Software Design Guidelines for Usability

For years, the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) community has crafted usability guidelines that clearly define what
characteristics a software system should have in order to be easy to use. However, in the Software Engineering (SE)
community keep falling short of successfully incorporating these recommendations into software projects. From a SE
perspective, the process of incorporating usability features into software is not always straightforward, as a large number
of these features have heavy implications in the underlying software architecture. For example, successfully including an
“undo” feature in an application requires the design and implementation of many complex interrelated data structures and
functionalities. Our work is focused upon providing developers with a set of software design patterns to assist them in the
process of designing more usable software. This would contribute to the proper inclusion of specific usability features
with high impact on the software design. Preliminary validation data show that usage of the guidelines also has positive
effects on development time and overall software design quality

Environmental change rate and dispersion pattern modulate the dynamics of evolutionary rescue of the cyanobacterium Microcystis aeruginosa

The rate of biodiversity loss is so high that some scientists affirm that we are being witnesses of the sixth mass extinction. In this situation, it is necessary to ask the following question: can the organisms be able to resist the environmental changes that are taking place? Recent studies have shown the possibility of a population recovering from a stress situation through evolutionary rescue (ER) events. These events depend on the size of the population, its previous history and the rate of the environmental change. The aim of this work is to add more knowledge about the ER dynamics creating stress situations with selective agents (sulphur and salinity) and using the toxic cyanobacterium Microcystis aeruginosa as a model organism. The experiments are based on exposing populations to severe stress and analyze the effect of previous dispersal events and deterioration rates on the occurrence of ER events among populations. The model consists in three different rates of environmental change (constant, slow and fast; under salinity stress we only used the first two treatments) and three dispersal models (isolated, local or global). In total, 324 and 720 populations were exposed to stressful conditions caused by sulphur and salinity, respectively. The results showed that the dispersal modes and the environmental deterioration rates modulated the occurrence of ER events. It has been observed that dispersal favours ER events for both selective agents. Regarding the rate of environmental change, we observed an increase of ER events under constant changes in the populations exposed to sulphur stress. However, ER events were higher when there was previous deterioration (i.e., slow environmental change rate) under saline stress. As a conclusion, ER events in M. aeruginosa depend on selective agent, being the probability higher for salinity than for sulphur. Thus, it could be hypothesized that general conclusions in ER studies must take into account the selective agent.This work has been financially supported by the projects CGL2014- 53682-P (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad) and CGL2017-87314-P (Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad), and the Universidad de Málaga, Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Regulation of bistability in the std fimbrial operon of Salmonella enterica by DNA adenine methylation and transcription factors HdfR, StdE and StdF

Bistable expression of the Salmonella enterica std operon is controlled by an AND logic gate involving three transcriptional activators: the LysR-type factor HdfR and the StdE and StdF regulators encoded by the std operon itself. StdE activates transcription of the hdfR gene, and StdF activates std transcription together with HdfR. Binding of HdfR upstream of the std promoter is hindered by methylation of GATC sites located within the upstream activating sequence (UAS). Epigenetic control by Dam methylation thus antagonizes formation of the StdE-StdF-HdfR loop and tilts the std switch toward the StdOFF state. In turn, HdfR binding hinders methylation of the UAS, permitting activation of the StdE-StdF-HdfR loop and concomitant formation of StdON cells. Bistability is thus the outcome of competition between DNA adenine methylation and the StdE-StdF-HdfR activator loop.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades [BIO2016–75235-P

Balancing software engineering education and industrial needs

In the world of information and communications technologies the demand for professionals with software engineering skills grows at an exponential rate. On this ground, we have conducted a study to help both academia and the software industry form a picture of the relationship between the competences of recent graduates of undergraduate and graduate software engineering programmes and the tasks that these professionals are to perform as part of their jobs in industry. Thanks to this study, academia will be able to observe which skills demanded by industry the software engineering curricula do or do not cater for, and industry will be able to ascertain which tasks a recent software engineering programme graduate is well qualified to perform. The study focuses on the software engineering knowledge guidelines provided in SE2004 and GSwE2009, and the job profiles identified by Career Space

A systematic literature review on Wikidata

To review the current status of research on Wikidata and, in particular, of articles that either describe applications of Wikidata or provide empirical evidence, in order to uncover the topics of interest, the fields that are benefiting from its applications and which researchers and institutions are leading the work

A complex network analysis of the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) package ecosystem

Free and open source software package ecosystems have existed for a long time and are among the most sophisticated human-made systems. One of the oldest and most popular software package ecosystems is CRAN, the repository of packages of the statistical language R, which is also one of the most popular environments for statistical computing nowadays. CRAN stores a large number of packages that are updated regularly and depend on a number of other packages in a complex graph of relations; such graph is empirically studied from the perspective of complex network analysis (CNA) in the current article, showing how network theory and measures proposed by previous work can help profiling the ecosystem and detecting strengths, good practices and potential risks in three perspectives: macroscopic properties of the ecosystem (structure and complexity of the network), microscopic properties of individual packages (represented as nodes), and modular properties (community detection). Results show how complex network analysis tools can be used to assess a package ecosystem and, in particular, that of CRAN

