Attention is not required to maintain feature bindings in visual working memory

Attention plays an important role in the formation of accurate feature bindings. However, the role of attention in maintaining feature bindings is not as well established. Some research supports the theory that attention is needed to maintain feature bindings in visual working memory (VWM), while other research suggests that bindings remain intact after the withdrawal of attention. Experiment 1 of current study tested this hypothesis by replicating the findings that feature bindings are more difficult to remember than individual features in a whole report change detection task. Experiment 2 directly measured attention through eye tracking and manipulated whether a change occurred to an object within the focus of attention, a previously attended object, or an unattended object. The results of Experiment 2 suggest that attention is not required to maintain feature bindings. Together, the results of the current study suggest that while feature bindings may be more difficult to remember than individual features in some instances, attention is not required to maintain feature bindings in VWM

What you attend to is what you remember : investigating the unit of representation in visual working memory

The unit of representation in visual working memory (VWM) is a matter of some debate. The object benefit occurs when more features are remembered when they are combined into fewer objects. This has been used to support the perspective that objects are the unit of representation in VWM. However, the object benefit occurs only for two features from different dimensions (e.g., a blue circle: color and shape) but not two features from the same dimension (e.g., a red-and-blue bi-colored square: two colors). This suggests that both objects and features may be important in determining VWM capacity. The purpose of this study was to compare the object hypothesis against a new, alternative unit of representation: the Boolean map. A Boolean map is a spatial representation that can also carry information about features, although feature tags must be applied to an entire map. The Boolean map distinguishes between features that must be accessed serially and features that can be accessed in parallel: features that can be accessed in parallel can be represented on the same map, while features that are accessed serially must be represented on different maps. Three experiments were conducted to explore both hypotheses. In Experiment 1, the hypothesis that some types of stimuli are not attended as objects was examined by testing object-based attention for different kinds of objects. In Experiment 2, the Boolean map hypothesis was tested by examining which features can be accessed in parallel and which features must be accessed serially. Finally, in Experiment 3, the object benefit in VWM was tested for the same stimuli used in Experiments 1 and 2. The results showed that even objects that did not show an object benefit in VWM in Experiment 3 were still attended as objects in Experiment 1. However, only features that could be attended in parallel when combined into an object (Experiment 2) showed an object benefit in VWM (Experiment 3). These results suggesting that the unit of representation is restricted by the features that can be accessed in parallel, in support of the Boolean map hypothesis

Co-operation between metastatic tumor cells and macrophages in the degradation of basement membrane (type IV) collagen

AbstractThe co-culture of mouse peritoneal macrophages and Lewis lung carcinoma cells induces the relase of a metal-dependent type IV collagen-degrading proteinase which is not produced in detactable amounts by either cell type cultivated alone. Conditioned media of the co-cultures degrade both pepsin-extracted type IV collagen from human placenta and mouse type IV procollagen. Thus macrophages can interact with tumor cells to degrade basement membrane type IV collagen: this might be of importance to allow cancer invasion and metastasis

MORPH: A Reference Architecture for Configuration and Behaviour Self-Adaptation

An architectural approach to self-adaptive systems involves runtime change of system configuration (i.e., the system's components, their bindings and operational parameters) and behaviour update (i.e., component orchestration). Thus, dynamic reconfiguration and discrete event control theory are at the heart of architectural adaptation. Although controlling configuration and behaviour at runtime has been discussed and applied to architectural adaptation, architectures for self-adaptive systems often compound these two aspects reducing the potential for adaptability. In this paper we propose a reference architecture that allows for coordinated yet transparent and independent adaptation of system configuration and behaviour

Risk-driven revision of requirements models

© 2016 ACM.Requirements incompleteness is often the result of unanticipated adverse conditions which prevent the software and its environment from behaving as expected. These conditions represent risks that can cause severe software failures. The identification and resolution of such risks is therefore a crucial step towards requirements completeness. Obstacle analysis is a goal-driven form of risk analysis that aims at detecting missing conditions that can obstruct goals from being satisfied in a given domain, and resolving them. This paper proposes an approach for automatically revising goals that may be under-specified or (partially) wrong to resolve obstructions in a given domain. The approach deploys a learning-based revision methodology in which obstructed goals in a goal model are iteratively revised from traces exemplifying obstruction and non-obstruction occurrences. Our revision methodology computes domain-consistent, obstruction-free revisions that are automatically propagated to other goals in the model in order to preserve the correctness of goal models whilst guaranteeing minimal change to the original model. We present the formal foundations of our learning-based approach, and show that it preserves the properties of our formal framework. We validate it against the benchmarking case study of the London Ambulance Service

