DPN -- Dependability Priority Numbers

This paper proposes a novel model-based approach to combine the quantitative dependability (safety, reliability, availability, maintainability and IT security) analysis and trade-off analysis. The proposed approach is called DPN (Dependability Priority Numbers) and allows the comparison of different actual dependability characteristics of a systems with its target values and evaluates them regarding trade-off analysis criteria. Therefore, the target values of system dependability characteristics are taken as requirements, while the actual value of a specific system design are provided by quantitative and qualitative dependability analysis (FHA, FMEA, FMEDA, of CFT-based FTA). The DPN approach evaluates the fulfillment of individual target requirements and perform trade-offs between analysis objectives. We present the workflow and meta-model of the DPN approach, and illustrate our approach using a case study on a brake warning contact system. Hence, we demonstrate how the model-based DPNs improve system dependability by selecting the project crucial dependable design alternatives or measures

A model of support for divorced professional nurses in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

The purpose of this research study was to develop a support model for divorced professional nurses in the health-care facilities of the Department of Health, Eastern Cape, with guidelines to operationalise the model. Divorce is a process with psychological as well as social implications, and with a series of economic causes it also has implications in terms of the society and culture in which individuals operate. The main causes for divorce are adultery and domestic violence, especially against women and children (Lurea, 2011:99). A need for support from managers in the health-care facilities of the Department of Health, Eastern Cape during the process of divorce was identified by divorced professional nurses, since a lack of support and all the negativity that encompasses divorce could lead to severe depression, which will later have a negative effect on work performance (Abdul Kadir & Bifulco, 2010:858). The literature in this field of study, along with experience, indicates that it is imperative for divorced professional nurses to be supported in the workplace to help them to cope emotionally with their work demands, as prescribed by the South African Nursing Council. An explorative, descriptive and contextual qualitative design with theory generation was used to achieve the purpose of the study. Snowball sampling was employed to select participants, namely divorced professional nurses who were unknown to the researcher. A sample of 21 divorced professional nurses who work in health-care facilities in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality in the Eastern Cape participated in the study. Data was collected by means of individual face-face interviews with divorced professional nurses. The interviews continued until data saturation was reached. Field notes supplemented data that could not be portrayed by audio-taped interviews, such as non- verbal communication in observed interactions. Data analysis was done using Tesch’s approach to open coding in qualitative research. Themes, categories and sub-categories emerged from the data analysis and were fully discussed, becoming fundamental units in the development of the conceptual framework as well as in the model. The researcher did a thorough literature review to conceptualise the identified concepts on which the model was based. The description and evaluation of the model, along with guidelines to operationalise the model, were done in accordance with the method described by Chinn and Kramer (2011:197). The justification of the research, the limitations, and the recommendations for operationalisation of the model of support for divorced professional nurses working in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality of the Department of Health, Eastern Cape Province, and South Africa were indicated accordingly

A Comparison of Neuropathic Pain in HIV Disease and Diabetes Mellitus

Neuropathy is a nerve disorder found in HIV disease and diabetes mellitus that indicates damage in the peripheral nervous system. Burning, tingling, stabbing, shooting, and painful sensations in the hands and feet are common symptoms of this chronic disorder, and no treatments are available that repair the nerves. The approved pain treatments are few and only available for the diabetic neuropathy population. A mixed-methods study of archival data was performed to compare patients with painful neuropathy (PN) associated with 2 diseases: HIV (HIV-PN) and diabetes mellitus (DPN). This study examined the similarities and differences of the pain narratives and common pain questionnaires from 12 HIV-PN and 11 DPN subjects. An independent t test of the Visual Analog Scale, Numeric Rating Scale, Brief Pain Intensity subscale, and the Short Form McGill Pain questionnaire failed to reject the null hypothesis that HIV-PN and DPN have equal pain levels. The qualitative analysis revealed 8 shared themes in both groups, with footwear challenges reported as the primary theme. This finding supports the many shared themes between these groups, yet education addressing these themes is minimal. One contrasting theme, privacy, was detected in the HIV-PN group, correlating statistically with the Beck Depression Inventory findings of guilt feelings. The theme of exercise was unique for the DPN group. Both groups had paralinguistic and nonverbal elements discovered in the recordings demonstrating the need for future research to explore these components. Results of education and research themes of privacy in the HIV-PN group and pain communication strategies for both groups will increase understanding of etiology, intervention, and patterns of pain for those diagnosed with neuropathy

A flight software development and simulation framework for advanced space systems

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 293-302).Distributed terrestrial computer systems employ middleware software to provide communications abstractions and reduce software interface complexity. Embedded applications are adopting the same approaches, but must make provisions to ensure that hard real-time temporal performance can be maintained. This thesis presents the development and validation of a middleware system tailored to spacecraft flight software development. Our middleware runs on the Generalized Flight Operations Processing Simulator (GFLOPS) and is called the GFLOPS Rapid Real-time Development Environment (GRRDE). GRRDE provides publish-subscribe communication services between software components. These services help to reduce the complexity of managing software interfaces. The hard real-time performance of these services has been verified with General Timed Automata modelling and extensive run-time testing. Several example applications illustrate the use of GRRDE to support advanced flight software development. Two technology-focused studies examine automatic code generation and autonomous fault protection within the GRRDE framework. A complex simulation of the TechSat 21 distributed spacebased radar mission highlights the utility of the approach for large-scale applications.by John Patrick Enright.Ph.D

