In today's world, characterized by the massive generation of data, a major problem related to data manipulation occurs when people's privacy is violated. To face this situation different regulations and solutions, to help users... more
In today's world, characterized by the massive generation of data, a major problem related to data manipulation occurs when people's privacy is violated. To face this situation different regulations and solutions, to help users get in control over their data, emerged. However, many of the solutions require a certain level of knowledge in the field of privacy or offer unclear information that does not facilitate a real control of their data by the users. Added to this is the unfriendly user interface design as one of the factors that prevents users from managing their privacy settings effectively. Thus, in this work we explore the effect of the application of Participatory Design (PD) techniques in the implementation of privacy enhancing technologies. In particular, we focus on the use of PD for the design of a privacy dashboard that encourages the immersion of users with privacy issues and gives them greater control with a user interface according to usability criteria. The evaluation of the PD process, which has resulted in a high-fidelity prototype of the dashboard, shows encouraging results and greater user immersion in privacy management.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Depression is a prevalent disorder and leading cause of disability in Latin America, where the mental health treatment gap is still above 50%. We sought to synthesise and assess the quality of the evidence on the feasibility of... more
Depression is a prevalent disorder and leading cause of disability in Latin America, where the mental health treatment gap is still above 50%. We sought to synthesise and assess the quality of the evidence on the feasibility of mHealth-based interventions for depression in Latin America. We conducted a literature search of studies published in 2007 and after using four electronic databases. We included peer-reviewed articles, in English, Spanish or Portuguese, that evaluated interventions for depressive symptoms. Two authors independently extracted data using forms developed a priori. We assessed appropriateness of reporting utilising the CONSORT checklist for feasibility trials. Eight manuscripts were included for full data extraction. Appropriate reporting varied greatly. Most (n = 6, 75%) of studies were conducted in primary care settings and sought to deliver psychoeducation or behaviour change interventions for depressive symptoms. We found great heterogeneity in the assessment of feasibility. Two studies used comparator conditions. mHealth research for depression in Latin America is scarce. Included studies showed some feasibility despite methodological inconsistencies. Given the dire need for evidence-based mental health interventions in this region, governments and stakeholders must continue promoting and funding research tailored to cultural and population characteristics with subsequent pragmatic clinical trials.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This study presents the Architecture Specific Model (ASM) defined by the MoWebA approach to improve the development of web applications for different architectures. MoWebA is a model-driven approach to web applications development. The... more
This study presents the Architecture Specific Model (ASM) defined by the MoWebA approach to improve the development of web applications for different architectures. MoWebA is a model-driven approach to web applications development. The article presents a general overview of MoWebA, including the methodological aspects related to its modeling and transformation processes, the process of defining the ASM, and an example of an ASM model. We finally present a preliminary validation experience and its main results. The experience was structured according to the proposal of Runeson et al. for case studies.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, require systematic strategies to assist in the discovery of effective treatments. Drug repositioning, the process of finding new therapeutic indications for... more
Emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, require systematic strategies to assist in the discovery of effective treatments. Drug repositioning, the process of finding new therapeutic indications for commercialized drugs, is a promising alternative to the development of new drugs, with lower costs and shorter development times. In this paper, we propose a recommendation system called geometric confidence non-negative matrix factorization (GcNMF) to assist in the repositioning of 126 broad spectrum antiviral drugs for 80 viruses, including SARS-CoV-2. GcNMF models the non-Euclidean structure of the space using graphs, and produces a ranked list of drugs for each virus. Our experiments reveal that GcNMF significanlty outperforms other matrix decomposition methods at predicting missing drug-virus associations. Our analysis suggests that GcNMF could assist pharmacological experts in the search for effective drugs against viral diseases.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
As mosquito-borne diseases like dengue and Zika continue to develop, traditional approaches have not curbed the epidemics, and evidence suggests that community-based programs are an effective alternative. In Paraguay, more than 8,300... more
As mosquito-borne diseases like dengue and Zika continue to develop, traditional approaches have not curbed the epidemics, and evidence suggests that community-based programs are an effective alternative. In Paraguay, more than 8,300 cases of dengue were reported in 2019. Recent entomological surveys found that the percentage of houses with Aedes aegypti larvae is as high as 20% in the capital. In this context and based on the experiences of Camino Verde and DengueChat in Nicaragua, we started the TopaDengue project, a community-based intervention, supported by ICTs (information and communication technologies), in one of the most vulnerable territories of the Paraguayan capital, the Bañado Sur of Asunción. To inform our design of the socio-technical ICT platform, our fieldwork in this community explored the dynamic of interaction among researchers, facilitators, volunteers, the extended community, and technologies. Combining both paper and digital technologies with a continuous feed...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Mood inference with mobile sensing data has been studied in ubicomp literature over the last decade. This inference enables context-aware and personalized user experiences in general mobile apps and valuable feedback and interventions in... more
Mood inference with mobile sensing data has been studied in ubicomp literature over the last decade. This inference enables context-aware and personalized user experiences in general mobile apps and valuable feedback and interventions in mobile health apps. However, even though model generalization issues have been highlighted in many studies, the focus has always been on improving the accuracies of models using different sensing modalities and machine learning techniques, with datasets collected in homogeneous populations. In contrast, less attention has been given to studying the performance of mood inference models to assess whether models generalize to new countries. In this study, we collected a mobile sensing dataset with 329K self-reports from 678 participants in eight countries (China, Denmark, India, Italy, Mexico, Mongolia, Paraguay, UK) to assess the effect of geographical diversity on mood inference models. We define and evaluate country-specific (trained and tested with...
Research Interests:
In recent years, social media has become increasingly relevant in democratic decision-making processes, such as referendums or elections. Recent investigations have raised the concern of social media misuse in attempts to manipulate the... more
In recent years, social media has become increasingly relevant in democratic decision-making processes, such as referendums or elections. Recent investigations have raised the concern of social media misuse in attempts to manipulate the public opinion and influence results, undermining the foundations of democracy. By analyzing the use of Twitter during the 2017/2018 presidential elections in Paraguay, this study provides empirical evidence and analysis about the role of social media on political campaigns. In a departure from other countries in the region, dominance in this network did not correlate with elections results. The results we highlight in this article, therefore, challenge the impact of social media on elections, offering an interesting view of their role in Latin America countries, like Paraguay.
