Making a difference - the appropriate use of web technology

Much has been written elsewhere about how, different Information Technology tools, can in principle be used by groups or communities to make their web sites more effective for Continued Professional Development. In practice, complex use is not often the case. In particular, three sites were studied in Scotland, which provided web facilities for the over 60s. The sites, and the communities they served, used only simple Information Technology. Nevertheless, they enabled their communities to participate effectively, on the 'right side', of the European population's 'digital divide'

Exploring Supply Chains from a Technical Debt Perspective

Software development has evolved from software development organizations building custom solutions for every need and creating a backlog of applications needed by users to specialized organizations producing components that are supplied to other software development organizations to speed the development of their software products. Our objective is to illustrate how a manager might use supply chain information to evaluate software being considered for inclusion in a product. We investigated the Eclipse platform code to illustrate analysis methods that produce information of use to decision makers. The technical debt of the software pieces was measured using the Technical Debt plug-in to SONAR as one input into the evaluation of supply chain quality. The dependency graphs of uses relationships among files were analyzed using graph metrics such as betweenness centrality. There was a statistically significant moderate correlation between the technical debt for a file and the betweenness centrality for that file. This relationship is used as the basis for a heuristic approach to forming advice to a development manager regarding which assets to acquire

Longitudinal Analysis of Technical Debt for Strategic Platform Adoption

Increasingly, software producing organizations utilize a common software platform, joining an ecosystem; however, little expertise exists on selecting which platform to use when presented a number of different platforms. While technical debt can be used to examine the quality of a software platform by the organization that produces the software, a single discrete data point does not provide sufficient context for analysis. In this paper, we seek to resolve this difficulty by applying linear regression analysis to technical debt data collected by the SonarQube static analyzer. We apply this method to a case study on Cytoscape network analysis platform to perform a pedagogical investigation on the longitudinal technical debt found in that platform. We present our case study on the longitudinal technical debt in the form of arguments for and against the adoption of the Cytoscape network analysis platform, utilizing the data and analysis generated from our method

A product line organization using an open development method

Opening access to the source code for a product is a business strategy that is increasingly used as the basis for innovative collaborations with stakeholders. The strategy has been successful at producing a large quantity of high-quality software. A tactic in this strategy is to effectively use the efforts of many widely dispersed professionals. The processes, software tools and the communication mechanisms used to facilitate concurrent development by a large number of people are of as much interest as the software being created. In this position paper we present our view of how a software product line organization might operate if it used an open development method (ODM) but is not necessarily producing open source software. We will describe a hypothetical product line (HPL), which is part speculation, part our experience, and partly the experience of others

Designing for Reuse in an Industrial Internet of Things Monitoring Application

Abstract The Internet of Things (IoT) continues to experience rapid growth, and its influence is extending into previously unreached domains. However, some of these new domains impose specific limitations that complicate the design and implementation of IoT systems. Examples of such limitations are the exclusion of specific protocols, restrictions on the types of data that can be collected, requirements about what information can be transmitted to the public and controls around how that communication occurs. Capturing, representing and designing for these limitations as well as reuse is essential for the quick and successful deployment of such projects. In this paper, we present a case study of an IoT human in the loop monitoring system built for use within an industrial setting. We report our experiences with both designing the first deployment of the system as well as designing variation points into the software architecture to account for future iterations and deployment into other environments

The ALI Architecture Description Language

Architecture Description Languages (ADLs) have emerged over the past two decades as a means to abstract details of large-scale systems in order to enable better intellectual control over the complete systems. Recently, there has been an explosion in the number of ADLs created in the research community. However, industrial adoption of these ADLs has been rather limited. This has been attributed to various reasons, including the lack of support of some ADLs for: variability management, requirements traceability, architectural artefact reusability and multiple architectural views. To overcome these limitations, this paper is a report on ALI, an ADL that was designed to complement existing work by adding mechanisms to address the aforementioned limitations. The ALI design principles, concepts, notations and formal semantics are presented in this paper. The notation is illustrated using two distinct case studies, one from the information systems domain " an Asset Management System (AMS); and another from the embedded systems domain - a Wheel Brake System (WBS)

Recent trends in primary-care antidepressant prescribing to children and young people: an e-cohort study

