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Since December 2019, the world has been facing the life-threatening disease, named Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19), recognized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization. The response of the Emergency Medicine network, integrating "out-of-hospital" and "hospital" activation, is crucial whenever the health system has to face a medical emergency, being caused by natural or human-derived disasters as well as by a rapidly spreading epidemic outbreak. We here report the Pavia Emergency Medicine network response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The "out-of-hospital" response was analysed in terms of calls, rescues and missions, whereas the "hospital" response was detailed as number of admitted patients and subsequent hospitalisation or discharge. The data in the first 5 weeks of the Covid-19 outbreak (February 21-March 26, 2020) were compared with a reference time window referring to the previous 5 weeks (January 17-February 20, 2020) and with the corresponding historical average data from the previous 5 years (February 21-March 26). Since February 21, 2020, a sudden and sustained increase in the calls to the AREU 112 system was noted (+ 440%). After 5 weeks, the number of calls and missions was still higher as compared to both the reference pre-Covid-19 period (+ 48% and + 10%, respectively) and the historical control (+ 53% and + 22%, respectively). Owing to the overflow from the neighbouring hospitals, which rapidly became overwhelmed and had to temporarily close patient access, the population served by the Pavia system more than doubled (from 547.251 to 1.135.977 inhabitants, + 108%). To minimize the possibility of intra-hospital spreading of the infection, a separate "Emergency Department-Infective Disease" was created, which evaluated 1241 patients with suspected infection (38% of total ED admissions). Out of these 1241 patients, 58.0% (n = 720) were admitted in general wards (n = 629) or intensive care unit (n = 91). To allow this massive number of admissions, the hospital reshaped many general ward Units, which became Covid-19 Units (up to 270 beds) and increased the intensive care unit beds from 32 to 60. In the setting of a long-standing continuing emergency like the present Covid-19 outbreak, the integration, interaction and team work of the "out-of-hospital" and "in-hospital" systems have a pivotal role. The present study reports how the rapid and coordinated reorganization of both might help in facing such a disaster. AREU-112 and the Emergency Department should be ready to finely tune their usual cooperation to respond to a sudden and overwhelming increase in the healthcare needs brought about by a pandemia like the current one. This lesson should shape and reinforce the future.

Objectives To detect possible severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA contamination of inanimate surfaces in areas at high risk of aerosol formation by patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Methods Sampling was performed in the emergency unit and the sub-intensive care ward. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was extracted from swabbed surfaces and objects and subjected to real-time RT-PCR targeting RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and E genes. Virus isolation from positive samples was attempted in vitro on Vero E6 cells. Results Twenty-six samples were collected and only two were positive for low-level SARS-CoV-2 RNA, both collected on the external surface of continuous positive airway pressure helmets. All transport media were inoculated onto susceptible cells, but none induced a cytopathic effect on day 7 of culture. Conclusions Even though daily contact with inanimate surfaces and patient fomites in contaminated areas may be a medium of infection, our data obtained in real-life conditions suggest that it might be less extensive than hitherto recognized.

We describe clinical characteristics, treatments and outcomes of 44 Caucasian patients with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a single hospital in Pavia, Italy, from 21–28 February 2020, at the beginning of the outbreak in Europe. Seventeen patients developed severe disease, two died. After a median of 6 days, 14 patients were discharged from hospital. Predictors of lower odds of discharge were age > 65 years, antiviral treatment and for severe disease, lactate dehydrogenase > 300 mg/dL.

