How do software practitioners perceive human-centric defects?

Context: Human-centric software design and development focuses on how users want to carry out their tasks rather than making users accommodate their software. Software users can have different genders, ages, cultures, languages, disabilities, socioeconomic statuses, and educational backgrounds, among many other differences. Due to the inherently varied nature of these differences and their impact on software usage, preferences and issues of users can vary, resulting in user-specific defects that we term as `human-centric defects' (HCDs). Objective: This research aims to understand the perception and current management practices of such human-centric defects by software practitioners, identify key challenges in reporting, understanding and fixing them, and provide recommendations to improve HCDs management in software engineering. Method: We conducted a survey and interviews with software engineering practitioners to gauge their knowledge and experience on HCDs and the defect tracking process. Results: We analysed fifty (50) survey- and ten (10) interview- responses from SE practitioners and identified that there are multiple gaps in the current management of HCDs in software engineering practice. There is a lack of awareness regarding human-centric aspects, causing them to be lost or under-appreciated during software development. Our results revealed that handling HCDs could be improved by following a better feedback process with end-users, a more descriptive taxonomy, and suitable automation. Conclusion: HCDs present a major challenge to software practitioners, given their diverse end-user base. In the software engineering domain, research on HCDs has been limited and requires effort from the research and practice communities to create better awareness and support regarding human-centric aspects

Dealing with Data Challenges when Delivering Data-Intensive Software Solutions

The predicted increase in demand for data-intensive solution development is driving the need for software, data, and domain experts to effectively collaborate in multi-disciplinary data-intensive software teams (MDSTs). We conducted a socio-technical grounded theory study through interviews with 24 practitioners in MDSTs to better understand the challenges these teams face when delivering data-intensive software solutions. The interviews provided perspectives across different types of roles including domain, data and software experts, and covered different organisational levels from team members, team managers to executive leaders. We found that the key concern for these teams is dealing with data-related challenges. In this paper, we present the theory of dealing with data challenges that explains the challenges faced by MDSTs including gaining access to data, aligning data, understanding data, and resolving data quality issues; the context in and condition under which these challenges occur, the causes that lead to the challenges, and the related consequences such as having to conduct remediation activities, inability to achieve expected outcomes and lack of trust in the delivered solutions. We also identified contingencies or strategies applied to address the challenges including high-level strategic approaches such as implementing data governance, implementing new tools and techniques such as data quality visualisation and monitoring tools, as well as building stronger teams by focusing on people dynamics, communication skill development and cross-skilling. Our findings have direct implications for practitioners and researchers to better understand the landscape of data challenges and how to deal with them.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 22 pages, 4 Figures, 1 Tabl

Ocular biometry characteristics in cataract surgery candidates: A cross-sectional study

Background: This study was conducted to investigate ocular biometry parameters in cataract surgery candidates in northern Tehran, Iran using OA-2000 biometry device. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, values of ocular biometry parameters, including axial length (AL), anterior chamber depth (ACD), mean corneal curvature (mean K), lens thickness (LT), corneal astigmatism (CA), and white-to-white (WTW) of 818 eyes with cataracts, were measured using the OA-2000 biometry device (Tomey, Nagoya, Japan). The participants were divided into six age subgroups, in 10-year intervals. Finally, the values of the biometry parameters were calculated, and the trend of changes was examined for both age and sex subgroups. Results: The mean± standard deviation (SD) of age of the participants was 63.82 ± 13.25 years. Mean ± SD of biometry parameters were as follows: AL, 23.36 ± 1.55 mm; ACD, 3.09 ± 0.40 mm; LT, 4.45 ± 0.55 mm; mean K, 44.51 ± 1.72 D; CA, 1.06 ± 0.94 D; and WTW, 11.81 ± 0.45 mm. Most of the parameters showed significant age-related changes in the total population. There was an increase in LT (P < 0.001) and mean K (P = 0.001), as well as a decrease in AL (P < 0.001) and ACD (P < 0.001) with age. Moreover, AL had a negative negligible correlation with LT (r = -0.24, P < 0.001) and mean K (r = -026, P < 0.001), as well as a weak positive correlation with ACD (r = 0.44, P < 0.001). Conclusions: Our study revealed that the mean values of most biometric parameters varied across age and sex subgroups. Moreover, most of the parameters showed significant age-related changes in the total population

Developing "Code of Ethics for Medical Professionals, Medical Council of Islamic Republic of Iran"