A Requirement-centric Approach to Web Service Modeling, Discovery, and Selection

Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) has gained considerable popularity for implementing Service-Based Applications (SBAs) in a flexible\ud and effective manner. The basic idea of SOC is to understand users'\ud requirements for SBAs first, and then discover and select relevant\ud services (i.e., that fit closely functional requirements) and offer\ud a high Quality of Service (QoS). Understanding users’ requirements\ud is already achieved by existing requirement engineering approaches\ud (e.g., TROPOS, KAOS, and MAP) which model SBAs in a requirement-driven\ud manner. However, discovering and selecting relevant and high QoS\ud services are still challenging tasks that require time and effort\ud due to the increasing number of available Web services. In this paper,\ud we propose a requirement-centric approach which allows: (i) modeling\ud users’ requirements for SBAs with the MAP formalism and specifying\ud required services using an Intentional Service Model (ISM); (ii)\ud discovering services by querying the Web service search engine Service-Finder\ud and using keywords extracted from the specifications provided by\ud the ISM; and(iii) selecting automatically relevant and high QoS services\ud by applying Formal Concept Analysis (FCA). We validate our approach\ud by performing experiments on an e-books application. The experimental\ud results show that our approach allows the selection of relevant and\ud high QoS services with a high accuracy (the average precision is\ud 89.41%) and efficiency (the average recall is 95.43%)

Quality measures for ETL processes: from goals to implementation

Extraction transformation loading (ETL) processes play an increasingly important role for the support of modern business operations. These business processes are centred around artifacts with high variability and diverse lifecycles, which correspond to key business entities. The apparent complexity of these activities has been examined through the prism of business process management, mainly focusing on functional requirements and performance optimization. However, the quality dimension has not yet been thoroughly investigated, and there is a need for a more human-centric approach to bring them closer to business-users requirements. In this paper, we take a first step towards this direction by defining a sound model for ETL process quality characteristics and quantitative measures for each characteristic, based on existing literature. Our model shows dependencies among quality characteristics and can provide the basis for subsequent analysis using goal modeling techniques. We showcase the use of goal modeling for ETL process design through a use case, where we employ the use of a goal model that includes quantitative components (i.e., indicators) for evaluation and analysis of alternative design decisions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Finding and Resolving Security Misusability with Misusability Cases

Although widely used for both security and usability concerns, scenarios used in security design may not necessarily inform the design of usability, and vice- versa. One way of using scenarios to bridge security and usability involves explicitly describing how design deci- sions can lead to users inadvertently exploiting vulnera- bilities to carry out their production tasks. This paper describes how misusability cases, scenarios that describe how design decisions may lead to usability problems sub- sequently leading to system misuse, address this problem. We describe the related work upon which misusability cases are based before presenting the approach, and illus- trating its application using a case study example. Finally, we describe some findings from this approach that further inform the design of usable and secure systems

Automated goal operationalisation based on interpolation and SAT solving

Goal oriented methods have been successfully employed for eliciting and elaborating software requirements. When goals are assigned to an agent, they have to be operationalised: the agent’s operations have to be refined, by equipping them with appropriate enabling and triggering conditions, so that the goals are fulfilled. Goal operationalisation generally demands a significant effort of the engineer. Although there exist approaches that tackle this problem, they are either in-formal or at most semi automated, requiring the engineer to assist in the process. In this paper, we present an approach for goal operationalisation that automatically computes required preconditions and required triggering conditions for operations, so that the resulting operations establish the goals. The process is iterative, is able to deal with safety goals and particular kinds of liveness goals, and is based on the use of interpolation and SAT solving

Annotation management: a Group decision support system for nurses tasks

International audienceWe develop a 5-year empirical investigation that is giving us broad and deep insights to characterise activity management in the palliative ward of an oncology hospital, and offer effective support for group decision-making and collaborative activity of caregivers. Following this observation period, we propose a software prototype based upon annotations in which dealing with patients’ state and evolution is a complex organisational task. We based our conception of an annotation tool on the observations of the rich writing practices of medical professionals. We rely on the innovative strategy of intermediate management to introduce a new technology able to bridge heterogeneous, valuable data flows that addresses both management support and activity support in a single tool