Starting from scratch: experimenting with computer science in Flemish secondary education

In the Flemish secondary education curriculum, as in many countries and regions, computer science currently only gets an extremely limited coverage. Recently, in Flanders (and elsewhere), it has been proposed to change this, and try-outs are undertaken, both in and outside of schools. In this paper, we discuss some of those efforts, and in particular take a closer look at the preliminary results of one experiment involving different approaches to programming in grade 8. These experiments indicate that many students from secondary schools would welcome a more extensive treatment of computer science. Planning and implementing such a treatment, however, raises a number of issues, from which in this paper, we formulate a handful as calls for action for the computer science education research community

Sales Growth of New Pharmaceuticals Across the Globe: The Role of Regulatory Regimes

Prior marketing literature has overlooked the role of regulatory regimes in explaining international sales growth of new products. This paper addresses this gap in the context of new pharmaceuticals (15 new molecules in 34 countries) and sheds light on the effect regulatory regimes have on new drug sales across the globe. Based on a time-varying coefficient model, we find that differences in regulation substantially contribute to cross-country variation in sales. One of the regulatory constraints investigated, i.e. manufacturer price controls, has a positive effect on drug sales. The other forms of regulation such as restrictions of physician prescription budgets and the prohibition of direct-to-consumer advertising tend to hurt sales. The effect of manufacturer price controls is similar for newly launched and mature drugs. In contrast, regulations on physician prescription budget and direct-to-consumer advertising have a differential effect for newly launched and mature drugs. While the former hurts mature drugs more, the latter has a larger effect on newly launched drugs. In addition to these regulatory effects,

Evolution of Fragmentation Cloud in Highly Eccentric Orbit Using Representative Objects

Many historical on-orbit satellite fragmentations occurred in Highly Eccentric Orbits (HEOs) such as the Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO). Such fragmentations produce fragment clouds that interfere with the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) environment and pose a threat to operational satellites. Objects in HEO undergo complex dynamics due to the influence of perturbations varying as a function mainly of their altitude and area-to-mass ratio. The evolution of such a cloud, including small objects down to 1 mm, is not well understood. This paper describes a method to model the evolution of a fragmentation cloud in HEO under the influence of atmospheric drag and Earth's oblateness. Semi-analytical techniques are applied to propagate represen- tative objects constituting the cloud; rather than following the evolution of many distinct fragments. The proposed method is applied on a GTO upper stage using the standard NASA break-up model to nd the distribution right after the fragmentation. The evolution of the fragment cloud is analysed statistically and time of closures are calculated for the formation of the torus along the parent orbit and the band around Earth. Assumptions on the evolution of the cloud that are valid in LEO are shown to be invalid for clouds in HEO

Специфика организации транспортной службы предприятия

В данной статье были рассмотрены проблемы организации транспортной службы предприятия. Актуальность темы исследования обусловлена, тем, что любую готовую продукцию необходимо транспортировать, в связи с этим были рассмотрены общие характеристики транспортной службы предприятия, сделаны выводы, позволяющие повысить эффективность работы транспортного цеха предприятия за счет повышения качества надежности внешних и внутрипроизводственных перевозок, что обеспечит повышение конкурентоспособности предприятия в целом

Complementing the European earth observation and geographic information body of knowledge with a business‐oriented perspective

A body of knowledge (BoK) is an inventory of knowledge or concepts of a domain that serves as a reference vocabulary for various purposes, such as the development of curricula, the preparation of job descriptions, and the description of occupational profiles. To fulfill its purpose, a BoK needs to be up‐to‐date and ideally widely accepted by academia as well as the private and public sectors. This article presents the initiative taken in the Earth observation and geographic information (EO*GI) domain to provide a current, comprehensive education‐ and business‐oriented EO*GI BoK called EO4GEO BoK. In particular, an approach to strengthen the business‐oriented perspective in the EO4GEO BoK is presented. This approach is based on the analysis of professional tasks and the mapping of these tasks to concepts and skills contained in the BoK. A critical reflection of the proposed approach that is based on the experiences gained during a workshop complements this article

Updating and using the EO4GEO Body of Knowledge for (AI) concept annotation

The EO4GEO Body of Knowledge (BoK) serves as a vocabulary for the domain of geoinformation and earth observation, supporting the annotation of online resources. This paper presents how the BoK is designed, maintained and improved. We discuss how the BoK content can be extended, using the example of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) concepts and show how annotation is done by adding persistent concept identifiers in the metadata of training materials. This platform allows us to share online information with clarified semantics. A prolonged use necessitates the incentivisation of an active expert community and a further adoption of infrastructure standards

Establishing a persistent interoperability test-bed for European geospatial research