Objective: This study aimed to assess the role of Tocilizumab therapy (TCZ) in terms of ICU admission and mortality rate of critically ill patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia. Design: Patients with COVID-19 pneumonia were prospectively enrolled in SMAtteo COvid19 REgistry (SMACORE). A retrospective analysis of patients treated with TCZ matched using propensity score to patients treated with Standard Of Care (SOC) was conducted. Setting: The study was conducted at IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo Hospital, Pavia, Italy, from March 14, 2020 to March 27, 2020. Participants: Patients with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 hospitalized in our institution at the time of TCZ availability. Interventions: TCZ was administered to 21 patients. The first administration was 8 mg/kg (up to a maximum 800 mg per dose) of Tocilizumab intravenously, repeated after 12 h if no side effects were reported after the first dose. Main Outcomes and Measures: ICU admission and 7-day mortality rate. Secondary outcomes included clinical and laboratory data. Results: There were 112 patients evaluated (82 were male and 30 were female, with a median age of 63.55 years). Using propensity scores, the 21 patients who received TCZ were matched to 21 patients who received SOC (a combination of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and prophylactic dose of low weight heparin). No adverse event was detected following TCZ administration. This study found that treatment with TCZ did not significantly affect ICU admission (OR 0.11; 95% CI between 0.00 and 3.38; p = 0.22) or 7-day mortality rate (OR 0.78; 95% CI between 0.06 and 9.34; p = 0.84) when compared with SOC. Analysis of laboratory measures showed significant interactions between time and treatment regarding C-Reactive Protein (CRP), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), platelets and international normalized ratio (INR) levels. Variation in lymphocytes count was observed over time, irrespective of treatment. Conclusions: TCZ administration did not reduce ICU admission or mortality rate in a cohort of 21 patients. Additional data are needed to understand the effect(s) of TCZ in treating patients diagnosed with COVID-19.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) diagnosis is based on molecular detection of SARS‐CoV‐2 in respiratory samples such as nasal swab (NS) However, the evidence that NS in patients with pneumonia was sometimes negative raises the attention to collect other clinical specimens SARS‐CoV‐2 was shown in 10 3% rectal swabs (RS), 7 7% plasma, 1% urine, and 0% feces from 143 NS‐positive patients Potential infection by fluids different from respiratory secretion is possible but unlikely [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Pediatric Allergy & Immunology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use This abstract may be abridged No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract (Copyright applies to all Abstracts )

Architectural patterns and styles represent common solutions to recurrent problems. They encompass architectural knowledge about how to achieve holistic system quality. The relation between patterns (or styles) and quality attributes has been regularly addressed in the literature. However, there is a lack of a consolidated and systematically built reference capturing this relation and eventually making it available for reuse in the form of patterns-quality attributes knowledge. If captured, this knowledge can be used as an architectural decision framework where solutions (patterns) are strongly intertwined with quality (attributes). Such a framework should also contemplate variants and combinations of patterns. In order to create the framework, we first proposed a lightweight theory on the interaction of patterns/styles and quality attributes. That framework has been built by starting from a key study on the interaction between architectural patterns and quality attributes. We then challenged the theory against the systematic survey of a pilot set of primary studies. This paper presents the preliminary results of this survey on architectural patterns and styles, and their interaction with quality attributes. The preliminary results show that the initial theory can work as a platform for integrating the body of knowledge gathered through the analysis.

Software is widely used, and society increasingly depends on its reliability. However, software has become so complex and it evolves so quickly that we fail to keep it under control. Therefore, we propose intents: fundamental laws that capture a software systems’ intended behavior (resilient, secure, safe, sustainable, etc.). The realization of this idea requires novel theories, algorithms, tools, and techniques to discover, express, verify, and evolve software intents. Thus, future software systems will be able to verify themselves that they meet their intents. Moreover, they will be able to respond to deviations from intents through selfcorrection. In this article we propose a research agenda, outlining which novel theories, algorithms and tools are required.

Cyber-foraging is a technique to enable mobile de- vices to extend their computing power and storage by offloading computation or data to more powerful servers located in the cloud or in single-hop proximity. While there is a large amount of research in this area, the reality is that there are not many deployed, operational cyber-foraging systems. As these systems become more prevalent due to their proven benefits, combined with the emergence of micro data centers and edge clouds, a need will arise for guidance on their architecture and development. To start providing this guidance, we present a decision model based on a mapping of functional and non-functional requirements for cyber-foraging systems to a set of architectural tactics. The decision model was validated by developers to obtain an expert opinion on its correctness and usefulness for guiding the architecture, design, and evolution of cyber-foraging systems that meet their intended functional and non-functional requirements, while understanding the effects of decisions.

