What to Fix? Distinguishing between design and non-design rules in automated tools

Technical debt---design shortcuts taken to optimize for delivery speed---is a critical part of long-term software costs. Consequently, automatically detecting technical debt is a high priority for software practitioners. Software quality tool vendors have responded to this need by positioning their tools to detect and manage technical debt. While these tools bundle a number of rules, it is hard for users to understand which rules identify design issues, as opposed to syntactic quality. This is important, since previous studies have revealed the most significant technical debt is related to design issues. Other research has focused on comparing these tools on open source projects, but these comparisons have not looked at whether the rules were relevant to design. We conducted an empirical study using a structured categorization approach, and manually classify 466 software quality rules from three industry tools---CAST, SonarQube, and NDepend. We found that most of these rules were easily labeled as either not design (55%) or design (19%). The remainder (26%) resulted in disagreements among the labelers. Our results are a first step in formalizing a definition of a design rule, in order to support automatic detection.Comment: Long version of accepted short paper at International Conference on Software Architecture 2017 (Gothenburg, SE

Effects of surface forces and phonon dissipation in a three-terminal nano relay

We have performed a theoretical analysis of the operational characteristics of a carbon-nanotube-based three-terminal nanorelay. We show that short range and van der Waals forces have a significant impact on the characteristics of the relay and introduce design constraints. We also investigate the effects of dissipation due to phonon excitation in the drain contact, which changes the switching time scales of the system, decreasing the longest time scale by two orders of magnitude. We show that the nanorelay can be used as a memory element and investigate the dynamics and properties of such a device

Patient experience and challenges in group concept mapping for clinical research.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Group concept mapping (GCM) is a research method that engages stakeholders in generating, structuring and representing ideas around a specific topic or question. GCM has been used with patients to answer questions related to health and disease but little is known about the patient experience as a participant in the process. This paper explores the patient experience participating in GCM as assessed with direct observation and surveys of participants. METHODS: This is a secondary analysis performed within a larger study in which 3 GCM iterations were performed to engage patients in identifying patient-important outcomes for diabetes care. Researchers tracked the frequency and type of assistance required by each participant to complete the sorting and rating steps of GCM. In addition, a 17-question patient experience survey was administered over the telephone to the participants after they had completed the GCM process. Survey questions asked about the personal impact of participating in GCM and the ease of various steps of the GCM process. RESULTS: Researchers helped patients 92 times during the 3 GCM iterations, most commonly to address software and computer literacy issues, but also with the sorting phase itself. Of the 52 GCM participants, 40 completed the post-GCM survey. Respondents averaged 56 years of age, were 50% female and had an average hemoglobin A1c of 9.1%. Ninety-two percent (n = 37) of respondents felt that they had contributed something important to this research project and 90% (n = 36) agreed or strongly agreed that their efforts would help others with diabetes. Respondents reported that the brainstorming session was less difficult when compared with sorting and rating of statements. DISCUSSION: Our results suggest that patients find value in participating in GCM. Patients reported less comfort with the sorting step of GCM when compared with brainstorming, an observation that correlates with our observations from the GCM sessions. Researchers should consider using paper sorting methods and objective measures of sorting quality when using GCM in patient-engaged research to improve the patient experience and concept map quality

Young-adult children of alcoholic parents: protective effects of positive family functioning

The occurrence of alcoholism is clustered within families, but the detrimental effect of a positive family history may vary with the degree of family impairment involved. In this study we assessed the effects of family history and family environment on alcohol misuse. From ongoing studies we recruited parents who had a child aged 18–30, 20 with a DSM-III-R alcohol dependence diagnosis, 20 without. The child then completed a multidimensional assessment. The young-adult participants included 20 men and 20 women (mean age=24.8). Differences by family history were restricted to substance abuse behaviors. While a high level of alcohol problems occurred in both groups, those with an alcohol-dependent parent were more likely to be heavy drinkers and showed more symptoms of alcohol dependence. Overall psychological adjustment did not differ between the groups, however. Alcohol misuse measures did correlate moderately with symptoms of poor emotional health. The most important correlates of alcohol misuse measures in this study were exposure to parental alcoholism, abusive punishment, and psychological symptoms, with some separation of effects in the two subgroups. Psychological symptoms had a stronger relationship with misuse in subjects with social-drinking parents, while abuse was more associated in the group with an alcohol-dependent parent. These results confirm the importance of environmental interactions with familial risk. A biological vulnerability from an alcohol-dependent parent was not sufficient or necessary for the participants in this study to develop alcohol dependence as a young adult, although there was an increased risk. There appear to be strong protective effects of positive family relationships on the potential negative effects of a family history of alcoholism.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73415/1/j.1360-0443.1992.tb02681.x.pd

Avian Behavioral and Physiological Responses to Challenging Thermal Environments and Extreme Weather Events

Birds occupy habitats ranging from Antarctic ice shelves and Arctic tundra to low-latitude deserts and lowland rainforests, and so are exposed to the full range of climates present on Earth. Cold, hot, or variable (on a variety of temporal scales) thermal conditions can present significant thermoregulatory challenges to birds, which typically must maintain body temperatures within narrow physiological tolerance limits. Such challenges may occur in all stages of the annual cycle and in all life stages of birds, so the ability to adjust to these conditions is required to maintain stable populations through time. For this Research Topic, we broadly define a challenging thermal environment as one necessitating behavioral or physiological adjustments to maintain body temperatures at levels appropriate for continued physiological function.Avian abilities to respond to extreme cold and heat are defined by thermoregulatory capacities for heat production or dissipation, respectively. Behavioral responses to temperature challenges can reduce the necessity for and magnitude of physiological adjustments, so together, physiological capacities and behavioral responses determine the probability of survival in thermally challenging situations. Moreover, thermal conditions experienced during reproduction can affect parental investment in the nesting effort and, independently, alter the course of nestling development, with potentially long-term consequences. Behavioral responses to these conditions as well as physiological responses at multiple levels of organization, from organisms to molecules, allow birds to tolerate thermal challenges. Our knowledge of the mechanisms by which birds respond, the time course for such responses, and the impacts on fitness, however, remain incompletely understood. Studies examining behavioral and physiological responses of birds to extreme and/or seasonally variable climates have been a research focus for decades, but recent advances in methods of measurement and analyses of physiological and behavioral traits have led to novel findings regarding the patterns and mechanisms by which birds adjust to challenging thermal environments.This Research Topic examines how thermal conditions in the environment pose challenges to birds and the physiological and behavioral adjustments that birds employ to meet them. Articles for this Research Topic may be original research papers, reviews, or perspectives. Specific themes that we believe are suitable for this Research Topic include, but are not limited to:• Integrative mechanisms underlying bird thermoregulatory capacities contributing to a tolerance of challenging thermal environments and their links to fitness• Influence of thermal conditions during reproduction on parental investment or nestling development• Behavioral responses to challenging thermal conditions and their mechanistic underpinnings• Time courses for physiological adjustments to environmental temperature variation• Physiological and behavioral flexibility associated with daily or seasonal temperature variation• Physiological and behavioral responses and tolerance limits during extreme weather events• Body temperature regulation under challenging thermal conditions and energy or water restrictions, including real-time field measurements and thermal imaging• Body temperature regulation and environmental or ecological drivers of hypometabolic strategies• Physiological consequences of exceeding thermoregulatory capacitie