The development of standards for geospatial web services has been spearheaded by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) - a group of over 370 private, public and academic organisations (OGC, 1999-2009). The OGC aims to facilitate interoperability between geospatial technologies through education, standards and other initiatives. The OGC Service Architecture, described in the international standard ISO 19119, offers an abstract specification for web services covering data dissemination, processing, portrayal, workflows and other areas. The development of specifications covering each of these categories of web services has led to a significant number of geospatial data and computational services available on the World Wide Web (the Web). A project1 to establish a persistent geospatial interoperability test-bed (PTB) was commissioned in 2007 by the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE), Commission 5 (Networks) of the European Spatial Data Research (EuroSDR) organisation and the OGC

Optimum Blood Pressure in Patients With Shock After Acute Myocardial Infarction and Cardiac Arrest

BACKGROUND In patients with shock after acute myocardial infarction (AMI), the optimal level of pharmacologic support is unknown. Whereas higher doses may increase myocardial oxygen consumption and induce arrhythmias, diastolic hypotension may reduce coronary perfusion and increase infarct size. OBJECTIVES This study aimed to determine the optimal mean arterial pressure (MAP) in patients with AMI and shock after cardiac arrest. METHODS This study used patient-level pooled analysis of post-cardiac arrest patients with shock after AMI randomized in the Neuroprotect (Neuroprotective Goal Directed Hemodynamic Optimization in Post-cardiac Arrest Patients; NCT02541591) and COMACARE (Carbon Dioxide, Oxygen and Mean Arterial Pressure After Cardiac Arrest and Resuscitation; NCT02698917) trials who were randomized to MAP 65 mm Hg or MAP 80/85 to 100 mm Hg targets during the first 36 h after admission. The primary endpoint was the area under the 72-h high-sensitivity troponin-T curve. RESULTS Of 235 patients originally randomized, 120 patients had AMI with shock. Patients assigned to the higher MAP target (n = 58) received higher doses of norepinephrine (p = 0.004) and dobutamine (p = 0.01) and reached higher MAPs (86 +/- 9 mm Hg vs. 72 +/- 10 mm Hg, p <0.001). Whereas admission hemodynamics and angiographic findings were all well-balanced and revascularization was performed equally effective, the area under the 72-h high-sensitivity troponin-T curve was lower in patients assigned to the higher MAP target (median: 1.14 mu g.72 h/l [interquartile range: 0.35 to 2.31 mu g.72 h/l] vs. median: 1.56 mu g.72 h/l [interquartile range: 0.61 to 4.72 mu g. 72 h/l]; p = 0.04). Additional pharmacologic support did not increase the risk of a new cardiac arrest (p = 0.88) or atrial fibrillation (p = 0.94). Survival with good neurologic outcome at 180 days was not different between both groups (64% vs. 53%, odds ratio: 1.55; 95% confidence interval: 0.74 to 3.22). CONCLUSIONS In post-cardiac arrest patients with shock after AMI, targeting MAP between 80/85 and 100 mm Hg with additional use of inotropes and vasopressors was associated with smaller myocardial injury. (C) 2020 by the American College of Cardiology Foundation.Peer reviewe

Comparison of Tobacco Control Scenarios: Quantifying Estimates of Long-Term Health Impact Using the DYNAMO-HIA Modeling Tool

There are several types of tobacco control interventions/policies which can change future smoking exposure. The most basic intervention types are 1) smoking cessation interventions 2) preventing smoking initiation and 3) implementation of a nationwide policy affecting quitters and starters simultaneously. The possibility for dynamic quantification of such different interventions is key for comparing the timing and size of their effects

The relevance of rich club regions for functional outcome post-stroke is enhanced in women

This study aimed to investigate the influence of stroke lesions in predefined highly interconnected (rich-club) brain regions on functional outcome post-stroke, determine their spatial specificity and explore the effects of biological sex on their relevance. We analyzed MRI data recorded at index stroke and similar to 3-months modified Rankin Scale (mRS) data from patients with acute ischemic stroke enrolled in the multisite MRI-GENIE study. Spatially normalized structural stroke lesions were parcellated into 108 atlas-defined bilateral (sub)cortical brain regions. Unfavorable outcome (mRS > 2) was modeled in a Bayesian logistic regression framework. Effects of individual brain regions were captured as two compound effects for (i) six bilateral rich club and (ii) all further non-rich club regions. In spatial specificity analyses, we randomized the split into "rich club" and "non-rich club" regions and compared the effect of the actual rich club regions to the distribution of effects from 1000 combinations of six random regions. In sex-specific analyses, we introduced an additional hierarchical level in our model structure to compare male and female-specific rich club effects. A total of 822 patients (age: 64.7[15.0], 39% women) were analyzed. Rich club regions had substantial relevance in explaining unfavorable functional outcome (mean of posterior distribution: 0.08, area under the curve: 0.8). In particular, the rich club-combination had a higher relevance than 98.4% of random constellations. Rich club regions were substantially more important in explaining long-term outcome in women than in men. All in all, lesions in rich dub regions were associated with increased odds of unfavorable outcome. These effects were spatially specific and more pronounced in women.Peer reviewe