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As a particular case study of the formal verification of state-of-the-art, real software, we discuss the specification and verification of a corrected version of the implementation of a linked list as provided by the Java Collection Framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) is a security enforcement point or cloud-based software that is placed between cloud service users and cloud applications of cloud computing (CC) which is used to run the dimensionality, heterogeneity, and ambiguity correlated with cloud services. They permit the organization to amplify the reach of their security approaches past their claim framework to third-party computer programs and storage. In contrast to other systematic literature reviews (SLR), this one is directed at the client setting. To identify and evaluate methods to understand CASB, the SLR discusses the literature, citing a comprehension of the state-of-the-art and innovative characterization to describe. An SLR was performed to compile CASB related experiments and analyze how CASBs are designed and formed. These studies are then analyzed from different contexts, like motivation, usefulness, building approach, and decision method. The SLR has discussed the contrasts present between the studies and implementations, with planning accomplishments conducted with combinations of market-based courses of action, simulation tools, middleware's, etc. Search words with the keywords, which were extracted from the Research Questions (RQs), were utilized to recognize the essential consideration from the journal papers, conference papers, workshops, and symposiums. This SLR has distinguished 20 particular studies distributed from 2011 to 2021. Chosen studies were evaluated concurring to the defined RQs for their eminence and scope to particular CASB in this way recognizing a few gaps within the literature. Unlike other studies, this one concentrates on the customer's viewpoint. The survey uses a systematic analysis of the literature to discover and classify techniques for realizing CASB, resulting in a comprehensive grasp of the state-of-the-art and a novel taxonomy to describe CASBs. To assemble studies relating to CASB and investigate how CASB are engineered, a systematic literature review was done. These investigations are then evaluated from a variety of angles, including motivation, functionality, engineering approach, and methodology. Engineering efforts were directed at a combination of "market-based solutions", "middlewares", "toolkits", "algorithms", "semantic frameworks", and "conceptual frameworks", according to the study, which noted disparities in the studies' implementations. For further understanding, the different independent parameters influencing the CASB are studied using PCA (Principal Component Analysis). The outcome of their analysis was the identification of five parameters influencing the PCA analysis. The experimental results were used as input for Research Surface Methodology (RSM) to obtain an empirical model. For this, five-level coding was employed for developing the model and considered three dependent parameters and four center values. For more understanding of these independent variables' influence, on the CASB study, RSM analysis was employed. It was observed from the CCD (Central Composite Design) model that the actual values show significant influence with R2 = 0.90. This wide investigation reveals that CASB is still in a formative state. Even though vital advancement has been carried out in this zone, obvious challenges stay to be tended to, which have been highlighted in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software engineering is a socio-technical endeavor, and while many of our contributions focus on technical aspects, human stakeholders such as software developers are directly affected by and can benefit from our research and tool innovations. In this paper, we question how much of our research addresses human and social issues, and explore how much we study human and social aspects in our research designs. To answer these questions, we developed a socio-technical research framework to capture the main beneficiary of a research study (the who), the main type of research contribution produced (the what), and the research strategies used in the study (how we methodologically approach delivering relevant results given the who and what of our studies). We used this Who-What-How framework to analyze 151 papers from two well-cited publishing venues—the main technical track at the International Conference on Software Engineering, and the Empirical Software Engineering Journal by Springer—to assess how much this published research explicitly considers human aspects. We find that although a majority of these papers claim the contained research should benefit human stakeholders, most focus predominantly on technical contributions. Although our analysis is scoped to two venues, our results suggest a need for more diversification and triangulation of research strategies. In particular, there is a need for strategies that aim at a deeper understanding of human and social aspects of software development practice to balance the design and evaluation of technical innovations. We recommend that the framework should be used in the design of future studies in order to steer software engineering research towards explicitly including human and social concerns in their designs, and to improve the relevance of our research for human stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The study tests the effects of data collection modes on patient responses associated with the multi-item measures such as Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement System (PROMIS®), and single-item measures such as Patient-Reported Outcomes version of the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (PRO-CTCAE), and Numerical Rating Scale (NRS) measures. Methods: Adult cancer patients were recruited from five cancer centers and administered measures of anxiety, depression, fatigue, sleep disturbance, pain intensity, pain interference, ability to participate in social roles and