Tool-supported identification of functional concerns in object-oriented code

Concern identification aims to find the implementation of a functional concern in existing source code. In this work, concerns are described, using the Hierarchic Concern Model, as gray-boxes containing subconcerns, inputs, and outputs. The inputs and outputs are used as concern seeds to identify data-oriented abstractions of concern implementations, called concern skeletons. The identification approach is based on context free language reachability and supported by a tool, called CoDEx

An ethnobotanical study of medicinal plants of the Agadir Ida Ou Tanane province (southwest Morocco)

Objective: As part of the development of natural heritage of Morocco, an ethnobotanical study was conducted in the region of Agadir Ida Ou Tanane (Southwest Morocco) with the aim to collect detailed information about the usage of plants in human therapy.Methodology and results: The survey was carried out over a period of 24 months, by means of semi-structured and structured interviews. A total of 400 interviews were done with traditional health practitioners and knowledgeable villagers. Data collected was on, vernacular names of plants, their uses, parts used and mode of preparation. Other information about users was also collected such as age, sex, level of education. A total of 110 plants species belonging to 53 families and 95 genera were inventoried with 7.27 % of the species endemic to Morocco. Plants frequently used were: Thymus satureioides (Tazouknnit, Zaitra), Thymus broussonnetii (Azoukni, Zaater), Argania spinosa (Argan), Tetraclinis articulata (Azouka, Aârar) and Lavandula dentate (Igerch, Halhal). The elderly (more than 50 years) have more knowledge in medicinal plants with regard to the other age groups, this indicates that knowledge was acquired by long experience accumulated.Conclusion and application of results: This survey shows that traditional medicine is still used and constituted a very rich heritage in Agadir Ida Ou Tanane Region. The collected data may help to avoid the loss of traditional knowledge on the use of medicinal plants detained in the study area, and represent the preliminary information required in view of a future phytochemical investigation on the most used plants.Key words: Ethnobotanical survey, medicinal plants, phytotherapy, Agadir Ida Ou Tanane province, southwest of Morocco

Exploiting Hopsets: Improved Distance Oracles for Graphs of Constant Highway Dimension and Beyond

For fixed h >= 2, we consider the task of adding to a graph G a set of weighted shortcut edges on the same vertex set, such that the length of a shortest h-hop path between any pair of vertices in the augmented graph is exactly the same as the original distance between these vertices in G. A set of shortcut edges with this property is called an exact h-hopset and may be applied in processing distance queries on graph G. In particular, a 2-hopset directly corresponds to a distributed distance oracle known as a hub labeling. In this work, we explore centralized distance oracles based on 3-hopsets and display their advantages in several practical scenarios. In particular, for graphs of constant highway dimension, and more generally for graphs of constant skeleton dimension, we show that 3-hopsets require exponentially fewer shortcuts per node than any previously described distance oracle, and also offer a speedup in query time when compared to simple oracles based on a direct application of 2-hopsets. Finally, we consider the problem of computing minimum-size h-hopset (for any h >= 2) for a given graph G, showing a polylogarithmic-factor approximation for the case of unique shortest path graphs. When h=3, for a given bound on the space used by the distance oracle, we provide a construction of hopset achieving polylog approximation both for space and query time compared to the optimal 3-hopset oracle given the space bound

Time-reparametrization invariances, multithermalization and the Parisi scheme

The Parisi scheme for equilibrium and the corresponding slow dynamics with multithermalization - same temperature common to all observables, different temperatures only possible at widely separated timescales -- imply one another. Consistency requires that two systems brought into infinitesimal coupling be able to rearrange their timescales in order that all their temperatures match: this time reorganisation is only possible because the systems have a set of time-reparametrization invariances, that are thus seen to be an essential component of the scenario