Copilot: Monitoring Embedded Systems

Runtime verification (RV) is a natural fit for ultra-critical systems, where correctness is imperative. In ultra-critical systems, even if the software is fault-free, because of the inherent unreliability of commodity hardware and the adversity of operational environments, processing units (and their hosted software) are replicated, and fault-tolerant algorithms are used to compare the outputs. We investigate both software monitoring in distributed fault-tolerant systems, as well as implementing fault-tolerance mechanisms using RV techniques. We describe the Copilot language and compiler, specifically designed for generating monitors for distributed, hard real-time systems. We also describe two case-studies in which we generated Copilot monitors in avionics systems

Washington Pension System Review

The purpose of this study is to analyze the incidence of Total Permanent Disability (TPD)pensions in Washington State's workers' compensation program. Concerns exist at both thelegislature and in the Department of Labor and Industries as there appears to have been a sharp upturn in the number of pensions awarded since late in the 1990s. This report examines the factors that may be causally related to any upsurge in such awards. Our task is to evaluate pension incidence for both the state fund and the self-insured populations, with a view towards identifying causes of the trend in both sectors, although we concentrate more on the state fund Cclaims due to data limitations

Understanding adoption and continual usage behaviour towards internet banking services in Hong Kong

Banks and financial institutions in Hong Kong are increasingly finding themselves facing rapid increases in turbulence and complexity, leading to greater uncertainty and increased competition. Customers are also becoming more demanding. Apart from the traditional type of banking services, customers today require more personalized products and services, and access to such services at any time, and at any place. Although there is no panacea for banks to stay competitive, Internet Banking is one of the advanced information technologies they can employ to achieve a high level of customer services. Internet Banking is an emerging technology that permits conduct of banking transactions through the Internet. From the banks’ point of view, it requires the lowest transaction cost among various channels, just one percent of branch-based banking. It also can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of corporate business processes through elimination of paper work. One of the many benefits of Internet Banking is that customers can use bank services 24 hours a day from anywhere in the world. This study investigates university students\u27 adoption/continual usage behaviour within the context of Hong Kong Internet Banking services. A research framework based on the extension of Technology Acceptance Model and Social Cognitive Theory was developed to identify factors that would influence the adoption/continual usage of Internet Banking. The framework includes subjective norm, image, result demonstrability, perceived risk, computer self-efficacy, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and intention constructs. A diverse sample of undergraduate and postgraduate students of seven universities in Hong Kong was used to test the models. Structural Equation Modeling was used to examine the entire pattern of intercorrelations among the eight proposed constructs and to test related propositions empirically. The results reveal that both subjective norm and computer self-efficacy play significant roles in influencing the intention to adopt Internet Banking indirectly. Perceived usefulness has significant positive effect on intention to adopt, this result supports the extension of the Technology Acceptance Model. Perceived ease of use has significant indirect effect on intention to adopt/continual usage through perceived usefulness, while its direct effect on intention to adopt is not significant in this empirical study. Theoretical contributions and practical implications of the findings are discussed and suggestions for future research are presented

