506 research outputs found
Software Analysis using Natural Language Queries
No full textUnderstanding a software system consumes a substantial portion of a developer's effort. To support software comprehension and evolution, reverse engineering aims at creating a high-level representation of an existing software system. With state- of-the-art technology, abstract models of software systems are created by reverse engineering tools and analyzed using software analysis tools. Despite the rich functionalities offered by analysis tools, a novice user may find them difficult to use due to an unfamiliar tool environment and query language. In this paper, we propose an approach that allows the developer to formulate a query in a natural language in order to overcome these obstacles
Assessing Comment Quality in Object-Oriented Languages
Full text linkPrevious studies have shown that high-quality code comments support developers in software maintenance and program comprehension tasks. However, the semi-structured nature of comments, several conventions to write comments, and the lack of quality assessment tools for all aspects of comments make comment evaluation and maintenance a non-trivial problem. To understand the specification of high-quality comments to build effective assessment tools, our thesis emphasizes acquiring a multi-perspective view of the comments, which can be approached by analyzing (1) the academic support for comment quality assessment, (2) developer commenting practices across languages, and (3) developer concerns about comments.
Our findings regarding the academic support for assessing comment quality showed that researchers primarily focus on Java in the last decade even though the trend of using polyglot environments in software projects is increasing. Similarly, the trend of analyzing specific types of code comments (method comments, or inline comments) is increasing, but the studies rarely analyze class comments. We found 21 quality attributes that researchers consider to assess comment quality, and manual assessment is still the most commonly used technique to assess various quality attributes. Our analysis of developer commenting practices showed that developers embed a mixed level of details in class comments, ranging from high-level class overviews to low-level implementation details across programming languages. They follow style guidelines regarding what information to write in class comments but violate the structure and syntax guidelines. They primarily face problems locating relevant guidelines to write consistent and informative comments, verifying the adherence of their comments to the guidelines, and evaluating the overall state of comment quality.
To help researchers and developers in building comment quality assessment tools, we contribute: (i) a systematic literature review (SLR) of ten years (2010–2020) of research on assessing comment quality, (ii) a taxonomy of quality attributes used to assess comment quality, (iii) an empirically validated taxonomy of class comment information types from three programming languages, (iv) a multi-programming-language approach to automatically identify the comment information types, (v) an empirically validated taxonomy of comment convention-related questions and recommendation from various Q&A forums, and (vi) a tool to gather discussions from multiple developer sources, such as Stack Overflow, and mailing lists.
Our contributions provide various kinds of empirical evidence of the developer’s interest in reducing efforts in the software documentation process, of the limited support developers get in automatically assessing comment quality, and of the challenges they face in writing high-quality comments. This work lays the foundation for future effective comment quality assessment tools and techniques
The Brylinski beta function of a coaxial layer
Full text linkIn [Pooja Rani and M. K. Vemuri, The Brylinski beta function of a double layer, Differential Geom. Appl. \textbf{92}(2024)], an analogue of Brylinski\u27s knot beta function was defined for a compactly supported (Schwartz) distribution on Euclidean space. Here we consider the Brylinski beta function of the distribution defined by a coaxial layer on a submanifold of Euclidean space. We prove that it has an analytic continuation to the whole complex plane as a meromorphic function with only simple poles, and in the case of a coaxial layer on a space curves, we compute some of the residues in terms of the curvature and torsion
Speculative Analysis for Quality Assessment of Code Comments