Background Neonatal units’ volume of activity, and other quantitative and qualitative variables, such as staffing, workload, work environment, care organization and geographical location, may influence the outcome of high risk newborns. Data about the distribution of these variables and their relationships among Italian neonatal units are lacking. Methods Between March 2010-April 2011, 63 neonatal intensive care units adhering to the Italian Neonatal Network participated in the SONAR Nurse study. Their main features and work environment were investigated by questionnaires compiled by the chief and by physicians and nurses of each unit. Twelve cross-sectional monthly-repeated surveys on different shifts were performed, collecting data on number of nurses on duty and number and acuity of hospitalized infants. Results Six hundred forty five physicians and 1601 nurses compiled the questionnaires. In the cross-sectional surveys 702 reports were collected, with 11082 infant and 3226 nurse data points. A high variability was found for units’ size (4–50 total beds), daily number of patients (median 14.5, range 3.4-48.7), number of nurses per shift (median 4.2, range 0.7-10.8) and number of team meetings per month. Northern regions performed better than Central and Southern regions for frequency of training meetings, qualitative assessment of performance, motivation within the unit and nursing work environment; mean physicians’ and nurses’ age increased moving from North to South. After stratification by terciles of the mean daily number of patients, the median number of nurses per shift increased at increasing volume of activity, while the opposite was found for the nurse-to-patient ratio adjusted by patients’ acuity. On average, in units belonging to the lower tercile there was 1 nurse every 2.5 patients, while in those belonging to the higher tercile the ratio was 1 nurse every 5 patients. Conclusions In Italy, there is a high variability in organizational characteristics and work environment among neonatal units and an uneven distribution of human resources in relation to volume of activity, suggesting that the larger the unit the greater the workload for each nurse. Urgent modifications in planning and organization of services are needed in order to pursue more efficient, homogeneous and integrated regionalized neonatal care systems.

The interest of organisations in becoming more environmentally sustainable by adopting green ICT solution is constantly growing. More and more initiatives have been proposed on energy efficiency computing, ranging from hardware to software solutions [10]. Accordingly, energy efficiency has become an important issue for industry as energy consumption of ICT systems grows and related energy footprint into realise important financial savings while decreasing the environmental impact of their systems—in terms of, for example, greenhouse gas emissions, e-waste and heat generation [9].

Over the last decades, the use of information and communications technology (ICT) and software systems has exploded, making our lives and work much more efficient. However, besides the benefits that ICT brings us, it also contributes significantly to environmental issues [11, 13], not only because of the electricity consumed by computers, data centres, networks or other ICT utilities but also due to the rapidly growing computation needs of emerging software systems that contribute significantly to ever-increasing energy demands and greenhouse gas emissions [1, 21]. Decreasing ICT operation expenses becomes more and more crucial. How to make ICT greener (i.e. environmentally sustainable) and how to develop greener software have been gaining significant attention [16, 17, 24].

Background: Although life-saving, intubation and mechanical ventilation can lead to complications including bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). In order to reduce the incidence of BPD, non-invasive ventilation (NIV) is increasingly used. Objective: The aim of our study was to describe changes in ventilator strategies and outcomes between 2006 and 2010 in the Italian Neonatal Network (INN). Design: Multicentre cohort study. Settings: 31 tertiary level neonatal units participating in INN in 2006 and 2010. Patients: 2465 preterm infants 23-30 weeks gestational age (GA) without congenital anomalies. Main outcomes measures: Death, BPD and other variables defined according to Vermont Oxford Network. Logistic regressions, adjusting for confounders and clustering for hospitals, were used. Results: Similar numbers of infants were studied between 2006 and 2010 (1234 in 2006 and 1231 in 2010). The baseline risk of populations studied (GA, birth weight and Vermont Oxford Network Risk-Adjustment score) did not change. After adjusting for confounding variables, infants receiving invasive mechanical ventilation decreased (OR=0.72, 95% CI 0.58 to 0.89) while NIV increased (OR=1.75, 95% CI 1.39 to 2.21); intubation in delivery room decreased (OR=0.64, 95% CI 0.51 to 0.79). Considering outcomes, there was a significant reduction in mortality (OR=0.73, 95% CI 0.55 to 0.96) and in the combined outcome mortality or BPD (OR=0.76, 95% CI 0.62 to 0.94). Conclusions: Despite a stable baseline risk, from 2006 to 2010, we observed a lower level of invasiveness, a reduction of mechanical ventilation and an increase of NIV use, and this was accompanied by a decrease in risk-adjusted mortality and BPD.

