669 research outputs found
Can virtual seminars be used costâeffectively to enhance student learning?
This paper describes a virtual seminar initiative designed to investigate the extent to which computerâmediated communication (CMC) can costâeffectively strengthen staffâstudent interaction and enhance student group discussion, and thereby improve collaborative learning. After setting the scene by means of a brief review of the discursive potential of CMC, the establishment of an asynchronous bulletin board system on three modules in the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester using industry standard software is described. Detailed time diaries kept by all staff involved revealed that organizing and running the virtual seminars were very much less timeâconsuming than running faceâtoâface seminars. However, analysis of the studentsâ access to and mage of the virtual seminars indicates that some of them were disadvantaged by CMC and that they favoured faceâtoâface contact with lecturers over virtual seminars. The latter should therefore be part of a portfolio of teaching techniques rather than the sole form of collaborative learning. The conclusion is that a significant obstacle to benefiting from CMC is the further demand on staff time that results from adding virtual seminars as a supplement to existing teaching practices. Even though these extra demands may be modest, effectively deploying the discursive potential of CMC to enhance student learning increases staff effort rather than reducing it, as many have hoped or promised it would
Evaluating the process: CHAPS process evaluation overview and experiences: 2002 evaluation report
Replica determinism and flexible scheduling in hard real-time dependable systems
Fault-tolerant real-time systems are typically based on active replication where replicated entities are required to deliver their outputs in an identical order within a given time interval. Distributed scheduling of replicated tasks, however, violates this requirement if on-line scheduling, preemptive scheduling, or scheduling of dissimilar replicated task sets is employed. This problem of inconsistent task outputs has been solved previously by coordinating the decisions of the local schedulers such that replicated tasks are executed in an identical order. Global coordination results either in an extremely high communication effort to agree on each schedule decision or in an overly restrictive execution model where on-line scheduling, arbitrary preemptions, and nonidentically replicated task sets are not allowed. To overcome these restrictions, a new method, called timed messages, is introduced. Timed messages guarantee deterministic operation by presenting consistent message versions to the replicated tasks. This approach is based on simulated common knowledge and a sparse time base. Timed messages are very effective since they neither require communication between the local scheduler nor do they restrict usage of on-line flexible scheduling, preemptions and nonidentically replicated task sets
Views and experiences of men who have sex with men on the ban on blood donation: a cross sectional survey with qualitative interviews.
OBJECTIVE: To explore compliance with the UK blood services' criterion that excludes men who have had penetrative sex with a man from donating blood, and to assess the possible effects of revising this policy. DESIGN: A random location, cross sectional survey followed by qualitative interviews. SETTING: Britain. PARTICIPANTS: 1028 of 32,373 men in the general population reporting any male sexual contact completed the survey. Additional questions were asked of a general population sample (n=3914). Thirty men who had had penetrative sex with a man participated in the qualitative interviews (19 who had complied with the blood services' exclusion criterion and 11 who had not complied). Main outcome measure Compliance with the blood services' lifetime exclusion criterion for men who have had penetrative sex with a man. RESULTS: 10.6% of men with experience of penetrative sex with a man reported having donated blood in Britain while ineligible under the exclusion criterion, and 2.5% had donated in the previous 12 months. Ineligible donation was less common among men who had had penetrative sex with a man recently (in previous 12 months) than among men for whom this last occurred longer ago. Reasons for non-compliance with the exclusion included self categorisation as low risk, discounting the sexual experience that barred donation, belief in the infallibility of blood screening, concerns about confidentiality, and misunderstanding or perceived inequity of the rule. Although blood donation was rarely viewed as a "right," potential donors were seen as entitled to a considered assessment of risk. A one year deferral since last male penetrative sex was considered by study participants to be generally feasible, equitable, and acceptable. CONCLUSIONS: A minority of men who have sex with men who are ineligible to donate blood under the current donor exclusion in Britain have nevertheless done so in the past 12 months. Many of the reasons identified for non-compliance seem amenable to intervention. A clearly rationalised and communicated one year donor deferral is likely to be welcomed by most men who have sex with men
The prevalence of, and factors associated with, paying for sex among men resident in Britain: findings from the third national survey of sexual attitudes and lifestyles (Natsal-3)
Objectives Men who pay for sex (MPS) are considered a bridging population for sexually transmitted infections (STI). However, the extent, characteristics and role of MPS in transmission is poorly understood. We investigate these questions using data from Britain's third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3).