No full textPrevious studies have shown that high-quality code comments assist developers in program comprehension and maintenance tasks. However, the semi-structured nature of comments, unclear conventions for writing good comments, and the lack of quality assessment tools for all aspects of comments make their evaluation and maintenance a non-trivial problem. To achieve high-quality comments, we need a deeper understanding of code comment characteristics and the practices developers follow. In this thesis, we approach the problem of assessing comment quality from three different perspectives: what developers ask about commenting practices, what they write in comments, and how researchers support them in assessing comment quality. Our preliminary findings show that developers embed various kinds of information in class comments across programming languages. Still, they face problems in locating relevant guidelines to write consistent and informative comments, verifying the adherence of their comments to the guidelines, and evaluating the overall state of comment quality. To help developers and researchers in building comment quality assessment tools, we provide: (i) an empirically validated taxonomy of comment convention-related questions from various community forums, (ii) an empirically validated taxonomy of comment information types from various programming languages, (iii) a language-independent approach to automatically identify the information types, and (iv) a comment quality taxonomy prepared from a systematic literature review
LEXTREME: A Multi-Lingual and Multi-Task Benchmark for the Legal Domain
Full text linkLately, propelled by the phenomenal advances around the transformer
architecture, the legal NLP field has enjoyed spectacular growth. To measure
progress, well curated and challenging benchmarks are crucial. However, most
benchmarks are English only and in legal NLP specifically there is no
multilingual benchmark available yet. Additionally, many benchmarks are
saturated, with the best models clearly outperforming the best humans and
achieving near perfect scores. We survey the legal NLP literature and select 11
datasets covering 24 languages, creating LEXTREME. To provide a fair
comparison, we propose two aggregate scores, one based on the datasets and one
on the languages. The best baseline (XLM-R large) achieves both a dataset
aggregate score a language aggregate score of 61.3. This indicates that
LEXTREME is still very challenging and leaves ample room for improvement. To
make it easy for researchers and practitioners to use, we release LEXTREME on
huggingface together with all the code required to evaluate models and a public
Weights and Biases project with all the runs.Comment: Published at EMNLP Findings 202
The NLBSE'24 Tool Competition
No full textWe report on the organization and results of the tool competition of the third International Workshop on Natural Language-based Software Engineering (NLBSE'24). As in prior editions, we organized the competition on automated issue report classification, with focus on small repositories, and on automated code comment classification, with a larger dataset. In this tool competition edition, six teams submitted multiple classification models to automatically classify issue reports and code comments. The submitted models were fine-tuned and evaluated on a benchmark dataset of 3 thousand issue reports or 82 thousand code comments, respectively. This paper reports details of the competition, including the rules, the teams and contestant models, and the ranking of models based on their average classification performance across issue report and code comment types
Multicomponent targeted proapoptotic anticancer drug delivery system
No full textCancer is one of the leading causes of death in United States. The current approaches for the treatment of solid tumor available are the surgery for the removal of primary tumor followed by chemotherapy and /or radiation. The efficacy of chemotherapy is limited by the following factors; (1) adverse side-effects on healthy organs, (2) development of cellular resistance and (3) low solubility of many anticancer drugs. The primary objective of this dissertation is to overcome all the above stated limitations. The methods employed in this dissertation includes designing, synthesizing and evaluating a novel drug delivery system comprising of 1) multiple copies of an anticancer drug, Camptothecin (CPT) ; 2) a polymeric carrier, Polyethylene glycol (PEG); 3) multiple copies of a targeting moiety to cancer cells, Luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH) peptide; 4) multiple copies of a suppressor of antiapoptotic cellular defense, BH3 peptide both in vitro and in vivo on A2780 human ovarian carcinoma cells and malignant ascites and animal models respectively. Conjugates of CPT, LHRH and CPT, LHRH, BH3 were evaluated for cytotoxicity, cancer specificity and antitumor activity. The multicomponent anticancer delivery system will significantly enhance the efficacy of an anticancer drug in the treatment of all the stages of cancer when compared with free drug, non-targeted delivery systems or the system consisting of one copy of each active component.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Pooja Chandn
Senescence and postharvest studies of cut flowers: a critical review
