Análise de impacto baseada em rastreabilidade de artefatos para linhas de produto de software

Software Product Line (SPL) consists of a software development paradigm, whose main focus is to identify features common and variability among applications in a specific domain. An LPS is designed to attend all products requirements from its product family. These requirements and LPS may have changes over time due to several factors, such as evolution of product requirements, evolution of the market, evolution of SLP process, evolution of the technologies used to develop the products. To handle these changes, LPS should be modified and evolve in order to not become obsolete, and adapt itself to new requirements. The Changes Impact Analysis is an activity that understand and identify what consequences these changes are cause on LPS. Impact Analysis on LPS may be supported by traceability relationships, which identify relationships between artefacts created during all phases of software development. Despite the solutions of change impact analysis based on traceability for software, there is a lack of solutions for assessing the change impact analysis based on traceability for LPS, since existing solutions do not include estimates specific to the artefacts of LPS. Thus, this paper proposes a process of change impact analysis and an tool for assessing the change impact through traceability of artefacts in LPS. For this purpose, we specified a process of change impact analysis that considers artifacts produced during the development of LPS. We have also implemented a tool which allows estimating and identifying artefacts and products of LPS affected from changes in other products, changes in class, changes in features, changes between releases of LPS and artefacts related to changes in core assets and variability. Finally, the results were evaluated through metrics

GeOntoQuery - um mecanismo de busca em bancos de dados geográficos baseado em ontologias

Geographic Information System (GIS) are computational tools used to capture, store, consult, manipulate, analyze and print geo-referenced data. A GIS is a multi-disciplinary system that can be used by different communities of users, each one having their own interest and knowledge. This way, different knowledge views about the same reality need to be combined, in such way to attend each community. This work presents a mechanism that allows different community users access the same geographic database without knowing its particular internal structure. We use geographic ontologies to support a common and shared understanding of a specific domain: the coral reefs. Using these ontologies' descriptions that represent the knowledge of the different communities, mechanisms are created to handle with such different concepts. We use equivalent classes mapping, and a semantic layer that interacts with the ontologies and the geographic database, and that gives to the user the answers about his/her queries, independently of the used terms

Reprogramming of distinct astroglial populations into specific neuronal subtypes in vitro and in vivo

Recently, the field of cellular reprogramming has been revolutionized by works showing the potential to directly lineage-reprogram somatic cells into neurons upon overexpression of specific transcription factors. This technique offers a promising strategy to study the molecular mechanisms of neuronal specification, identify potential therapeutic targets for neurological diseases and eventually repair the central nervous system damaged by neurological conditions. Notably, studies with cortical astroglia revealed the high potential of these cells to reprogram into neurons using a single neuronal transcription factor. However, it remains unknown whether astroglia isolated from different regions of the central nervous system have the same neurogenic potential and generate induced neurons (iN) with similar phenotypes. Similarly, little is known about the fate that iNs could adopt after transplantation in the brain of host animals. In this study we compare the potential to reprogram astroglial cells isolated from the postnatal cerebral cortex and cerebellum into iNs both in vitro and in vivo using the proneural transcription factors Neurogenin-2 (Neurog2) and Achaete scute homolog-1 (Ascl1). Our results indicate cerebellar astroglia can be reprogrammed into induced neurons (iNs) with similar efficiencies to cerebral cortex astroglia. Notably however, while iNs in vitro adopt fates reminiscent of cortical or cerebellar neurons depending on the astroglial population used for reprogramming, in situ, after transplantation in the postnatal and adult mouse brain, iNs adopt fates compatible with the region of integration. Thus, our data suggest that the origin of the astroglial population used for lineage-reprogramming affects the fate of iNs in vitro, but this imprinting can be overridden by environmental cues after grafting.