activities, global mental and physical health, and physical function. Patients were randomized to complete the measures on paper (595), interactive voice response (IVR, 596) system, or tablet computer (589). We evaluated differential item functioning (DIF) by method of data collection using the R software package, lordif. For constructs that showed no DIF, we concluded equivalence across modes if the equivalence margin, defined as ± 0.20 × pooled SD, completely surrounds 95% confidence intervals (CI's) for difference in mean score. If the 95% CI fell totally outside the equivalence margin, we concluded systematic score difference by modes. If the 95% CI partly overlaps the equivalence margin, we concluded neither equivalence nor difference. Results: For all constructs, no DIF of any kind was found for the three modes. The scores on paper and tablet were more comparable than between IVR and other modes but none of the 95% CI's were completely outside the equivalence margins, in which we established neither equivalence nor difference. Percentages of missing values were comparable for paper and tablet modes. Percentages of missing values were higher for IVR (2.3% to 6.5% depending on measures) compared to paper and tablet modes (0.7% to 3.3% depending on measures and modes), which was attributed to random technical difficulties experienced in some centers. Conclusion: Across all mode comparisons, there were some measures with CI's not completely contained within the margin of small effect. Two visual modes agreed more than visual-auditory pairs. IVR may induce differences in scores unrelated to constructs being measured in comparison with paper and tablet. The users of the surveys should consider using IVR only when paper and computer administration is not feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refereed conferences require every submission to be reviewed by members of a program committee (PC) in charge of selecting the conference program. There are many software packages available to manage the review process. Typically, in a bidding phase PC members express their personal preferences by ranking the submissions. This information is used by the system to compute an assignment of the papers to referees (PC members). We study the problem of assigning papers to referees. We propose to optimize a number of criteria that aim at achieving fairness among referees/papers. Some of these variants can be solved optimally in polynomial time, while others are NP-hard, in which case we design approximation algorithms. Experimental results strongly suggest that the assignments computed by our algorithms are considerably better than those computed by popular conference management software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary on John Symons' and Jack Horner's paper, besides sharing its main argument, challenges the authors' statement that there is no effective method to evaluate software-intensive systems as a distinguishing feature of software intensive science. It is underlined here how analogous methodological limitations characterise the evaluations of empirical systems in non-software intensive sciences. The authors' claim that formal methods establish the correctness of computational models rather than of the represented programme is here compared with the empirical adequacy problem typifying the model-based reasoning approach in physics, and the remark that testing all the paths of a software-intensive system is unfeasible is related to the enumerative induction problem in the justification of empirical law-like hypotheses in non-software intensive sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today’s competitive market designing of digital systems (hardware as well as software) faces tremendous challenges. In fact, notwithstanding an ever decreasing project budget, time to market and product lifetime, designers are faced with an ever increasing system complexity and customer expected quality. The above situation calls for better and better formal verification techniques at all steps of the design flow. This special issue is devoted to publishing revised versions of contributions first presented at the 12th Advanced Research Working Conference on Correct Hardware Design and Verification Methods (CHARME) held 21–24 October 2003 in L’Aquila, Italy. Authors of well regarded papers from CHARME’03 were invited to submit to this special issue. All papers included here have been suitably extended and have undergone an independent round of reviewing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we describe the Interval Manager (INTMAN) software system for collecting time-sampled observational data and present a preliminary application comparing the program with a traditional paper-and-pencil method. INTMAN is a computer-assisted alternative to traditional paper-and-pencil methods for collecting fixed interval time-sampled observational data. The INTMAN data collection software runs on Pocket PC handheld computers and includes a desktop application for Microsoft Windows that is used for data analysis. Standard analysis options include modified frequencies, percent of intervals, conditional probabilities, and kappa agreement matrices and values. INTMAN and a standardized paper-and-pencil method were compared under identical conditions on five dimensions: setup time, duration of data entry, duration of interobserver agreement calculations, accuracy, and cost. Overall, the computer-assisted program was a more efficient and accurate data collection system for time-sampled data than the traditional method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information related to the scientific papers discussed in workshops which will be held on May 1, 2004. The topics to be discussed in session III are--'It is About the Money: Fundamentals of Financial Management of Radiology Businesses,' by L. Christopher Foley, 'The Long Night: Are You Up for It?,' by Philip L. Lund. The scientific paper 'Useful Software for Radiologists,' by Laurie Perry, Charles Grimes and Keith White discusses the practical computer skills to enhance radiology teaching and presentation in the age of digital imaging.