The Gaia methodology (Wooldridge et al., 2000) has been the rst com-plete methodology for the analysis and design of multiagent systems. However, the original version of Gaia suered from the limitations of be-ing suitable for the analysis... more
The Gaia methodology (Wooldridge et al., 2000) has been the rst com-plete methodology for the analysis and design of multiagent systems. However, the original version of Gaia suered from the limitations of be-ing suitable for the analysis and design of closed multiagent systems and of adopting non-standard notation techniques. For these reasons, several extensions to the basic Gaia methodology has been recently proposed. In this chapter, we summarize the key characteristics of the original Gaia methodology and present three extensions that have been proposed to Gaia to overcome its limitations and to make it more suitable for the development of open multiagent systems in complex environments.
Research Interests:
Factors such as instructions, payment schemes, platform demographics, along with strategies for mapping studies into crowdsourcing environments, play an important role in the reproducibility of results. However, inferring these details... more
Factors such as instructions, payment schemes, platform demographics, along with strategies for mapping studies into crowdsourcing environments, play an important role in the reproducibility of results. However, inferring these details from scientific articles is often a challenging endeavor, calling for the development of proper reporting guidelines. This paper makes the first steps towards this goal, by describing an initial taxonomy of relevant attributes for crowdsourcing experiments, and providing a glimpse into the state of reporting by analyzing a sample of CSCW papers.
Research Interests:
Crowdsourced civic engagement is a novel form of democratic participation that allows citizens to share their ideas and deliberate in a multitude of diverse participatory processes that are emerging all over the world, influencing, often... more
Crowdsourced civic engagement is a novel form of democratic participation that allows citizens to share their ideas and deliberate in a multitude of diverse participatory processes that are emerging all over the world, influencing, often with binding power, urban plans, city budgets, and even legislation, among many other forms of public policy decisions. As a result, hundreds of thousands of civic contributions are produced as ideas, comments, and proposals circulate among citizens and between them and government officials, generating an avalanche of mostly unstructured data, which decision-makers have difficulty to manage. Sentiment analysis techniques have the potential to process and classify these contributions in ways that can make it easier to make sense of them. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a rule based sentiment analyzer that integrates a lexicon, optimized for the Spanish language and the application domain of civic contributions. We present the results of our first evaluation and discuss the aspects of the proposal that have room for improvement in future work.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Chagas disease is a parasitic disease, endemic in South America. As of today, there is no effective treatment in its chronic stage. We have recently identified 134 FDA approved drugs with potential antitrypanosomal activity. In this... more
Chagas disease is a parasitic disease, endemic in South America. As of today, there is no effective treatment in its chronic stage. We have recently identified 134 FDA approved drugs with potential antitrypanosomal activity. In this paper, we propose a novel method for selecting combinations of drugs (drug cocktails), to provide a more effective treatment against Chagas disease. We define three measures to evaluate the predicted performance of a cocktail, establishing in this way a mathematical foundation for its analysis. This allows us to model the drug cocktail selection as a multi-objective optimisation problem, that we show can be solved efficiently with state-of-the-art evolutionary algorithms. Our analysis retrieves 57 drug cocktails containing between 2 and 6 drugs. We discuss the improvement of the cocktail selection given by our method, and the application of this approach to the identification of cocktails against other parasitic diseases.
Research Interests:
Supplemental Items used in "Machine Learning and Network Medicine approaches for Drug Repositioning for COVID-19" by Suzana de Siqueira Santos, Mateo Torres, Diego Galeano, María del Mar Sánchez, Luca Cernuzzi, and Alberto... more
Supplemental Items used in "Machine Learning and Network Medicine approaches for Drug Repositioning for COVID-19" by Suzana de Siqueira Santos, Mateo Torres, Diego Galeano, María del Mar Sánchez, Luca Cernuzzi, and Alberto Paccanaro. The items include input datasets, and predictions by our matrix decomposition model and network medicine approach. Predictions by our matrix decomposition model are shown in Supplementary File 1. Two out of three interactomes used by our network medicine approach were mapped to SwissProt proteins and shown in Supplementary Files 2 (Luck et al., 2020, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2188-x), and 3 (Cheng et al., 2018, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-05116-5). For these two interactomes, we used drug-target associations in Supplementary File 4, and 336 host proteins (UniProt accession numbers) in Supplementary File 5. For the Gysi el al. interactome (Gysi et al., 2021, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2025581118), we used Entrez IDs of the 336 host proteins shown in Supplementary File 6. Supplementary File 7 shows the ATC categories of DrugBank drugs. DrugBank entries with effect against SARS-CoV-2 according to CMAP, in vitro, and clinical trials evidence are shown in Supplementary Files 8, 9, and 10, respectively. Predictions by our network medicine approach are shown in Supplementary File 11. The weights assigned to the host proteins by the kernel-based methods are shown in Supplementary File 12.