The experience of zen meditation on patients with generalized anxiety disorder in Taiwan

This study explored the experience of patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) undertaking a six week intervention of a Zen meditation programme in Taiwan. Mix-methods were used including the Revised State and Trait Anxiety Inventory (RSTAI), repeated focus groups, individual interviews, diaries and field notes. Heidegger’s interpretative phenomenology was adopted as a theoretical framework. Two groups of 9 and 12 patients (n=21) participated in the study. Three themes emerged from repeated focus groups: First ‘Expectation of Zen meditation regarding GAD symptoms included sub themes of ‘ambivalence towards meditation’, ‘crave a good sleep’, ‘stop thinking’ and ‘regain memory and concentration’. The second theme, ‘The process of Zen meditation’ included the sub themes of ‘struggling to reach a state of calm’, ‘signs of improvement’ and ‘an individual process’. The last theme, ‘The cultural beliefs regarding Zen meditation in Taiwan’ involved the ‘spiritual influence’ of Zen meditation practice. Four themes emerged from individual interviews. Firstly, ‘Separation’ referred to the issues that participants faced in dealing with the termination of the programme, including ‘concern about other participants’ and ‘examining the relationship between Zen meditation and self’. The second theme ‘Body experience of Zen meditation practice’ incorporated ‘body awareness’ and ‘preparing to practise Zen meditation’. The third theme, ‘States of mind while meditating’ consisted of ‘the state of engagement with real life’, ‘the state of detachment from real life’ and ‘the state of calm’. Lastly, ‘Benefits of Zen meditation practice’ incorporated the categories ‘less pressure with daily life’ and ‘more acceptance of being a GAD patient’. The RSTAI was administrated at baseline and post intervention and also at the two week follow-up of the Zen meditation programme. Neither the Trait Anxiety Score nor the State Anxiety Score showed significant differences between Groups 1 and 2 at baseline. This allowed the RSTAI data from the 2 groups to be merged.The results of 95% confidence interval for differences of both groups showed a significant improvement in the Trait Anxiety Score over time but not the State Anxiety Score. This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge and associated literature regarding Zen meditation and GAD in three ways. Firstly, the findings confirmed that the essential or authentic traditional qualities of meditation should be addressed in meditation study. Secondly, the meaning of Zen meditation for the groups of GAD patients was revealed in the context of Taiwan society. How their lived experience of GAD shaped their understanding of Zen meditation was interpreted. Thirdly, a comprehensive understanding of Zen meditation is reported. The findings (including themes, i.e. diverse Zen meditation processes, body experiences, concepts of obstacles and spiritual influence) add to the current knowledge by providing insight derived from participants’ lived experiences

Improving Model-Based Software Synthesis: A Focus on Mathematical Structures

Computer hardware keeps increasing in complexity. Software design needs to keep up with this. The right models and abstractions empower developers to leverage the novelties of modern hardware. This thesis deals primarily with Models of Computation, as a basis for software design, in a family of methods called software synthesis. We focus on Kahn Process Networks and dataflow applications as abstractions, both for programming and for deriving an efficient execution on heterogeneous multicores. The latter we accomplish by exploring the design space of possible mappings of computation and data to hardware resources. Mapping algorithms are not at the center of this thesis, however. Instead, we examine the mathematical structure of the mapping space, leveraging its inherent symmetries or geometric properties to improve mapping methods in general. This thesis thoroughly explores the process of model-based design, aiming to go beyond the more established software synthesis on dataflow applications. We starting with the problem of assessing these methods through benchmarking, and go on to formally examine the general goals of benchmarks. In this context, we also consider the role modern machine learning methods play in benchmarking. We explore different established semantics, stretching the limits of Kahn Process Networks. We also discuss novel models, like Reactors, which are designed to be a deterministic, adaptive model with time as a first-class citizen. By investigating abstractions and transformations in the Ohua language for implicit dataflow programming, we also focus on programmability. The focus of the thesis is in the models and methods, but we evaluate them in diverse use-cases, generally centered around Cyber-Physical Systems. These include the 5G telecommunication standard, automotive and signal processing domains. We even go beyond embedded systems and discuss use-cases in GPU programming and microservice-based architectures

Placement de graphes de tâches de grande taille sur architectures massivement multicoeurs

