Comparison of Existing Computing Curricula and the New ACM-IEEE Computing Curricula 2013

The ACM-IEEE Computing Curricula 2005 was published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Association for Information Systems (AIS) and the Computer Society (IEEE-CS). After few years and many updates, the new version was published at the end of 2013 year. This last version can be named ACM-IEEE Computing Curricula 2013 (CC2013). In this paper, we present a comparison of the computing curricula degree programs from five countries (Ecuador, France, Germany, Poland and Spain) and the CC2013. The comparison takes into account both the duration and the content of the studies. This comparison can provide several benefits. Firstly, this comparison highlights the differences that exist among the five analysed countries; it can be used to define correspondence tables between different degree programs. Secondly, this comparison also shows the differences from the CC2005 and the following updates (e.g. CC2013) and it shows what should be changed to align with the latest updates.This work has been partially supported by the Prometeo Project by SENESCYT, Ecuadorian Government. This work has been partially supported by the GEODAS-BI (TIN2012-37493-C03-03) project from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness

Faculty Development and Quality Assurance in the EU ERAMIS Project

The aim of the ERAMIS project is to create a network of Masters degrees “Informatics as a Second Competence” in nine beneficiary universities of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia. This contribution presents how faculty development is organized and quality assurance implemented inside this project.This work was supported in part by the EU Tempus Project ERAMIS 159025-TEMPUS-1-2009-FR-TEMPUS-JPCR

From Physics Model to Results: An Optimizing Framework for Cross-Architecture Code Generation

Starting from a high-level problem description in terms of partial differential equations using abstract tensor notation, the Chemora framework discretizes, optimizes, and generates complete high performance codes for a wide range of compute architectures. Chemora extends the capabilities of Cactus, facilitating the usage of large-scale CPU/GPU systems in an efficient manner for complex applications, without low-level code tuning. Chemora achieves parallelism through MPI and multi-threading, combining OpenMP and CUDA. Optimizations include high-level code transformations, efficient loop traversal strategies, dynamically selected data and instruction cache usage strategies, and JIT compilation of GPU code tailored to the problem characteristics. The discretization is based on higher-order finite differences on multi-block domains. Chemora's capabilities are demonstrated by simulations of black hole collisions. This problem provides an acid test of the framework, as the Einstein equations contain hundreds of variables and thousands of terms.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Scientific Programmin

Resuscitation of the patient with suspected/confirmed COVID-19 when wearing personal protective equipment: A randomized multicenter crossover simulation trial

Background: The aim of the study was to evaluate various methods of chest compressions in patients with suspected/confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection conducted by medical students wearing full personal protective equipment (PPE) for aerosol generating procedures (AGP).Methods: This was prospective, randomized, multicenter, single-blinded, crossover simulation trial. Thirty-five medical students after an advanced cardiovascular life support course, which included performing 2-min continuous chest compression scenarios using three methods: (A) manual chest compression (CC), (B) compression with CPRMeter, (C) compression with LifeLine ARM device. During resuscitation they are wearing full personal protective equipment for aerosol generating procedures.Results: The median chest compression depth using manual CC, CPRMeter and LifeLine ARM varied and amounted to 40 (38–45) vs. 45 (40–50) vs. 51 (50–52) mm, respectively (p = 0.002). The median chest compression rate was 109 (IQR; 102–131) compressions per minute (CPM) for manual CC, 107 (105–127) CPM for CPRMeter, and 102 (101–102) CPM for LifeLine ARM (p = 0.027). The percentage of correct chest recoil was the highest for LifeLine ARM — 100% (95–100), 80% (60–90) in CPRMeter group, and the lowest for manual CC — 29% (26–48).Conclusions: According to the results of this simulation trial, automated chest compression devices (ACCD) should be used for chest compression of patients with suspected/confirmed COVID-19. In the absence of ACCD, it seems reasonable to change the cardiopulmonary resuscitation algorithm (in the context of patients with suspected/confirmed COVID-19) by reducing the duration of the cardiopulmonary resuscitation cycle from the current 2-min to 1-min cycles due to a statistically significant reduction in the quality of chest compressions among rescuers wearing PPE AGP