Background: The medical profession has always been an inspiration for human societies throughout its diverse history. This position and historical authority in the field of ethics has had a different and higher status, in such a way that many of the norms of general ethics and professional ethics, especially principles, such as trust, confidentiality and respect for human dignity, have been developed by medical professionals. Developing guidelines of general and professional ethics is one of the inherent duties of the Medical Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRIMC) as a professional organization. In this regard, the Supreme Council of IRIMC has approved the "Code of Ethics for Medical Professionals"and, in accordance with its legal authority, has annexed it to the disciplinary regulations of IRIMC. Methods: A draft document, the result of extensive literature review, was discussed in 27 expert panel meetings and after receiving and endorsing the stakeholders' point of view, was approved by the IRIMC Supreme Council. Results: The first edition of "Code of Ethics for Medical Professionals, Medical Council of Islamic Republic of Iran"was developed on July 6, 2017 by the Supreme Council of IRIMC. The guideline was set to take effect one year after its enactment. The first edition was revised and completed and final edition was adopted on August 9, 2018 by IRIMC in 13 chapters and 140 articles (original full text is available in the Supplementary file 1). Conclusion: According to the approved decision by the Supreme Council of IRIMC on May 10, 2018, the final edition takes effect as of October 7, 2018. © 2020 The Author(s)

Combined deformation and solidification-driven porosity formation in aluminum alloys

In die-casting processes, the high cooling rates and pressures affect the alloy solidification and deformation behavior, and thereby impact the final mechanical properties of cast components. In this study, isothermal semi-solid compression and subsequent cooling of aluminum die-cast alloy specimens were characterized using fast synchrotron tomography. This enabled the investigation and quantification of gas and shrinkage porosity evolution during deformation and solidification. The analysis of the 4D images (3D plus time) revealed two distinct mechanisms by which porosity formed; (i) deformation-induced growth due to the enrichment of local hydrogen content by the advective hydrogen transport, as well as a pressure drop in the dilatant shear bands, and (ii) diffusion-controlled growth during the solidification. The rates of pore growth were quantified throughout the process, and a Gaussian distribution function was found to represent the variation in the pore growth rate in both regimes. Using a one-dimensional diffusion model for hydrogen pore growth, the hydrogen flux required for driving pore growth during these regimes was estimated, providing a new insight into the role of advective transport associated with the deformation in the mushy region

Evaluation of Antibiotic Resistance in Extended-spectrum Beta-lactamase (ESBL) Genes in the E. coli Isolates of Urinary Infections

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) enzymes hydrolyze cephalosporins and penicillins. This study aimed to determine the frequency of Escherichia coli strains producing SHV, TEM and CTX-M &beta-lactamase genes and their association by inducing antibiotic resistance. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, 55 E. coli strains were isolated from urinary samples and cultured on eosin methylene blue (EMB) agar and CHROMagar. After biochemical examinations, antibiotic susceptibility test was performed using the disk-diffusion method according to the guidelines of the Clinical & Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI). In addition, the presence of blaCTX-M, blaTEM and blaSHV genes was evaluated using specific multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primers. FINDINGS: In this study, the highest antibiotic resistance was observed against penicillin and erythromycin (96% and 94.5%, respectively), while the highest susceptibility was reported for ciprofloxacin and imipenem (67.2%). Out of 55 samples, 26(47.27%) had the TEM gene, and CTX-M gene was detected in 41 (74.54%) samples. Moreover, TEM and CTX-M genes were simultaneously detected in 32.72% of the samples, while in six samples (10.9%), neither of these genes were present. The SHV gene was not detected in any of the samples. CONCLUSION: According to the results of this study, the production of ESBL was identified in 70% of the investigated E. coli isolates. Therefore, accurate and timely medical care, as well as the use of appropriate antibiotics, is required to prevent the outbreak of ESBL-producing E. coli strains

Improving cloud-based online social network data placement and replication

Online social networks make it easier for people to find and communicate with other people based on shared interests, values, membership in particular groups, etc. Common social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have hundreds of millions or even billions of users scattered all around the world sharing interconnected data. Users demand low latency access to not only their own data but also theirfriends’ data, often very large, e.g. videos, pictures etc. However, social network service providers have a limited monetary capital to store every piece of data everywhere to minimise users’ data access latency. Geo-distributed cloud services with virtually unlimited capabilities are suitable for large scale social networks data storage in different geographical locations. Key problems including how to optimally store and replicate these huge datasets and how to distribute the requests to different datacenters are addressed in this paper. A novel genetic algorithm-based approach is used to find a near-optimal number of replicas for every user’s data and a near-optimal placement of replicas to minimise monetary cost while satisfying latency requirements for all users. Experiments on a large Facebook dataset demonstrate our technique’s effectiveness in outperforming other representative placement and replication strategies