DETERMINANTS OF CLERGY BEHAVIORS PROMOTING SAFETY OF BATTERED KOREAN IMMIGRANT WOMEN

Studies have shown that not only are clergy members the first persons from whom battered women seek help, but also a great number of clergy counsel battered women every year (Martin, 1989; Rotunda, Williamson, & Penfold, 2004). The role of the church and clergy are especially critical for the Korean immigrant community in the U.S. because Korean immigrants greatly underutilize existing services and rely heavily on their respective churches for assistance with various issues, including domestic violence (Boodman, 2007; Kim, 1997). Korean churches and clergy members have the potential to be active partners in providing intervention services and to serve as a major force for preventing domestic violence, yet there is no study that directly examines Korean clergy’s responses to domestic violence in their congregations and the factors related to their responses. Recognizing this gap in knowledge, this study was designed to examine how patriarchal, religious, and cultural values of Korean clergy members affect their responses to domestic violence in their congregations. Based on the radical feminist theory and intersectionality theory, it was hypothesized that younger clergy, clergy that have lived longer in the U.S., clergy with more pastoral counseling education, clergy with less religious fundamentalist beliefs, clergy with more egalitarian gender role attitudes, and clergy who do not adhere strongly to Korean cultural values will indicate more behaviors that promote safety of Korean battered women. A cross-sectional survey design utilizing mixed methods was used in this study with data collection through mail and online surveys. The sample was drawn from the Korean Business Directory (The Korea Times Washington D.C., 2010) that includes mailing addresses and phone numbers of 388 Korean American churches in Virginia and Maryland. A total of 152 Korean American ministers participated in this study by completing and returning a self-administered mail survey or accessing a web-based survey, yielding a 40.5% return rate. Results from both quantitative and qualitative analyses indicated that many Korean American clergy are torn between safety of battered women and sacredness of marriage in responding to domestic violence cases in their church. They first try to work toward reconciliation of couples through couples counseling and marriage enrichment seminars, and when this effort is not successful, then they refer to other resources such as domestic violence programs and therapists. Younger Korean American ministers, ministers who have lived in the U.S. longer, and ministers who adhere to Korean cultural values less were more likely to endorse behaviors that promote safety of Korean battered women. Religious fundamentalist beliefs, pastoral counseling education, and gender role attitudes did not account for a significant amount of variance associated with Korean clergy responses to domestic violence. Many Korean American clergy considered themselves as important figures who are best suited to deal with cases of domestic violence in their churches and recognized the need to work and build collaborative relationships with other professionals. Only small number of Korean American clergy felt well prepared to deal with domestic violence cases; however, they are willing to attend training on domestic violence, and many of them stressed the importance of clergy training on domestic violence in ensuring safety of battered women. Implications for social work practice and research are discussed

Transactions of 2019 International Conference on Health Information Technology Advancement Vol. 4 No. 1

The Fourth International Conference on Health Information Technology Advancement Kalamazoo, Michigan, October 31 - Nov. 1, 2019. Conference Co-Chairs Bernard T. Han and Muhammad Razi, Department of Business Information Systems, Haworth College of Business, Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI 49008 Transaction Editor Dr. Huei Lee, Professor, Department of Computer Information Systems, Eastern Michigan University Ypsilanti, MI 48197 Volume 4, No. 1 Hosted by The Center for Health Information Technology Advancement, WM

Design, construction and commissioning of the Thermal Screen Control System for the CMS Tracker detector at CERN

The CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) laboratory is currently building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Four international collaborations have designed (and are now constructing) detectors able to exploit the physics potential of this collider. Among them is the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), a general purpose detector optimized for the search of Higgs boson and for physics beyond the Standard Model of fundamental interactions between elementary particles. This thesis presents, in particular, the design, construction, commissioning and test of the control system for a screen that provides a thermal separation between the Tracker and ECAL (Electromagnetic CALorimeter) detector of CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid experiment). Chapter 1 introduces the new challenges posed by these installations and deals, more in detail, with the Tracker detector of CMS. The size of current experiments for high energy physics is comparable to that of a small industrial plant: therefore, the techniques used for controls and regulations, although highly customized, must adopt Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) hardare and software. The âﾜslow controlâ systems for the experiments at CERN make extensive use of PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) and SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) to provide safety levels (namely interlocks), regulations, remote control of high and low voltages distributions, as well as archiving and trending facilities. The system described in this thesis must follow the same philosophy and, at the same time, comply with international engineering standards. While the interlocks applications belong straightforwardly to the category of DES (Discrete Event System), and are therefore treated with a Finite State Machine approach, other controls are more strictly related to the regulation problem. Chapter 2 will focus on various aspects of modern process control and on the tools used to design the control system for the thermal screen: the principles upon which the controller is designed and tuned, and the model validated, including the Multiple Input-Multiple Output (MIMO) problematics are explained. The thermal screen itself, the constraints and the basis of its functioning are described in Chapter 3, where the thermodynamical design is discussed as well. For the LHC experiments, the aim of a control system is also to provide a well defined SIL (Safety Interlock Level) to keep the system in a safe condition; yet, in this case, it is necessary to regulate the temperature of the system within certain values and respect the constraints arising from the specific needs of the above mentioned subsystems. The most natural choice for a PLC-based controller is a PID (Proportional Integral Derivative) controller. This kind of controller is widely used in many industrial process, from batch production in the pharmaceutics or automotive field to chemical plants, distillation columns and, in general, wherever a reliable and robust control is needed. In order to design and tune PID controllers, many techniques are in use; the approach followed in this thesis is that of black-box modeling: the system is modeled in the time domain, a transfer function is inferred and a controller is designed. Then, a system identification procedure allows for a more thorough study and validation of the model, and for the controller tuning. Project of the thermal screen control including system modeling, controller design and MIMO implementation issues are entirely covered in Chapter 4. A systems engineering methodology has been followed all along to adequately manage and document every phase of the project, complying with time and budget constraints. A risk analysis has been performed, using Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) and Hazard and Operability Studies (HAZOP), to understand the level of protection assured by the thermal screen and its control components. Tests planned and then performed to validate the model and for quality assurance purposes are described in Chapter 5. A climatic chamber has been designed and built at CERN, where the real operating conditions of the thermal screen are simulated. Detailed test procedures have been defined, following IEEE standards, in order to completely check every single thermal screen panel. This installation allows for a comparison of different controller tuning approaches, including IAE minimization, Skogestad tuning rules, Internal Model Control (IMC), and a technique based upon the MatLab Optimization toolbox. This installation is also used for system identification purposes and for the acceptance tests of every thermal screen panel (allowing for both electrical and hydraulic checks). Also, tests have been performed on the West Hall CERN experimental area , where a full control system has been set up, for interlock high- and low- voltage lines. The interlock system operating procedures and behaviour have been validated during real operating conditions of the detector esposed to a particle beam. The satisfactory results of tests take the project to full completion, allowing the plan to reach the âﾜexitâ stage, when the thermal screen is ready to be installed in the Tracker and ready to be operational

