A model of time dependent behavior in concurrent software systems

A great difficulty in building distributed systems lies in being able to predict what the systems behavior will be. A distributed or communicating system is defined here to be one in in which the hardware consists of a set of processors each with their own memory, connected by some communication medium (there is no shared memory), and the software is assumed to be of the CSP (Hoare's Communicating Sequential Processes) type.In the past few years some theories have been proposed to model features of communicating systems. Milner's Calculus of communicating Systems (CCS), Winskel's Synchronization Trees (ST), Hennessy's Acceptance Trees (AT), and Hoare and Brookes's theory of communicating processes are examples of formal models of such systems. All of these models concentrate on modelling observable properties of a system.Event Dependency Trees (EDT) is a new representation of communicating systems that models the time dependent nature of such systems. None of the representations mentioned above explicitly represent time but time is precisely the factor that introduces so much variability and complexity into such software and systems. EDT provides a representation based on trees and a set of operations over the EDT trees that can be used to produce deadlock-free software. The model supplies potentially important information for the design and construction of distributed, parallel software systems

Bakteri Tanah Sampah Pendegradasi Plastik dalam Kolom Winogradsky

Penggunaan plastik berupa kantong kresek hasil daur ulang dengan berbagai warna sangat diminati oleh masyarakat. Sifat plastik yang tidak mudah terdegradasi di alam mengakibatkan masalah lingkungan. Penelitian ini dilakukan untuk mengisolasi dan mengkarakterisasi bakteri tanah sampah yang mampu mendegradasi plastik secara biokimia. Parameter biodegradasi plastik yang diukur adalah prosentase kehilangan berat kering, pengukuran densitas sel biofilm, densitas sel kolom air dan pH tiap bulan selama 4 bulan masa inkubasi. Dari penelitian didapatkan persentase kehilangan berat kerig plastk hitam lebih tinggi daripada plastik putih Bening. Hasil yang diperoleh menunjukkan bahwa isolat bakteri tanah sampah pendegradasi plastik yaitu Gram positif basil (PPs 2, PPs 7, PPs 9, dan PPs 11) dan Gram negatif basil (PPs 1, PPs 4, PPs 5, PPs 6, PPs 8, PPs 10, PPs 12 dan PPs 13 )dan hanya PPs 3 termasuk Gram negatif kokus

Football quakes as a tool for student engagement

In 2016 students from the Geology department at Leicester University used simple low frequency geophones and low cost seismic dataloggers set up in a primary school and local museum within Leicester city to record crowd induced vibrations from the King Power Stadium, home of Leicester City Football Club, a professional soccer team in the English Premier League. Clear signals were detected every time the home team scored a goal, which the students named “vardyquakes” on social media after the team’s star striker. After a student-led social media campaign the story was picked up by the press and turned into a viral news story, leading to hundreds of newspaper articles in papers around the world together with dozens of TV news stories and interviews with the students. However the true success of this project was in finding an engaging and reliable tool for encouraging university students to participate in outreach activities with local schools. The football-quakes provided a regular, and predictable seismic signal which was easy to understand and gave the opportunity to explain to school students how seismic waves are created and can travel through the ground

Hoping to Teach Someday? Inquire Within: Examining Inquiry-Based Learning with First-Semester Undergrads

Using case study method, this study examines the impact of an inquiry-based learning program among a cohort of first-semester undergraduates (n=104) at a large public university in the southeastern United States who are aspiring to become teachers. The Boyer Commission (1999) asserted that inquiry-based learning should be the foundation of higher education curricula. Even though inquiry pedagogies are emphasized in teacher education, many prospective teacher candidates have limited experience with inquiry as a constructivist practice from their K-12 settings. This study investigates the effects and first-semester undergraduates’ perceptions of an inquiry-based learning project. The research is grounded in Knowledge Building Theory (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006), which posits that knowledge building is comprised of three components: 1) inquiry driven questions, 2) epistemic artifacts, and 3) collective spaces for collaboration. The study found that inquiry projects had positive effects on participants’ understanding of: the complexity of educational issues; the overall inquiry process; and a future career in teaching. Using Knowledge Building Theory, the findings are discussed and analyzed to posit a conceptual model of the entire inquiry process, called the Inquiry Processing Cycle

Paediatric Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy (OPAT): an e-survey of the experiences of parents and clinicians.

