and relevant archaeological data for estimating the presence or absence of a population-level bias to the right hand as the manipulator in extinct hominin species and in the early prehistory of our own species

Supporting the automated generation of modular product line safety cases

Abstract The effective reuse of design assets in safety-critical Software Product Lines (SPL) would require the reuse of safety analyses of those assets in the variant contexts of certification of products derived from the SPL. This in turn requires the traceability of SPL variation across design, including variation in safety analysis and safety cases. In this paper, we propose a method and tool to support the automatic generation of modular SPL safety case architectures from the information provided by SPL feature modeling and model-based safety analysis. The Goal Structuring Notation (GSN) safety case modeling notation and its modular extensions supported by the D-Case Editor were used to implement the method in an automated tool support. The tool was used to generate a modular safety case for an automotive Hybrid Braking System SPL

Software test automation : a design and tool selection approach for a heterogeneous environment

textThis report describes a design approach for implementing a software test automation solution that can accommodate existing test processes in an organization. The process of implementing a software test automation solution is a large undertaking and requires careful planning to avoid unsuccessful implementations. This report outlines a design that can integrate with existing business and development processes in an organization, and recommends automation and development frameworks for achieving the test automation goals. Considerations for a heterogeneous test environment with varying types of supported operating systems, such as Windows and Linux, and multiple test execution environments, such as Java and .NET, have been made in this design and in the tool selections for the system implementation. The report also describes some of the challenges and caveats of automation in a heterogeneous environment along with recommended solutions to these challenges.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Deuce: A Lightweight User Interface for Structured Editing

We present a structure-aware code editor, called Deuce, that is equipped with direct manipulation capabilities for invoking automated program transformations. Compared to traditional refactoring environments, Deuce employs a direct manipulation interface that is tightly integrated within a text-based editing workflow. In particular, Deuce draws (i) clickable widgets atop the source code that allow the user to structurally select the unstructured text for subexpressions and other relevant features, and (ii) a lightweight, interactive menu of potential transformations based on the current selections. We implement and evaluate our design with mostly standard transformations in the context of a small functional programming language. A controlled user study with 21 participants demonstrates that structural selection is preferred to a more traditional text-selection interface and may be faster overall once users gain experience with the tool. These results accord with Deuce's aim to provide human-friendly structural interactions on top of familiar text-based editing.Comment: ICSE 2018 Paper + Supplementary Appendice