It has been argued that reporting software engineering experiments in a standardized way helps researchers find relevant information, understand how experiments were conducted and assess the validity of their results. Various guidelines have been proposed specifically for software engineering experiments. The benefits of such guidelines have often been emphasized, but the actual uptake and practice of reporting have not yet been investigated since the introduction of many of the more recent guidelines. In this research, we utilize a mixed-method study design including sequence analysis techniques for evaluating to which extent papers follow such guidelines. Our study focuses on the four most prominent software engineering journals and the time period from 2000 to 2020. Our results show that many experimental papers miss information suggested by guidelines, that no de facto standard sequence for reporting exists, and that many papers do not cite any guidelines. We discuss these findings and implications for the discipline of experimental software engineering focusing on the review process and the potential to refine and extend guidelines, among others, to account for theory explicitly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a society where computers have become ubiquitous, it is necessary to develop a broader understanding of the nature of computing and programming, not just from a technical viewpoint but also from a historical and philosophical perspective. Computers and computer programs do not exist in a vacuum. Instead, they are a part of a rich socio-technological context that provides ways for understanding computers and reasoning about programs. This includes not only formal logic, mathematics, sciences, and technology but also cognitive sciences and sociology. The focus of this special issue is on questions that arise when we consider computing and programming in a wider context. In particular, the papers in this special issue explore the interplay between computing or programming and mathematics, formal logic, sciences, technology, and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These days, Internet coverage and technologies are growing rapidly, hence, it makes the network more complex and heterogeneous. Software defined network (SDN) revolutionized the network architecture and simplified the network by separating the control and data plane. On the other hand, machine learning (ML) and its derivations have made the systems more intelligent. Many pieces of research papers have addressed ML and SDN. In this survey, we collected the papers published in Springer, Elsevier, IEEE, and ACM and addressed SDN and ML between 2016 and 2023. The research papers are organized based on the solutions, evaluation parameters, and evaluation environments to help those working on SDN and ML for improving the target functional or non-functional parameters. The research papers will be analyzed to extract the solutions, evaluation parameters and environments. The extracted solutions, evaluation parameters and environments will be clustered in this review paper. The research gap and future research directions will be stated in this work. This survey is completely useful for those who working on SDN and want to improve the functional and non-functional parameters using machine learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore trends in mother–child healthcare (MCHC) research over the past 30 years. Methods: Classifications of Medline articles were made at 5-year intervals using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) as classifiers. Papers were classified in mutually and non-mutually exclusive categories by subject (mother and four age groups of children) and type of research (clinical, basic, epidemiologic, and unclassified) and its various combinations. Results: The number of MCHC papers increased from 34,110 in 1966 to 65,028 in 1995, but the proportion of all Medline articles (18–21%) was relatively stable. There were remarkable long-term temporal stabilities in the proportions of MCHC papers of mothers and the four age groups of children. Most papers dealt with child (46%) and adolescents (45%), and only 11% studied mother and children together. Regression analysis indicated that a linear increase in number of MCHC papers in Medline (1053/year) was represented largely by single-age and combinations of age children, especially adolescence. However, the slope for mother-plus-children papers (113/year) was substantially higher than for mothers alone (64/year). Clinical papers (52%) were the dominant type of MCHC research, but the proportions of basic and epidemiologic papers and their combinations with clinical papers have increased substantially in the past decade. Conclusions: There has been a dominance of clinical and child-related papers in MCHC research, which may be a reflection of restricted outlooks of specialists in the area. This may change soon if the tendency toward increasing numbers of basic and epidemiologic papers holds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A preface to the periodical "Journal of Automated Reasoning" is presented.

