Design Patterns go to Hollywood: Teaching Patterns with Multimedia

Design Patterns have insinuated themselves into the forefront of computer science and software engineering practice. To this end, there has been much scholarship about the proper way to introduce them into the classroom. Studies indicate that understanding the contexts in which design patterns are to be used is one of the most (if not the most) difficult challenge in applying design patterns. However, little research on the topic attempts to solve the problem of better illuminating this context problem, preferring instead to focus on simplification of the patterns and better examples to explain them. This paper discusses a new paradigm through which the teaching of design patterns can be viewed, one which focuses on conceptual examples and contexts as the key elements in teaching design patterns. To better illustrate this new ideology, several short instructional videos, each employing this approach with a different design pattern were created. Their effectiveness was subsequently assessed, relative to traditional lecture that focused more on teaching the structure of the patterns

Design Patterns Go to Hollywood: Teaching Patterns with Multimedia

Studies indicate that understanding the contexts in which design patterns are to be used is one of the most (if not the most) difficult challenge in applying design patterns, yet little research on the topic attempts to solve the problem of better teaching the contexts. This paper discusses a new paradigm through which the teaching of design patterns can be viewed, one which focuses on conceptual examples and contexts as the key elements in teaching design patterns. We created several multimedia learning modules that use this approach and we evaluated the modules by comparing them to other methods of instruction in junior-level software engineering courses. The context-oriented modules performed better (or at least not significantly worse) than traditional lectures on virtually all metrics, and the videos are easily deployable, making them ideal for uses like distance learning, and they can save valuable instruction hours for professors

JOXM: Java Object —XML Mapping

Java object XML mapping (JOXM) is a library that supports the automated persistence and querying of Java objects in a native XML database. The goal of this library is to provide a suitable alternative to standard object-relational mapping (ORM) tools, most notably Hibernate. Unlike techniques such as XML-relational persistence, the storage mechanism provided by JOXM is transparent, allowing the developer to store, retrieve, and query typed Java objects as opposed to plain XML data

Novel interleukin 2 (IL-2) receptor appears to mediate IL-2-induced activation of natural killer cells.

A novel IL-2 receptor, distinct from the Tac protein, has been identified on the surface of purified human natural killer (NK) cells by chemical cross-linking of 125I-IL-2. This protein is approximately 70,000 D in size (p70) and appears to be identical to the recently recognized second subunit of the human high affinity IL-2 receptor complex. Scatchard analysis of 125I-IL-2 binding to purified NK cells revealed approximately 2,300 p70 binding sites per cell with an apparent dissociation constant of 200 pM, a value intermediate between the previously recognized high and low affinity forms of the human IL-2 receptor. The monoclonal anti-Tac antibody did not inhibit the cross-linking of 125I-IL-2 to the p70 binding sites present on NK cells. Functionally, the addition of high concentrations of recombinant IL-2 to the enriched NK cells promoted a rapid augmentation of cytolytic activity and a more delayed increase in cellular proliferation. Anti-Tac effectively blocked the IL-2-induced proliferative response in these cells, but failed to alter the enhancement of cytotoxicity. Analysis of NK cytoplasmic RNA isolated at various time points after IL-2 stimulation revealed the rapid induction of c-myb and Tac gene expression that was also not inhibited by the anti-Tac antibody. These findings suggest that IL-2 binding to the p70 receptor constitutively expressed on the surface of NK cells may mediate both the development of increased cytolytic activity and rapid changes in gene expression. The activation of the Tac gene may in turn permit the formation of the high affinity IL-2 receptor complex (comprised of at least the Tac and p70 proteins) that appears to transduce the requisite signals involved in NK cell proliferation