Hermeneutic single case efficacy design: A systematic review of published research and current standards

open4siThis article systematically reviews the methodological characteristics of Hermeneutic Single Case Efficacy Design (HSCED) studies published in peer-reviewed journals. HSCED provides researchers with a flexible and viable alternative to both between-groups and within-subject experimental designs. This article includes a description of the evolution of the methodology distinctive to HSCED; a discussion of results of HSCED studies considered within a framework of contemporary standards and guidelines for systematic case study research; a presentation of recommendations for key characteristics (e.g., diagnosis, hermeneutic analysis, adjudication procedure). Overall, the aim is provide researchers and reviewers with a resource for conducting and evaluating HSCED research. The results of a systematic review of 13 studies suggests that published HSCED research meets contemporary criteria for systematic case study research. Hermeneutic analysis and adjudication emerged as areas of HSCED practice characterized by a diversity of procedures. Although consensus exists along key dimensions of HSCED, there remains a need for further evaluation of adjudication procedures and reporting standards.openBenelli, Enrico; De Carlo, Alessandro; Biffi, Diana; Mcleod, JohnBenelli, Enrico; De Carlo, Alessandro; Biffi, Diana; Mcleod, Joh

Diversity and Adjudication

This paper takes an axiomatic and calculational view of diversity (or "N-version programming"), where multiple implementations of the same specification are executed in parallel to increase dependability. The central notion is "adjudication": once we have multiple, potential different, outcomes, how do we come to a single result? Adjudication operators are explicitly defined and some general properties for these explored

An Adaptive Software Fault Tolerant Framework for Ubiquitous Vehicular Technologies

Probability for the occurrence of faults increases manifolds when program Lines of Code (LoC) exceeds a few thousand in ubiquitous applications. Faults mitigation in ubiquitous applications, such as those of autonomous Vehicular Technologies (VTs), has not been effective even with the use of formal methods. Faults in such applications require exhaustive testing for a timely fix, that seems infeasible computationally. This emphasizes the imperative role of Software Fault Tolerance (SFT) for autonomous applications. Several SFT techniques have been proposed but failures revealed in VT applications imply that existing SFT techniques need to be fine-tuned. In this paper, current replication-based SFT techniques have been analyzed and classified with respect to their diversity, adjudication, and adaptivity. Essential parameters (such as Reliability, Time, Variance, etc) for adjudication, diversity, and adaptiveness were recorded. The identified parameters were mapped to different techniques (such as AFTRC, SCOP, VFT, etc) for observing their shortcomings. Consequently, a generic framework named ”Diverse Parallel Adjudication for Software Fault Tolerance (DPA-SFT)” has been proposed. DPA-SFT addresses the shortcomings of existing SFT techniques for VTs with the added value of parallel and diverse adjudication. A prototype implementation of the proposed framework has been developed for assessing the viability of DPA-SFT over modules of VT. An empirical comparison of the proposed framework was performed with prevalent techniques (AFTRC, SCOP, VFT, etc). A thorough evaluation suggests that DPA-SFT performs better than contemporary SFT techniques in VTs due to its parallel and diverse adjudication

Democracy, Judicial Attitudes and Heterogeneity: The Civil Versus Common Law Tradition

A key issue in the design of a legal system is the choice of the mechanism aggregating citizens ’ preferences over the harshness of punishment. While under Case law appellate judges ’ biases offset one another at the cost of volatility of the law, under Statute law a corruptible Legislator chooses certain rules that are biased only if she favors special interests: i.e., when the preference heterogeneity is sufficiently high and/or the political process sufficiently inefficient. Thus, society should possibly choose Case law only in the last scenario. Instrumental variables estimates based on data from 156 countries, which possibly reformed the transplanted law making institution, confirm this prediction

