The Software Product Lines (SPLs) paradigm promises faster development cycles and increased quality by systematically reusing software assets. This paradigm considers a family of systems, each of which can be obtained by a selection of features in a variability model. Though essential, providing Quality Assurance (QA) techniques for SPLs has long been perceived as a very difficult challenge due...

Robots will increasingly take on roles in our social lives where they can cause humans harm. When robots do so, will people hold robots morally accountable? To investigate this question, 40 undergraduate students individually engaged in a 15-minute interaction with ATR’s humanoid robot, Robovie. The interaction culminated in a situation where Robovie incorrectly assessed the participant’s perfo...

To increase a player’s immersion in the game world, its objects should behave as one would reasonably expect. For this, it is now becoming increasingly clear that what game objects really miss is richer semantics, not eye-catching visuals. Current games’ lack of semantics is mostly due to the difficulty of game designers to realize such complex objects. This paper proposes a solution to this pr...

We introduce a new micropayment scheme, suitable for certain kinds of transactions, that requires neither online transactions nor trusted hardware for either the payer or payee. Each payer is periodically issued certi ed credentials that encode the type of transactions and circumstances under which payment can be guaranteed. A risk management strategy, taking into account the payers' history, a...

Childhood obesity is a major public health problem. Experts recommend that prevention and control strategies include population-based policies. Arkansas Act 1220 of 2003 is one such initiative and provides examples of the tensions between individual rights and public policy. We discuss concerns raised during the implementation of Act 1220 related to the 2 primary areas in which they emerged: bo...

In this paper we present a model and solution procedures of the Inventory Routing Problem (IRP) encountered in vending machine supply chains working under vendor-managed inventory (VMI) scheme. The new IRP model is built based on the existing Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem with Time-windows (PVRPTW). The model will be referred to as the Integrated Inventory and Periodic Vehicle Routing Proble...

The safety of raw milk sold in Northern Italy was investigated in relation to hygiene quality parameters and presence of Salmonella spp., Listeria monocytogenes, thermotolerant Campylobacter, and Verocytotoxin producing Escherichia coli O157:H7. The performance of different analytical methods used-official culture method (ISO), modified Bacteriological Analytical Manual cultural method (mBAM), ...

BACKGROUND A healthy school nutrition environment may be important for decreasing childhood overweight. This article describes a project to make healthier snacks and beverages available in vending machines and à la carte programs in Maine public high schools. CONTEXT Seven public high schools in Maine volunteered to participate in this project. Four schools made changes to the nutrition envir...

We study source coding in the presence of side information, when the system can take actions that affect the availability, quality, or nature of the side information. We begin by extending the Wyner-Ziv problem of source coding with decoder side information to the case where the decoder is allowed to choose actions affecting the side information. We then consider the setting where actions are t...