Accessibility in Electronic Government: a study on the implementation of web standads in sites gov.br

In Brazil, the use of e-government is a relatively new. It first started in 2000, and since then, the web platform, through the web sites, has been widely used to strengthen the relationship with the Brazilian citizen, to provide services and to enhance transparency and access to information. Among the main patterns of e-government, the e-MAG and e-PWG models stand out. The first model is responsible for digital accessibility guidelines, and the second model is a set of technical guidelines for the development of sites and managing digital content. The Brazilian government is also implementing, since 2013, the Government Digital Identity, a project that aims to standardize the navigation logic and the structure of government sites from the federal level. This article aims to show that key government sites, despite all efforts, still do not implement the standards set by the Brazilian Electronic Government properly. We used code validators to evaluate and to analyze thirty-nine sites related to the ministries of the federal government. During our analysis, we found errors that compromise the access to digital information guaranteed by specific legislation to any Brazilian citizen

An Empirical Evaluation of Evolutionary Algorithms for Unit Test Suite Generation

Context: Evolutionary algorithms have been shown to be e ective at generating unit test suites optimised for code coverage. While many speci c aspects of these algorithms have been evaluated in detail (e.g., test length and di erent kinds of techniques aimed at improving performance, like seeding), the in uence of the choice of evolutionary algorithm has to date seen less attention in the literature. Objective: Since it is theoretically impossible to design an algorithm that is the best on all possible problems, a common approach in software engineering problems is to rst try the most common algorithm, a Genetic Algorithm, and only afterwards try to re ne it or compare it with other algorithms to see if any of them is more suited for the addressed problem. The objective of this paper is to perform this analysis, in order to shed light on the in uence of the search algorithm applied for unit test generation. Method: We empirically evaluate thirteen di erent evolutionary algorithms and two random approaches on a selection of non-trivial open source classes. All algorithms are implemented in the EvoSuite test generation tool, which includes recent optimisations such as the use of an archive during the search and optimisation for multiple coverage criteria. Results: Our study shows that the use of a test archive makes evolutionary algorithms clearly better than random testing, and it con rms that the DynaMOSA many-objective search algorithm is the most e ective algorithm for unit test generation. Conclusions: Our results show that the choice of algorithm can have a substantial in uence on the performance of whole test suite optimisation. Although we can make a recommendation on which algorithm to use in practice, no algorithm is clearly superior in all cases, suggesting future work on improved search algorithms for unit test generatio

An estimate of the number of tropical tree species

The high species richness of tropical forests has long been recognized, yet there remains substantial uncertainty regarding the actual number of tropical tree species. Using a pantropical tree inventory database from closed canopy forests, consisting of 657,630 trees belonging to 11,371 species, we use a fitted value of Fisher’s alpha and an approximate pantropical stem total to estimate the minimum number of tropical forest tree species to fall between ∼40,000 and ∼53,000, i.e. at the high end of previous estimates. Contrary to common assumption, the Indo-Pacific region was found to be as species-rich as the Neotropics, with both regions having a minimum of ∼19,000–25,000 tree species. Continental Africa is relatively depauperate with a minimum of ∼4,500–6,000 tree species. Very few species are shared among the African, American, and the Indo-Pacific regions. We provide a methodological framework for estimating species richness in trees that may help refine species richness estimates of tree-dependent taxa

Fast demographic traits promote high diversification rates of Amazonian trees

The Amazon rain forest sustains the world's highest tree diversity, but it remains unclear why some clades of trees are hyperdiverse, whereas others are not. Using dated phylogenies, estimates of current species richness and trait and demographic data from a large network of forest plots, we show that fast demographic traits - short turnover times - are associated with high diversification rates across 51 clades of canopy trees. This relationship is robust to assuming that diversification rates are either constant or decline over time, and occurs in a wide range of Neotropical tree lineages. This finding reveals the crucial role of intrinsic, ecological variation among clades for understanding the origin of the remarkable diversity of Amazonian trees and forests

Phylogenetic classification of the world's tropical forests

Knowledge about the biogeographic affinities of the world’s tropical forests helps to better understand regional differences in forest structure, diversity, composition, and dynamics. Such understanding will enable anticipation of region-specific responses to global environmental change. Modern phylogenies, in combination with broad coverage of species inventory data, now allow for global biogeographic analyses that take species evolutionary distance into account. Here we present a classification of the world’s tropical forests based on their phylogenetic similarity. We identify five principal floristic regions and their floristic relationships: (i) Indo-Pacific, (ii) Subtropical, (iii) African, (iv) American, and (v) Dry forests. Our results do not support the traditional neo- versus paleotropical forest division but instead separate the combined American and African forests from their Indo-Pacific counterparts. We also find indications for the existence of a global dry forest region, with representatives in America, Africa, Madagascar, and India. Additionally, a northern-hemisphere Subtropical forest region was identified with representatives in Asia and America, providing support for a link between Asian and American northern-hemisphere forests.</p

"A method for aspect and component based software development"