This document is a guest editorial for a special issue of the journal "Programming & Computer Software" titled "Recent Trends on Advanced Computing: The Converging Technologies." The issue features research and practical implementation results from researchers and industry experts in computer science, engineering, and technology. The papers cover a range of topics including microservices, software quality, user engagement on social media, non-functional requirements, medical software architecture, fallacies in political speeches, intelligent learning environments, and more. The guest editors for this special issue are Prof. Dr. Andrei Tchernykh, Prof. Reyes Juárez Ramírez, Dr. Esteban Mocskos, and Prof. Sergio Nesmachnow. [Extracted from the article]

This special section is devoted to a selection of papers that appeared originally in the Proceedings of TACAS 2001, the 7th International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems [1] which took place in Genova, Italy in April 2001 as a constituent event of the European joint conferences on theory and Practice of Software. All papers present approaches, tools and algorithms that aim at extending the scope of formal techniques (coverage of systems specifications, data structures, size, and their trade-offs) for validation, verification, and testing of software systems. They are by no means a complete account of the numerous ways in which real software and software systems may become subject to rigorous investigation, but they provide an interesting sampling of novel approaches towards scalability of formal methods-based validation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simulation-based optimization for industrial processlines is discussed in this paper. Our approach combinesmultidisciplinary modeling, modern sensitivity analysismethodology as well as multiobjective optimization bymeans of object-oriented software design principles. As aresult, a simulation and optimization approach that can beextended and modified due to users' needs can be developed.Our approach is illustrated by a real-world examplefrom papermaking industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relevant data on sensitive and politicised political processes might be difficult to obtain and is sometimes even purposely hidden from the public domain. Policy elite interviews constitute crucial sources of information in policy research. However, there are significant challenges associated with 'researching up' which sets elite interviews apart from other interview methods. Although there is a great deal of literature concerning interviews conducted via phone or audio-visual computer programs, the implications of conducting policy elite interviews online have received surprisingly little attention. This paper discusses how going online can mediate the main challenges associated with policy elite interviews. These challenges include barriers to gaining access, dealing with biased information, and problems concerning positionality. Based on a least likely case to access relevant data, this paper reflects on personal experience from 20 online interviews with European Commission representatives on policy responses to the 2015 migration crisis. The paper concludes that the online format facilitated unique insights into a highly controversial issue area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a retrospective of 25 years of the International Conference on AI and Law, which was first held in 1987. Fifty papers have been selected from the thirteen conferences and each of them is described in a short subsection individually written by one of the 24 authors. These subsections attempt to place the paper discussed in the context of the development of AI and Law, while often offering some personal reactions and reflections. As a whole, the subsections build into a history of the last quarter century of the field, and provide some insights into where it has come from, where it is now, and where it might go. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various topics within the issue, including one by Dennis Giffhorn and Christian Hammer on the precise slicing of concurrent programs, one by Mariano Cecato on barrier slicing for identification of boundery computation, and one by Andreas Lochbihler and Gregor Snelting on temporal path conditions.

Mathematics, as a subject dealing with abstract concepts, poses a special challenge for educators. In students' experience, the subject is often associated with (potentially) unflattering adjectives — “austere”, “remote”, “depersonalized”, and so forth. This paper describes a computer program named HyperGami whose purpose is to alleviate this harsh portrait of the mathematical enterprise. HyperGami is a system for the construction of decorated paper polyhedral. shapes; these shapes may be combined into larger polyhedral sculptures, which we have dubbed “orihedra.” In this paper, we illustrate the methods by which orihedra may be created from HyperGami solids (using the construction of a particular sculpture as an example); we describe our experiences with elementary- and middle-school students using HyperGami to create orihedra; we discuss the current limitations of HyperGami as a sculptural medium; and we outline potential directions for future research and software development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe the development of software that allows and automates the routine inclusion of nondigital paper-based data directly into DICOM examinations. No human intervention is required. The software works by allowing the direct faxing of nondigital paper-based patient data directly into DICOM imaging examinations and is added as the first series in the examination. The software is effective in any typical PACS/DICOM server environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an introduction to the articles related to software model checking published in the May 2005 issue of the journal "International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer."