Methods We performed complex survey analyses of data from 6293 men aged 16â74â
years resident in Britain who completed Natsal-3, a probability sample survey undertaken during 2010â2012, using computer-assisted personal interviewing and computer-assisted self-interview.
Results 11.0% (95% CI10.1% to 11.9%) of all men reported ever paying for sex. Among MPS, 18.4% (95% CI 18.2% to 18.7%) of their lifetime sexual partners were paid. 3.6% (95% CI 3.1% to 4.2%) of men had paid for sex in the past 5â
years. Partners of MPS constitute 14.7% of all reported partners and MPS report 15.6% of all reported STI diagnoses in the past 5â
years. Paying for sex in the past 5â
years was strongly associated with reporting larger numbers of sexual partners (adjusted OR, AOR for 5+ partners, past 5 years, 31.50, 95% CI 18.69 to 53.09). After adjusting for partner numbers, paying for sex remained strongly associated with reporting new foreign partners outside the UK (AOR 7.96; 95% CI 4.97 to 12.73) and STI diagnosis/es (AOR 2.34; 95% CI 1.44 to 3.81), all in the past 5 years. Among men ever paying for sex, 62.6% (95% CI 58.3% to 66.8%) reported paying for sex outside the UK, most often in Europe and Asia.
Conclusions MPS in Britain remain at greater risk of STI acquisition and onward transmission than men who do not. They report high numbers of partners, but the minority are paid partners. They are an important core group in STI transmission
Education and Development in Central Kenya: Problems of Spatial and Structural Inequalities in the School System.
Massive and sustained expenditure on educational development has been a consistent feature of Kenyan government policy since independence. Education is seen as a means of promoting national unity, establishing political ideologies and, most importantly, as a catalyst of social change and economic development through the production of appropriate skills and attitudes. In the light of recent policy intentions to concentrate upon rural development it is pertinent to evaluate the efficacy of the education sector's contribution. The thesis briefly documents the history of Kenyan education and examines influential research and reports within several disciplines in terms of their impact upon current educational policy. It is shown that, despite rapid growth and administrative changes, the present formal school system exhibits, in structure and direction, no fundamental departures from the inherited colonial framework; moreover, the informal sector's contribution, although specifically oriented to rural development, is far from significant. Inequalities within the educational system, particularly between secondary schools of different type, grade and location, are identified and the implications of these inequalities for the developnent-priority educational policy are discussed. The field data were provided by a questionnaire survey of students in secondary schools in central Kenya. The information referred to students' socio-economic and educational backgrounds; occupational and educational aspirations; and their attitudes towards development, social class and elitism. Analysis reveals that school standards are highly variable and that the system is still oriented to the urban/white-collar sector; access to this is rigidly restricted and biased towards students of high-graded Government schools serving the more affluent socio-economic groups. These findings are interpreted in terms of Kenya's political structure, ideologies and developing class relations. It is concluded that the educational system, far from generating an infrastructure conducive to rural development, acts to legitimize and reinforce elitism
Young peopleâs views and experiences of a mobile phone texting intervention to promote safer sex behaviour
Combining Time-Triggered Plans with Priority Scheduled Task Sets
The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39083-3_13Time-triggered and concurrent priority-based scheduling are
the two major approaches in use for real-time and embedded systems.
Both approaches have their own advantages and drawbacks. On the one
hand, priority-based systems facilitate separation of concerns between
functional and timing requirements by relying on an underlying real-
time operating system that takes all scheduling decisions at run time.