Service Orientation is a paradigm for exposing business functions as reusable services and enabling business partners to discover those services on demand. Several service-oriented methodologies have been proposed in both academia and industry. Few methodologies, however, do provide concrete yet pragmatic support for developing software that is truly service-oriented, supporting service-specific aspects and challenges. As a consequence, the design of software services that are in-line with service aspects is left up to the prudence of the developers. To fill this gap, this paper proposes a methodology that incorporates essential ingredients of SOA during analysis and design. The methodology focuses service inventories while consciously addressing the perspectives of both service providers and service consumers. By supporting service-oriented reasoning, our methodology results in better reusable services, and the available inventories aid the development of service-oriented systems in a more cost-effective way. This is of the essence in cloud computing, which is a fast-spreading business model promising high ROI and cost savings.

Architectural Knowledge (AK) is defined as the integrated representation of the software architecture of a software-intensive system or family of systems along with architectural decisions and their rationale, external influence and the development environment. The SHARK workshop series focuses on current methods, languages, and tools that can be used to extract, represent, share, apply, and reuse AK, and the experimentation and/or exploitation thereof. This sixth edition of SHARK will discuss, among other topics, the approaches for AK personalization, where knowledge is not codified through templates or annotations, but it is exchanged through the discussion between the different stakeholders. © 2011 ACM.

The state of the practice in enterprise and software architecture learnt that relevant architectural aspects should be illustrated in multiple views, targeting the various concerns of different stakeholders. This has been expressed a.o. in the ISO/IEC 42010 Standard on architecture descriptions. In the same vein, the research community observed that Architecture Description Languages, or ADLs, should be developed to address stakeholders' concerns concentrating on the use of viewpoints for their description. This notwithstanding, we notice today a proliferation of ADLs impervious to these guidelines. This imperviousness creates a gap between what the IT industry requires and what ADLs can provide. This gap makes it impossible for practitioners to choose and use the best-fit ADL for his/her requirements. To fill this gap, we must analyze the existing ADLs, and mine and make explicit their addressed concerns, views, viewpoints, and stakeholders. Such an explicit overview can provide practitioners with pragmatic information for selecting the most suitable ADL, and hence support them in the architecting process. This paper reports on initial results in this direction. Given a specific ADL (namely, DARWIN/FSP), it presents a feasibility study on the methodology mapping the concepts of the ISO/IEC 42010 on the DARWIN/FSP ADL. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.

Requirements are fundamental to any engineered system. They capture the key stakeholder functional needs, constraints on the operation of the system, and often form a basis for contracting, testing and acceptance [1, 2]. Architecture captures the structuring of software solutions, incorporating not just functional properties of a system but design rationale, multi-layer abstractions and architectural knowledge [3, 4]. One can not exist without the other. Requirements need to be realized in a software system, described in essence by appropriate software architectures. Architecture must deliver on specified functional and non-functional requirements in order for the software system to be at all useful.

This book describes current understanding and use of the relationship between software requirements and software architectures.

Migration of legacy systems to service-based systems constitutes a key challenge of service-oriented system engineering, namely rehabilitation of pre-existing enterprise assets while conforming to service engineering principles. Over a decade there has been an increasing interest in the approaches addressing SOA migration. These approaches mainly differ in 'what is migrated' and 'how the migration is performed'. Such differences aggravate achieving a general understanding of 'what SOA migration entails'. To solve this problem, we conducted a systematic review that extracts main migration categories, called SOA migration families, from the approaches proposed in the research community. Based on the results of the systematic review, we describe eight distinct families along with their characteristics and goals. These families represent a first frame of reference for SOA migration which brings order and enhances understanding on how migration can be carried out. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.

Architectural knowledge has been recognized by the software architecture community as a self-contained research area in software architecture, and brought along some promising research directions. In this workshop we discuss the issues that lead to the application of architectural knowledge in research and industrial practice, ongoing research and new ideas to advance the field. In its previous editions this workshop examined the state of the art and practice, future challenges and trends, and architectural knowledge as perceived by different research communities, including requirements engineering, service-oriented computing and international standardization. This fourth edition will discuss, among others, the application, experimentation, specialization and use of architectural knowledge theory and approaches. © 2009 IEEE.

The shift of the software architecture community towards architectural knowledge has brought along some promising research directions. In this workshop we discuss the issues that lead to the application of architectural knowledge in research and industrial practice as well as presenting ongoing research and new ideas to advance the field. We expect to examine the state of the art and practice and gauge future challenges and trends. This year's workshop has a strong emphasis on documenting, sharing, and reusing architectural rationale and design intent. © 2007 IEEE.

