Abstract
The concept of patterns and pattern languages, although very common in software nowadays, was first approached by Christopher Alexander, in the area of architecture, in the book A pattern language: towns, buildings, construction. However, it was only in 1980 that the term was adapted for software development, gaining its popularity in 1994. Despite the fact that the concept of patterns has been used in the area of software development for more than 40 years, there is still no consensus on the best method to validate patterns and patterns languages, and the existing methods are scattered in several different papers and research across the scientific community. As such, in this paper, we conduct a systematic literature review about the existing methods in the scientific community to validate patterns and pattern languages. © 2024 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

Abstract
Inherited retinal diseases such as Retinitis Pigmentosa and Stargardt’s disease are genetic conditions that cause the photoreceptors in the retina to deteriorate over time. This can lead to vision symptoms such as tubular vision, loss of central vision, and nyctalopia (difficulty seeing in low light) or photophobia (high light). Timely healthcare intervention is critical, as most forms of these conditions are currently untreatable and usually focused on minimizing further vision loss. Machine learning (ML) algorithms can play a crucial role in the detection of retinal diseases, especially considering the recent advancements in retinal imaging devices and the limited availability of public datasets on these diseases. These algorithms have the potential to help researchers gain new insights into disease progression from previous classified eye scans and genetic profiles of patients. In this work, multi-class identification between the retinal diseases Retinitis Pigmentosa, Stargardt Disease, and Cone-Rod Dystrophy was performed using three pretrained models, ResNet101, ResNet50, and VGG19 as baseline models, after shown to be effective in our computer vision task. These models were trained and validated on two datasets of autofluorescent retinal images, the first containing raw data, and the second dataset was improved with cropping to obtain better results. The best results were achieved using the ResNet101 model on the improved dataset with an Accuracy (Acc) of 0.903, an Area under the ROC Curve (AUC) of 0.976, an F1-Score of 0.897, a Recall (REC) of 0.903, and a Precision (PRE) of 0.910. To further assess the reliability of these models for future data, an Explainable AI (XAI) analysis was conducted, employing Grad-Cam. Overall, the study showed promising capabilities of Deep Learning for the diagnosis of retinal diseases using medical imaging. © ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2024.

Abstract
This study evaluates a new solution approach for the Resource -Constrained Project Scheduling with Alternative Subgraphs (RCPSP-AS) in case that complex relations (i.e. nested and linked alternatives) are considered. In the RCPSP-AS, the project activity structure is extended with alternative activity sequences. This implies that only a subset of all activities should be scheduled, which corresponds with a set of activities in the project network that model an alternative execution mode for a work package. Since only the selected activities should be scheduled, the RCPSP-AS comes down to a traditional RCPSP problem when the selection subproblem is solved. It is known that the RCPSP and, hence, its extension to the RCPSP-AS is NP -hard. Since similar scheduling and selection subproblems have already been successfully solved by satisfiability (SAT) solvers in the existing literature, we aim to test the performance of a GA -SAT approach that is derived from the literature and adjusted to be able to deal with the problem -specific constraints of the RCPSP-AS. Computational results on smalland large-scale instances (both artificial and empirical) show that the algorithm can compete with existing metaheuristic algorithms from the literature. Also, the performance is compared with an exact mathematical solver and learning behaviour is observed and analysed. This research again validates the broad applicability of SAT solvers as well as the need to search for better and more suited algorithms for the RCPSP-AS and its extensions.

Abstract
The intrinsic challenges of contemporary marketing encourage discovering new approaches to engage and retain customers effectively. As the main channels of interactions between customers and brands pivot between the physical and the digital world, analyzing the outcome behavioral patterns must be achieved dynamically with the stimulus performed in both poles. This systematic review investigates the collaborative impact of adopting multidisciplinary fields of Affective Computing to evaluate current marketing strategies, upholding the process of using multimodal information from consumers to perform and integrate Sentiment Analysis tasks. The adjusted representation of modalities such as textual, visual, audio, or even psychological indicators enables prospecting a more precise assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed technique, glimpsing future applications of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence in Marketing. Embracing the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis as the research method to be applied, this article warrants a rigorous and sequential identification and interpretation of the synergies between the latest studies about affective computing and marketing. Furthermore, the robustness of the procedure is deepened in knowledge-gathering concerning the current state of Affective Computing in the Marketing area, their technical practices, ethical and legal considerations, and the potential upcoming applications, anticipating insights for the ongoing work of marketers and researchers.

Abstract
Great advances in stitching high-quality retinal images have been made in recent years. On the other hand, very few studies have been carried out on low-resolution retinal imaging. This work investigates the challenges of low-resolution retinal images obtained by the D-EYE smartphone-based fundus camera. The proposed method uses homography estimation to register and stitch low-quality retinal images into a cohesive mosaic. First, a Siamese neural network extracts features from a pair of images, after which the correlation of their feature maps is computed. This correlation map is fed through four independent CNNs to estimate the homography parameters, each specializing in different corner coordinates. Our model was trained on a synthetic dataset generated from the Microsoft Common Objects in Context (MSCOCO) dataset; this work added an important data augmentation phase to improve the quality of the model. Then, the same is evaluated on the FIRE retina and D-EYE datasets for performance measurement using the Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural Similarity Index (SSIM). The obtained results are promising: the average PSNR was 26.14 dB, with an SSIM of 0.96 on the D-EYE dataset. Compared to the method that uses a single neural network for homography calculations, our approach improves the PSNR by 7.96 dB and achieves a 7.86% higher SSIM score.

Abstract
The Digital electronics collaborative enhanced learning (DECEL) project has recently developed an international collaborative education course. Its main objective is to enhance the digital electronics skills of international students by working on a complex, multidisciplinary applied problem using a mixed digital architecture. We have developed a logic level synthesis and dedicated software layers on the Red Pitaya FPGA platform. The diversity of digital concepts to be implemented, from hardware description language (HDL) to high-level languages such as Python or Matlab, forced the students to work together and rapidly improve their skills. Their motivation was fueled by the curiosity of controlling an ultrasound probe to obtain ultrasound signatures. This particular physics, little known to the students, was an additional source of curiosity. The goal of forming an image in a liquid medium was an additional motivating factor for them. The students reported that they learned a lot from the experiment. Thus, the technical parts and pedagogical results are documented in this work for reproducibility.