The Sunway TaihuLight is the first supercomputer built entirely with domestic processors in China. On Sunway Taihulight, the local data memory (LDM) of the slave core is limited, so data transmission with the main memory is frequent during calculation, and the memory access efficiency is low. On the other hand, for many scientific computing programs, how to solve the storage problem of irregular access data is the key to program optimization. Software cache (SWC) is one of the effective means to solve these problems. Based on the characteristics of Sunway TaihuLight structure and irregular access, this paper designs and implements a new software cache structure by using part of the space in LDM to simulate the cache function, which uses new cache address mapping and conflicts solution to solve high data access overhead and storage overhead in a traditional cache. At the same time, the SWC uses the register communication between the slave cores to share on the different slave core LDMs, increasing the capacity of the software cache and improving the hit rate. In addition, we adopt a double buffer strategy to access regular data in batches, which hides the communication overhead between the slave core and the main memory. The test results on the Sunway TaihuLight platform show that the software cache structure in this paper can effectively reduce the program running time, improve the software cache hit rate, and achieve a better optimization effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays many tools are in use in processes related to handling bug reports, feature requests, supporting questions or similar related issues which should be handled during software development or maintenance. Part of them use machine learning techniques. In introduction is presented a review of fundamental methods used for evaluation of machine learning models. This paper points out weak points of currently used metrics for evaluation in specific context of the cases related to software development especially bug reports. The disadvantages of state of the art are related to disregarding time dependencies which are important to be applied for creating train and test sets as they may have impact on results. Extensive research of the art has been conducted and has not been found any article with the use of time dependencies for evaluation of machine learning models in the context of works related to software development applications like machine learning solutions to supporting bug tracking systems. This paper introduces a novel solution which is devoid of these drawbacks. Experimental research showed the effectiveness of the introduced method and significantly different results obtained compared to the state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study conducted a scoping review of publications in mobile Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning for mathematics. Papers published between 2007 and 2021 inclusive were retrieved from research databases to achieve this goal. Twenty-eight papers met the inclusion–exclusion criteria of the study. It was shown that two papers were published on average over the last 15 years. The majority of the papers were published in peer-reviewed journals. Intending to improve mathematics pedagogy, the two most popular math mCSCL contents were general elementary mathematics and geometry. The review also revealed that math mCSCL benefited elementary students the most. The majority of math mCSCL software was custom-built and designed for synchronous sharing. The research designs were consistent with the existing reviews. The effects on social and attitude skills, as well as mathematics competency, were the most frequently mentioned benefits of math mCSCL. Usability issues, device unfamiliarity, inability to track students' activities, synchronization, and coordination concerns were among the problems highlighted during the implementation of math mCSCL. The implications for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of computer technology and artificial intelligence today, human–computer interaction based solely on computer software operations is far from being able to meet human requirements for computer use. People are looking forward to a more convenient and fast human–computer interface. This paper studies the expression dynamic capture and 3D animation generation methods based on deep learning. For facial expression dynamic capture, this paper proposes a facial feature extraction algorithm based on deep learning and uses SVM technology for feature classification. For 3D animation, C++ and OpenGL are used for rendering simulation. The experimental results show that the face detection algorithm proposed in this paper has good performance in both accuracy and speed. It can realize real-time detection of face regions in video images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE). This issue contains an introduction of the best papers presented during the conference on requirements activities in the fields of systems and software engineering. The conference was held at the University of Paris 1-Pantheon Sorbonne.