Effectiveness and safety of hypotension fluid resuscitation in traumatic hemorrhagic shock: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Background: Although the resuscitation of an adult trauma patient has been researched and written about for the past century, the ideal fluid strategy to infuse during the initial resuscitation period remains unresolved. This work was aimed at assessing the effect of hypotensive versus conventional resuscitation strategies in traumatic hemorrhagic shock patients on mortality, and the need for blood transfusions  including adverse events. Methods: This systematic review and meta-analysis were performed following the PRISMA guidelines. Electronic databases were searched for randomized controlled trials (RCT) comparing the effect of hypotension versus conventional fluid resuscitation for traumatic hemorrhagic shock patients. Two reviewers independently performed the screening, data extraction, and bias assessment. The data analysis was completed using the Cochrane Collaboration's software RevMan 5.4. Results: Data from 28 RCTs on 4503 patients were included in the final meta-analysis. Patients receiving hypotension fluid resuscitation compared with conventional fluid resuscitation experienced less mortality (12.5% vs. 21.4%; RR = 0.58; 95% CI: 0.51–0.66; p < 0.001), fewer adverse events (10.8% vs. 13.4%; RR = 0.70; 95% CI: 0.59–0.83; p < 0.001), including fever acute respiratory distress syndrome (7.8% vs. 16.8%) or multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (8.6% vs. 21.6%). Conclusions: This meta-analysis showed that hypotensive fluid resuscitation significantly reduced the mortality of hypovolemic shock patients. Findings are low in certainty and should be interpreted with caution. Therefore, there is an urgent need for larger, multicenter, randomized trials to confirm these findings

Comparison of different chest compression positions for use while wearing CBRN-PPE: a randomized crossover simulation trial

Background: The prevailing COVID-19 pandemic forces paramedics to take medical rescue operations using personal protective equipment (PPE) for aerosol-generating procedures (AGP). The use of PPE-AGP may reduce the effectiveness of the procedures performed, including airway management, intravascular access, or chest compression. The goal of the current study was to compare the quality by which a chest compression during simulated COVID-19 resuscitation while wearing PPE-AGP. A secondary goal was to assess provider preferences with standard versus OHD chest compression methods while wearing PPE-AGP.   Methods: This is a randomized cross-over single-blinded study involving 37 paramedics performing 2-min continuous chest compression using two methods: the standard chest compression (CC) method during which the rescuer takes a position to the side of the victim (STD) and over-the-head position (OHD). During cardiopulmonary resuscitation, study participants wore Class C PPE-AGP. Both the order of study participants and compression methods were random. The results were blinded before statistical analysis. The compression rate per minute (CPM), CC depth as well as full chest recoil were measured. The analysis was undertaken using STATISTICA (V13.3EN).   Results : Mean chest compression depth using distinct CC methods varied and amounted to 42 ± 2mm for STD vs. 46 ± 4mm for OHD (p < 0.001). Chest compressions based on the OHD method were associated with a lower frequency of chest compressions (107 ± 7CPM) compared with STD (114.5 ± 8; p< 0.001). A higher percentage of full chest recoil was observed in the case of STD (42 ± 6%) than in the case of OHD (34 ± 10%).   Conclusions: Based on the current simulation trial, it is impossible to clearly determine which method (STD vs. OHD) is more effective in resuscitation with PPE-AGP. Paramedics wearing PPE-AGP achieved better chest compression depth for OHD compared to the STD, however, OHD resuscitation causes a lower degree of full chest relaxation. A further well-designed clinical study looking at efficacy, safety, and outcomes is needed to confirm current results

The ESCAPE project : Energy-efficient Scalable Algorithms for Weather Prediction at Exascale