Introduction In 1973, Petrea Jacobsen described the first patient showing dysmorphic features, developmental delay and congenital heart disease (atrial and ventricular septal defect) associated to a 11q deletion, inherited from the father. Since then, more than 200 patients have been reported, and the chromosomal critical region responsible for this contiguous gene disorder has been identified. Patients’ presentation We report on two unrelated newborns observed in Italy affected by Jacobsen syndrome (JBS, also known as 11q23 deletion). Both patients presented prenatal and postnatal bleeding, growth and developmental delay, craniofacial dysmorphisms, multiple congenital anomalies, and pancytopenia of variable degree. Array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) identified a terminal deletion at 11q24.1-q25 of 12.5 Mb and 11 Mb, in Patient 1 and 2, respectively. Fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis of the parents documented a de novo origin of the deletion for Patient 1; parents of Patient 2 refused further genetic investigations. Conclusions Present newborns show the full phenotype of JBS including thrombocytopenia, according to their wide 11q deletion size. Bleeding was particularly severe in one of them, leading to a cerebral hemorrhage. Our report highlights the relevance of early diagnosis, genetic counselling and careful management and follow-up of JBS patients, which may avoid severe clinical consequences and lower the mortality risk. It may provide further insights and a better characterization of JBS, suggesting new elements of the genotype-phenotype correlations.

Background The ongoing pandemic of COVID-19 has underlined the importance of adopting effective infection prevention and control (IPC) measures in hospital and community settings. UV-based technologies represent promising IPC tools: their effective application for sanitation has been extensively evaluated in the past but scant, heterogeneous and not conclusive evidence is available on their effect on SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Methods With the aim of pooling the available evidence on the efficacy of UV technologies against coronaviruses, we conducted a systematic review following PRISMA guidelines, searching Medline, Embase and Cochrane Library, and the main clinical trials’ registries (WHO ICTRP, ClinicalTrials.gov, Cochrane and EU Clinical Trial Register). Quantitative data on studies’ interventionS were summarized in tables, pooled by different coronavirus species and strain, UV source, characteristics of UV light exposure and outcomes. Findings Eighteen papers met our inclusion criteria, published between 1972 and 2020. Six focused on SARS-CoV-2, four on SARS-CoV-1, one on MERS-CoV, three on seasonal coronaviruses, and four on animal coronaviruses. All were experimental studies. Overall, despite wide heterocenicity within included studies, complete inactivation of coronaviruses on surfaces or aerosolized, including SARS-CoV-2, was reported to take a maximum exposure time of 15 minutes and to need a maximum distance from the UV emitter up to 1 meter. Conclusion Advances in UV-based technologies in the field of sanitation and their proved high virucidal potential against SARS-CoV-2 support their use for IPC in hospital and community settings and their contribution towards ending the COVID-19 pandemic. National and international guidelines are to be updated and identify parameters and conditions of use to ensure both efficacy and safety of UV technology application for effective infection prevention and control in both healthcare and non-healthcare settings.

In the last few years, research and industrial communities have spent a considerable effort in the designing and early commissioning of digitalized manufacturing environments with the primary objective of achieving a new automation paradigm, more flexible, responsive to changes, and safe. This work presents the architecture and discusses the applications through a real-life case study, of a microservices-based middleware supporting the next generation of smart-factory applications with particular attention paid to simulation tools. The proposed platform aims at being among the first solutions capable of empowering industrial cyber-physical systems (CPSs), providing an environment that streamlines the management of digital twins along the whole plant life cycle. The platform features a distributed architecture based on microservices and big data best practices; it supports the definition of CPS digital representations and the handling of data conveyed from the shop floor for real-to-digital synchronization.