The sociolinguistic constraints on the Quotative system: British English and US English compared

The recent advent and rapid spread of two new vernacular options, go and like, within the (say) variable has attracted a growing body of research in variationist sociolinguists. This thesis examines the synchronic functions of these new quotatives and considers pragmatic, discourse, and social factors. The investigation is based on an analysis of very large corpora of spontaneous spoken British and American English. This cross-variety comparison gives me the opportunity (i) to investigate a case of rapid language change that is happening concurrently with the time of research and (ii) to consider to what extent social and linguistic constraints hold globally.A variationist study of the constraints which govern the quotative system is valuable for the following reasons: By investigating the patterning of the (say) variable as a whole, we gain insights into the rule-governed variability of innovative features and their rival variants (say, tell, think, cry, ...). A look at the entire quotative system reveals the intimate interplay of competing choices within the (say) variable. My project aims at understanding how the system as a whole reacts to the intrusion of newcomer variants. A sharply delimited and hitherto stable set of variants - such as the (say) variable - presents the unique opportunity to investigate the restructuring of all variants as new ones come in. This is especially interesting when we look at competing choices which have the same [- canonical] underlying semantic feature, such as unframed quotes. The data show that far from ousting the unframed or say-variant, like and go add options within the vernacular categoryA comparative study on the patterning of non-canonical variants within the quotative pool produces important insights into phenomena such as reallocation, competition within one socio-pragmatic field, as well as interaction of variants ii within the same variable. In this light, the restructuring of all quotative variants during the rapid intrusion of the robust new variant like gives us an important test-case for various explanatory parameters for language change that have been raised in the literature, i.e. Romaine's claims about language and gender (2003), the reallocation hypothesis as raised by Britain (2002) and Britain and Trudgill (1999), the reformulation of the standard vs. non-standard dichotomy into local vs. supra-local variants by Foulkes and Docherty (1999) and the Milroys' findings (1998) concerning network and class.Furthermore, research in variationist sociolinguistics has revealed the importance of intralinguistic constraints in situations of competing grammars (Meyerhoff 2000, Preston 1991, Rickford and MacNair-Knox 1994). Using a synthetic approach which looks at both intralinguistic and extralinguistic constraints, I attempt to explain the variability at all levels within the variable in order to account for as much of the variability as possible. Investigation into an array of linguistic factors reveals that linguistic constraints on the members of the (say) variable are indeed very important and quite robust.A cross-variety comparison gives insights into how much we can generalize our findings: do locally separate systems handle the situation in the same way? The comparison of pragmatic and sociolinguistic factors reveals some interesting but subtle differences in go's and tike's development in different locales. This raises more fundamental linguistic questions, such as are whether we are indeed comparing the same variable in the US and in Britain. My findings give evidence of the restructuring processes in the quotative system as a whole that accompany the arrival of a newcomer variant, like, in two varieties, British English and US English. There is evidence that different systems find idiosyncratic solutions to similar problems. This finding constitutes an important contribution to the growing body of research on globalisation phenomena and supra-local trends (Buchstaller 2003, Kerswill 2003, Meyerhoff and Niedzielski 2003, Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999, Trudgill 1983, 1994, and many others)