But this is at the cost of indeterminism in the exact timing pattern of
execution of activities, namely variable release jitter. On the other hand,
time-triggered schedules are more intricate to design since all schedul-
ing decisions must be taken beforehand in the design phase, but their
advantage is determinism and more chances for minimisation of release
jitter. In this paper we propose a software architecture that enables the
combined and controlled execution of time-triggered plans and priority-
scheduled tasks. We also describe the implementation of an Ada library
supporting it. Our aim is to take advantage of the best of both ap-
proaches by providing jitter-controlled execution of time-triggered tasks
(e.g., control tasks), coexisting with a set of priority-scheduled tasks,
with less demanding jitter requirements.This work has been partly supported by the Spanish Governmentâs project M2C2 (TIN2014-56158-C4-1-P-AR) and the European Commissionâs project EMC2 (ARTEMIS-JU Call 2013 AIPP-5, Contract 621429).Real SĂĄez, JV.; SĂĄez Barona, S.; Crespo, A. (2016). Combining Time-Triggered Plans with Priority Scheduled Task Sets. En Reliable Software Technologies â Ada-Europe 2016. Springer. 195-212. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39083-3_13S195212Liu, C., Layland, J.: Scheduling algorithms for multiprogramming in a hard real-time environment. J. ACM 20(1), 46â61 (1973)MartĂ, P., Fuertes, J., Fohler, G.: Jitter compensation for real-time control systems. In: Real-Time Systems Symposium (2001)Dobrin, R.: Combining off-line schedule construction and fixed priority scheduling in real-time computer systems. Ph.D. thesis. Mälardalen University (2005)Cervin, A.: Integrated control and real-time scheduling. Ph.D. thesis. Lund Institute of Technology, April 2003Balbastre, P., Ripoll, I., Vidal, J., Crespo, A.: A task model to reduce control delays. Real-Time Syst. 27(3), 215â236 (2004)Hong, S., Hu, X., Lemmon, M.: Reducing delay jitter of real-time control tasks through adaptive deadline adjustments. In: 22nd Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems - ECRTS, pp. 229â238. IEEE Computer Society (2010)ISO/IEC-JTC1-SC22-WG9: Ada Reference Manual ISO/IEC 8652:2012(E) (2012). http://www.ada-europe.org/manuals/LRM-2012.pdfBaker, T.P., Shaw, A.: The cyclic executive model and Ada. In: Proceedings IEEE Real Time Systems Symposium 1988, Huntsville, Alabama, pp. 120â129 (1988)Liu, J.W.S.: Real-Time Systems. Prentice-Hall Inc., Upper Saddle River (2000)Pont, M.J.: The Engineering of Reliable Embedded Systems: LPC1769. SafeTTy Systems Limited, Skelmersdale (2014). ISBN: 978-0-9930355-0-0Aldea Rivas, M., GonzĂĄlez Harbour, M.: MaRTE OS: an Ada kernel for real-time embedded applications. In: Strohmeier, A., Craeynest, D. (eds.) Ada-Europe 2001. LNCS, vol. 2043, pp. 305â316. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)Palencia, J., GonzĂĄlez-Harbour, M.: Schedulability analysis for tasks with static and dynamic offsets. In: 9th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (1998)Wellings, A.J., Burns, A.: A framework for real-time utilities for Ada 2005. Ada Lett. XXVI XXVII(2), 41â47 (2007)Real, J., Crespo, A.: Incorporating operating modes to an Ada real-time framework. Ada Lett. 30(1), 73â85 (2010)SĂĄez, S., Terrasa, S., Crespo, A.: A real-time framework for multiprocessor platforms using Ada 2012. In: Romanovsky, A., Vardanega, T. (eds.) Ada-Europe 2011. LNCS, vol. 6652, pp. 46â60. Springer, Heidelberg (2011
The prevalence of, and factors associated with, paying for sex among men resident in Britain: findings from the third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3)
Objectives Men who pay for sex (MPS) are considered a bridging population for sexually transmitted infections (STI). However, the extent, characteristics and role of MPS in transmission is poorly understood. We investigate these questions using data from Britain's third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3). Methods We performed complex survey analyses of data from 6293 men aged 16â74â
years resident in Britain who completed Natsal-3, a probability sample survey undertaken during 2010â2012, using computer-assisted personal interviewing and computer-assisted self-interview. Results 11.0% (95% CI10.1% to 11.9%) of all men reported ever paying for sex. Among MPS, 18.4% (95% CI 18.2% to 18.7%) of their lifetime sexual partners were paid. 3.6% (95% CI 3.1% to 4.2%) of men had paid for sex in the past 5â
years. Partners of MPS constitute 14.7% of all reported partners and MPS report 15.6% of all reported STI diagnoses in the past 5â
years. Paying for sex in the past 5â
years was strongly associated with reporting larger numbers of sexual partners (adjusted OR, AOR for 5+ partners, past 5 years, 31.50, 95% CI 18.69 to 53.09). After adjusting for partner numbers, paying for sex remained strongly associated with reporting new foreign partners outside the UK (AOR 7.96; 95% CI 4.97 to 12.73) and STI diagnosis/es (AOR 2.34; 95% CI 1.44 to 3.81), all in the past 5 years. Among men ever paying for sex, 62.6% (95% CI 58.3% to 66.8%) reported paying for sex outside the UK, most often in Europe and Asia. Conclusions MPS in Britain remain at greater risk of STI acquisition and onward transmission than men who do not. They report high numbers of partners, but the minority are paid partners. They are an important core group in STI transmission
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