Research Interests:
In the context of the project “WeNet: Internet of us” we are studying the role of diversity in relation to Internetmediated social interactions. In this paper, in particular, we analyze a possible relationship between personality aspects... more
In the context of the project “WeNet: Internet of us” we are studying the role of diversity in relation to Internetmediated social interactions. In this paper, in particular, we analyze a possible relationship between personality aspects and social interaction mediated by digital platforms. More specifically, we rely on the five personality traits (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and Openness to Experience), commonly referred to as “Big-five”, and associate them to automatically extracted behavioral characteristics derived from the experience of using a Chatbot for a closed community of students at the Universidad Católica “Nuestra Señora de la Asunción” (UC). The personality data comes from a self-report made by the users through questionnaires. The main results show very positive appraisals about the use of the Chatbot in terms of user experience and its main functionalities. As for the role of personality in relation to the main use of the Chat...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Having a sense of purpose is one of the tenets of well-being, at any age. Here, the authors review technologies that could help older adults remain active in society -- in particular, those who can't leave their home regularly or... more
Having a sense of purpose is one of the tenets of well-being, at any age. Here, the authors review technologies that could help older adults remain active in society -- in particular, those who can't leave their home regularly or easily. The authors also discuss areas that current research and practice haven't yet addressed satisfactorily.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Friendships and social interactions are renown contributors to wellbeing. As such, keeping a healthy amount of relationships becomes very important as people age and the size of their social network tends to decrease. In this paper, we... more
Friendships and social interactions are renown contributors to wellbeing. As such, keeping a healthy amount of relationships becomes very important as people age and the size of their social network tends to decrease. In this paper, we take a step back and explore reconnection -- find out about or re-contact old friends, an emerging topic due to the increased use of computer-mediated technology by older adults to maintain friendships and form new ones. We report on our findings from semi-structured interviews with 28 individuals from Costa Rica and Poland. The interviews aimed to explore whether there is a wish to reconnect, and the challenges encountered by older adults to reconnect. We contribute with design considerations for tools allow- ing older adults to reconnect, discussing opportunities for technology.
Crowdsourcing is being increasingly adopted as a platform to run studies with human subjects. Running a crowdsourcing experiment involves several choices and strategies to successfully port an experimental design into an otherwise... more
Crowdsourcing is being increasingly adopted as a platform to run studies with human subjects. Running a crowdsourcing experiment involves several choices and strategies to successfully port an experimental design into an otherwise uncontrolled research environment, e.g., sampling crowd workers, mapping experimental conditions to micro-tasks, or ensure quality contributions. While several guidelines inform researchers in these choices, guidance of how and what to report from crowdsourcing experiments has been largely overlooked. If under-reported, implementation choices constitute variability sources that can affect the experiment's reproducibility and prevent a fair assessment of research outcomes. In this paper, we examine the current state of reporting of crowdsourcing experiments and offer guidance to address associated reporting issues. We start by identifying sensible implementation choices, relying on existing literature and interviews with experts, to then extensively ana...
Research Interests:
node node node This thesis introduces SKOs (Scientific Knowledge Object) a specification for capturing the knowledge and artifacts that are produced by the scientific research processes. Aiming to address the current existing limitations... more
node node node This thesis introduces SKOs (Scientific Knowledge Object) a specification for capturing the knowledge and artifacts that are produced by the scientific research processes. Aiming to address the current existing limitations of scientific production this specification is focused on reducing the work overhead of scientific creation, being composable and reusable, allow continuous evolution and facilitate collaboration and discovery among researchers. To do so it introduces four layers that capture different aspects of the scientific knowledge: content, meaning, ordering and visualization. Executive Summary node Scientific papers or Articles were introduced during the 17th century when the first academic journals appeared. Since then these papers, along with the scientific conferences or symposiums, have become the cornerstones of the scientific community and research. Currently, not very unlike
This special issue of the CLEIej consists of extended and revised versions of Selected Papers presented at the XXI Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering (CIbSE 2018), hold in Bogotá, Colombia, in April 2018.
Research Interests:
Abstract The data layer access design is a critical task for mobile applications which need constant access to remote data, making them available offline in case of network connectivity problems. Moreover, the variety of mobile operating... more
Abstract The data layer access design is a critical task for mobile applications which need constant access to remote data, making them available offline in case of network connectivity problems. Moreover, the variety of mobile operating systems and platforms (fragmentation phenomenon) that handles data storage differently affects the portability of mobile applications. This issue suggests the use of Model-Driven Development (MDD) approach that may ease the smartphone application development for different platforms. Therefore, we propose an extension of the Model-Oriented Web Approach (MoWebA) for the development of native mobile applications focusing on the data layer. MoWebA Mobile (as we name the proposal) covers data persistence concepts to achieve offline applications in case of network connectivity problems. It defines meta-models and the Architecture-Specific Model (ASM) for data persistence and data provider to design the data sources of mobile applications. As well, we propose transformation rules for the generation of Android and Windows Phone applications. The MoWebA Mobile process was illustrated by means of modeling, design, and development of a typical mobile application. Despite the learning curve of the approach, the first evaluation suggests that MoWebA Mobile has the potential for supporting the mobile design applications considering the persistence of data.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper presents an algorithm and a tool for discovering scientific communities. Several approaches have been proposed to discover community structure applying clustering methods over different networks, such as co-authorship and... more
This paper presents an algorithm and a tool for discovering scientific communities. Several approaches have been proposed to discover community structure applying clustering methods over different networks, such as co-authorship and citation networks. However, most existing approaches do not allow for overlapping of communities, which is instead natural when we consider communities of scientists. The approach presented in this paper combines different clustering algorithms for detecting overlapping scientific communities, based on conference publication data. The Community Engine Tool implements the algorithm and was evaluated using the DBLP dataset, which contains information on more than 12 thousand conferences. The results show that using our approach it is possible to automatically produce community structure close to human-defined classification of conferences. The approach is part of a larger research effort aimed at studying how scientific communities are born, evolve, remain...
Research Interests:
i* is one of the more promising goal-oriented modeling framework to capture and model multi agent systems (MAS) requirements. Moreover, i* has been incorporated as the foundation for one of the more important AOSE methodologies, that is,... more
i* is one of the more promising goal-oriented modeling framework to capture and model multi agent systems (MAS) requirements. Moreover, i* has been incorporated as the foundation for one of the more important AOSE methodologies, that is, Tropos. Our research interests related with i* cover two mainly directions. The first, is to compare i* with other methods, techniques and notations for capturing and modeling MAS abstractions. The second is related to the computational organization theory to model the organizational perspective of the MAS. Specifically, we are analyzing the critical issue of coping with adaptive changes of MAS organizations whenever circumstances claim for changes in the very MAS structure. Then, we are surveying different relevant AOSE methodologies, Tropos (and therefore i*) among others, to discuss their suitability in dealing with adaptation in MAS organizations.
