Statically Checking Web API Requests in JavaScript

Many JavaScript applications perform HTTP requests to web APIs, relying on the request URL, HTTP method, and request data to be constructed correctly by string operations. Traditional compile-time error checking, such as calling a non-existent method in Java, are not available for checking whether such requests comply with the requirements of a web API. In this paper, we propose an approach to statically check web API requests in JavaScript. Our approach first extracts a request's URL string, HTTP method, and the corresponding request data using an inter-procedural string analysis, and then checks whether the request conforms to given web API specifications. We evaluated our approach by checking whether web API requests in JavaScript files mined from GitHub are consistent or inconsistent with publicly available API specifications. From the 6575 requests in scope, our approach determined whether the request's URL and HTTP method was consistent or inconsistent with web API specifications with a precision of 96.0%. Our approach also correctly determined whether extracted request data was consistent or inconsistent with the data requirements with a precision of 87.9% for payload data and 99.9% for query data. In a systematic analysis of the inconsistent cases, we found that many of them were due to errors in the client code. The here proposed checker can be integrated with code editors or with continuous integration tools to warn programmers about code containing potentially erroneous requests.Comment: International Conference on Software Engineering, 201

Interaction design for paediatric emergency VR training

Virtual reality (VR) in healthcare training has increased adoption and support, but efforts are still required to mitigate usability concerns. This study conducted a usability study of an in-use emergency medicine VR training application, available on commercially available VR hardware and with a standard interaction design. Nine users without prior VR experience but with relevant medical expertise completed two simulation scenarios for a total of 18 recorded sessions. They completed NASA Task Load Index and System Usability Scale questionnaires after each session, and their performance was recorded for the tracking of user errors. Our results showed a medium (and potentially optimal) Workload and an above average System Usability Score. There was significant improvement in several factors between users’ first and second sessions, notably increased Performance evaluation. User errors with the strongest correlation to usability were not directly tied to interaction design, however, but to a limited ‘possibility space’. Suggestions for closing this ‘gulf of execution’ were presented, including ‘voice control’ and ‘hand-tracking’, which are only feasible for this commercial product now with the availability of the Oculus Quest headset. Moreover, wider implications for VR medical training were outlined, and potential next steps towards a standardized design identified

Ontology-based data access with databases: a short course

Ontology-based data access (OBDA) is regarded as a key ingredient of the new generation of information systems. In the OBDA paradigm, an ontology defines a high-level global schema of (already existing) data sources and provides a vocabulary for user queries. An OBDA system rewrites such queries and ontologies into the vocabulary of the data sources and then delegates the actual query evaluation to a suitable query answering system such as a relational database management system or a datalog engine. In this chapter, we mainly focus on OBDA with the ontology language OWL 2QL, one of the three profiles of the W3C standard Web Ontology Language OWL 2, and relational databases, although other possible languages will also be discussed. We consider different types of conjunctive query rewriting and their succinctness, different architectures of OBDA systems, and give an overview of the OBDA system Ontop

COVID-19 vaccination uptake amongst ethnic minority communities in England: a linked study exploring the drivers of differential vaccination rates

BACKGROUND: Despite generally high coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination rates in the UK, vaccination hesitancy and lower take-up rates have been reported in certain ethnic minority communities. METHODS: We used vaccination data from the National Immunisation Management System (NIMS) linked to the 2011 Census and individual health records for subjects aged ≥40 years (n = 24 094 186). We estimated age-standardized vaccination rates, stratified by ethnic group and key sociodemographic characteristics, such as religious affiliation, deprivation, educational attainment, geography, living conditions, country of birth, language skills and health status. To understand the association of ethnicity with lower vaccination rates, we conducted a logistic regression model adjusting for differences in geographic, sociodemographic and health characteristics. ResultsAll ethnic groups had lower age-standardized rates of vaccination compared with the white British population, whose vaccination rate of at least one dose was 94% (95% CI: 94%-94%). Black communities had the lowest rates, with 75% (74-75%) of black African and 66% (66-67%) of black Caribbean individuals having received at least one dose. The drivers of these lower rates were partly explained by accounting for sociodemographic differences. However, modelled estimates showed significant differences remained for all minority ethnic groups, compared with white British individuals. CONCLUSIONS: Lower COVID-19 vaccination rates are consistently observed amongst all ethnic minorities

Sex and the Cinema: What American Pie Teaches the Young

This paper focuses upon the wildly successful blockbuster American Pie teenpics, especially American Pie 3 – the Wedding. I argue that these films, which are sited so securely within the visual and pedagogical machinery of Hollywood culture, are specifically designed to appeal to teenage male audiences, and to provide lessons in sex and romance. Movies like this are especially important as they are experienced by far more teenagers than, for example, instructional films or other classroom materials; indeed, as Henry Giroux has observed, "teens and youth learn how to define themselves outside of the traditional sites of instruction, such as the home and the school… Learning in the postmodern age is located elsewhere – in popular spheres that shape their identities, through forms of knowledge and desires that appear absent from what is taught in schools" (Giroux, 1997, p.49). In this paper I discuss whether the American Pie series is actually a "new age" effort which, via insubordinate performances of gender, contests the hegemonic field of signification which regulates the production of sex, gender and desire, or whether it is more accurately described as a retrogressive hetero-conservative opus with a veneer of sexual radicalism. In short, I intend to probe whether this filmic vector for sex education is all about the shaping of responsible, caring, vulnerable men, or is it guiding them to become just like their heterosexual, middle-class fathers? And whether, despite its riotous and raunchy advertising, American Pie really dishes up something spicy or something terribly wholesome instead

First observations of confined fast ions in MAST Upgrade with an upgraded neutron camera

