Advanced Three-Dimensional Echocardiography

__Abstract__ During the development of echocardiography, 3D echocardiography imaging represents a major innovation in cardiovascular ultrasound (Figure 1). Advancements in computer and transducer technologies permit real-time 3D acquisition and presentation of cardiac structures from any view. An important milestone in the history of real-time 3D echocardiography was reached shortly after the year 2000, with the development of fully sampled matrix-array transducers (Figure 2). These transducers provide excellent real-time imaging of the beating heart in three dimensions and require significant technological developments in both hardware and software

Enterprise Resource Planning Systems and Their Impact on Development and Training: A Study of Instructional Methods in North America

One of the most important issues facing the modern world today is the Year 2000 problem. One of the greatest impacts of this problem is experienced by legacy computer systems. These are the database systems that run our businesses. Legacy systems are operated by segregated software packages that may or may not be able to communicate to each other. With the globalization of the economy, business computer systems need to be able to communicate with each other. This type of situation is what enterprise resource planning software is designed to solve. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems provide a common, consistent system to capture data organization-wide without redundancies. ERP is defined as a software management system that integrates all facets of the business, including planning, manufacturing, sales, and marketing. In addition to integrating the information across functions, also provides a set of tools for planning and monitoring the organizational functions and ensuring progress towards a common organizational goal (Sudhakar, 1998). As ERP methodology has become more popular, software applications have emerged to help business managers implement ERP. The purpose of this pilot study is to identify development times and delivery methods for high-level computer technology training. This has become an issue for Human Resource Development (HRD) because of the Year 2000 situation and its resulting issues, which have compelled businesses around North America to implement these ERP systems. After circulating a survey for almost seven month, the data collection period ended in March 1999. The response rate of 47 returned surveys from 63 requests calculates to 74.6%. A total of 34, or 72%, of respondents developed training programs for high-level computer technology

Initial Experiences Gained and Initiatives employed in the Teaching of Java Programming in the Institute of Technology Tallaght

This paper describes recent experiences gained and initiatives employed in the teaching of Java programming to first and second year students in the Institute of Technology Tallaght from September 2000 to March 2002. It outlines some elearning, technological and pedagogical initiatives that were undertaken within the department and the resultant preliminary outcomes. The outcomes have been determined after detailed analysis of the results of a survey which was commissioned to determine the effectiveness of the initiatives and also to identify those parts of the Java language which were causing students particular difficulty. The students surveyed are currently completing their fourth and final Java programming module. The Java programming modules make up the software development stream of a 2- year National Certificate in Computing (Information Systems). The typical profile of a first year computing student in IT Tallaght is someone who has achieved a reasonable but not exceptional level of academic attainment in the Leaving Certificate and who has had little or no previous exposure to software development. The design of the Java programming modules, while geared towards novices, is ambitious in an institutional learning context

Flood Mapping along the Lower Mekong River in Cambodia

Located in Southeast Asia, Cambodia is one of the most disaster prone countries, where flooding rank the top of the natural disaster. Flood affects and threatens not only humans’ and animal’s life, properties, infrastructures, but it is also an obstacle to the current development. Furthermore, without having the efficient modern technology to predict flood situation in Cambodia, the disaster in this country become more serious. The objective of this research study is to simulate flood inundation area by using software HEC-RAS. HEC-RAS is a hydraulic model software capable of calculating any hydraulic river study including flood. In this study, the Lower Mekong River with approximately 50 km length was selected to delineate flood map from 2000 until 2013 and also 10-year return period map. The available data are 11 years of the measured water level at the upstream and downstream stations, 18 surveyed cross-sections and DEM with grid cell size 30 m x 30 m were used to understand the recurrence of the floods in the study area. The output from the model was delineated into map including flood extent and flood depth from 2000 until 2013 (without 2009, 2010 and 2012). The results show that flooding varied from year to year; however, the greatest flood was during 2000 and again in 2011. The simulated flood maps were compared with observed data to figure out that the model was accurate for flood mapping. These results will be useful for river engineers, experts, and decision makers to manage river floods

MUSIC SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT FOR GHANAIAN MUSIC EDUCATORS IN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS.

During the 20th Century, the field of education witnessed dramatic changes in pedagogical strategies engendered by information and communication technology (ICT). Computer-assisted instruction has, in some instances, replaced the student-instructor interaction in the teaching and learning environment.  Arts educators, who, for a long time, adopted the apprenticeship approach to teaching, where the master artistes teach the novices, have also embraced the computer-assisted interactive approach. Since the year 2000, Departments of Music in Ghanaian Universities have been exposed to innovative teaching in which ICT is employed. However, in the area of music instructional technology, little has been done by Ghanaian music educators, especially in the area of music software development.  The purpose of this paper therefore is to encourage music educators in tertiary institutions to acquire skills in the development of music software and utilize them for the enhancement of teaching and learning

