Gabriela Guedes

STREAM-ADD - Supporting the Documentation of Architectural Design Decisions in an Architecture Derivation Process

Requirements Engineering and Architectural Design are activities of the software development process that are strongly related and intertwined. Thus, providing effective methods of integration between requirements and architecture is an important Software Engineering challenge. In this context, the STREAM process presents a model-driven approach to generate early software architecture models from requirements models. Despite being a systematic derivation approach, STREAM does not support the documentation of architectural decisions and their corresponding rationale. Recent studies in the software architecture community have stressed the need to treat architectural design decisions and their rationale as first class citizens in software architecture specification. In this paper we define an extension of this process, named STREAM-ADD (Strategy for Transition between Requirements and Architectural Models with Architectural Decisions Documentation). This extended process aims to systematize the documentation of architectural decisions by the time they are made and to support the refinement of the architecture according to such decisions. In order to illustrate our approach, it was applied for creating the architecture specification of a route-planning system.

Variability Management in Dynamic Software Product Lines: A Systematic Mapping

Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPLs) are SPLs in which the product configuration may occur at runtime. Over the last decade, DSPL has gained the interest of researchers as a way of modelling and developing dynamically adaptive systems. We have conducted a systematic mapping to discover how variability is modelled in DSPL approaches and which information is used to guide variability binding at runtime. This paper presents the results of our systematic mapping, which can be used to identify research trends and gaps for variability management in DSPLs.

Core Ontology to Aid the Goal Oriented Specification for Self-Adaptive Systems

[Context] Self-adaptive systems are able to modify their own behavior according to the environment in which they are inserted. Ontology is a set of concepts and relations about a specific domain and can help in the requirements communication. The core ontology for self-adaptive systems does not cover the four groups goal-oriented modeling dimensions for self-adaptive systems (goal, change, mechanism and effects). [Objective] This paper aims to complete the core ontology for self-adaptive systems in order to facilitate the requirements elicitation and specification. [Method] We had performed a comparative study in order to realize the modeling dimensions supported by the goal-oriented approaches for self-adaptive systems. So, we complete the core ontology for self-adaptive systems with the modeling dimensions concepts. [Results] As result, we present some concepts and relationships required when modeling a self-adaptive systems. [Conclusion] We obtained more complete core ontology to assist the requirements elicitation and specification for self-adaptive systems.

Single-tube nested PCR assay with in-house DNA extraction for Mycobacterium tuberculosis detection in blood and urine.

INTRODUCTION Molecular analyses are auxiliary tools for detecting Kochs bacilli in clinical specimens from patients with suspected tuberculosis (TB). However, there are still no efficient diagnostic tests that combine high sensitivity and specificity and yield rapid results in the detection of TB. This study evaluated single-tube nested polymerase chain reaction (STNPCR) as a molecular diagnostic test with low risk of cross contamination for detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis in clinical samples. METHODS Mycobacterium tuberculosis deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was detected in blood and urine samples by STNPCR followed by agarose gel electrophoresis. In this system, reaction tubes were not opened between the two stages of PCR (simple and nested). RESULTS STNPCR demonstrated good accuracy in clinical samples with no cross contamination between microtubes. Sensitivity in blood and urine, analyzed in parallel, was 35%-62% for pulmonary and 41%-72% for extrapulmonary TB. The specificity of STNPCR was 100% in most analyses, depending on the type of clinical sample (blood or urine) and clinical form of disease (pulmonary or extrapulmonary). CONCLUSIONS STNPCR was effective in detecting TB, especially the extrapulmonary form for which sensitivity was higher, and had the advantage of less invasive sample collection from patients for whom a spontaneous sputum sample was unavailable. With low risk of cross contamination, the STNPCR can be used as an adjunct to conventional methods for diagnosing TB.

Osteoarticular tuberculosis in an HIV-positive patient: a case report

The authors report a case of a 38-year-old HIV-positive woman, with subcutaneous nodules on the thoracic region with 3 months of evolution. Clinical, laboratory, and epidemiological features were evaluated and associated with apparent damage to the T11-T12 vertebrae, identification by imaging tests, positivity in a polymerase chain reaction-based test, and reactivity to the Mantoux tuberculin skin test (PPD-RT 23). The patient was diagnosed with osteoarticular tuberculosis and received treatment for a year, and clinical cure was achieved.