Parallel J-W Monte Carlo Simulations of Thermal Phase Changes in Finite-size Systems

The thermodynamic properties of 59 TeF6 clusters that undergo temperature-driven phase transitions have been calculated with a canonical J-walking Monte Carlo technique. A parallel code for simulations has been developed and optimized on SUN3500 and CRAY-T3E computers. The Lindemann criterion shows that the clusters transform from liquid to solid and then from one solid structure to another in the temperature region 60-130 K.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures; presented at the conference on computational physics, Aachen (2001) accepted for publication in Comp.Phys.Com

Physical activity and health promotion strategies among Physiotherapists in Rwanda

BACKGROUND: Physical inactivity has become a global health concern and is among the 10 leading causes of death and disability. Physiotherapists are in a position to combat inactivity and effectively promote physical activity to their clients. OBJECTIVES: To establish the relationship between physical activity levels of physiotherapists and their physical activity promotion strategies. METHODS: A sequential mixed method design was used by means of a self-administered questionnaire (n=92) and a focus group discussion comprising of 10 purposively selected physiotherapists. Descriptive statistics were employed to summarize demographic information. Inferential statistics was used to test the associations between different categorical variables (p<0.05). Tape recorded interviews were transcribed. Thematic analysis was then done. RESULTS: The findings revealed that 64% of the participants were physically active both within the work and recreation domains and 65% of the participants had good physical activity promoting practices. Discussing physical activity and giving out information regarding physical activity were most common methods used in promotion of physical activity. Policies on physical activity, cultural influence, and nature of work, time management as well as the environment were the barriers highlighted. CONCLUSION: Although physiotherapists experience barriers to promoting physical activity, they have good physical activity promoting practices.Department of HE and Training approved lis

Queue-priority optimized algorithm: a novel task scheduling for runtime systems of application integration platforms

The need for integration of applications and services in business processes from enterprises has increased with the advancement of cloud and mobile applications. Enterprises started dealing with high volumes of data from the cloud and from mobile applications, besides their own. This is the reason why integration tools must adapt themselves to handle with high volumes of data, and to exploit the scalability of cloud computational resources without increasing enterprise operations costs. Integration platforms are tools that integrate enterprises’ applications through integration processes, which are nothing but workflows composed of a set of atomic tasks connected through communication channels. Many integration platforms schedule tasks to be executed by computational resources through the First-in-first-out heuristic. This article proposes a Queue-priority algorithm that uses a novel heuristic and tackles high volumes of data in the task scheduling of integration processes. This heuristic is optimized by the Particle Swarm Optimization computational method. The results of our experiments were confirmed by statistical tests, and validated the proposal as a feasible alternative to improve integration platforms in the execution of integration processes under a high volume of data.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Task scheduling characterisation in enterprise application integration

Cloud computing allows enterprises to incorporate applications and computational resources as services, and thus, enterprises can concentrate on their business processes, without concerning the development, configuration and maintenance of these applications and resources. Integration platforms are one of these services that allow enterprises to integrate applications in order to reduce the maintenance costs and operations of the integration of on-premises platforms. However, high performance on resources offered by the cloud, demands improvement in task scheduling of integration platforms. Our literature review has identified a lack of studies in the field of enterprise application integration, focusing on specificities and vulnerabilities of the task scheduling of integration processes. This is a pioneer work regarding the characterisation of the scheduling of tasks of integration processes. We propose a ranking according to their conceptual models and apply this ranking to five integration processes. Then, we have statistically analysed the influence of each component of their conceptual models on the performance of the execution of these integration processes. We characterise the task scheduling of integration processes and presented a mathematical equation for the makespan as a function of the components of this characterisation. This study can guide software engineers in the optimal task scheduling for integration processes, which can improve the performance runtime systems regarding using the computational resources and result in minimisation of costs of companies.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Curriculum mapping: A tool to align competencies in a dental curriculum

Background. In response to the adoption of the African Medical Education Directives for Specialists (AfriMEDS) competency framework by the Health Professions Council of South Africa, all dental schools in the country were required to incorporate and implement the core competencies described in AfriMEDS in the undergraduate curricula. Objectives. To describe curriculum mapping as a tool to demonstrate the alignment of an undergraduate dental curriculum with a competency framework, such as AfriMEDS, in preparation for accreditation and curriculum review. Methods. All the module descriptors (n=59) from the first to fifth year of study were included, and outcomes were mapped against the AfriMEDS competency framework. The presence of AfriMEDS core competencies (healthcare practitioner, communicator, collaborator, health advocate, leader and manager, scholar, professional) were located (if present) within the module learning outcomes. AfriMEDS core competencies were quantified and illustrated in the form of a curriculum map. Results. Healthcare practitioner, health advocate and communicator were present across all 5 years of the undergraduate dental curriculum, while healthcare practitioner was present in 46 modules, health advocate in 8 modules and communicator in 13 modules. Competencies related to collaborator were present in the first, third and fifth year in 7 modules. Leader and manager competencies were present in the fifth year in 1 module. Professional competencies were present in the second and fifth year in 3 modules. Competencies related to scholar were present in the first, third, fourth and fifth year in 8 modules. Conclusions. From the results, it was highlighted that all AfriMEDS competencies were present in the University of the Western Cape (UWC) dental programme. Curriculum mapping identified gaps in or areas of development for the AfriMEDS competencies in the UWC dental curriculum. Curriculum mapping can be recommended as a valuable tool for curriculum development