k-MED - from a local project to a service provider for eLearning

k-MED entwickelte sich von einem fachbezogenen Projekt im Jahr 1999 zu einem e-Learning-Dienstleister mit umfangreichen Lehr-Lernangeboten sowie einer technischen und organisatorischen Infrastruktur für Autoren und Nutzer. Es bietet heute – Mitte 2006 – 5000 Studierenden, v.a. der Humanmedizin, ca. 170 Lernkurse aus 16 medizinischen Fächern. Das Projekt umfasst erfahrenes Fachpersonal und nutzt eine eigene Online-Autorenumgebung sowie eine internetbasierte Lernplattform, deren Funktionalitäten in Abstimmung mit evaluierten Lehr- und Lern-Szenarien ständig weiter entwickelt werden. Die wichtigste Aufgabe ist die Vollversorgung von Bildungseinrichtungen, darunter vor allem medizinische Fakultäten, mit Lehr-Lern- und Kommunikationsinstrumenten. Aktuelle Informationen sind zu finden unter http://www.k-med.org.k-MED evolved from a single medical subject project in 1999 to a provider of comprehensive technology, infrastructure and content for authors and learners. It currently offers about 170 courses covering 16 medical subjects. The k-MED community consists of medical authors and experts for technology, graphical and instructional design. It has its proprietary authoring tools and an internet based learning management system, both being continually improved corresponding to service experiences. k-MED aims at ongoing development as a service provider for educational institutions for undergraduate or continuing medical education. For further information see http://www.k-med.org

Replicated execution of workflows

Workflows are the de facto standard for managing and optimizing business processes. Workflows allow businesses to automate interactions between business locations and partners residing anywhere on the planet. This, however, requires the workflows to be executed in a distributed and dynamic environment, where device and communication failures occur quite frequently. In case that a workflow execution becomes unavailable through such failures, the business operations that rely on the workflow might be hindered or even stopped, implying the loss of money. Consequently, availability is a key concern when using workflows in dynamic environments. In this thesis, we propose replication schemes for workflow engines to ensure the availability of the workflows that are executed by these engines. Of course, a workflow that is executed by a replicated workflow engine has to yield the same result as a non-replicated execution of that workflow. To this end, we formally define the equivalence of a replicated and a non-replicated execution called Single-Execution-Equivalence. Subsequently, we present replication schemes for both imperative and declarative workflow languages. Imperative workflow languages, such as the Web Service Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL), specify the execution order of activities through an ordering relation and are the predominant way of specifying workflow models. We implement a proof-of-concept for demonstrating the compatibility of our replication schemes with current (imperative) workflow technology. Declarative workflow languages provide greater flexibility by allowing the reordering of the activities within a workflow at run-time. We exploit this by executing differently ordered replicas on several nodes in the network for improving availability further

Robust execution of workflows in a distributed environment

In many business applications, workflows are used to describe business processes. Employees and machines get instructions from a plan (the workflow) to be guided or controlled. The workflows make it easier to create and manage business processes. Therefore, using workflows is the standard procedure in the business area today. The distributed execution of workflows plays an important role as almost all nodes are connected to a network today. The importance even increases with the emerging of pervasive environments. Because these systems are prone to failures, it is important to develop reliability methods that ensure that the system works properly even if failures occur. When the robustness of a system in a distributed environment shall be increased, the service that has to be executed is usually replicated and executed by two or more nodes. This means that the exact same behavior is executed by multiple nodes and thereby increases the reliability of the system by being able to cope with node failures. Changing the order of the activities or using alternative activities to increase the robustness is promising because when each node receives a different workflow that achieves the same goal, the possibility of failures should be further reduced by decoupling the replicas in respect of time and hardware dependencies. We developed a robustness metric that evaluates the robustness of a set of workflow replicas. We also developed methods and algorithms that generate workflows with different orders and alternative tasks within reasonable time. Our evaluations show that our proposed methods work significantly better than deploying a brute-force method to achieve the same behavior

Involving young people as researchers: uncovering multiple power relations among youths

This is a postprint of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in Children's Geographies © 2008 Copyright Taylor & Francis; Children's Geographies is available online at http://www.informaworld.comIn this paper, we address the issue of giving young people a voice by involving them as interviewers in the research process. While highlighting the beneficial outcomes and the empowering potential of this method, we critically discuss the assumption that peer-led interviews create less hierarchical power relations as no adult is involved. We thus caution against seeing this method as the ultimate solution to young people's marginalisation. Considering that participation is a form of power, we argue that it is essential to acknowledge and work with the power relations that characterise young people's everyday lives and that thus also affect the creation of a participatory arena with them. Power relations among young people, however, have been mainly neglected in previous research. The paper draws on a participatory research project conduced with young people (14-16 years old) in rural east-Germany that focuses on the complexity of young people's daily life experiences and perceptions of their future prospects