Research Interests:
Crowdsourcing is being increasingly adopted as a platform to run studies with human subjects. Running a crowdsourcing experiment involves several choices and strategies to successfully port an experimental design into an otherwise... more
Crowdsourcing is being increasingly adopted as a platform to run studies with human subjects. Running a crowdsourcing experiment involves several choices and strategies to successfully port an experimental design into an otherwise uncontrolled research environment, e.g., sampling crowd workers, mapping experimental conditions to micro-tasks, or ensure quality contributions. While several guidelines inform researchers in these choices, guidance of how and what to report from crowdsourcing experiments has been largely overlooked. If under-reported, implementation choices constitute variability sources that can affect the experiment's reproducibility and prevent a fair assessment of research outcomes. In this paper, we examine the current state of reporting of crowdsourcing experiments and offer guidance to address associated reporting issues. We start by identifying sensible implementation choices, relying on existing literature and interviews with experts, to then extensively ana...
Research Interests:
Agent design is a complex human activity involving active and proactive modules of software that may present knowledge representation and learning aspects. In this study we review some Agent-Oriented Methodologies including extensions of... more
Agent design is a complex human activity involving active and proactive modules of software that may present knowledge representation and learning aspects. In this study we review some Agent-Oriented Methodologies including extensions of object oriented and knowledge engineering methodologies. Moreover, we present a case study of a multi-agent system for requirement engineering formal specification that was designed using “the Agent Modelling Technique for Systems of BDI agent” [12]. Finally, a discussion about the use of the methodology is presented.
Scientific papers are the current de-facto unit for scientific knowledge dissemination. Nevertheless, with the advent of the Web and is related technologies, the popularity of new types of dissemination methods (e.g. blogs, web pages and... more
Scientific papers are the current de-facto unit for scientific knowledge dissemination. Nevertheless, with the advent of the Web and is related technologies, the popularity of new types of dissemination methods (e.g. blogs, web pages and social networks) has also become difficult to ignore. In fact, several discussions are currently based on the advantages and limitations of both; the traditional paper model and these so called Science 2.0 new webbased opportunities. There is no discussion, however, on the fact that both of these types of documents are in fact used to disseminate and advance scientific knowledge. This paper presents a metadata-enabled model based on Scientific Knowledge Objects that aims to represent and capture the knowledge from both the traditional and the new types of these scientific artifacts. The inspiration for this model is mainly drawn from the comparison between the scientific artifacts and software, as several of the properties and processes currently us...
Research Interests:
An increasing number of methodologies and modell ing methods are being proposed in the area of agent-oriented software engineering. However, one of the open problems in order for agent-oriented software engineering to become a... more
An increasing number of methodologies and modell ing methods are being proposed in the area of agent-oriented software engineering. However, one of the open problems in order for agent-oriented software engineering to become a “mainstream” is a lack of consensus between the different analysis and design methods that have been proposed. Thus, this study proposes a framework to carry out an analysis or evaluation of the agent-oriented analysis and design modelli ng
Research Interests:
Excellence or quality are often regarded as the holy grail of science, and it is the main goal driving scientist to pursue research that will influence the direction of their fields. This excellence, however, has no standard definition... more
Excellence or quality are often regarded as the holy grail of science, and it is the main goal driving scientist to pursue research that will influence the direction of their fields. This excellence, however, has no standard definition and varies across disciplines, and even from person to person, making it difficult to evaluate research and reputation of researchers. In this work, we introduce the general problem of studying the nature of reputation in the context of computer science, providing preliminary results on its relation with bibliometric indicators and hints for future experiments that will foster a better understanding of reputation in the scientific domain.
Due to the complexity of software systems and the high probabilities of new errors appearing in any stage of the software life cycle, techniques for quality verification are needed. Software testing is a widely used approach but, due to... more
Due to the complexity of software systems and the high probabilities of new errors appearing in any stage of the software life cycle, techniques for quality verification are needed. Software testing is a widely used approach but, due to the costs involved in this process, development teams often debate its applicability in their projects. In the endeavor to reduce the complexity of this process, this document presents an approach for software development based in Test-Driven Development (TDD) supported by Model-Based Testing (MBT) tools to allow automatic test-case generation. Besides, a toolkit for the generation of unit and acceptance tests for Web applications is proposed.
Participa is a project that seeks to design, implement and evaluate ICT applications and services that support civic participation for public sector innovation. Using participatory design (PD) methods, the project will involve citizens... more
Participa is a project that seeks to design, implement and evaluate ICT applications and services that support civic participation for public sector innovation. Using participatory design (PD) methods, the project will involve citizens from an early stage, with the double goal of ensuring that the aforementioned services will be tailored to their local realities while also fostering, in itself, the development of a participatory culture. It will be conducted in Paraguay, a developing country with a relatively new democratic culture. By applying PD in this particular context, we expect to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the relation between participation, ICT and development, along with an understanding of what the role of PD might be in connecting them all. We argue that the role of PD will be that of providing the methodological tools by which Participa will not only contribute to research, but it will also generate, along the way, a positive change in culture, progressi...
Research Interests:
En la ciudad de Asunción existen problemas de movilidad urbana. Uno de los problemas es el estado de las veredas, por falta de rampas, existencia de desniveles, obstrucciones, entre otros. En este trabajo presentamos la herramienta... more
En la ciudad de Asunción existen problemas de movilidad urbana. Uno de los problemas es el estado de las veredas, por falta de rampas, existencia de desniveles, obstrucciones, entre otros. En este trabajo presentamos la herramienta SmartMoving, que recolecta información sobre el estado de las veredas, con ayuda de la ciudadańıa, y recomienda caminos peatonales con menos obstáculos. SmartMoving es una aplicación móvil que puede ser especialmente útil para personas con movilidad reducida. En ese sentido, la aplicación fue probada por personas que usan sillas de ruedas. La evaluación de usabilidad que realizaron arrojó resultados preliminares positivos.
