Introductory programming: a systematic literature review

As computing becomes a mainstream discipline embedded in the school curriculum and acts as an enabler for an increasing range of academic disciplines in higher education, the literature on introductory programming is growing. Although there have been several reviews that focus on specific aspects of introductory programming, there has been no broad overview of the literature exploring recent trends across the breadth of introductory programming. This paper is the report of an ITiCSE working group that conducted a systematic review in order to gain an overview of the introductory programming literature. Partitioning the literature into papers addressing the student, teaching, the curriculum, and assessment, we explore trends, highlight advances in knowledge over the past 15 years, and indicate possible directions for future research

Scoping biological indicators of soil quality Phase II. Defra Final Contract Report SP0534

This report presents results from a field assessment of a limited suite of potential biological indicators of soil quality to investigate their suitability for national-scale soil monitoring

AN ANALYSIS OF STAKEHOLDERS COMMUNICATION IN COLLABORATIVE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

Software development is a multidisciplinary collaboration involving many stakeholders. However, existing software development processes exhibit many issues related to that collaboration. Because prior research on stakeholder analysis and teamwork revealed the importance of communication, this study analyzed stakeholder communication with reference to team activities as a social and cognitive process. The study’s goal was to understand the collaboration process during software development and to delineate factors that influence this process. We focused on communication between the software developers and their clients during the requirements gathering phase, the team process, and the inter-team and interdisciplinary collaboration, in particular between software engineers and technical communicators. First, we conducted observations to help uncover the causes of variances in collaboration performance. Then we modified aspects of the collaboration process and compared team performance. We also performed an experimental study to further test the supporting effect of clients’ documents on requirement gathering. Finally, teams’ working structures and their impact on team performance were investigated using social network analysis. Among our findings was that clients are critical to the success of software development. Providing teams with documents that support requirement gathering facilitates team efficiency, but there is a trade-off in that team members may generate fewer creative ideas. Another finding was that software teams should ensure that members from all disciplines actively participate in projects. Finally, although teams need leadership, effective leadership is not a strong team member performing all coordination and tasks. A moderately centralized team structure is preferred

High-Temperature Lightweight Ceramics with Nano-sized Ferrites for EMI Shielding: Synthesis, Characterization, and Potential Applications

The present study focuses on the synthesis and characterisation of a lightweight ceramic material with electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding properties, achieved using mullite containing micrometre-sized hollow spheres (cenospheres) and CoFe2O4 nanoparticles. This research explores compositions with varying CoFe2O4 contents ranging from 0 up to 20 wt.%. Conventional sintering in an air atmosphere is carried out at a temperature between 1100 and 1300 °C. The addition of ferrite nanoparticles was found to enhance the process of sintering cenospheres, resulting in improved material density and mechanical properties. Furthermore, this study reveals a direct correlation between the concentration of ferrite nanoparticles and the electromagnetic properties of the material. By increasing the concentration of ferrite nanoparticles, the electromagnetic shielding effect of the material (saturation magnetisation (Ms ) and remanent magnetisation (Mr)) was observed to strengthen. These findings provide valuable insights into designing and developing lightweight ceramic materials with enhanced electromagnetic shielding capabilities. The synthe-sized ceramic material holds promise for various applications that require effective electromagnetic shielding, such as in the electronics, telecommunications, and aerospace industries

Real-time receding horizon optimisation of gas pipeline networks

Real-time optimisation of gas pipelines in transient conditions is considered to be a challenging problem. Many pipeline systems are, however, only mildly non-linear. It is shown, that even the shutdown event of a compressor station can be described using a linear model. A dynamic, receding horizon optimisation problem is defined, where the free response prediction of the pipeline is obtained from a pipeline simulator and the optimal values of the decision variables are obtained solving a Quadratic Programming (QP) problem set up by using linear models, linearised constraints and quadratic approximations of the cost function, which is the energy consumption of the compressor stations (CSs). The problem is extended with discrete decision variables, the shutdown/start-up commands of CSs. A Mixed Logical Dynamical (MLD) system is defined, but the resulting Mixed Integer QP problem is shown to be very high-dimensional. Instead, a series of QP problems, each containing linear constraints modelling the shut down state of CSs, results in an optimisation problem with considerably smaller dimension. The receding horizon optimisation is tested in a simulation environment and comparison with data from the Finnish natural gas pipeline shows that 5 to 8 % savings in compressor energy consumption can be achieved using optimisation. A new idea, maximisation of energy consumption, is used to calculate maximal energy savings potential of the pipeline. A new result is that step response models used in conjunction with MLD systems do not produce the same model change behaviour than state space models.reviewe