This paper identifies the ethical issues associated with college instructors' use of plagiarism detection software (PDS), specifically the Turnitin program. It addresses the pros and cons of using such software in higher education, arguing that its use is justified on the basis that it increases institutional trust, and demonstrating that two common criticisms of such software are not universally valid. An analysis of the legal issues surrounding Turnitin, however, indicates that the way it is designed and operates raises some ethical issues because it denies students notice, access and choice about the treatment of their personal information. The paper concludes with a set of guidelines for instructors using Turnitin in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academic portfolio has become an integral part of the promotions process. Creating and maintaining an academic portfolio in paper-based or web-based formats can be a cumbersome and time-consuming task. In this article, we describe an alternative way to efficiently organize an academic portfolio using a reference manager software, and discuss some of the afforded advantages. The reference manager software Papers (Mekentosj, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) was used to create an academic portfolio. The article outlines the key steps in creating and maintaining a digital academic portfolio. Using reference manager software (Papers), we created an academic portfolio that allows the user to digitally organize clinical, teaching, and research accomplishments in an indexed library enabling efficient updating, rapid retrieval, and easy sharing. To our knowledge, this is the first digital portfolio of its kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of research work on how uncertainty is currently represented in software models. The survey presents the definitions and current research status of different proposals for addressing uncertainty modeling and introduces a classification framework that allows to compare and classify existing proposals, analyze their current status and identify new trends. In addition, we discuss possible future research directions, opportunities and challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Isotonic exercise is the most common mode of strength training. Isotonic strength is often measured in the movement that was exercised, but isometric and isokinetic movements are also commonly used to quantify changes in muscular strength. Previous research suggests that increasing strength in one movement may not lead to an increase in strength in a different movement. Quantifying the increase in strength in a movement not trained may be important for understanding strength training adaptations and making recommendations for resistance exercise and rehabilitation programs. Objective: To quantify changes in non-specific strength relative to a control. Design: A systematic review and random effects meta-analysis was conducted investigating the effects of isotonic strength training on isotonic and isokinetic/isometric strength. Search and Inclusion: This systematic review was conducted in Google scholar, PubMed, Academic Search Premier, and MENDELEY. To be included in this review paper the article needed to meet the following criteria: (1) report sufficient data for our variables of interest (i.e., changes in isotonic strength and changes in isokinetic or isometric strength); (2) include a time-matched non-exercise control; (3) be written in English; (4) include healthy human participants over the age of 18 years; (5) the participants had to train and test isotonically; (6) the participants had to be tested isokinetically or isometrically on a device different from that they trained on; (7) the non-specific strength task had to test a muscle involved in the training (i.e., could not have trained chest press and test handgrip strength); and (8) the control group and the experimental group had to perform the same number of strength tests. Results: We completed two separate searches. In the original search a total of 880 papers were screened and nine papers met the inclusion criteria. In the secondary search a total of 2594 papers were screened and three additional papers were added (total of 12 studies). The overall effect of resistance training on changes in strength within a movement that was not directly trained was 0.8 (Cohen's d) with a standard error of 0.286. This overall effect was significant (t = 2.821, p = 0.01) and the 95% confidence interval (CI) is 0.22–1.4. The overall effect of resistance training on strength changes within a movement that was directly trained was 1.84 (Cohen's d) with a standard error of 0.296. This overall effect was significant (t = 6.221, p < 0.001) and the 95% CI is 1.23–2.4. Conclusion: The results of our meta-analysis suggest that strength increases in both the specific and non-specific strength tests. However, the smaller effect size associated with non-specific strength suggests that it will be difficult for a single study to meaningfully investigate the transfer of strength training adaptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Triage is a system used to prioritise patients as they enter the emergency department (ED) based on their need for urgent care. In recent decades, EDs have becoming increasingly overcrowded, leading to longer pre-triage waiting times for patients. E-triage interventions like kiosks have been proposed as a solution to overcrowding. We conducted a literature review into the