Dependability enhancing mechanisms for integrated clinical environments

In this article, we present a set of lightweight mechanisms to enhance the dependability of a safety-critical real-time distributed system referred to as an integrated clinical environment (ICE). In an ICE, medical devices are interconnected and work together with the help of a supervisory computer system to enhance patient safety during clinical operations. Inevitably, there are strong dependability requirements on the ICE. We introduce a set of mechanisms that essentially make the supervisor component a trusted computing base, which can withstand common hardware failures and malicious attacks. The mechanisms rely on the replication of the supervisor component and employ only one input-exchange phase into the critical path of the operation of the ICE. Our analysis shows that the runtime latency overhead is much lower than that of traditional approaches

I Have a Solution to Share: Learning through Equitable Participation in a Mathematics Classroom

Student participation is an issue of equity. Without participation there can be no learning. This study focuses on the participation (and therefore learning) of struggling students (those with individual education plans [IEPs]) during the implementation of a relational thinking routine in a third-grade inclusion classroom. Students with IEPs often initially used direct modeling with linking cubes as a resource for presenting their thinking. In this way, they were able to demonstrate their ability to think relationally. As the year progressed, these students, who had earlier been reluctant to share and had done so only by using several of the resources that the participation structure of the routine provided, often showed a growth in their abilities to explain their thinking verbally

Responses of Species in Kalsow Prairie, Iowa, to an April Fire

Selected prairie species were observed during the first growing season following a prescribed burn on Kalsow Prairie, a mesic tall grass prairie in central Iowa. Changes in dry weight, vegetative cover, and flowering response were measured on burned, unburned and mowed areas. Significant changes were recorded for many species following the burn ranging from a flowering response of prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) on burned areas 30 times that on unburned areas to a slight reduction in flowering of bluegrass (Poa pratensis) on burned areas