Uma investigação sobre como a programação orientada a aspectos combinada com a tecnologia de componentes pode encapsular os interesses transversais de um sistema é apresentada. Como resultado desta investigação, um método para o desenvolvimento de software baseado em componentes e aspectos é proposto, cujas etapas, atividades e artefatos são mostrados por meio do exemplo de um Sistema de Reservas de Hotéis, juntamente com sua implementação nas linguagens JAsCO e AspectJ. O método é uma extensão do método UML Components e utiliza a UML com algumas adaptações. Além disso, uma estratégia de generalização e documentação de componentes transversais para que possam ser reusados em outras aplicações é proposta. Adicionalmente, o método proposto foi usado para o projeto de um Sistema de Locação de Carros e o resultado foi comparado com uma outra solução para o mesmo problema, baseada em UML Components e uma arquitetura geral para sistemas na Web. O resultado dessa comparação é apresentado e discutido.An investigation about how aspect oriented programming combined with the components technology can encapsulate the crosscuting concerns of a system is presented. As result of this research, a method for the aspect and component based software development is proposed, whose phases, activities and designs elements are shown by means of an example of a Hotel Reservation System, with its implementation in the JAsCO and AspectJ languages. The method is an extension of the UML Components method and uses UML with some adaptations. Moreover, a strategy to the generalization and documentation of crosscutting (or aspectual) components to be reused in other applications is proposed. Additionally, the proposed method was used to design a Car Rental System and the result was compared with another solution for the same problem, based on UML Components and a general architecture for Web systems. The results of the comparation are presented and discussed

Using structural testing to test and monitor service based applications

A computação orientada a serviços propõe o desenvolvimento de software por meio da composição de serviços com os objetivos de aumentar o reúso de software e facilitar a criação de aplicações dinâmicas, flexíveis e com baixo acoplamento. O uso de serviços no desenvolvimento de software só é possível se os desenvolvedores de aplicações (integradores) confiarem na qualidade dos serviços oferecidos por terceiros. Uma forma de aumentar a confiança sobre serviços adquirido de terceiros é a realização de testes. Entretanto, o teste de serviços é difícil porque os testadores ficam limitados a usar técnicas de teste baseadas em especificação por causa da indisponibilidade do código fonte. Nesse contexto, os testadores não podem usufruir dos benefícios de combiná-las com técnicas baseadas em implementação, como a técnica estrutural, por exemplo. Uma abordagem para viabilizar o uso da técnica de teste estrutural no contexto de aplicações baseadas em serviços sem expor o código fonte dos serviços é apresentada. Ela propõe a criação de serviços testáveis, que são serviços com alta testabilidade e que possuem uma interface de teste cujas operações apoiam o teste estrutural. Integradores podem realizar o teste de um serviço testável e obter, sem acessar o código fonte, uma análise de cobertura. Metadados de teste também são fornecidos pelos serviços testáveis para auxiliar integradores na obtenção de uma cobertura estrutural maior. A abordagem também apoia atividades de monitoração ativa de serviços. A abordagem é genérica uma instanciação para apoiar o teste estrutural de serviços e aplicações escritos em Java é apresentada. Estudos de casos e experimentos controlados foram realizados para validar a abordagem instanciada. Os resultados mostram que a abordagem é viável e apresenta bons resultados quando comparada com o uso apenas da técnica funcionalSoftware oriented computing aims at developing software by the composition of services. It promotes software reuse and the implementation of dynamic, flexible and low coupling applications. Services provide specific business functionalities and are provided as a black-box. The use of services is only possible if the developers of service applications (integrators) trust the third party services. Particularly, testing is one of the solutions to obtain confidence on third party software. However, testers can only use specification based testing techiniques due to unavailability of the source code. In this context, testers cannot use the benefits of combining specification and implementation-based testing techniques. This works aims at proposing an an approach to introduce the structural testing technique in the context of service-based applications, but without revealing the source code. The proposed approach promotes the development of testable services, which are services with high testability and exposes operations through a testing interface to support structural testing. Integrators can test testable services and get, without having access to the source code, a coverage analysis on structural criteria. Test metadata are also provided along with testable services to help integrators on creating more test cases to increase the coverage obtained. The proposed approach is also used to support monitoring activities. The approach is generic and an instantiation is presented to create testable services written in Java. Formal experiments and case studies were conduct to validate the proposed approach and the instantiation. The results provide evidences of the applicability and the benefits of the approach for both testing and monitoring activities when compared to only using the functional approac

BISTFaSC: an aproach to embed structural testing facilities into software components

Component-based applications can be composed by in-house or COTS (Commercial off-the-shelf) components. In many situations, reused components should be tested before their integration into an operational environment. Testing components is not an easy task because they are usually provided as black boxes and have low testability. Built-in Testing (BIT) is an approach devised to improve component testability by embedding testing facilities into software components usually to support specification-based testing. Such components are called testable components. There are situations, however, in which combining specification and program-based testing is desirable. This paper proposes a BIT technique designed to introduce testing facilities into software components at the provider side to support structural testing at the user side, even when the source code is unavailable. An implementation to generate testable components written in Java is also presented. The approach was firstly evaluated by an exploratory study conducted to transform COTS components into testable components.CNPqEste evento faz parte do: Congresso Brasileiro de Software: Teoria e Prática - CBSoft 2013 (2013 Brasília, DF