effectiveness of kiosks in improving triage efficiency. After rigorously searching five biomedical databases and screening candidate articles in Endnote, we identified nine papers pertaining to the introduction of kiosks in emergency departments. Six articles had positive findings—with E-triage interventions improving some aspect of the triage process—such as reducing pre-triage times. Conversely, only three articles reported negative findings, such as low uptake. Consequently, EDs should consider introducing kiosks to complement the current nurse-led triage process and thereby promote better patient outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 27th International Symposium on Model Checking Software, SPIN 2021, was held online, July 12, 2021. The current special issue contains extended versions of three selected works published at the symposium. This short introduction presents these selected papers and the selection process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software engineering (SE) research should be relevant to industrial practice. There have been regular discussions in the SE community on this issue since the 1980's, led by pioneers such as Robert Glass. As we recently passed the milestone of "50 years of software engineering", some recent positive efforts have been made in this direction, e.g., establishing "industrial" tracks in several SE conferences. However, many researchers and practitioners believe that we, as a community, are still struggling with research relevance and utility. The goal of this paper is to synthesize the evidence and experience-based opinions shared on this topic so far in the SE community, and to encourage the community to further reflect and act on the research relevance. For this purpose, we have conducted a Multi-vocal Literature Review (MLR) of 54 systematically-selected sources (papers and non peer-reviewed articles). Instead of relying on and considering the individual opinions on research relevance, mentioned in each of the sources, the MLR aims to synthesize and provide the "holistic" view on the topic. The highlights of our MLR findings are as follows. The top three root causes of low relevance, discussed in the community, are: (1) Researchers having simplistic views (or wrong assumptions) about SE in practice; (2) Lack of connection with industry; and (3) Wrong identification of research problems. The top three suggestions for improving research relevance are: (1) Using appropriate research approaches such as action-research; (2) Choosing relevant (practical) research problems; and (3) Collaborating with industry. By synthesizing all the discussions on this important topic so far, this paper aims to encourage further discussions and actions in the community to increase our collective efforts to improve the research relevance. Furthermore, we raise the need for empirically-grounded and rigorous studies on the relevance problem in SE research, as carried out in other fields such as management science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study provides an overview of the research activity carried out in the field of cybernetics. To do so, all research papers from 1997 to 2011 (16,445 research papers) under the category of 'Computer Science, Cybernetics' of Web of Science have been processed using our in-house software which is developed specifically for this purpose. Among its multiple capabilities, this software analyses individual and compound keywords, quantifies productivity taking into account the work distribution, estimates the impact of each article and determines the collaborations established at different scales. Keywords analysis identifies the evolution of the most important research topics in the field of cybernetics and their specificity in biological aspects, as well as the research topics with lesser interest. The analysis of productivity, impact and collaborations provides a framework to assess research activity in a specific and realistic context. The geographical and institutional distribution of publications reveals the leading countries and research centres, analysing their relation to main research journals. Moreover, collaborations analysis reveals great differences in terms of internationalization and complexity of research networks. The results of this study may be very useful for the characterization and the decisions made by research in the field of cybernetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the design of a Coherence-Free Processor (CFP) that enables a scalable multiprocessor by eliminating cache coherence operations in both hardware and software. The CFP uses a coherence-free cache (CFC) that can improve the cost-effectiveness and performance-effectiveness of the existing multiprocessors for commonly used workloads. The CFC is feasible because not all program data that reside in a multiprocessor cache need to be accessed by other processors, and private caches at level 1 (L1) and level 2 (L2) facilitate this method of sharing. Reentrant programs are specifically designed to protect their data from modification by other tasks. Program data that are modified but not shared with other tasks do not require a coherence protocol. Adding processors reduces the multitasking queue, reducing elapsed time. Simultaneous execution replaces concurrent execution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including research papers from Embedded SystemsWeek (ESWEEK) 2011, and papeprs from International Conference on Embedded Software (EMSOFT 2011).