In the simulation of complex multi-scale flows arising in weather and climate modelling, one of the biggest challenges is to satisfy strict service requirements in terms of time to solution and to satisfy budgetary constraints in terms of energy to solution, without compromising the accuracy and stability of the application. These simulations require algorithms that minimise the energy footprint along with the time required to produce a solution, maintain the physically required level of accuracy, are numerically stable, and are resilient in case of hardware failure. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) led the ESCAPE (Energy-efficient Scalable Algorithms for Weather Prediction at Exascale) project, funded by Horizon 2020 (H2020) under the FET-HPC (Future and Emerging Technologies in High Performance Computing) initiative. The goal of ESCAPE was to develop a sustainable strategy to evolve weather and climate prediction models to next-generation computing technologies. The project partners incorporate the expertise of leading European regional forecasting consortia, university research, experienced high-performance computing centres, and hardware vendors. This paper presents an overview of the ESCAPE strategy: (i) identify domain-specific key algorithmic motifs in weather prediction and climate models (which we term Weather & Climate Dwarfs), (ii) categorise them in terms of computational and communication patterns while (iii) adapting them to different hardware architectures with alternative programming models, (iv) analyse the challenges in optimising, and (v) find alternative algorithms for the same scheme. The participating weather prediction models are the following: IFS (Integrated Forecasting System); ALARO, a combination of AROME (Application de la Recherche a l'Operationnel a Meso-Echelle) and ALADIN (Aire Limitee Adaptation Dynamique Developpement International); and COSMO-EULAG, a combination of COSMO (Consortium for Small-scale Modeling) and EULAG (Eulerian and semi-Lagrangian fluid solver). For many of the weather and climate dwarfs ESCAPE provides prototype implementations on different hardware architectures (mainly Intel Skylake CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs, Intel Xeon Phi, Optalysys optical processor) with different programming models. The spectral transform dwarf represents a detailed example of the co-design cycle of an ESCAPE dwarf. The dwarf concept has proven to be extremely useful for the rapid prototyping of alternative algorithms and their interaction with hardware; e.g. the use of a domain-specific language (DSL). Manual adaptations have led to substantial accelerations of key algorithms in numerical weather prediction (NWP) but are not a general recipe for the performance portability of complex NWP models. Existing DSLs are found to require further evolution but are promising tools for achieving the latter. Measurements of energy and time to solution suggest that a future focus needs to be on exploiting the simultaneous use of all available resources in hybrid CPU-GPU arrangements

Place of tranexamic acid in traumatic brain injury: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

BACKGROUND: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death and disability. In many cases of TBI-related intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) is associated with a high risk of coagulopathy and may lead to an increased risk of hemorrhage growth. Therefore, tranexamic acid (TXA), which is known as an antifibrinolytic agent that reduces bleeding by inhibiting the breakdown of blood clots, might limit ICH expansion.   MATERIAL AND METHODS: We aimed to quantify the effects of TXA in brain injury and thus performed a literaturę search using PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, EMBASE, and Cochrane Center Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) for studies that were published between the respective database inception, and April 10, 2021.   RESULTS: A total of nine studies were identified; these included 5845 patients treated with, and 5380 treated without TXA. The 28-day or in-hospital mortality was 17.8% for the TXA group, compared with 19.3% for the no-TXA group (OR = 0.92; 95% CI: 0.83, 1.01; p = 0.08). At 6-months follow-up, mortality was 18.3% vs 19.9% (OR = 0.91; 95% CI: 0.63–1.31; p = 0.60), with and without TXA, respectively. A Glasgow Outcome Scale less than 4 points at 28-days follow-up was reported in 3 studies and was 29.8% vs 34.8% (OR = 0.91; 95% CI: 0.45, 1.82; p = 0.78), with and without TXA, respectively. No differences were found in adverse events between TXA and non-TXA groups.   CONCLUSION: Our analysis found showed no statistical significance between TXA and non-TXA treatment of TBI patients, however, in the TXA group a trend to decrease 28-day mortality compared to non-TXA treatment was observed. More high-quality studies are needed to show the significant benefit of using TXA, especially in moderate and severe TBI patient groups