As the web continues to change the way we produce and disseminate scientific knowledge, traditional digital libraries are confronted with the challenge of transcending their boundaries to remain compatible with a world where the whole Web... more
As the web continues to change the way we produce and disseminate scientific knowledge, traditional digital libraries are confronted with the challenge of transcending their boundaries to remain compatible with a world where the whole Web in itself is the source of scientific knowledge. This paper discusses a resource-oriented approach for the management and interaction of scientific services as a way to face this challenge. Our approach consists in building a general-purpose, extensible layer for accessing any resource that has an URI and is accessible on the Web, along with appropriate extensions specific to the scientific domain. We name the class of systems that have this functionality Scientific Resource Space Management Systems, since they are the resource analogous of data space management systems known in literature. In this paper, we describe the motivations, concepts, architecture, and implementation of the platform and one validat- ing usage scenario.
A low average number of people per private vehicle and inappropriate road infrastructure results in heavy traffic that wastes space, time and money for the people involved. To optimize these resources, it is intended to promote carpooling... more
A low average number of people per private vehicle and inappropriate road infrastructure results in heavy traffic that wastes space, time and money for the people involved. To optimize these resources, it is intended to promote carpooling between people who share the same destination, for example, colleagues at work or students at a university. This paper presents UCarpooling, a matching system for commuting between people of a same institution. UCarpooling is aimed at optimizing the number of passengers in vehicles during routine trips to and from work or study. The difference with respect to other similar proposals is that UCarpooling takes into account logistical details (place of departure, time of entry, etc.) and personal traits (if you smoke, what genres of music you listen to, etc.) as variables to calculate the percentage compatibility that different people have to carry out a carpool. A simulation of the use of UCarpooling in a university in Asunción, Paraguay, yields favorable data reaching the conclusion that its adoption is quite beneficial for the institution that adopts it, the people who use it, and the cities where it is adopted.
Research Interests:
A low average number of people per private vehicle and inappropriate road infrastruc-ture results in heavy traffic that wastes space, time and money for the people involved.To optimize these resources, it is intended to... more
A low average number of people per private vehicle and inappropriate road infrastruc-ture results in heavy traffic that wastes space, time and money for the people involved.To optimize these resources, it is intended to promotecarpoolingbetween people whoshare the same destination, for example, colleagues at work or students at a university.This paper presents UCarpooling, a matching system for commuting between people inthe same institution. UCarpooling is aimed at optimizing the number of passengers invehicles during routine trips to and from work or study. The difference with respect toother similar proposals is that UCarpooling takes into account logistical details (place ofdeparture, time of entry, etc.) and personal traits (if you smoke, what genres of musicyou listen to, etc.) as variables to calculate the percentage compatibility that differentpeople have to carry out a carpool. A simulation of the use of UCarpooling in a universityin Asuncion, Paraguay, yields favorable dat...
Research Interests:
The state of sidewalks in Asunción, Paraguay is far from being optimal. There are many problems such as obstructions, necessary repairs, lack of ramps, unevenness of surface, among others. In addition, the Municipality of Asunción does... more
The state of sidewalks in Asunción, Paraguay is far from being optimal. There are many problems such as obstructions, necessary repairs, lack of ramps, unevenness of surface, among others. In addition, the Municipality of Asunción does not have automated mechanisms to know the updated status of sidewalks. In this work we propose SmartMoving, a mobile application that collects information on the state of the sidewalks, with the help of citizens, and recommends pedestrian paths with fewer obstacles. The application can be especially useful for people with reduced mobility, as well as for the Municipality of Asunción. This type of application is based on citizen participation, since it receives data from them, and therefore requires a particularly friendly user experience, adapted to users and their daily context. Therefore, the need for a participatory and user-centered design, as a basis for the development of the application. Therefore, in this paper we present the SmartMoving appli...
Research Interests:
COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has become a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Drug repositioning, the process of finding new therapeutic indications for marketed drugs, is a promising alternative to new drug... more
COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, has become a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Drug repositioning, the process of finding new therapeutic indications for marketed drugs, is a promising alternative to new drug development, with lower costs and shorter development times. Here, we present two computational approaches that have been designed to assist drug repurposing projects for COVID-19. The aim of these methods is to provide rankings of drugs that can be used for directing experimental research. Our first approach consists of a novel non-negative matrix factorisation algorithm to rank broad spectrum antivirals that have been approved, or are being developed, for viruses. Our second approach, rooted in ideas from network medicine, aims at ranking drugs by estimating the perturbation each drug induces on a subnetwork of the human interactome that is crucial for SARS-CoV-2 infection/replication. Using graph kernels and host proteins weighted by gene expression data from SARS-CoV-2 infected cell lines, we obtained a ranking of 1853 therapeutically diverse FDA-approved drugs. Our experiments show that nine out of 10 of our top predicted broad spectrum antivirals are already indicated for compassionate use in COVID-19 patients worldwide; and that the ranking obtained by our perturbation analysis approach aligns with independent experimental data on in vitro screenings. Finally, we present the COVID-19 Repositioning Explorer (CoREx), an interactive online tool that we developed for assisting drug repositioning projects for COVID-19. CoRex allows scientists to explore the interplay between approved drugs and SARS-CoV-2 host proteins in the context of biological networks, protein function, drug clinical use, and the Connectivity Map. Funding Information: This work was supported by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (https://bbsrc.ukri.org/) grants BB/K004131/1, BB/F00964X/1 and BB/M025047/1, Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia Paraguay - CONACyT (http://www.conacyt.gov.py/) grants 14-INV-088, PINV15-315, and PINV20-337, National Science Foundation Advances in Bio Informatics (https://www.nsf.gov/) grant 1660648 and the Fundacao Getulio Vargas. Conflicts of Interest: None to declare.
Research Interests:
Background. This review studies technology-supported interventions to help older adults, living in situations of reduced mobility, overcome loneliness, and social isolation. The focus is on long-distance interactions, investigating the... more
Background. This review studies technology-supported interventions to help older adults, living in situations of reduced mobility, overcome loneliness, and social isolation. The focus is on long-distance interactions, investigating the (i) challenges addressed and strategies applied; (ii) technology used in interventions; and (iii) social interactions enabled. Methods. We conducted a search on Elsevier’s Scopus database for related work published until January 2020, focusing on (i) intervention studies supported mainly by technology-mediated communication, (ii) aiming at supported virtual social interactions between people, and (iii) evaluating the impact of loneliness or social isolation. Results. Of the 1178 papers screened, 25 met the inclusion criteria. Computer and Internet training was the dominant strategy, allowing access to communication technologies, while in recent years, we see more studies aiming to provide simple, easy-to-use technology. The technology used was mostly ...