Effective Field Theory and Finite Density Systems

This review gives an overview of effective field theory (EFT) as applied at finite density, with a focus on nuclear many-body systems. Uniform systems with short-range interactions illustrate the ingredients and virtues of many-body EFT and then the varied frontiers of EFT for finite nuclei and nuclear matter are surveyed.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figure

Intraarterial transplantation of human umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells is more efficacious and safer compared with umbilical cord mesenchymal stromal cells in a rodent stroke model

INTRODUCTION: Stroke is the second leading cause of death worldwide, claims six lives every 60 seconds, and is a leading cause of adult disability across the globe. Tissue plasminogen activator, the only United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drug currently available, has a narrow therapeutic time window of less than 5 hours. In the past decade, cells derived from the human umbilical cord (HUC) have emerged as a potential therapeutic alternative for stroke; however, the most effective HUC-derived cell population remains unknown. METHODS: We compared three cell populations derived from the human umbilical cord: cord blood mononuclear cells (cbMNCs); cord blood mesenchymal stromal cells (cbMSCs), a subpopulation of cbMNCs; and cord matrix MSCs (cmMSCs). We characterized these cells in vitro with flow cytometry and assessed the cells’ in vivo efficacy in a 2-hour transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAo) rat model of stroke. cbMNCs, cbMSCs, and cmMSCs were each transplanted intraarterially at 24 hours after stroke. RESULTS: A reduction in neurologic deficit and infarct area was observed in all three cell groups; however, this reduction was significantly enhanced in the cbMNC group compared with the cmMSC group. At 2 weeks after stroke, human nuclei-positive cells were present in the ischemic hemispheres of immunocompetent stroke rats in all three cell groups. Significantly decreased expression of rat brain-derived neurotrophic factor mRNA was observed in the ischemic hemispheres of all three cell-treated and phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) group animals compared with sham animals, although the decrease was least in cbMNC-treated animals. Significantly decreased expression of rat interleukin (IL)-2 mRNA and IL-6 mRNA was seen only in the cbMSC group. Notably, more severe complications (death, eye inflammation) were observed in the cmMSC group compared with the cbMNC and cbMSC groups. CONCLUSIONS: All three tested cell types promoted recovery after stroke, but cbMNCs showed enhanced recovery and fewer complications compared with cmMSCs

Potential of wind-powered renewable energy membrane systems for Ghana

Areas of the world that lack fresh water often have an ample supply of wind or solar energy, making renewable energy an attractive option as a power source for desalination systems. Particularly, wind energy is attractive because of its relatively low cost, high efficiency, and recent technological advancements in this area of research. To open system applicability to a broader range of geographical areas, the feasibility of substituting solar panels with a wind turbine on an existing membrane desalination systemthat has undergone testing in the Australian outback is examined. The use of wind turbines will provide greater scope for the system's implementation in various parts of the world according to the local wind or solar resources.Acomparison of several small wind turbines coupled with wind speed data from Ghana showed that a 1 kW FuturEnergy wind turbine would give the best performance for the lowest cost and is therefore the most appropriate for coupling with the membrane system. The predicted permeate production is 1.3 m3/d at a specific energy consumption (SEC) of 1.8 kWh/m3

Relationship between peak VO₂ and performance on the Rockport fitness walking test of adolescent males with mental retardation

Graduation date: 199

Soliton broadening under random dispersion fluctuations: Importance sampling based on low-dimensional reductions

We demonstrate that dispersion-managed solitons are less likely to experience critical broadening under the influence of random dispersion fluctuations than are solitons of the integrable nonlinear Schrödinger equation, and that this robustness increases with map strength from the constant-dispersion (integrable) limit to the large-map-strength limit. To achieve this, we exploit a separation of scales in dispersion-managed soliton dynamics to implement an importance-sampled Monte Carlo approach that determines the probability of rare broadening events. This approach reconstructs the tails (i.e., the regions of practical importance) of probability distribution functions with an efficiency that is several orders of magnitude greater than conventional Monte Carlo simulations. We further show that the variational approach with an appropriately scaled ansatz is surprisingly good at capturing the effect of random dispersion on pulse broadening; where it fails, it can still be used to guide very efficient simulation of the original equation