Background: Infants born at 23–24 weeks' gestation have the highest risk of developing a hemodynamically significant patent ductus arteriosus (hsPDA), that is refractory to pharmacological closure requiring surgical ligation. Thus, these patients might have the greatest benefits from hsPDA closure, although previous studies on PDA closure were not focused on this population. Aim: To compare the occurrence of hsPDA, failure rate of the first course of ibuprofen in closing hsPDA, and need of surgical closure in infants born at 23+0–24+6 weeks' gestation to those in infants born at 25+0–28+6 weeks' gestation. Study design: This is a retrospective multicenter study including infants born at 23+0–28+6 weeks of gestation admitted to the neonatal care units from January 2013 to December 2017. All infants underwent echocardiographical assessment for hsPDA diagnosis and eventually pharmacological treatment, and surgical closure. Results: We studied a total of 842 infants of which 562 (67%) developed a PDA. Among those with PDA, 511 (91%) received a pharmacological treatment for a hsPDA. We found that a hsPDA occurred in 70% (106/151) of infants born at 23–24 weeks and in 59% (405/691) of infants born at 25–28 weeks of gestation (P < 0.001). Failure of closure with the first-treatment cycle (69 vs. 40%; P < 0.001) and need of surgical closure (19 vs 10%) were more frequent (P < 0.011) in infants born at 23–24 than 25–28 gestational weeks. Paracetamol vs. ibuprofen treatment and gestational age of 23–24 versus 25–28 weeks increased closure failure, while less severe RDS and maternal clinical chorioamnionitis decreased it. Conclusions: Among extremely preterm infants, infants born at 23–24 weeks of gestation have the highest risk of developing a hsPDA refractory to pharmacological treatment requiring surgical closure. Our findings support the need of individualized more careful strategies for hsPDA management in this special population.

Context: Systematic Reviews (SRs) are means for collecting and synthesizing evidence from the identification and analysis of relevant studies from multiple sources. To this aim, they use a well-defined methodology meant to mitigate the risks of biases and ensure repeatability for later updates. SRs, however, involve significant effort. \ud Goal: The goal of this paper is to introduce a novel methodology that reduces the amount of manual tedious tasks involved in SRs while taking advantage of the value provided by human expertise. \ud Method: Starting from current methodologies for SRs, we replaced the steps of keywording and data extraction with an automatic methodology for generating a domain ontology and classifying the primary studies. This methodology has been applied in the Software Engineering sub-area of Software Architecture and evaluated by human annotators. \ud Results: The result is a novel Expert-Driven Automatic Methodology, EDAM, for assisting researchers in performing SRs. EDAM combines ontology-learning techniques and semantic technologies with the human-in-the-loop. The first (thanks to automation) fosters scalability, objectivity, reproducibility and granularity of the studies; the second allows tailoring to the specific focus of the study at hand and knowledge reuse from domain experts. We evaluated EDAM on the field of Software Architecture against six senior researchers. As a result, we found that the performance of the senior researchers in classifying papers was not statistically significantly different from EDAM. \ud Conclusions: Thanks to automation of the less-creative steps in SRs, our methodology allows researchers to skip the tedious tasks of keywording and manually classifying primary studies, thus freeing effort for the analysis and the discussion.

The intersection between software engineering research and the problems related to sustainability and green IT has been the subject of increasing attention. In spite of that, we observe that sustainability is still not clearly defined, or understood, in the field of software engineering. This lack of clarity leads to confusion about e.g. what is relevant to measure or the research implications over time or space. This paper provides an overview of how the research so far has defined sustainability, and how this definition has been used to guide which research areas. To this end, we carried out a systematic mapping study for selecting, classifying and analyzing relevant publications. In this study, we investigate which knowledge areas and which time scope of sustainability effects are mostly targeted in scientific research. Our analysis shows research trends and discusses gaps to be filled.

Consumer electronics (CE) products must be appealing to customers, have features that distinguish them in the market and be priced competitively. However, this must be achieved with limited hardware resources, so requirements engineers and architects must work together to specify an attractive product within these constraints. This requires an architectural description from early in devel-opment. The creation of this description is hampered by the lack of consensus on high-level architectural concepts for the CE domain and the rate at which novel features are added to products, so that old descriptions cannot simply be reused.\ud This chapter describes both the development of a reference architecture that addresses these problems and the process by which the requirements and architec-ture are refined together. The reference architecture is independent of specific functionality and is designed to be readily adopted. The architecture is informed by information mined from previous developments and organised to be reusable in different contexts. The interplay between the roles of requirements engineer and architect, mediated through the reference architecture, is described and illustrated with an example of integrating a new feature into a mobile phone.

This chapter gives an overview of the approaches supporting the establishment and the management of social networks aimed at knowledge sharing. We identify two approaches. The first approach is made of networks driven by technologies and potentially providing support for architecture knowledge management, like grid computing and peer-to-peer technologies. These were initially meant for implementing very specific and low level services; nowadays they cover broader spectra like knowledge management in a distributed setting and knowledge grids. The second approach is made of networks autonomously created from already existing social communities. These are further enabled by Web 2.0 technologies and services.