Empirical Investigations of Software Process Improvement

Vliet, J.C. van [Promotor]Brinkkemper, S. [Promotor

22nd Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training

Software engineering courses often include some form of project, aimed at bridging the theory-practice gap. These projects tend to emphasize technical topics. Because software engineering has an important organizational and social dimension as well, and because software engineering courses may be taken by non-CS majors too, there is every reason to also include these non-technical issues in the software project. In this paper we discuss how we designed a multi-disciplinary software engineering project course that pays attention to non-technical issues. We report about our experience in four editions of the same project, and discuss lessons learned. Our general conclusion is that software engineering projects need to have specific characteristics to attract a multi-disciplinary student population.

De partner van de psychiatrisch opgenomen patiënt : een empirisch onderzoek naar attitudes

Binnen de psychiatrie vinden grote veranderingen plaats die nog niet tot een rustpunt zijn gekomen. Globaal gesteld komen Zeer langdurige opnames in een bosrijke omgeving, ver van huis steeds minder voor. Men is nu veel sterker geneigd opnames te voorkomen, eventueel met behulp van een korte krisisinterventie. Opnames, die toch plaatsvinden, worden zo sterk mogelijk bekort en de breuk met het eigen milieu probeert men zo beperkt mogelijk te houden. Kreisman en Joy (19[4) stellen: 11 ••• the old pattern of chronic hospitalization - in which the long hospitalized patient each year becomes further removed from the concern of his family- is virtually a thing of the past.". De verandering is ruwweg begonnen na de tweede wereldoorlog en zou geïnstigeerd zijn door een nieuwe stroming, door nieuwe aksenten binnen de psychiatrie. Er kwam meer aandacht voor de sociale omgeving van de patiënt. De nieuwe stroming kreeg verschillende namen: sociale psychiatrie, community psychiatry, coromunity mental health (Beisser, 1974). Er worden verschillende argumenten aangevoerd voor een zorgvuldige afweging van de noodzaak van een psychiatrische opname. In de eerste plaats is duidelijker geworden welke negatieve gevolgen een psychiatrische opname kan hebben. De kans dat de breuk met het eigen milieu vergroot wordt en een gewenning aan de kliniek (hospitalisatie) optreedt, is veel beschreven. In deze overwegingen speelt tevens stigmatisering een rol. In de tweede plaats leeft er de overtuiging, dat de problemen niet voldoende opgelost kunnen worden als alleen de aangemelde patiënt behandeld wordt. Een opname lig

Clinically significant prostate cancer diagnosed using a urinary molecular biomarker-based risk score : two case reports

Background: Identifying men for a repeat prostate biopsy is a conundrum to urologists. Risk calculators (RCs) such as the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) RCs have been developed to predict the outcome of prostate biopsies and have been shown to improve diagnostic accuracy compared to PSA alone. However, it was recently shown that the outcome for high-grade prostate cancer (PCa) upon biopsy tended to be underestimated in men with previous negative biopsies using ERSPC RC model 4. For these men, an individualized approach combining the clinical information with the outcome of biomarker-related urine tests may help to make a more informed decision. Case presentation Two men, aged 66 and 69 respectively when presented in the clinic, show the typical dilemma of urologist and patient for electing repeat prostate biopsy. Both men had normal DRE findings, did not have a family history of PCa, presented with serum PSA values between 3 and 10 ng/ml and the first biopsies were negative for disease. The ERSPC RC4 did not indicate a biopsy in these men. The urinary molecular biomarker-based test for HOXC6 and DLX1, combining biomarker-expression profiling with clinical risk factors, resulted in SelectMDx Risk scores for these men that were higher than the cut-off of the test. Based on this outcome, mpMRI was performed with an outcome of PI-RADS >= 4 in both men. Histopathological evaluation of TRUS-guided biopsies confirmed high-grade PCa. Conclusions: The urinary molecular biomarker-based risk score played a pivotal role in the diagnosis of clinically significant PCa whereas ERSPC RC4 outcome would not have indicated further diagnostic follow-up in these two cases. The timely diagnosis was shown to be crucial for the curative treatment by radical retropubic prostatectomy and the potential life-years gained for these two vital males