Spherical tokamaks are key to the successful design of operating scenarios of future fusion reactors in the areas of divertor physics, neutral beam current drive and fast ion physics. MAST Upgrade, which has successfully concluded its first experimental campaign, was specifically designed to address the role of the radial gradient of the fast ion distribution in driving the excitation of magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities, such as toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes, fish-bones and long-lived mode, thanks to its two tangential neutral beam injection systems, one on the equatorial plane and one that is vertically shifted 65 cm above the equatorial plane. To study the fast ion dynamics in the presence of such instabilities, as well as of sawteeth and neo-classical tearing modes, several fast ion diagnostics were upgraded and new ones added. Among them, the MAST prototype neutron camera (NC) has been upgraded to six, equatorial sight-lines. The first observations of the confined fast ion behavior with the upgraded NC in a wide range of plasma scenarios characterized by on-axis and/or off-axis heating and different MHD instabilities are presented here. The observations presented in this study confirm previous results on MAST but with a higher level of detail and highlight new physics observations unique to the MAST Upgrade. The results presented here confirm the improved performance of the NC Upgrade, which thus becomes one of the key elements, in combination with the rich set of fast ion diagnostics available on the MAST Upgrade, for a more constrained modeling of the fast ion dynamics in fusion reactor relevant scenarios

P352 A propensity score-matched, real-world comparison of ustekinumab vs vedolizumab as a second-line treatment for Crohn's disease. The Cross Pennine study II

Abstract Background The best choice of biological agents after failure to an anti-tumour necrosis factor (TNF)α agent in patients with Crohn's disease (CD) is yet to be defined. Real-world data dealing with this issue are still emerging. Methods This is a multicentre retrospective study including eight UK hospitals (August 2014-April 2020). We retrospectively collected data of patients treated with ustekinumab. Clinical response and remission at 14 and 52 weeks evaluated through Physician Global Assessment (PGA) and adverse events were recorded. Predictors of clinical response were examined, and a propensity score-matched analysis with a cohort of patients treated with vedolizumab was performed. Results Overall, 282 patients (mean age 40±15, F:M ratio 1.7:1) treated with ustekinumab were included. Clinical response or remission was reached by 200/282 patients (70.9%) at 14 weeks, and by 162/259 patients (62.5%) at 52 weeks. The most common reason for discontinuation was either primary failure or loss of response, followed by the occurrence of adverse events and by the need for surgery. The rate of non-adherence was rather low (1.4%). Current smoking (OR 2.48, 95% CI 1.13-5.44; p=0.02), baseline PGA (OR 2.4, 95% CI 1.55-3.69, p<0.001), and use of steroids (OR 2.42, 95% CI 1.26-4.65, p=0.008) were associated with 52-week treatment failure. Overall, 74 adverse events occurred, of which 26 were labelled as serious (8.3 per 100 person-year). After exclusion of patients without anti-TNFα exposure prior to starting ustekinumab or vedolizumab and exclusion of patients previously exposed to vedolizumab or ustekinumab, we analysed 275/282 patients (97.5%) from the ustekinumab cohort and 118/135 patients (87.4%) from the vedolizumab cohort. Propensity score analysis revealed that at 14 weeks, patients treated with ustekinumab were 38% (95% CI 25-50%; p<0.001) more likely to achieve a clinical remission, while at 52 weeks, the difference of 9% (95% CI -15-33%; p=0.462) was not significant. Conclusion Ustekinumab was effective and well tolerated in this real-world cohort. While ustekinumab proved more effective at 14-week follow-up, we found no statistically significant differences in outcomes at 52 weeks

Substitution in a sense

The Reference Principle (RP) states that co-referring expressions are everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. On first glance, (RP) looks like a truism, but a truism with some bite: (RP) transforms difficult philosophical questions about co-reference into easy grammatical questions about substitutability. This has led a number of philosophers to think that we can use (RP) to make short work of certain longstanding metaphysical debates. For example, it has been suggested that all we need to do to show that the predicate ‘( ) is a horse’ does not refer to a property is point out that ‘( ) is a horse’ and ‘the property of being a horse’ are not everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. However, when we understand ‘substitution’ in the simplest and most straightforward way, (RP) is no truism; in fact, natural languages are full of counterexamples to the principle. In this paper, I introduce a new notion of substitution, and then develop and argue for a version of (RP) that is immune to these counterexamples. Along the way I touch on the following topics: the relation between argument forms and their natural language instances; the reification of sense; the difference between terms and predicates; and the relation between reference and disquotation. I end by arguing that my new version of (RP) cannot be used to settle metaphysical debates quite as easily as some philosophers would like

Microscopic self-consistent theory of Josephson junctions including dynamical electron correlations

We formulate a fully self-consistent, microscopic model to study the retardation and correlation effects of the barrier within a Josephson junction. The junction is described by a series of planes, with electronic correlation included through a local self energy for each plane. We calculate current-phase relationships for various junctions, which include non-magnetic impurities in the barrier region, or an interfacial scattering potential. Our results indicate that the linear response of the supercurrent to phase across the barrier region is a good, but not exact indicator of the critical current. Our calculations of the local density of states show the current-carrying Andreev bound states and their energy evolution with the phase difference across the junction. We calculate the figure of merit for a Josephson junction, which is the product of the critical current, Ic, and the normal state resistance, R(N), for junctions with different barrier materials. The normal state resistance is calculated using the Kubo formula, for a system with zero current flow and no superconducting order. Semiclassical calculations would predict that these two quantities are determined by the transmission probabilities of electrons in such a way that the product is constant for a given superconductor at fixed temperature. Our self-consistent solutions for different types of barrier indicate that this is not the case. We suggest some forms of barrier which could increase the Ic.R(N) product, and hence improve the frequency response of a Josephson device.Comment: 46 pages, 21 figure