Using ATL transformation services in the MDEForge collaborative modeling platform

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42064-6_5In the last years, the increasing complexity of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) tools and techniques has led to higher demands in terms of computation, interoperability, and configuration management. Harnessing the softwareas- a-service (SaaS) paradigm and shifting applications from local, mono-core implementations to cloud-based architectures is key to enhance scalability and flexibility. To this end, we propose MDEForge: an extensible, collaborative modeling platform that provides remote model management facilities and prevents the user from focussing on time-consuming, and less creative procedures. This demo paper illustrates the extensibility of MDEForge by integrating ATL services for the remote execution, automated testing, and static analysis of ATL transformations. The usefulness of their employment under the SaaS paradigm is demonstrated with a case-study showing a wide range of new application possibilities.Work supported by the Spanish MINECO (TIN2014-52129-R), the Madrid Region (S2013/ICE-3006), and the EU commission (#611125

“Keep It Simple: Optimized Student Evaluations With Moodle”

Acquiring representative feedback from students is a common problem for universities. To address the often low response rates and participation bias, we focussed on a simplified evaluation process and improved user convenience. We developed and implemented a new tool for collecting feedback by sharing an accessible short survey on our Moodle-based e-learning platform. This new Moodle evaluation tool allows surveys to pop up visibly but non-invasively within every Moodle course offered by our university for the duration of the valuation period. After voting, the survey does not show up again. By condensing a questionnaire to three main queries using a 6-point Likert scale, we gathered data on overall satisfaction with the course, satisfaction with course structure and navigation, and satisfaction with course elements and content. Within two weeks, we collected 65,000 votes from over 1600 courses, with an average response rate of 30% among all active students using the Moodle platform. This paper describes the design and implementation of the short survey, provides an overview of the new evaluation tool and its features, and shares preliminary results and interpretations of the data. Based on these findings, we outline our plans for the continuation and extension of the short-survey approach

Morphological and Chemical Traits of Cladonia Respond to Multiple Environmental Factors in Acidic Dry Grasslands

Terricolous lichen communities in lowlands occur especially in open dry habitats. Such communities are often dominated by species of the genus Cladonia, which are very variable in morphology, reproduction strategies, and secondary metabolites. In this work, we investigated traits-environment relationships considering vegetation dynamics, substrate pH, disturbance, and climate. A total of 122 plots were surveyed in 41 acidic dry grasslands in the western Po Plain (Northern Italy). Relationships between Cladonia traits and environmental variables were investigated by means of a model-based Fourth Corner Analysis. Thallus morphology and metabolites responded to vegetation dynamics, substrate pH, disturbance, and climate, whereas reproduction strategies responded only to vegetation dynamics. Traits\u2019 correlations with vegetation dynamics elucidate their colonization patterns in open dry habitats or suggest biotic interactions with bryo-phytes and vascular plants. In addition, correlations between metabolites and environmental factors support interpretations of their ecological roles. Our results also stress the importance of studying traits\u2019 relationships with climatic factors as an alert towards lichen reactions to climate change

Supporting Early-Safety Analysis of IoT Systems by Exploiting Testing Techniques

IoT systems complexity and susceptibility to failures pose significant challenges in ensuring their reliable operation Failures can be internally generated or caused by external factors impacting both the systems correctness and its surrounding environment To investigate these complexities various modeling approaches have been proposed to raise the level of abstraction facilitating automation and analysis FailureLogic Analysis FLA is a technique that helps predict potential failure scenarios by defining how a components failure logic behaves and spreads throughout the system However manually specifying FLA rules can be arduous and errorprone leading to incomplete or inaccurate specifications In this paper we propose adopting testing methodologies to improve the completeness and correctness of these rules How failures may propagate within an IoT system can be observed by systematically injecting failures while running test cases to collect evidence useful to add complete and refine FLA rule

Automated reuse of model transformations through typing requirements models

Model transformations are key elements of model-driven engineering, where they are used to automate the manipulation of models. However, they are typed with respect to concrete source and target meta-models, making their reuse for other (even similar) meta-models challenging. To improve this situation, we propose capturing the typing requirements for reusing a transformation with other meta-models by the notion of a typing requirements model (TRM). A TRM describes the prerequisites that amodel transformation imposes on the source and targetmeta-models to obtain a correct typing. The key observation is that any meta-model pair that satisfies the TRM is a valid reuse context for the transformation at hand. A TRM is made of two domain requirement models (DRMs) describing the requirements for the source and target meta-models, and a compatibility model expressing dependencies between them. We define a notion of refinement between DRMs and see meta-models as a special case of DRM. We provide a catalogue of valid refinements and describe how to automatically extract a TRM from an ATL transformation. The approach is supported by our tool TOTEM. We report on two experiments-based on transformations developed by third parties and meta-model mutation techniques-validating the correctness and completeness of our TRM extraction procedure and confirming the power of TRMs to encode variability and support flexible reuseWork partially funded by the R&D programme of the Madrid Region (project FORTE, S2018/TCS4314), the Spanish Ministry of Science (project MASSIVE, RTI2018-095255-B-I00), the Spanish MINECO(project RECOM, TIN2015-73968-JIN, AEI/FEDER/UE), a Ramón y Cajal 2017 grant, and the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme through the Polyglot and Hybrid Persistence Architectures for Big Data Analytics (TYPHON) project (#780251

Life-stage dependent response of the epiphytic lichen Lobaria pulmonaria to climate

Lichens are poikilohydric organisms, whose internal water content tends to reflect external humidity conditions. After drying, they can reactivate their metabolic activity through water vapor uptake or liquid water input. Thus, lichen water-related functional traits are important as they are involved in the duration of the hydrated period. Models predicting the effect of environmental conditions on lichens are based mainly on the presence or absence of adult thalli. Nevertheless, ecological conditions required by lichens might vary during their life cycle, for example during propagule establishment or in the first stages of thallus development. Little is known about the different ecological requirements at the different development stages in lichens. In this work, we measured water holding capacity (WHC) and specific thallus mass (STM) of adult and juvenile thalli of the model species Lobaria pulmonaria along a climatic gradient to constrain the processbased model LiBry. The LiBry model allows accounting for the productivity of lichens with different physiological strategies under various environmental conditions. We simulated the activity and performance of adult and juvenile thalli in 9 regions of Italy and Corsica. The model was used to test if adult thalli of L. pulmonaria have a higher survival probability due to their higher aerodynamic resistance. In the current climatic condition, the LiBry model predicts a higher survival probability of adults with decreasing absolute survival rates of both life stages with increasing temperature. Adult thalli also result in having higher active time, STM, and relative growth rate (RGR). We discuss the main implications of our simulation outputs, provide future perspectives and possible implementations of the LiBry mode