3,635 research outputs found
Visual and Textual Programming Languages: A Systematic Review of the Literature
It is well documented, and has been the topic of much research, that Computer
Science courses tend to have higher than average drop out rates at third level.
This is a problem that needs to be addressed with urgency but also caution. The
required number of Computer Science graduates is growing every year but the
number of graduates is not meeting this demand and one way that this problem
can be alleviated is to encourage students at an early age towards studying
Computer Science courses.
This paper presents a systematic literature review on the role of visual and
textual programming languages when learning to program, particularly as a first
programming language. The approach is systematic, in that a structured search
of electronic resources has been conducted, and the results are presented and
quantitatively analysed. This study will give insight into whether or not the
current approaches to teaching young learners programming are viable, and
examines what we can do to increase the interest and retention of these
students as they progress through their education.Comment: 18 pages (including 2 bibliography pages), 3 figure
ACM Curriculum Reports: A Pedagogic Perspective
In this paper, we illuminate themes that emerged in interviews with participants in the major curriculum recommendation efforts: we characterize the way the computing community interacts with and influences these reports and introduce the term âpedagogic projectionâ to describe implicit assumptions of how these reports will be used in practice. We then illuminate how this perceived use has changed over time and may affect future reports
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
Molecular Characterisation of Bacteriophage K Towards Applications for the Biocontrol of Pathogenic Staphylococci
End of project reportThe aim of this work was to characterise staphylococcal bacteriophage (a bacterial virus) and to assess their potential as therapeutic agents against pathogenic strains of Staphylococcus aureus, particularly mastitis-causing strains. The project included the use of two newly isolated phage CS1 and DW2, and an existing polyvalent phage. The new phage were isolated from the farmyard and characterised by electron microscopy and restriction analysis. Both phage were shown to belong to the Siphoviridae family and were lytic for representatives of all three clonal groups of Irish mastitis-associated staphylococci. A cocktail of three phage (CS1, DW2 and K) at 108 (plaque forming units) PFU/ml was infused into cows teats in animal trials. The lack of an increase in somatic cell counts in milks indicated strongly that the phage did not irritate the animal. In addition, the most potent phage used in this study, phage K, was further studied by genome sequencing, which revealed a linear DNA genome of 127,395 base pairs, which encodes 118 putative ORFs (open reading frames)
TVOCs and PM 2.5 in Naturally Ventilated Homes: Three Case Studies in a Mild Climate
In southern Europe, the present stock of social housing is ventilated naturally, with practice
varying in the di erent seasons of the year. In winter, windows are kept closed most of the day
with the exception of short periods for ventilation, whereas the rest of the year the windows are
almost permanently open. In cold weather, air changes depend primarily on the air infiltrating
across the envelope and when the temperature is warm, on the air flowing in through open windows.
CO2, PM2.5, and TVOC concentration patterns were gathered over a yearâs time in three social
housing developments in southern Europe with di erent airtightness conditions and analyzed to
determine possible relationships between environmental parameters and occupantsâ use profiles.
Correlations were found between TVOC and CO2 concentrations, for human activity was identified
as the primary source of indoor contaminants: peak TVOC concentrations were related to specific
household activities such as cooking or leisure. Indoor and outdoor PM2.5 concentrations were
likewise observed to be correlated, although not linearly due to the presence of indoor sources.
Ventilation as presently practiced in winter appears to be insufficient to dilute indoor contaminants in
all three buildings, nor does summertime behavior guarantee air quality
State anxiety modulates the return of fear
Current treatments for anxiety disorders are effective but limited by the high frequency of clinical relapse. Processes underlying relapse are thought to be experimentally modeled in fear conditioning experiments with return fear (ROF) inductions. Thereby reinstatement-induced ROF might be considered a model to study mechanisms underlying adversity-induced relapse. Previous studies have reported differential ROF (i.e. specific for the danger stimulus) but also generalized ROF (i.e. for safe and danger stimuli), but reasons for these divergent findings are not clear yet. Hence, the response pattern (i.e. differential or generalized) following reinstatement may be of importance for the prediction of risk or resilience for ROF. The aim of this study was to investigate state anxiety as a potential individual difference factor contributing to differentiability or generalization of return of fear. Thirty-six participants underwent instructed fear expression, extinction and ROF induction through reinstatement while physiological (skin conductance response, fear potentiated startle) and subjective measures of fear and US expectancy were acquired. Our data show that, as expected, high state anxious individuals show deficits in SCR discrimination between dangerous and safe cues after reinstatement induced ROF (i.e. generalization) as compared to low state anxious individuals. The ability to maintain discrimination under aversive circumstances is negatively associated with pathological anxiety and predictive of resilient responding while excessive generalization is a hallmark of anxiety disorders. Therefore, we suggest that experimentally induced ROF might prove useful in predicting relapse risk in clinical settings and might have implications for possible interventions for relapse prevention
Mathematical skills in the workplace: final report to the Science Technology and Mathematics Council
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Uncertainty explicit assessment of off-the-shelf software: A Bayesian approach
Assessment of software COTS components is an essential part of component-based software development. Poorly chosen components may lead to solutions of low quality and that are difficult to maintain. The assessment may be based on incomplete knowledge about the COTS component itself and other aspects (e.g. vendorâs credentials, etc.), which may affect the decision of selecting COTS component(s). We argue in favor of assessment methods in which uncertainty is explicitly represented (âuncertainty explicitâ methods) using probability distributions. We provide details of a Bayesian model, which can be used to capture the uncertainties in the simultaneous assessment of two attributes, thus, also capturing the dependencies that might exist between them. We also provide empirical data from the use of this method for the assessment of off-the-shelf database servers which illustrate the advantages of âuncertainty explicitâ methods over conventional methods of COTS component assessment which assume that at the end of the assessment the values of the attributes become known with certainty
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