Research Interests:
In many developing countries, legacy systems of government are normally isolate affecting the quality of services provided to citizens. This situation affects the data trustfulness, and transparency. For this reason, various governments... more
In many developing countries, legacy systems of government are normally isolate affecting the quality of services provided to citizens. This situation affects the data trustfulness, and transparency. For this reason, various governments have been striving interoperate their legacy systems using service oriented paradigm. To achieve this ambitious goal many aspects have to be considered such as the economy conditions that have an influence on the decision of adopting software development method. The method has to produce fast deliveries, maintains the costs low, and considers from the beginning aspects related to long-term sustainability of the IT solutions. Trying to comply with such requirements, Tape Mbo'e Process (TME) has been proposed. TME focuses on building, and maintaining sustainable services-based applications. TME has been used in five case studies, which embraced both academia and public organizations in Paraguay. It is important to remark that it was the first application of this type of evaluation in the public sector in Paraguay. The initial results of the different case studies indicate the feasibility and simplicity of TME when it is applied in this context.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This special issue of the CLEI Electronic Journal consists of extended and revised versions of the Best Paper Nominee articles presented at the XVII Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering (CIbSE 2014), which took place in... more
This special issue of the CLEI Electronic Journal consists of extended and revised versions of the Best Paper Nominee articles presented at the XVII Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering (CIbSE 2014), which took place in Pucón, Chile, in April 2014.
Research Interests:
The recent surge of investment in Civic Technologies represents a unique opportunity to realize the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for improving democratic participation. In this review, we study what... more
The recent surge of investment in Civic Technologies represents a unique opportunity to realize the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for improving democratic participation. In this review, we study what technologies are proposed and evaluated in the academic literature for such goal. We focus our exploration on how civic technology is used in the collaborative creation of solutions for social issues and innovations for public services (i.e., social innovation). Our goal is to provide researchers, designers, and practitioners a starting point to understand both the academic state of the art and the existing opportunities for ICT in a democracy.
Research Interests:
Many Web applications have among their features the possibility of distributing their data and their business logic between the client and the server, also allowing an asynchronous communication between them. These features, originally... more
Many Web applications have among their features the possibility of distributing their data and their business logic between the client and the server, also allowing an asynchronous communication between them. These features, originally associated with the arrival of Rich Internet Applications (RIA), remain particularly relevant and desirable. In the area of RIA, there are few proposals that simultaneously consider these features, adopt MDD (Model-Driven Development), and use implementation technologies based on scripting. In this work, we start from MoWebA, an MDD approach to web application development, and we extend it by defining a specific architecture model with RIA functionalities, supporting the previously mentioned features. We have defined the necessary metamodels and UML profiles, as well as transformation rules that allow you to generate code based on HTML5, Javascript, jQuery, jQuery Datatables and jQuery UI. The preliminary validation of the proposal shows positive evid...
Research Interests:
En los últimos años han sido presentados varios trabajos de evaluación de metodologías orientadas a agentes abarcando enfoques cualitativos y cuantitativos y diferentes tipos de evaluaciones. Si bien estos estudios han presentado algunos... more
En los últimos años han sido presentados varios trabajos de evaluación de metodologías orientadas a agentes abarcando enfoques cualitativos y cuantitativos y diferentes tipos de evaluaciones. Si bien estos estudios han presentado algunos resultados interesantes, sería particularmente relevante para el área poder contar con mejores instrumentos de comparación entre las evaluaciones actualmente disponibles que permitan incrementar la confiabilidad con respecto a los estudios existentes. Para el efecto, en este trabajo se propone la utilización de técnicas de análisis comparativo de perfiles, en particular calculando los coeficientes de Congruencia y Similaridad Configuracional, para corroborar eventuales similitudes entre evaluaciones de distintos autores y de distintas metodologías. Además, este tipo de análisis podría ser de utilidad para la elección de una metodología que tenga cierto nivel de Congruencia con respecto a un perfil ideal o deseado, ya sea en términos generales o por ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Techniques for quality assurance have to deal with the complexity of software systems and the high probabilities of new errors appearing in any stage of the software life cycle. Software testing is a widely used approach but, due to the... more
Techniques for quality assurance have to deal with the complexity of software systems and the high probabilities of new errors appearing in any stage of the software life cycle. Software testing is a widely used approach but, due to the costs involved in this process, development teams often debate its applicability in their projects. In the endeavor to reduce the complexity of this process, this study presents an approach for software development based in Test-Driven Development (TDD) supported by Model-Based Testing (MBT) tools to allow automatic test-case generation. The approach, called MoFQA (Model-First Quality Assurance), consists of two main aspects: i) a method to drive software development based on testing techniques which defines steps and recom-mended practices; and, ii) a tool-set to allow clients and stakeholders to model system requirements, testers to create models that represent unit and abstract tests, and transformation tools used to generate executable tests. The...
Research Interests:
This special issue of the CLEI Electronic Journal consists of extended and revised versions of articles presented at the XV Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering (CIbSE 2012) and the IX Experimental Software Engineering Latin... more
This special issue of the CLEI Electronic Journal consists of extended and revised versions of articles presented at the XV Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering (CIbSE 2012) and the IX Experimental Software Engineering Latin American Workshop (ESELAW 2012), which took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in April 2012.
Research Interests:
This issue of the CLEIej consists of three main parts: i) a review paper on the state of the art of how contextual information extracted from a user task can help to improve searches for contents relevant to this task; ii) extended and... more
This issue of the CLEIej consists of three main parts: i) a review paper on the state of the art of how contextual information extracted from a user task can help to improve searches for contents relevant to this task; ii) extended and revised versions of Selected Papers (which correspond to the second and third best paper from each track) presented at the XX Ibero-American Conference on Software Engineering (CIbSE 2017), which took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in May 2017; and, iii) extended and revised versions of selected papers from LACLO 2016, the XI Latin American Conference on Learning Objects and Technology, which took place in San José, Costa Rica, in October 2016.
