1,722,469 research outputs found
Dead Code
No full textDead code is a bad smell. It is conjectured to be harmful and it appears to be also a common phenomenon in software systems. Surprisingly, dead code has received little empirical attention from the software engineering research community. This post-doctoral track paper shows the main results of a multi-study investigation into dead code with an overarching goal to study when and why developers introduce dead code, how they perceive and cope with it, and whether dead code is harmful. This investigation is composed of semi-structured interviews with software professionals and four experiments at the University of Basilicata and the College of William & Mary. The results suggest that it is worth studying dead code not only in maintenance and evolution phases, where the results suggest that its presence is detrimental to developers, but also in design and implementation phases, where source code is born dead because developers consider dead code as a sort of reuse means. The results also foster the development of tools for detecting dead code. In this respect, two approaches were proposed and then implemented in two prototypes of supporting tool
The tumor microenvironment: insights into FKBP5 alternative splicing
No full textA focus on the tumor microenvironment as dynamic ecosystem capable of changing appearance and function during the course of the disease and, particularly, on the role of tumor associated macrophages (TAMs) as pivotal players in promoting cancerogenesis and tumor progression and new promising strategies for their identification and targeting as a promising strategy for cancer defeat
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Exploring the use of rapid type analysis for detecting the dead method smell in Java code
No full textRapid Type Analysis (RTA) is an algorithm for call graph construction, which is known to be fast and to well approximate virtual method calls. In this paper, we explore its use in the context of refactoring, namely we defined an approach that relies on RTA for the detection of the dead method smell in Java code. We implemented this approach in a prototype of supporting tool we named Dead Code Finder (DCF). We empirically assessed DCF (and the underlying approach) through an experiment on four open-source Java desktop application. We compared DCF with three baseline tools. The results indicate that DCF outperforms these baselines in terms of accuracy of the detected dead methods
DUM-Tool
No full textWith object-oriented programming languages (e.g., Java or C#), the identification of unreachable source code may be very complex especially when working at method level. To deal with the detection of unreachable methods, we have defined an approach named DUM: Detecting Unreachable Methods. We implemented a prototype of a supporting software we named DUM-Tool. It works on Java byte-code and detects unreachable methods by traversing a graph-based representation of a subject software
SMUG: A selective MUtant generator tool
No full textIn this tool demo paper, we present a prototype of a tool for the selective generation of mutants in Java source code. We named this tool as SMUG (Selective MUtant Generator). Given two subsequent versions of a program, SMUG creates mutants by considering only those methods modified in, or added to, the second version. This is why it is a selective generator of mutants. On the basis of created mutants, SMUG generates a specified number of faulty versions of the program. We implemented SMUG as an Eclipse plug-in and employed this plug-in to assess regression test selection approaches. Therefore, SMUG has to be intended as a means to advance research in regression testing. We applied SMUG to create a total number of 200 faulty versions of 7 small-to-medium Java programs. A screencast of SMUG in action is available at www2.unibas.it/sromano/SMUG.html
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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