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Over the past few years, agile methods have recorded impressive results in the software engineering field basically in terms of business value and time to market. Similarly, software usability has been the major success factor for interactive systems. Agile usability engineering has been motivated as a booming solution to develop better usability in a cost-effective manner. eXtreme Scenario Based Design (XSBD) is one of the effective agile usability approaches. However, XSBD does not provide explicit metrics to quantify the software usability. In this paper, we propose the Quantified eXtreme Scenario Based Design (QXSBD) approach, which complements XSBD with a set of usability metrics collected from the agile architecture-centric approach and the Quality in Use Integrated Model (QUIM). Further, QXSBD specifies the subset of usability metrics that need to be assessed at the major milestones in agile process. This integration employs the Usability Critical Parameters Workshop (UCPW) to provide engineering practices defining the usability requirements and design goals. We demonstrate the QXSBD, process through customer request project case study. The obtained results have shown that usability issues have been reduced by about 30%. Noticeable end user satisfaction has been achieved while maintaining the project total cost.

Background: The superiority of minimally invasive aortic valve replacement (AVR) over the standard approach is the subject of ongoing research. The aim of this study was to compare the outcomes of AVR through full sternotomy versus mini-sternotomy. Methods:  We included 60 patients who had AVR; 30 patients underwent AVR through J- or T-shaped mini-sternotomy, and 30 patients had a full sternotomy. We included patients who had isolated AVR and excluded patients who had a concomitant cardiac procedure, redo surgery, or those who needed annular dilatation. All patients had aortic and right atrial cannulation for cardiopulmonary bypass. Study endpoints were operative times, postoperative complications and duration of ICU and hospital stays. Results: There were no differences between the two groups preoperatively. Cardiopulmonary bypass time was longer in the mini-sternotomy group (median: 100 (range: 65- 170) vs. 85 (55-160) min, respectively; p= 0.024). Operative time was non-significantly longer in the mini-sternotomy group 5 (4-6) hours vs. 4.5 (4-6) hours in the full sternotomy group (p=0.62). Ventilation time was 10 (4- 50) hours in the mini-sternotomy group vs. 14 (8- 45) hours in the full sternotomy group (p<0.001). ICU stay was shorter in the mini-sternotomy group (2 (1-6.5) vs. 2.5 (1-7) days, respectively, p= 0.014). The total mediastinal drainage was 100 (50 400) ml in the mini-sternotomy group vs. 275 (50- 1000) ml in the full sternotomy group (p= <0.001). There was no difference in wound infection (p= 0.35), tamponade (p˃0.99), and hemothorax (p˃0.99) between both groups. Conclusion: Mini-sternotomy AVR had longer cardiopulmonary bypass times; however, there were no differences in the postoperative complications compared to the full sternotomy approach. Mini-sternotomy could be a safe alternative approach to the full median sternotomy for aortic valve replacement.

Proteins are very important components in any living cells. A number of diseases such as Retinitis pigmentosa, Stargadt-like macular degeneration and Doyne Honeycomb Retinal Dystrophy (DHRD) diseases are shown to result from misfunctioning of proteins. Protein folding problem is a way to predict the best and optimal 3D molecular structure (tertiary structure) of a protein which is then considered to be a sign for the protein's proper functionality. This comparative study's purpose is to calculate the protein's energy using the Empirical Conformational Energy Program for Peptides (ECEPP) package and experiments were performed on the Rhodopsin proteinusing three different evolutionary algorithms in order to find the best energy in parallel with the best structure for the protein and a comparison for the results obtained from the three algorithms was performed. It was found that the best result was -11.8 obtained from the Extended Compact Genetic Algorithm (ECGA). ECGA has proved from the obtained results to be the best algorithm from the chosen algorithms in the comparative study in obtaining the Rhodpsin protein's energy and its equivalent structure.