BackgroundLittle evidence exists about parental satisfaction and their influence on referral to paediatric Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy (OPAT).AimThis study aimed to examine the experiences of parents, children and clinicians of OPAT at a large tertiary children's hospital.MethodA prospective e-survey, using closed and open questions, of parents (n = 33) of 33 children who had received OPAT (3 children completed a survey), and clinicians (n = 31) involved in OPAT at a tertiary hospital. Data were collected September 2016 to July 2018.ResultsData were analysed using simple descriptive statistics. The results show that OPAT offered benefits (less stress, re-establishment of family life) compared to hospital-based treatment for parents and children, although some were anxious. Clinicians' referral judgements were based on child, home, and clinical factors. Some clinicians found the process of referral complex.ConclusionMost parents and children were satisfied with the OPAT service and preferred the option of home-based treatment as it promoted the child's comfort and recovery and supported family routines

Peering beneath the Canadian crust

This work was funded by Leverhume Trust research project grant RPG-2013- 332. Equipment was provided by the NERC’s GEF, SEIS-UK: Loan 986. Many thanks to residents of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick for allowing us to install seismometers on their land, and for their interest and hospitality: Ben and Elizabeth Pooley, Calvin and Mary Fraser, Kirk Munn, Mary Guptill and Delbé Comeau, Simeon Comeau, George Klass, Greg McHone and the Grand Manan Museum, Heiner and Alison Josenhans, Bev and Ian Cameron, Maurice Mazerolle, Russell and Debbie Parrott. Thanks to Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, especially to Mladen Nedimovic, Darlene van de Rijt and Anne Bannon for logistical assistance.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Global Use of Idarucizumab in Clinical Practice: Outcomes of the RE-VECTO Surveillance Program.

Idarucizumab was approved for the reversal of dabigatran in 2015. We investigated whether postapproval usage patterns of idarucizumab in a real-world setting reflect those observed in the pivotal trials. No safety or efficacy data were collected in this medical record-based observational study. RE-VECTO, a global postapproval, international, surveillance program, involved hospital pharmacies in countries where idarucizumab was licensed and dispensed (August 2016-June 2018). Characteristics of sites prescribing idarucizumab and of eligible patients (≥ 18 years old and receiving idarucizumab regardless of prior oral anticoagulant use), as well as idarucizumab utilization data, were collected and analyzed descriptively. Sixty-one sites enrolled 359 patients. Most pharmacies (85.2%) were centralized, and the median idarucizumab units stocked per hospital was 2.0 (interquartile range, 1.0-3.0). Almost three-quarters of patients were elderly (74.9% aged > 70 years), and only four (1.1%) had received idarucizumab before. Nearly all patients were treated with dabigatran (97.5%). There was a low frequency of unapproved dabigatran dosage regimens (3.3%). Life-threatening or uncontrolled bleeding was the most frequent indication for idarucizumab (57.7%), followed by emergency surgery/urgent procedure (35.9%). Of the life-threatening bleeding events, the most frequent were gastrointestinal tract (44.4%) and intracranial (38.6%). Most patients (95.0%) were given the full dose of two vials (2 × 2.5 g) of idarucizumab initially, and very few (1.7%) received a second dose. Of those patients requiring emergency or scheduled/planned surgery/procedures, 25.5% underwent gastrointestinal and/or abdominal surgery/procedures. Real-world usage patterns of idarucizumab provide valuable insights into emergency reversal strategies. Off-label use was minimal

Children’s and adults’ understanding of death: Cognitive, parental, and experiential influences

This study explored the development of understanding of death in a sample of 4- to 11-year-old British children and adults (N = 136). It also investigated four sets of possible influences on this development: parents’ religion and spiritual beliefs, cognitive ability, socioeconomic status, and experience of illness and death. Participants were interviewed using the “death concept” interview that explores understanding of the subcomponents of inevitability, universality, irreversibility, cessation, and causality of death. Children understood key aspects of death from as early as 4 or 5 years, and with age their explanations of inevitability, universality, and causality became increasingly biological. Understanding of irreversibility and the cessation of mental and physical processes also emerged during early childhood, but by 10 years many children’s explanations reflected not an improved biological understanding but rather the coexistence of apparently contradictory biological and supernatural ideas—religious, spiritual, or metaphysical. Evidence for these coexistent beliefs was more prevalent in older children than in younger children and was associated with their parents’ religious and spiritual beliefs. Socioeconomic status was partly related to children’s biological ideas, whereas cognitive ability and experience of illness and death played less important roles. There was no evidence for coexistent thinking among adults, only a clear distinction between biological explanations about death and supernatural explanations about the afterlife