Projecting productivity growth: lessons from the U.S. growth resurgence

Following the 1995-2000 period of more rapid output growth and lower inflation in the United States, economists have strenuously debated whether improvements in economic performance can be sustained. The recession that began in March 2001 intensified the debate, and the economic impacts of the events of September 11 have yet to be fully understood. Both factors add to the considerable uncertainties about future growth that currently face decision makers in both the public and private sectors. ; In this article, the authors analyze the sources of U.S. labor productivity growth in the post-1995 period and present projections for both output and labor productivity growth for the next decade. Despite the 2001 downward revisions to U.S. gross domestic product and software investment, the authors show that information technology (IT) played a substantial role in the U.S. productivity revival. The article then outlines a methodology for projecting trend output and productivity growth. The base-case projection puts the rate of trend productivity growth at 2.21 percent per year over the next decade with a range of 1.33 to 2.92 percent, reflecting fundamental uncertainties about the rate of technological progress in IT-production and investment patterns. The central projection is only slightly below the average growth rate of 2.36 percent during the 1995-2000 period.Productivity ; Technology ; Economic development

EU WATER POLICY: RESEARCH DEVELOPMENTS AND NEW MANAGEMENT TOOLS

At the end of 2000, the European Commission published its Water Framework Directive (WFD) in the Official Journal of the European Communities (2000/60/EC). This new legislation provides for achieving the sustainable management of water resources through its 26 articles that focus primarily on the improvement and protection of the quality of European water resources. The WFD adopts an integrated approach, based upon general principles deriving mainly from four disciplinary approaches, Geography; Ecology; Economics and Sociology. The new challenges posed to the people responsible for the management of water resources across the European Union include the "marrying" of existing national policies with the stipulations of the WFD. Research can support this transition by identifying compatibility and conflicts between legislative instruments, and by encouraging trans-national cooperative relationships. A relevant role of research is also foreseen in providing criteria and tools for conflict resolution by representing the goals of sustainable management in an objective and transparent way. The elaboration required for making planning decisions are increasing in number and complexity, requiring tools that help to organise and communicate the data that should be used to describe the decision context in terms of sustainability, in a holistic way by including environmental, economic and social information. These problems are being addressed by the MULINO Project, a 3-year research program aiming at producing a Decision Support System that will assist water managers in responding to the evolution of policies and management methodologies. The development of the system, which will be prepared in a software format, is being steered by a group of people from European water authorities. This steering committee is contributing to the policy analysis component of the research and to the software design which aims to be applicable in five different national contexts. This paper addresses the challenges and innovations that have been encountered in the second phase of research in which the first prototype of the software has been developed to operate in specific decision situations in each of MULINO's six case studies.Sustainable water management, EU policy, DSS tool, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Experiences of teaching UML within the information systems curriculum

The Unified Modelling Language (UML) has been a standard modelling language for the development of software intensive systems since 2000. As a consequence, the information systems (IS) curriculum, at the Cavendish School of Computer Science, University of Westminster in London, had UML teaching incorporated two years ago. We have encouraged the introduction to and use of UML in modules that replaced traditional approaches to IS development. In this paper we report on experiences of using UML within the two modules of our undergraduate curriculum, delivered by the IS department. The first module is taught in the second year, i.e. at level 5, and delivers requirements analysis with UML. The second module uses the UML for modelling and designing distributed business applications and is taught in the final year, at level 6. In both modules it is assumed that an introduction to modelling in IS, with the syntax and semantics of a selection of UML modelling elements and diagrams, has been done earlier. We single out some problems and give a rationale for changes in the next academic yea

Software process modeling languages: A systematic literature review

Context Organizations working in software development are aware that processes are very important assets as well as they are very conscious of the need to deploy well-defined processes with the goal of improving software product development and, particularly, quality. Software process modeling languages are an important support for describing and managing software processes in software-intensive organizations. Objective This paper seeks to identify what software process modeling languages have been defined in last decade, the relationships and dependencies among them and, starting from the current state, to define directions for future research. Method A systematic literature review was developed. 1929 papers were retrieved by a manual search in 9 databases and 46 primary studies were finally included. Results Since 2000 more than 40 languages have been first reported, each of which with a concrete purpose. We show that different base technologies have been used to define software process modeling languages. We provide a scheme where each language is registered together with the year it was created, the base technology used to define it and whether it is considered a starting point for later languages. This scheme is used to illustrate the trend in software process modeling languages. Finally, we present directions for future research. Conclusion This review presents the different software process modeling languages that have been developed in the last ten years, showing the relevant fact that model-based SPMLs (Software Process Modeling Languages) are being considered as a current trend. Each one of these languages has been designed with a particular motivation, to solve problems which had been detected. However, there are still several problems to face, which have become evident in this review. This let us provide researchers with some guidelines for future research on this topic.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2010-20057-C03-02Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN 2010-12312-EJunta de Andalucía TIC-578