Merging cloned alloy models with colorful refactorings

Likewise to code, clone-and-own is a common way to create variants of a model, to explore the impact of different features while exploring the design of a software system. Previously, we have introduced Colorful Alloy, an extension of the popular Alloy language and toolkit to support feature-oriented design, where model elements can be annotated with feature expressions and further highlighted with different colors to ease understanding. In this paper we propose a catalog of refactorings for Colorful Alloy models, and show how they can be used to iteratively merge cloned Alloy models into a single feature-annotated colorful model, where the commonalities and differences between the different clones are easily perceived, and more efficient aggregated analyses can be performed.This work is financed by the ERDF — European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation – COMPETE 2020 Programme and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within project PTDC/CCI-INF/29583/2017 – POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029583

Mind-wandering and alterations to default mode network connectivity when listening to naturalistic versus artificial sounds

Naturalistic environments have been demonstrated to promote relaxation and wellbeing. We assess opposing theoretical accounts for these effects through investigation of autonomic arousal and alterations of activation and functional connectivity within the default mode network (DMN) of the brain while participants listened to sounds from artificial and natural environments. We found no evidence for increased DMN activity in the naturalistic compared to artificial or control condition, however, seed based functional connectivity showed a shift from anterior to posterior midline functional coupling in the naturalistic condition. These changes were accompanied by an increase in peak high frequency heart rate variability, indicating an increase in parasympathetic activity in the naturalistic condition in line with the Stress Recovery Theory of nature exposure. Changes in heart rate and the peak high frequency were correlated with baseline functional connectivity within the DMN and baseline parasympathetic tone respectively, highlighting the importance of individual neural and autonomic differences in the response to nature exposure. Our findings may help explain reported health benefits of exposure to natural environments, through identification of alterations to autonomic activity and functional coupling within the DMN when listening to naturalistic sounds

Autonomic Modulation and Health-Related Quality of Life among Schizophrenic Patients Treated with Non-Intensive Case Management

Schizophrenia is associated with autonomic dysfunction and this may increase cardiovascular mortality. Past studies on autonomic modulation of schizophrenic patients focused on inpatients rather than individuals in a community setting, especially those receiving non-intensive case management (non-ICM). Besides, autonomic modulation and its association with health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in this population remain unexplored.A total of 25 schizophrenic patients treated by non-ICM and 40 healthy volunteers were matched by age, gender and body mass index; smokers were excluded. Between the two groups, we compared the individuals' 5 min resting assessments of heart rate variability and their HRQoL, which was measured using EuroQoL-5D (EQ-5D). Patients with schizophrenia were assessed for psychopathology using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale for Schizophrenia (PANSS). We examined the relationship between heart rate variability measurements, HRQoL scores, PANSS scores, and other clinical variables among the schizophrenic patients treated by non-ICM.Compared to the controls, patients with schizophrenia showed a significant impairment of autonomic modulation and a worse HRQoL. Cardiovagal dysfunction among the schizophrenic patients could be predicted independently based on lower educational level and more negative symptoms. Sympathetic predominance was directly associated with anticholinergics use and EQ-5D using a visual analogue scale (EQ-VAS).Patients with schizophrenia treated by non-ICM show a significant impairment of their autonomic function and HRQoL compared to the controls. Since the sympathovagal dysfunction is associated with more negative symptoms or higher VAS score, the treatment of the negative symptoms as well as the monitoring of HRQoL might help to manage cardiovascular risk among these individuals. In addition, EQ-VAS scores must be interpreted more cautiously in such a population

A comparison of abstract data types and objects recovery techniques

In the context of the authors' research on architectural features recovery, abstract data types (ADT) and abstract data objects (ADO, also called objects) have been identified as two of the smallest components which are useful for building a significant architectural overview of the system. The authors have named these the atomic components (AC) of an architecture. This article compares six published techniques which extract ADTs and ADOs from source code without extensive data flow analysis. A prototype tool implementing each technique has been developed and applied to three medium-sized and systems written in C (each over 30 Kloc). The results from each approach are compared with the atomic components identified by hand by a group of software engineers. This article extends previous papers by discussing how the software engineers' AC identification was validated and by analyzing the false positives, i.e., the atomic components identified by automatic approaches which were not identified by software engineers

An Incremental Approach for the Extraction of Software Product Lines from Model Variants

In practice, a large amount of Software Product Lines (SPLs) are developed using a bottom-up process. In this case, an SPL is synthesized from similar product variants that are developed for SPL using ad hoc reuse techniques such as copy-paste-modify. In this paper, we present an approach for migrating existing product variants into an SPL. This approach is applied on models and it takes as input a set of models that abstract the product variants. The result of the approach is a software product line represented by the SPL model and the variability model. SPL model is the result of merging input product models. The variability model is a Feature Model (FM) allowing the specification of the variability on the SPL model. We propose to construct the SPL in an incremental way. After an initialization step, the set of input products are integrated in the SPL one after another. To integrate a new product, we first compare the input product model with the SPL model in order to identify the variability, and then we update both the SPL model and the variability model. The approach is implemented and evaluated on a case study