Software Product Line Engineering via Software Transplantation

For companies producing related products, a Software Product Line (SPL) is a software reuse method that improves time-to-market and software quality, achieving substantial cost reductions.These benefits do not come for free. It often takes years to re-architect and re-engineer a codebase to support SPL and, once adopted, it must be maintained. Current SPL practice relies on a collection of tools, tailored for different reengineering phases, whose output developers must coordinate and integrate. We present Foundry, a general automated approach for leveraging software transplantation to speed conversion to and maintenance of SPL. Foundry facilitates feature extraction and migration. It can efficiently, repeatedly, transplant a sequence of features, implemented in multiple files. We used Foundry to create two valid product lines that integrate features from three real-world systems in an automated way. Moreover, we conducted an experiment comparing Foundry's feature migration with manual effort. We show that Foundry automatically migrated features across codebases 4.8 times faster, on average, than the average time a group of SPL experts took to accomplish the task

Resistance of Leishmania (Viannia) braziliensis to nitric oxide: correlation with antimony therapy and TNF-α production

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Nitric oxide (NO) produced in macrophages plays a pivotal role as a leishmanicidal agent. A previous study has demonstrated that 20% of the <it>L. (V.) braziliensis </it>isolated from initial cutaneous lesions of patients from the endemic area of Corte de Pedra, Bahia, Brazil, were NO resistant. Additionally, 5 to 11% of the patients did not respond to three or more antimony treatments" (refractory patients). The aim of this study is to investigate if there is an association between the resistance of <it>L. (V.) braziliensis </it>to NO and nonresponsiveness to antimony therapy and cytokine production.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We evaluated the <it>in vitro </it>toxicity of NO against the promastigotes stages of <it>L. (V.) braziliensis </it>isolated from responsive and refractory patients, and the infectivity of the amastigote forms of these isolates against human macrophages. The supernatants from <it>Leishmania </it>infected macrophage were used to measure TNF-α and IL-10 levels.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using NaNO₂(pH 5.0) as the NO source, <it>L. (V.) braziliensis </it>isolated from refractory patients were more NO resistant (IC50 = 5.8 ± 4.8) than <it>L. (V.) braziliensis </it>isolated from responsive patients (IC50 = 2.0 ± 1.4). Four isolates were selected to infect human macrophages: NO-susceptible and NO-resistant <it>L. (V.) braziliensis </it>isolated from responsive and refractory patients. NO-resistant <it>L. (V.) braziliensis </it>isolated from refractory patients infected more macrophages stimulated with LPS and IFN-γ at 120 hours than NO-susceptible <it>L. (V.) braziliensis </it>isolated from refractory patients. Also, lower levels of TNF-α were detected in supernatants of macrophages infected with NO-resistant <it>L. (V.) braziliensis </it>as compared to macrophages infected with NO-susceptible <it>L. (V.) braziliensis </it>(p < 0.05 at 2, 24 and 120 hours), while no differences were detected in IL-10 levels.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These data suggest that NO resistance could be related to the nonresponsiveness to antimony therapy seen in American Tegumentary Leishmaniasis.</p

Reconhecimento de Dígitos de Medidores de Energia por meio da Voz no Contexto de um Aplicativo de Autoleitura / Digit Recognition of Energy Meters through Voice in the Context of an Authentication Application

A Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica (ANEEL) destaca que perdas não-técnicas estão relacionadas a entraves no processo de leitura de consumo. Para a redução dessas falhas, uma alternativa factível e de menor custo seria a leitura realizada pelo próprio consumidor, denominada de autoleitura.  Este processo leva em consideração o uso de plataformas digitais, através das quais o consumidor registraria e enviaria as informações de consumo.  Uma etapa importante desse processo é o reconhecimento automático de dígitos de medidores por meio da voz.  Este trabalho, portanto, propõe um método para a realização dessa tarefa, que utiliza processamento de áudio e inteligência computacional. Para a extração de características de áudio, utiliza-se Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) e MelSpectrogram de forma combinada. O método apresenta Recall de 94,74%; Precision de 94,91%; F1 score de 94,72% e 0,9419 de índice Kappa utilizando-se o classificador Support Vector Machine (SVM)

Minimal information for studies of extracellular vesicles (MISEV2023): From basic to advanced approaches

Extracellular vesicles (EVs), through their complex cargo, can reflect the state of their cell of origin and change the functions and phenotypes of other cells. These features indicate strong biomarker and therapeutic potential and have generated broad interest, as evidenced by the steady year-on-year increase in the numbers of scientific publications about EVs. Important advances have been made in EV metrology and in understanding and applying EV biology. However, hurdles remain to realising the potential of EVs in domains ranging from basic biology to clinical applications due to challenges in EV nomenclature, separation from non-vesicular extracellular particles, characterisation and functional studies. To address the challenges and opportunities in this rapidly evolving field, the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) updates its 'Minimal Information for Studies of Extracellular Vesicles', which was first published in 2014 and then in 2018 as MISEV2014 and MISEV2018, respectively. The goal of the current document, MISEV2023, is to provide researchers with an updated snapshot of available approaches and their advantages and limitations for production, separation and characterisation of EVs from multiple sources, including cell culture, body fluids and solid tissues. In addition to presenting the latest state of the art in basic principles of EV research, this document also covers advanced techniques and approaches that are currently expanding the boundaries of the field. MISEV2023 also includes new sections on EV release and uptake and a brief discussion of in vivo approaches to study EVs. Compiling feedback from ISEV expert task forces and more than 1000 researchers, this document conveys the current state of EV research to facilitate robust scientific discoveries and move the field forward even more rapidly