The systematic review (SR) is a methodology used to find and aggregate all relevant existing evidence about a specific research question of interest. One of the activities associated with the SR process is the selection of primary studies, which is a time consuming manual task. The quality of primary study selection impacts the overall quality of SR. The goal of this paper is to propose a strategy named 'Score Citation Automatic Selection' (SCAS), to automate part of the primary study selection activity. The SCAS strategy combines two different features, content and citation relationships between the studies, to make the selection activity as automated as possible. Aiming to evaluate the feasibility of our strategy, we conducted an exploratory case study to compare the accuracy of selecting primary studies manually and using the SCAS strategy. The case study shows that for three SRs published in the literature and previously conducted in a manual implementation, the average effort reduction was 58.2 % when applying the SCAS strategy to automate part of the initial selection of primary studies, and the percentage error was 12.98 %. Our case study provided confidence in our strategy, and suggested that it can reduce the effort required to select the primary studies without adversely affecting the overall results of SR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a novel Moth-Flame Optimization (MFO) algorithm, namely MFO algorithm enhanced by Multiple Improvement Strategies (MISMFO) is proposed for solving parameter optimization in Multi-Kernel Support Vector Regressor (MKSVR), and the MISMFO-MKSVR model is further employed to deal with the software effort estimation problems. In MISMFO, the logistic chaotic mapping is applied to increase initial population diversity, while the mutation and flame number phased reduction mechanisms are carried out to improve the search efficiency, as well the adaptive weight adjustment mechanism is used to accelerate convergence and balance exploration and exploitation. The MISMFO model is verified on fifteen benchmark functions and CEC 2020 test set. The results show that the MISMFO has advantages over other meta-heuristic algorithms and MFO variants in terms of convergence speed and accuracy. Additionally, the MISMFO-MKSVR model is tested by simulations on five software effort datasets and the results demonstrate that the proposed model has better performance in software effort estimation problem. The Matlab code of MISMFO can be found at https://github.com/loadstar1997/MISMFO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software aging is a problem of progressive degradation of performance and dependability in computer programs, especially those executing for long period of time. The complexity of modern software systems poses significant challenges to model and design mitigation techniques for software aging. The seventh paper by Junjun Zheng et al. on "A Transient Interval Reliability Analysis for Software Rejuvenation Models with Phase Expansion" focused on the phase expansion approach for solving the transient solutions for the basic software rejuvenation models. [Extracted from the article]

In this full review paper, the recent emerging trends in Computing Structures, Software Science, and System Applications have been reviewed and explored to address the recent topics and contributions in the era of the Software and Computing fields. This includes a set of rigorously reviewed world-class manuscripts addressing and detailing state-of-the-art, framework, implemented approaches and techniques research projects in the areas of Software Technology & Automation, Networking, Systems, Computing Sciences and Software Engineering, Big Data and E-learning. Based on this systematic review, we have put some recommendations and suggestions for researchers, practitioners and scholars to improve their research quality in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The computer-assisted resuscitation algorithm (CARA) is the software component of an automatic infusion pump system being designed by US Army’s Walter Reed Institute of Research (WRAIR) to be used in the battlefields of tomorrow. Such medical devices are safety critical, and their use needs to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – a process on which formal methods can have a great impact. In this special section, six papers on the analysis of CARA’s requirements are presented. In the rest of this introduction, we present the framework and summary of results from those papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a computer-assisted program for conducting well-body assessments of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities attending a private special education school. Classroom instructors completed daily assessments to detect the presence of bodily injuries and other skin trauma, determine the need for medical treatment, and monitor healing status. Evaluations performed with the classroom instructors revealed that they implemented the program with high integrity and rated several procedural components favorably. Compared to "paper form" data recording, clinicians and supervisors judged the computer-assisted program to track student injuries more thoroughly and record student injuries more accurately. The importance of health monitoring among persons with neurodevelopmental disabilities, advantages of technology-based assessment methods, and practice considerations are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The architecture and interaction of elements of specialized software for digital discrete sampling of analog paper-recorded electroencephalograms is discussed. Particular attention is given to algorithms for digital image processing and pattern recognition methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the editorial of the Special Issue "Open Source Geospatial Software", which features 10 published papers. The editorial introduces the concept of openness and, within the geospatial context, declines it into the three main components of software, data and standards. According to this classification, the papers published in the Special Issue are briefly summarized and a future research agenda in the open geospatial domain is finally outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]