Familia y educación [Recurso electrónico] ] : guía práctica para escuelas de padres y madres eficaces

Datos tomados de la etiqueta del disc

El alumno motivado: un análisis empírico de los factores motivadores intrínsecos y extrínsecos en el aula de inglés

En el estudio de la motivación en el aula de lengua extranjera, está demostrada la importancia de la incidencia de determinados factores externos en la motivación intrínseca y extrínseca del alumno, así como la frecuencia con que esos factores externos se utilizan en clase. Por eso, en este artículo ofrecemos un estudio empírico de las principales variables que influyen en los factores motivacionales, como son la frecuencia de los factores motivacionales externos, el diario del estudiante sobre su estatus motivacional en la clase de inglés y diversos aspectos de la motivación final, que facilitarán la creación de un buen ambiente en el aula de lengua extranjera. En este sentido, demostraremos que el uso periódico de los factores motivacionales extrínsecos tiene efectivamente una incidencia positiva sobre los factores intrínsecos del alumno. Por último, los resultados de nuestro estudio demuestran que no existen diferencias significativas en ninguna de las variables mencionadas anteriormente entre chicos y chicas, lo que demuestra la escasa incidencia del sexo como factor motivacional intrínseco.It is demonstrated how important are certain external factors in the students intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and the frequency they are used when talking about the foreign language motivation research. Therefore, in this paper we present an empirical study of the main variables having an influence on the motivational factors, like the frequency of external motivational factors, the diary of the student on his/her motivational status in the English classroom, and several aspects of the final motivation, which will help us to create an appropriate and nice context in the classroom of a foreign language. In this way, we will show that the periodic use of extrinsic motivational factors have a positive influence on the students intrinsic factors. Finally, the results of our study show that there are not significant differences in any of the aforementioned variables between boys and girls, and this demonstrates the scarce effect of the gender as an intrinsic motivational factor

Successful treatment of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis with early teratoma removal and plasmapheresis

[EN]Rationale: This report describes a Successful treatment of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis with early teratoma removal and plasmapheresis. Patient Concerns: We present a 31-year-old Caucasian nulliparous patient who was admitted as an emergency with general illness status accompanied by holocranial cephalalgia and fever. Diagnoses: The previous symptoms were followed by disorientation, persecutory delusion, incoherent language, and tonic-clonic seizure. Interventions: The patient was admitted in the intensive care unit (ICU) with Glasgow score 7. Outcomes: Most of complementary exams (brain CT, brain MRI, blood analysis, PCR for virus on CSF) were normal except CSF leucocytosis and hyperproteinorrhachia. An abdominopelvic ultrasound revealed a 5-cm solid-cystic tumor in the left adnexal region, suggestive of teratoma. At that stage, the possibility of autoimmune encephalitis was considered, and confirmed later. Lessons: This disease can only be successfully treated with fast surgical intervention and an early implementation of immunosuppressive therapies. The optimal timing of initiation and duration of therapeutic plasma exchange necessary to achieve good outcomes in patients with NMDAR remains unknown. This case report intends to increase awareness about the importance of early surgical treatment and early implementation of this potentially life-saving therapy and of continuing the treatment until complete remission of symptoms

Role of 5 α -dihydrotestosterone in testicular development of gilthead seabream following finasteride administration

In teleosts, spermatogenesis is regulated by pituitary gonadotropins and sex steroids. 5α-dihydrotestosterone (DHT), derived from testosterone (T) through the action of 5α-reductase, has recently been suggested to play a physiologically important role in some fish species. In this study, gilthead seabream, Sparus aurata L., males received an implant of 1μg T/g body mass (bm) or vehicle alone and, 7 days later, 1 mg finasteride (FIN, an inhibitor of 5α-reductase)/kg bm or vehicle. Serum levels of T, 11-ketotestosterone (11KT), DHT and 17β-estradiol (E2), and the mRNA levels of the main enzymes involved in their synthesis, were analysed. T promoted a transient increase in the serum levels of T, 11KT and E2 but a decrease in those of DHT at day 15 following T injection, in accordance with the up-regulation of mRNA levels of the enzymes involved in T transformation to 11KT (coding genes: cyp11b1 and hsd11b) and the down-regulation of mRNA levels of the enzyme responsible for T transformation to DHT (coding gene:srd5a). Interestingly, a similar effect was observed when FIN was in- jected. However, when fish were injected with T and FIN successively (T + FIN), control levels were not re-covered at the end of the experimental period (28 days). DHT seems to regulate E2 serum levels via the down-regulation of mRNA levels of aromatase (coding gene:cyp19a1a), which is needed for the transformation of T into E2. The testis histology, together with the proliferative rates recorded upon T, FIN or T + FIN treatment, suggests that DHT is involved in the onset of the meiotic phase of spermatogenesis.Versión del edito