Effectiveness of the coping power program in a Mexican-American sample: distinctive cultural considerations

This study responds to the challenges associated with delivering culturally sensitive and evidence-based treatment (EBT) to at-risk children. Current research supports group interventions based on the Coping Power Program (CPP) curriculum as EBT for improving the frequency of positive behaviors in children and adolescents. However, the effectiveness of the CPP in a Mexican-American sample has not been explored to date. This study investigated the effectiveness of the CPP delivered as a preventative intervention to Mexican-American adoles- cents in a rural school setting. A major emphasis is put on cultural sensitivity when working with this population. Cultural sensitivity is expressed by minor adaptations of the CPP. The adaptations consisted of modifying treatment content, providing culturally relevant examples, contextualizing content and so forth, while maintaining program value. Our hypothesis was that when using the adapted EBT curriculum on the Mexican-American subsample, both groups would have similar scores and retention rates. As hypothesized, no significant differences were found between the two treatment groups (non-adapted EBT European-American and adapted EBT Mexican-American). Overall, the results suggest that EBT interventions for at-risk Mexican-American youth might require cultural adaptation in order to maximize its effectiveness

A Case Study in Embedded System Design: an Engine Control Unit

A number of techniques and software tools for embedded sys- tem design have been recently proposed. However, the cur- rent practice in the designer community is heavily based on manual techniques and on past experience rather than on a rigorous approach to design. To advance the state of the art it is important to address a number of relevant design prob- lems and solve them to demonstrate the power of the new approaches. We chose an industrial example in automotive electronics to validate our design methodology: an existing commercially available Engine Control Unit. We discuss in detail the spec- ication, the implementation philosophy, and the architec- tural trade-o analysis. We analyze the results obtained with our approach and compare them with the existing design un- derlining the advantages oered by a systematic approach to embedded system design in terms of performance and design time

A Case Study in Computer-Aided Codesign of Embedded Controllers

With our codesign system, POLIS, we have specified and implemented a real-life design: a shock absorber controller. Through this experiment, we have shown the possibility of using such a system to design complex applications and to speed up the design cycle dramatically. All aspects of the design process are closely scrutinized including high level language translation and automatic hardware and software synthesis. We analyze different software implementation styles and draw some conclusions about our design process