Concerns relating to increased use of psychotropic medication contrast with those of under-treatment and under-recognition of common mental disorders in children and young people (CYP) across developed countries. Little is known about the indications recorded for antidepressant prescribing in primary care in CYP.This was an electronic cohort study of routinely collected primary-care data from a population of 1.9 million, Wales, UK. Poisson regression was undertaken to model adjusted counts of recorded depression symptoms, diagnoses and antidepressant prescriptions. Associated indications were explored.3 58 383 registered patients aged 6-18 years between 1 January 2003 and 31 December 2013 provided a total of 19 20 338 person-years of follow-up. The adjusted incidence of antidepressant prescribing increased significantly [incidence rate ratio (IRR) for 2013 = 1.28], mainly in older adolescents. The majority of new antidepressant prescriptions were for citalopram. Recorded depression diagnoses showed a steady decline (IRR = 0.72) while depression symptoms (IRR = 2.41) increased. Just over half of new antidepressant prescriptions were associated with depression (diagnosis or symptoms). Other antidepressant prescribing, largely unlicensed, was associated with diagnoses such as anxiety and pain.Antidepressant prescribing is increasing in CYP while recorded depression diagnoses decline. Unlicensed citalopram prescribing occurs outside current guidelines, despite its known toxicity in overdose. Unlicensed antidepressant prescribing is associated with a wide range of diagnoses, and while accepted practice, is often not supported by safety and efficacy studies. New strategies to implement current guidance for the management of depression in CYP are required

Analysis of lesion localisation at colonoscopy: outcomes from a multi-centre U.K. study

Background: Colonoscopy is currently the gold standard for detection of colorectal lesions, but may be limited in anatomically localising lesions. This audit aimed to determine the accuracy of colonoscopy lesion localisation, any subsequent changes in surgical management and any potentially influencing factors. Methods: Patients undergoing colonoscopy prior to elective curative surgery for colorectal lesion/s were included from 8 registered U.K. sites (2012–2014). Three sets of data were recorded: patient factors (age, sex, BMI, screener vs. symptomatic, previous abdominal surgery); colonoscopy factors (caecal intubation, scope guide used, colonoscopist accreditation) and imaging modality. Lesion localisation was standardised with intra-operative location taken as the gold standard. Changes to surgical management were recorded. Results: 364 cases were included; majority of lesions were colonic, solitary, malignant and in symptomatic referrals. 82% patients had their lesion/s correctly located at colonoscopy. Pre-operative CT visualised lesion/s in only 73% of cases with a reduction in screening patients (64 vs. 77%; p = 0.008). 5.2% incorrectly located cases at colonoscopy underwent altered surgical management, including conversion to open. Univariate analysis found colonoscopy accreditation, scope guide use, incomplete colonoscopy and previous abdominal surgery significantly influenced lesion localisation. On multi-variate analysis, caecal intubation and scope guide use remained significant (HR 0.35, 0.20–0.60 95% CI and 0.47; 0.25–0.88, respectively). Conclusion: Lesion localisation at colonoscopy is incorrect in 18% of cases leading to potentially significant surgical management alterations. As part of accreditation, colonoscopists need lesion localisation training and awareness of when inaccuracies can occur

Structure and dynamics of aqueous 2-propanol: a THz-TDS, NMR and neutron diffraction study.

Aqueous liquid mixtures, in particular, those involving amphiphilic species, play an important role in many physical, chemical and biological processes. Of particular interest are alcohol/water mixtures; however, the structural dynamics of such systems are still not fully understood. Herein, a combination of terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) and NMR relaxation time analysis has been applied to investigate 2-propanol/water mixtures across the entire composition range; while neutron diffraction studies have been carried out at two specific concentrations. Excellent agreement is seen between the techniques with a maximum in both the relative absorption coefficient and the activation energy to molecular motion occurring at ∼90 mol% H2O. Furthermore, this is the same value at which well-established excess thermodynamic functions exhibit a maximum/minimum. Additionally, both neutron diffraction and THz-TDS have been used to provide estimates of the size of the hydration shell around 2-propanol in solution. Both methods determine that between 4 and 5 H2O molecules per 2-propanol are found in the 2-propanol/water clusters at 90 mol% H2O. Based on the acquired data, a description of the structure of 2-propanol/water across the composition range is presented.The authors would like to acknowledge CASTech (EPSRC grant EP/G011397/1), RCUK Basic Technology Grant (EP/E048811/1), STFC for beamtime allocation (RB910286) and Jon Mitchell (Cambridge) for valuable discussions.This is the final version of the article. It was first available from RSC via http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C5CP01132