This Ph.D thesis is devoted to the study of the mapping problem related to massively parallel embedded architectures. This problem arises from industrial needs like energy savings, performance demands for synchronous dataflow applications. This problem has to be solved considering three criteria: heuristics should be able to deal with applications with various sizes, they must meet the constraints of capacities of processors and they have to take into account the target architecture topologies. In this thesis, tasks are organized in communication networks, modeled as graphs. In order to determine a way of evaluating the efficiency of the developed heuristics, mappings, obtained by the heuristics, are compared to a random mapping. This comparison is used as an evaluation metric throughout this thesis. The existence of this metric is motivated by the fact that no comparative heuristics can be found in the literature at the time of writing of this thesis. In order to address this problem, two heuristics are proposed. They are able to solve a dataflow process network mapping problem, where a network of communicating tasks is placed into a set of processors with limited resource capacities, while minimizing the overall communication bandwidth between processors. They are applied on task graphs where weights of tasks and edges are unitary set. The first heuristic, denoted as Task-wise Placement, places tasks one after another using a notion of task affinities. The second algorithm, named Subgraph-wise Placement, gathers tasks in small groups then place the different groups on processors using a notion of affinities between groups and processors. These algorithms are tested on tasks graphs with grid or logic gates network topologies. Obtained results are then compared to an algorithm present in the literature. This algorithm maps task graphs with moderated size on massively parallel architectures. In addition, the random based mapping metric is used in order to evaluate results of both heuristics. Then, in a will to address problems that can be found in industrial cases, application cases are widen to tasks graphs with tasks and edges weights values similar to those that can be found in the industry. A progressive construction heuristic named Regret Based Approach, based on game theory, is proposed. This heuristic maps tasks one after another. The costs of mapping tasks according to already mapped tasks are computed. The process of task selection is based on a notion of regret, present in game theory. The task with the highest value of regret for not placing it, is pointed out and is placed in priority. In order to check the strength of the algorithm, many types of task graphs (grids, logic gates networks, series-parallel, random, sparse matrices) with various size are generated. Tasks and edges weights are randomly chosen using a bimodal law parameterized in order to have similar values than industrial applications. Obtained results are compared to the Task Wise placement, especially adapted for non-unitary values. Moreover, results are evaluated using the metric defined above.Ce travail de thèse de doctorat est dédié à l'étude d'un problème de placement de tâches dans le domaine de la compilation d'applications pour des architectures massivement parallèles. Ce problème vient en réponse à certains besoins industriels tels que l'économie d'énergie, la demande de performances pour les applications de type flots de données synchrones. Ce problème de placement doit être résolu dans le respect de trois critères: les algorithmes doivent être capable de traiter des applications de tailles variables, ils doivent répondre aux contraintes de capacités des processeurs et prendre en compte la topologie des architectures cibles. Dans cette thèse, les tâches sont organisées en réseaux de communication, modélisés sous forme de graphes. Pour évaluer la qualité des solutions produites par les algorithmes, les placements obtenus sont comparés avec un placement aléatoire. Cette comparaison sert de métrique d'évaluation des placements des différentes méthodes proposées. Afin de résoudre à ce problème, deux algorithmes de placement de réseaux de tâches de grande taille sur des architectures clusterisées de processeurs de type many-coeurs ont été développés. Ils s'appliquent dans des cas où les poids des tâches et des arêtes sont unitaires. Le premier algorithme, nommé Task-wise Placement, place les tâches une par une en se servant d'une notion d'affinité entre les tâches. Le second, intitulé Subgraph-wise Placement, rassemble les tâches en groupes puis place les groupes de tâches sur les processeurs en se servant d'une relation d'affinité entre les groupes et les tâches déjà affectées. Ces algorithmes ont été testés sur des graphes, représentants des applications, possédant des topologies de types grilles ou de réseaux de portes logiques. Les résultats des placements sont comparés avec un algorithme de placement, présent dans la littérature qui place des graphes de tailles modérée et ce à l'aide de la métrique définie précédemment. Les cas d'application des algorithmes de placement sont ensuite orientés vers des graphes dans lesquels les poids des tâches et des arêtes sont variables similairement aux valeurs qu'on peut retrouver dans des cas industriels. Une heuristique de construction progressive basée sur la théorie des jeux a été développée. Cet algorithme, nommé Regret Based Approach, place les tâches une par une. Le coût de placement de chaque tâche en fonction des autres tâches déjà placées est calculée. La phase de sélection de la tâche se base sur une notion de regret présente dans la théorie des jeux. La tâche qu'on regrettera le plus de ne pas avoir placée est déterminée et placée en priorité. Afin de vérifier la robustesse de l'algorithme, différents types de graphes de tâches (grilles, logic gate networks, series-parallèles, aléatoires, matrices creuses) de tailles variables ont été générés. Les poids des tâches et des arêtes ont été générés aléatoirement en utilisant une loi bimodale paramétrée de manière à obtenir des valeurs similaires à celles des applications industrielles. Les résultats de l'algorithme ont également été comparés avec l'algorithme Task-Wise Placement, qui a été spécialement adapté pour les valeurs non unitaires. Les résultats sont également évalués en utilisant la métrique de placement aléatoire

Universal design and professional practice obligations in Malaysian domestic housing.

Improving accessibility, usability and safety in the field of Malaysian housing and, more broadly the Malaysian built environment