No full textFlower senescence is the terminal phase of developmental processes that leads to the end of its life span. Since a number of developing countries are attracted to this global fresh flower trade for commercial purpose, this phenomenon is major obstacle for all the floricultural industries. Therefore, research related to postharvest changes was carried out to mitigate this problem. The post-harvest events in floricultural crops reflecting petal senescence are being reviewed in this paper, whereby various physiological and biochemical studies having data regarding lipid peroxidation, loss of membrane integrity and protein degradation central to petal senescence are included. Ultrastructural changes involving change in various cell organelles viz. rupturing of vacuole, tonoplast membrane invagination, chloroplast degradation in mesophyll cells, as well as change in mitochondria ultrastructure have also been recited. This review also pays attention to the issues related to carbohydrate metabolism and change in anthocyanin pigmentation during postharvest life. Various enzymatic activities, supporting petal senescence and current status of post-harvest technology applied to cut flowers to enhance their vase life especially by using preservatives in the form of energy source like sucrose and other sugars, biocides, mineral ions, growth regulators or various metabolic inhibitors, providing practice solution to global cut flower market, are cited
Offshoring and outsourcing of core corporate activities: the global relocation of pharmaceutical industry clinical trials
No full textThis dissertation examines the offshoring and outsourcing of core activities in the pharmaceutical industry. Using primary and secondary data sources, the dissertation adopts a multi-level approach to examine four research questions related to the sourcing strategies of core activities such as clinical trials. Specifically, I look at operational and strategic factors that influence the decision to relocate core activities both organizationally (in-house versus external vendors) and geographically (activities conducted in home nation versus trials in foreign countries). Drawing on Dunning's framework, the dissertation next examines the role of four motives (resource, market, efficiency and strategic asset seeking) in the offshoring decisions while distinguishing between offshore outsourcing and offshoring to foreign affiliates. Using multiple case studies, the third study further investigates the evolution of firms sourcing strategies from conducting core activities in-house to increasingly outsourcing and offshoring them. The final study in the dissertation examines the impact of offshoring and outsourcing on the performance of core activities. Data for this dissertation comes from multiple sources: Primary data from in-depth structured interviews and online survey of vice presidents of clinical affairs of pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, as well as secondary data from Medidata, Orbis, and World Development Indicators. The dissertation offers evidence that firms tend to use different sourcing strategies for different motives. Specifically, offshoring to foreign affiliates is primarily driven by strategic factors and firms tend to prefer this strategy for strategic asset seeking purposes. Offshore outsourcing on the other hand is motivated by resource and efficiency seeking behavior and the important determinants for this strategy are mainly operational. The third type of sourcing strategy is domestic outsourcing and firms are driven by both strategic as well as operational determinants for this strategy. The qualitative study on strategy evolution points towards a five stage process which begins with in-house sourcing followed by domestic outsourcing, foreign affiliates, offshore outsourcing and finally backsourcing of core activities. Evidence from the dissertation suggests that outsourcing has a positive impact on performance when compared to in-house while offshoring has a negative impact compared to domestic sourcing.Ph.D.Includes abstractVitaIncludes bibliographical referencesby Pooja Thaku
Target reliability indices for quay walls, jetties, and flexible dolphins
No full textStructural codes rely on generalised target reliability indices, which are mainly derived for buildings. It is unclear, however, whether these indices are applicable to the specific risk-profile of quay walls, jetties, and flexible dolphins. In this study, target reliability indices for marine structures were derived from various risk acceptance criteria, such as economic optimisation, individual risk, societal risk, the life quality index, and the social and environmental repercussion index. This article uses a method to determine reliability targets distinguishing time-dependent and time-independent variables, because some important stochastic design variables in the design of marine structures, such as soil and material properties, are largely time-independent. The assessment framework of ISO 2394, taking into account social, economic, and environmental impact, has proven to be a solid basis for reliability differentiation. The method of approach considered in this paper can also be used for evaluating target reliability indices of other geotechnical structures.Accepted Author ManuscriptHydraulic Structures and Flood Ris
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