Improving DBMS performance through diverse redundancy

Database replication is widely used to improve both fault tolerance and DBMS performance. Non-diverse database replication has a significant limitation - it is effective against crash failures only. Diverse redundancy is an effective mechanism of tolerating a wider range of failures, including many non-crash failures. However it has not been adopted in practice because many see DBMS performance as the main concern. In this paper we show experimental evidence that diverse redundancy (diverse replication) can bring benefits in terms of DBMS performance, too. We report on experimental results with an optimistic architecture built with two diverse DBMSs under a load derived from TPC-C benchmark, which show that a diverse pair performs faster not only than non-diverse pairs but also than the individual copies of the DBMSs used. This result is important because it shows potential for DBMS performance better than anything achievable with the available off-the-shelf servers

Three Models of Adjudicative Representation

Byggindustrin har länge tampats med en undermålig produktivitetsutveckling i förhållande till andra industrier och då speciellt processindustrin. Det har gjorts många försök att industrialisera byggandet för att dra nytta av standardiserade produkter och processer, i Sverige mest utmärkande under 60-talets miljonprogram vilket var kraftigt influerat av dåtidens rådande produktionsfilosofi - massproduktion. För närvarande  baseras  industrialiseringsarbetet  på  koncept  från  lean  production  där  fokus  ligger  i  att eliminera alla former av slöserier via det som kallas industriellt byggande. Syftet med denna rapport är att med hjälp av filosofier från lean production undersöka hur koncept från industriellt byggande appliceras i produktionen av bostäder där prefabricerade betongelement används. Anledningen till att  detta  perspektiv  väljs  baseras  i att ett  konceptuellt  ramverk deriverat  från lean production  lämpar  sig  ytterst  väl  för  att  undersöka  och  analysera  värdeflöden,  speciellt  i  en produktionsmiljö. Ett av Sveriges största byggbolag, NCC AB, använder sig för närvarande av tekniska plattformar och konceptuella produkter för att industrialisera sin process vid upplåtandet hyresfastigheter med  minimering  av  produktionskostnad  och  tid  som  huvudmål.  En  av  huvudkomponenterna   i produktionen av dessa bostäder är prefabricerade betongelement vilket gör att företaget lämpar sig ytterst väl för en fallstudie. Några av de huvudresultat som denna rapport utmynnat i är att det studerade företaget och i förlängningen hela byggbranschen dras med ett kraftigt eftersatt förbättringsarbete - continuous improvements vilket kan vara en av huvudförklaringarna till sektorns låga produktivitetsutveckling jämfört med processindustrins dito. Vidare har tre fokusområden tagits fram baserat på den utförda fallstudien som sedan ställts i relation  till  teori  inom  industriellt  byggande.  Dessa  tre fokusområden  har  givits  epitetet  pelare för industrialisering  och  det  argumenteras  för  att  dessa  pelare  måste  beaktas  för  att  möjliggöra  en framgångsrik industriell byggprocess.The  construction  industry  has  during  a  long  time  suffered  from  poor  development  in  productivity compared to other industries, especially the manufacturing industry. Many initiatives for industrialization have been made during the past decade in order to benefit from standardized products and processes, in Sweden most notably through "Miljonprogrammet" in the 1960s. This era was heavily influenced by the prevailing production philosophy in the manufacturing industry at the time - mass production. Today the industrialization  initiatives  are  based  on  concepts  from  lean  production  where  the  focus  is  upon eliminating all forms of waste through what is related to as industrial construction. This report is based on the purpose to, using lean philosophies and tools, investigate how concepts from industrial construction is applied in the production of residential buildings using prefabricated concrete elements. The perspective of lean production is chosen because it is suitable for the study of value flows, especially in a production environment. One of the largest  Swedish construction firms  - NCC  AB, currently deploys technical platforms and conceptual products in order to industrialize the processes used to construct rental housing with production cost and time reduction in focus. One of the key components used are prefabricated concrete elements which means the company is suitable as a case study. Some of the main results extracted through this research is that the studied company and in extension the entire construction industry performs poorly in terms of continuous improvements. This could be a main explanation for the industry’s productivity development in comparison with other industries, especially the manufacturing industry. Further, three areas of particular importance are derived from the case study and compared to theory within industrial construction. These areas are, in this report, labeled pillars for industrialization and it  is  argued for  that  these pillars  needs  to be considered  in order  to  enable a successful industrialized construction process