Research Interests:
This study focuses on model-to-model -- M2M -- transformations, as part of the Model-Driven Development -- MDD -- approach, for Rich Internet Applications -- RIA.The main aim of this study is to identify fields that require further... more
This study focuses on model-to-model -- M2M -- transformations, as part of the Model-Driven Development -- MDD -- approach, for Rich Internet Applications -- RIA.The main aim of this study is to identify fields that require further contributions, and/or research opportunities in the previously mentioned context.We applied mapping studies techniques, since these techniques use the same basic methodology as reviews but are more general and aimed at discovering what the research trends are, allowing to identify gaps in the literature.From an initial set of 132 papers, we selected 30 papers first. Then, thanks to experts' suggestion, we added 3 additional papers. Therefore, we considered 33 research papers. The performed analysis led to various considerations. Among the important ones, we can mention: there are many newly proposed methods, the scarcity of rigorous and formal validation of such methods, the problem of the portability of Platform Independent Models -- PIM, and the low...
Research Interests:
Currently, a growing interest is being caused by mobile applications which have functions implemented in the cloud (MobileApps-FC). Improvements related to the portability of these applications among different platforms and different... more
Currently, a growing interest is being caused by mobile applications which have functions implemented in the cloud (MobileApps-FC). Improvements related to the portability of these applications among different platforms and different service providers are a critical need. Model Driven Development (MDD) constitutes one of the alternatives to address portability issues. This work presents a systematic mapping study that analyzes different proposals that apply MDD to the development of MobileApps-FC and that, at the same time, consider the improvement of the portability of such applications. Even though we have identified just a few studies related to our subject of interest, the validation experiences that are presented in them, encourage the adoption of MDD to address portability issues. However, further validation experiences that consider more complex cases in industrial environments will be required to justify the benefits of MDD in a substantial manner.
Research Interests:
Idea Management (IM) has increasingly been adopted in the civic domain as a tool to engage the citizenry in processes oriented toward innovating plans, policies, and services. While Idea Management Systems (IMSs), the software systems... more
Idea Management (IM) has increasingly been adopted in the civic domain as a tool to engage the citizenry in processes oriented toward innovating plans, policies, and services. While Idea Management Systems (IMSs), the software systems that instrument IM, definitely help manage this practice, they require citizens to be committed to a separate virtual space for which they need to register, they must learn how to operate it, and they must return to it frequently. This article presents an approach that integrates IMS with today’s most popular digital spaces of participation, the social networking sites, thus enabling citizens to engage in IM processes using ordinary tools and without having to step outside their daily habits. Our goal is to reach out and pull into IM those large and demographically diverse sectors of the society that are already present and participating in social networking sites. Through a real case study of IM in the public sector that mixed both qualitative and qua...
The study presented in this paper focuses on a navigational and user perspectives analysis of Web applications, highlighting some of their critical points for modeling. To consider these critical points, we propose a notational definition... more
The study presented in this paper focuses on a navigational and user perspectives analysis of Web applications, highlighting some of their critical points for modeling. To consider these critical points, we propose a notational definition focused on a general metamodel, consisting of three specific metamodels: the Navigational Tree, the Node, and Roles. The metamodels have been implemented with a specific MDA (Model Driven Architecture) tool called AndroMDA, to generate applications for PHP language. Both, the general metamodel and its implementation have been analyzed by means of a proof of concept. Finally, some interesting results as well as the contribution of the proposed metamodel in comparison with other methodological proposals are discussed.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Un creciente número de investigadores están utilizando interfaces de audio para ejercitar tareas cognitivas en personas con discapacidad visual. Una de las aplicaciones que han sido presentadas en los últimos años es Club de Othello XO,... more
Un creciente número de investigadores están utilizando interfaces de audio para ejercitar tareas cognitivas en personas con discapacidad visual. Una de las aplicaciones que han sido presentadas en los últimos años es Club de Othello XO, un juego educativo, principalmente orientado a niños ciegos o con restos visuales de ocho años en adelante y que soporta interfaces visuales y basadas en audio. Club de Othello XO ofrece un ambiente lúdico para ejercitar varias destrezas como el desarrollo del pensamiento lógico– matemático, además de facilitar tareas colaborativas y competitivas propiciando el aprendizaje y una mayor interacción social entre los niños. Habiéndose obtenidos resultados alentadores en la evaluación de la usabilidad del software, en este trabajo se pretende analizar en mayor profundidad a través de un caso de estudio el impacto que produce la utilización de esta aplicación en el aprendizaje de conductas colaborativas y competitivas en niños con problemas visuales.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
An increasing number of methodologies and modelling methods are being proposed in the area of agent-oriented software engineering. However, one of the open problems in order for agent-oriented software engineering to become a... more
An increasing number of methodologies and modelling methods are being proposed in the area of agent-oriented software engineering. However, one of the open problems in order for agent-oriented software engineering to become a "mainstream" is a lack of consensus between the different analysis and design methods that have been proposed. Thus, this study proposes a framework to carry out an
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Abstract. An increasing number of methodologies and modelling methods are being proposed in the area of agent-oriented software engineering. However, one of the open problems in order for agent-oriented software engineering to become a... more
Abstract. An increasing number of methodologies and modelling methods are being proposed in the area of agent-oriented software engineering. However, one of the open problems in order for agent-oriented software engineering to become a “mainstream” is a lack of consensus between the different analysis and design methods that have been proposed. Thus, this study proposes a framework to carry out an analysis or evaluation of the agent-oriented analysis and design modelling methods.
