Mosquito collections were conducted during a dengue outbreak in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, July-December 1995. A total of 6694 adult mosquitoes (four genera and nine species) were captured, of which 2986 (78.3% females and 21.7% males) were Aedes albopictus and 2339 (39.7% females and 60.3% males) were Ae.aegypti. These two species comprised 84.2% of the total collection. Specimens were grouped into pools, nearly 50% of them processed for detection of virus by cythopathic effect in C6-36 and VERO cell cultures and by haemagglutination test. Five pools gave positive haemagglutination reactions and were examined by immunofluorescence using monoclonal antibodies to flavivirus and to dengue virus. One pool of ten Ae.albopictus males was positive for dengue virus: serotypes 2 and 3 were identified by serotype-specific monoclonal antibodies and confirmed by RT-PCR. This is the first report of Ae.albopictus naturally infected with dengue virus in America. Also, it is the very first time Ae.albopictus males have been found infected with dengue virus in the wild.

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The Cloud Computing paradigm is focused on the provisioning of reliable and scalable virtual infrastructures that deliver execution and storage services. This paradigm is particularly suitable to solve resource-greedy scientific computing applications such as parameter sweep experiments (PSEs). Through the implementation of autoscalers, the virtual infrastructure can be scaled up and down by acquiring or terminating instances of virtual machines (VMs) at the time that application tasks are being scheduled. In this paper, we extend an existing study centered in a state-of-the-art autoscaler called multiobjective evolutionary autoscaler (MOEA). MOEA uses a multiobjective optimization algorithm to determine the set of possible virtual infrastructure settings. In this context, the performance of MOEA is greatly influenced by the underlying optimization algorithm used and its tuning. Therefore, we analyze two well-known multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (NSGA-II and NSGA-III) and how they impact on the performance of the MOEA autoscaler. Simulated experiments with three real-world PSEs show that MOEA gets significantly improved when using NSGA-III instead of NSGA-II due to the former provides a better exploitation versus exploration trade-off.

Teaching agile practices is becoming a priority in Software engineering curricula as a result of the increasing use of agile methods (AMs) such as Scrum in the software industry. Limitations in time, scope, and facilities within academic contexts hinder students' hands‐on experience in the use of professional AMs. To enhance students' exposure to Scrum, we have developed Virtual Scrum, an educational virtual world that simulates a Scrum‐based team room through virtual elements such as blackboards, a Web browser, document viewers, charts, and a calendar. A preliminary version of Virtual Scrum was tested with a group of 45 students running a capstone project with and without Virtual Scrum support. Students' feedback showed that Virtual Scrum is a viable and effective tool to implement the different elements in a Scrum team room and to perform activities throughout the Scrum process. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 999: XX–XX, 2013; View this article online at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cae; DOI 10.1002/cae.21588 © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 23:147–156, 2015; View this article online at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cae; DOI

Agile methods have been in the cutting-edge of software engineering as a means to improve management of software development processes. The widespread use of such methods in professional contexts has encouraged their integration into software engineering training and undergraduate courses. Although there are several research works that have focused on teaching Scrum through simulating a software development project, they have covered only the learning of practices within a Scrum team, and a few of them have tackled non-technical skills beyond the development practices. Thus, we claim that it is necessary to help students understand Scrum rules, clear project obstacles and tackle non-technical issues such as management and teamwork.In this context, this work states the following research question: "How does agile coaching influence students' performance?". To answer this question, an original training model based on Scrum enhanced then with agile coaching to maximize student's performance is introduced. This model has been assessed by a case-study using a capstone project in the Software Engineering Workshop course within the Systems Engineering BSc program at the Faculty of Exact Sciences (Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires). Prior to the course, students were introduced into the basis of software system design, object-oriented programming, operating systems and networks, and database management. The course aims to engage students to develop a capstone project, which is organized and prioritized according to the Product Backlog divided into three 4-weeks Sprints (students are expected to work for about 2 hours a day). The phases of the training model are Initial Phase (performed only once at the beginning), Sprint Planning Phase, Development Phase, Sprint Review and Retrospective Phase, and Product Delivery and Assessment Phase (performed only once at the end). A comparison between a course version with and without coaching was conducted, in which the students' performance and their perceptions of using Scrum for the first time were evaluated. The students' performance was measured by the coverage of a set of recommended software engineering practices widely performed along a software development life-cycle, whereas the students' perception was evaluated throughout a survey to assess the impact of agile coaching on the training model. The encouraging results showed that the training model allowed coached students to improve both their technical and non-technical skills. The Agile Coach allowed students to increase the coverage of the software engineering practices (approximately 22%) and enhance comprehension of Scrum; coached teams could both tackle more sophisticated project features and cover more software engineering practices than non-coached teams. Also, the survey confirmed that the course provided coached students with valuable non-technical skills, such as facilitated internalization of Scrum, faster solutions of impediments, and guidance by means of check-point meetings. Mo...

Serious games (SGs) have emerged to improve the commitment and performance of user players, since they perform an exact mission, integrating with the game mechanics, thus creating a very attractive mission. In software engineering (SE), SGs have been addressed to increase the commitment of developers. Moreover, the use of SGs is of great interest to train and train future professionals to experience situations that they could face in software development. This study presents a multivocal literature review (MLR) to systematize and categorize the state-of-the-art of SGs for teaching Agile Methods. The MLR allowed software practitioners and teachers to identify cutting-edge methods for evaluating SGs, application domains in which the assessments were carried out, and the main features considered for assessing the educational benefits of SGs. For academics and professionals eager to test SGs in the training field of Agile Methods, the findings are helpful to (i) provide evidence regarding the usage of games in SE education, (ii) design game-based teaching/learning strategies, and (iii) offer a repertoire of tactics for assessing the use of SGs in SE courses. In conclusion, the knowledge collected was structured and classified to provide a response to our research questions, aimed at providing a summary of the key research in this area, as well as defining open issues in the field.

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