The Complexity of Model Checking (Collapsible) Higher-Order Pushdown Systems

We study (collapsible) higher-order pushdown systems --- theoretically robust and well-studied models of higher-order programs --- along with their natural subclass called (collapsible) higher-order basic process algebras. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the model checking complexity of a range of both branching-time and linear-time temporal logics. We obtain tight bounds on data, expression, and combined-complexity for both (collapsible) higher-order pushdown systems and (collapsible) higher-order basic process algebra. At order-$k$, results range from polynomial to $(k+1)$-exponential time. Finally, we study (collapsible) higher-order basic process algebras as graph generators and show that they are almost as powerful as (collapsible) higher-order pushdown systems up to MSO interpretations

An interprofessional urban health elective focused on the social determinants of health

Background: More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities. Health professionals should understand how social factors and processes in urban spaces determine individual and population health. We report on lessons from an interprofessional urban health elective developed to focus on the social determinants of health (SDOH).                Methods: An interprofessional committee developed an urban health elective based in downtown Toronto. Course objectives included promoting collaboration to address SDOH, identifying barriers to care, accessing community-based resources, and learning to advocate at individual- and community-levels.Results: Seventeen students from eight disciplines participated during the 2011-2012 academic year. Sessions were co-facilitated with community partners and community members identified as experts based on their personal experience. Topics included housing, income and food security, Indigenous communities in urban spaces, and advocacy. Students collaborated on self-directed projects, which ranged from literature reviews to policy briefs for government. Students particularly valued learning about community agencies and hearing from people with lived experience.Conclusion: The specific health challenges faced in urban settings can benefit from an interprofessional approach informed by the experiences and needs of patient communities. This elective was innovative in engaging students in interprofessional learning on how health and social agencies collaborate to tackle social determinants in urban spaces.

Newsletter of the Groupers and Wrasses Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature

After a long hiatus, we have finally assembled another newsletter for the Groupers & Wrasses IUCN Specialist group. This would not have possible without the leadership of Áthila Bertoncini, who formatted and compiled all of your contributions, Allen To and João Pedro Barreiros, we are most grateful for everybody’s efforts. […].info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An international initiative to create a collaborative for pharmacovigilance in hospice and palliative care clinical practice

Background: Medication registration currently requires evidence of safety and efficacy from adequately powered phase 3 studies. Pharmacovigilance (phase 4 studies, postmarketing data, adverse drug reaction reporting) provide data on more widespread and longer term use. Historically, voluntary reporting systems for pharmacovigilance have had low reporting rates, relying on ad hoc reporting and retrospective chart reviews, or prospective registries have often been limited to specific drugs or clinical conditions. Furthermore, these data are often irrelevant in hospice and palliative care due to the timeliness of which such data become available and the unique characteristics of our population and prescribing: compounding comorbidities, progressive organ failure, accumulation of symptom-specific medications, tendency to attribute toxicity to disease progression, use of old, off-patent medications, and incorporation of evolving evidence. There is a need for prospective, systematic pharmacovigilance in hospice and palliative care. Method: Here we describe an international, Web-based, 128-bit secure initiative to collect pharmacovigilance data documenting net clinical benefit and safety of common medications. The intention is for a diverse and large group of clinical units to record data prospectively on a small deidentified consecutive cohort of patients started on the medication of interest. A new medication would be studied every 3 months. Three key time points (different for each medication) will be assessed for each patient, collecting easily codefiable data at baseline, a point at which clinical benefit should be experienced, and a point at which short- to medium-term toxicities may occur. Toxicities can additionally be recorded at any time they occur. Data collection will take a maximum of 10 minutes per patient. Conclusion: The intention is to create an efficient, relevant system to improve hospice and palliative care with maximally generalizable results

How did a Housing First intervention improve health and social outcomes among homeless adults with mental illness in Toronto? Two-year outcomes from a randomised trial.

OBJECTIVES: We studied the impact of a Housing First (HF) intervention on housing, contact with the justice system, healthcare usage and health outcomes among At Home/Chez Soi randomised trial participants in Toronto, a city with an extensive service network for social and health services for individuals who are experiencing homelessness and mental illness. METHODS: Participants identified as high needs were randomised to receive either the intervention which provided them with housing and supports by an assertive community treatment team (HF+ACT) or treatment as usual (TAU). Participants (N=197) had in-person interviews every 3 months for 2 years. RESULTS: The HF+ACT group spent more time stably housed compared to the TAU group with the mean difference between the groups of 45.8% (95% CI 37.1% to 54.4%, p<0.0001). Accounting for baseline differences, HF+ACT group showed significant improvements over TAU group for community functioning, selected quality-of-life subscales and arrests at some time points during follow-up. No differences between HF+ACT and TAU groups over the follow-up were observed for health service usage, community integration and substance use. CONCLUSIONS: HF for individuals with high levels of need increased housing stability and selected health and justice outcomes over 2 years in a city with many social and health services. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ISRCTN42520374

Reasoning about explicit resource management

We investigate the behaviour and efficiency of concurrent processes with explicit resource management. Our study is based on a π-calculus variant called Rπ [4] where the only resources available are channels, which must be explicitly allocated before they can be used and can be deallocated when no longer required. A substructural type system guarantees the safe allocation and deallocation of channels, as well as safe channel reuse through strong updates. In this paper we use this type system to give compositional proof techniques for reasoning about the behaviour and efficiency of Rπ processes.peer-reviewe

Medical Students’ Experience: Community Engagement and Advocacy through Photovoice

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Structured Light-Based Hazard Detection For Planetary Surface Navigation

This paper describes a structured light-based sensor for hazard avoidance in planetary environments. The system presented here can also be used in terrestrial applications constrained by reduced onboard power and computational complexity and low illumination conditions. The sensor is on a calibrated camera and laser dot projector system. The onboard hazard avoidance system determines the position of the projected dots in the image and through a triangulation process detects potential hazards. The paper presents the design parameters for this sensor and describes the image based solution for hazard avoidance. The system presented here was tested extensively in day and night conditions in Lunar analogue environments. The current system achieves over 97 detection rate with 1.7 false alarms over 2000 images