Gaia (Wooldridge et al., 2000b) was the first complete methodology proposed for the analysis and design of MAS. However, the original version of Gaia suffered from the limitations of being suitable for the analysis and design of closed... more
Gaia (Wooldridge et al., 2000b) was the first complete methodology proposed for the analysis and design of MAS. However, the original version of Gaia suffered from the limitations of being suitable for the analysis and design of closed MAS and of adopting non-standard notation techniques. Several extensions to the basic Gaia methodology have been recently proposed to overcome these limitations.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Scientific papers are the current de-facto unit for scientific knowledge dissemination. Nevertheless, with the advent of the Web and is related technologies, the popularity of new types of dissemination methods (e.g. blogs, web... more
ABSTRACT Scientific papers are the current de-facto unit for scientific knowledge dissemination. Nevertheless, with the advent of the Web and is related technologies, the popularity of new types of dissemination methods (e.g. blogs, web pages and social networks) has also become difficult to ignore. In fact, several discussions are currently based on the advantages and limitations of both; the traditional paper model and these so called Science 2.0 new webbased opportunities. There is no discussion, however, on the fact that both of these types of documents are in fact used to disseminate and advance scientific knowledge. This paper presents a metadata-enabled model based on Scientific Knowledge Objects that aims to represent and capture the knowledge from both the traditional and the new types of these scientific artifacts. The inspiration for this model is mainly drawn from the comparison between the scientific artifacts and software, as several of the properties and processes currently used for software creation and management are deemed positive and interesting for the scientific publication world.
As the web continues to change the way we produce and disseminate scientific knowledge, traditional digital libraries are confronted with the challenge of transcending their boundaries to remain compatible with a world where the whole Web... more
As the web continues to change the way we produce and disseminate scientific knowledge, traditional digital libraries are confronted with the challenge of transcending their boundaries to remain compatible with a world where the whole Web in itself is the source of scientific knowledge. This paper discusses a resource-oriented approach for the management and interaction of scientific services as a way to face this challenge. Our approach consists in building a general-purpose, extensible layer for accessing any resource that has an URI ...
This paper presents an algorithm and a tool for discovering scientific communities. Several approaches have been proposed to discover community structure applying clustering methods over different networks, such as co-authorship and... more
This paper presents an algorithm and a tool for discovering scientific communities. Several approaches have been proposed to discover community structure applying clustering methods over different networks, such as co-authorship and citation networks. However, most existing approaches do not allow for overlapping of communities, which is instead natural when we consider communities of scientists. The approach presented in this paper combines different clustering algorithms for detecting overlapping scientific communities, ...
This paper introduces a conceptual high level design model for HyperStories and HHCASE, a CASE tool that supports and facilitates the building of HyperStories. HyperStories are stories that happen in a virtual and interactive hypermedia... more
This paper introduces a conceptual high level design model for HyperStories and HHCASE, a CASE tool that supports and facilitates the building of HyperStories. HyperStories are stories that happen in a virtual and interactive hypermedia environment. The model and the tool consider static and dynamic aspects of the hypermedia environment such as the modeling of contexts, interactive entities and navigation.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT In a world characterized by rapid change driven by globalization, an ICT-based economy transformation poses some challenges and opportunities for the private sector and the government sector alike. ICT has for some time been at... more
ABSTRACT In a world characterized by rapid change driven by globalization, an ICT-based economy transformation poses some challenges and opportunities for the private sector and the government sector alike. ICT has for some time been at the core of government tasks, ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT This paper is aimed at evaluating the ability of novice analysts to understand models specified using a RUP extension for modeling requirements. The evaluation is guided by a theoretical model for IS design methods, the Method... more
ABSTRACT This paper is aimed at evaluating the ability of novice analysts to understand models specified using a RUP extension for modeling requirements. The evaluation is guided by a theoretical model for IS design methods, the Method Evaluation Model (MEM). In this work, we present the empirical testing of the MEM in the evaluation of a RUP extension for modeling requirements. The testing was conducted through an experiment using 39 novice users. The evaluation's primary goal was to test the users' ability to understand requirements models. The results provide a strong indication that our RUP extension is indeed both ease to use and useful and there is an intention to use the method in the future.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Page 1. CHI 2001 31 MARCH - 5 APRIL Development Consortium Interactive Virtual Acoustic Environments for Blind Children: Computing, Usability, and Cognition Jaime Sfinchez Department of Computer Science University of Chile, CHILE... more
Page 1. CHI 2001 31 MARCH - 5 APRIL Development Consortium Interactive Virtual Acoustic Environments for Blind Children: Computing, Usability, and Cognition Jaime Sfinchez Department of Computer Science University of Chile, CHILE jsanchez@dcc.uchile.cl ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper introduces a conceptual high level design model for HyperStories and HHCASE, a CASE tool that supports and facilitates the building of HyperStories. HyperStories are stories that happen in a virtual and interactive hypermedia... more
This paper introduces a conceptual high level design model for HyperStories and HHCASE, a CASE tool that supports and facilitates the building of HyperStories. HyperStories are stories that happen in a virtual and interactive hypermedia environment. The model and the tool consider static and dynamic aspects of the hypermedia environment such as the modeling of contexts, interactive entities and navigation.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This study presents the Lucia System, a system of agents that supports visual impaired children playing with a hyperstory. The goal of the Lucia System is to help visual impaired children by enhancing sensorymotor skills and to provide... more
This study presents the Lucia System, a system of agents that supports visual impaired children playing with a hyperstory. The goal of the Lucia System is to help visual impaired children by enhancing sensorymotor skills and to provide professors with suggestions about the children performance during the play. Such system was designed using the AAII methodologies (Kinny, 1996). Finally, the study presents an analysis of some results obtained during the evaluation of the Lucia System in the school Santa Lucia, in ...
Excellence or quality are often regarded as the holy grail of science, and it is the main goal driving scientist to pursue research that will influence the direction of their fields. This excellence, however, has no standard definition... more
Excellence or quality are often regarded as the holy grail of science, and it is the main goal driving scientist to pursue research that will influence the direction of their fields. This excellence, however, has no standard definition and varies across disciplines, and even from person to person, making it difficult to evaluate research and reputation of researchers. In this work, we introduce the general problem of studying the nature of reputation in the context of computer science, providing preliminary results on its relation ...