A process-oriented perspective on large student projects guides students in integrating end-to-end life-cycle skills and provides consistency of experience among projects. After conducting 49 ...Capstone projects, the authors learned that they must cultivate a process culture, that agile processes provide a bridge from ad hoc programming assignments to organized project work, and that process requires a suitable infrastructure of tools and process expertise.
The key to applying computer-aided software engineering to the maintenance and enhancement of existing systems lies in applying reverse-engineering approaches. However, there is considerable ...confusion over the terminology used in both technical and marketplace discussions. The authors define and relate six terms: forward engineering, reverse engineering, redocumentation, design recovery, restructuring, and reengineering. The objective is not to create new terms but to rationalize the terms already in use. The resulting definitions apply to the underlying engineering processes, regardless of the degree of automation applied.< >
Recently, the first two in a series of planned comprehension experiments were performed to measure the effect of the control structure diagram (CSD) on program comprehensibility. Upper- and ...lower-division computer science and software engineering students were asked to respond to questions regarding the structure and execution of one source code module of a public domain graphics library. The time taken for each response and the correctness of each response was recorded. Statistical analysis of the data collected from these two experiments revealed that the CSD was highly significant in enhancing the subjects' performance in this program comprehension task. The results of these initial experiments promise to shed light on fundamental questions regarding the effect of software visualizations on program comprehensibility.
Each year an estimated 2.3 million newborns die in the first 28 days of life. Most of these deaths are preventable, and high-quality neonatal care is fundamental for surviving and thriving. Service ...readiness is used to assess the capacity of hospitals to provide care, but current health facility assessment (HFA) tools do not fully evaluate inpatient small and sick newborn care (SSNC).
Health systems ingredients for SSNC were identified from international guidelines, notably World Health Organization (WHO), and other standards for SSNC. Existing global and national service readiness tools were identified and mapped against this ingredients list. A novel HFA tool was co-designed according to a priori considerations determined by policymakers from four African governments, including that the HFA be completed in one day and assess readiness across the health system. The tool was reviewed by > 150 global experts, and refined and operationalised in 64 hospitals in Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and Tanzania between September 2019 and March 2021.
Eight hundred and sixty-six key health systems ingredients for service readiness for inpatient SSNC were identified and mapped against four global and eight national tools measuring SSNC service readiness. Tools revealed major content gaps particularly for devices and consumables, care guidelines, and facility infrastructure, with a mean of 13.2% (n = 866, range 2.2-34.4%) of ingredients included. Two tools covered 32.7% and 34.4% (n = 866) of ingredients and were used as inputs for the new HFA tool, which included ten modules organised by adapted WHO health system building blocks, including: infrastructure, pharmacy and laboratory, medical devices and supplies, biomedical technician workshop, human resources, information systems, leadership and governance, family-centred care, and infection prevention and control. This HFA tool can be conducted at a hospital by seven assessors in one day and has been used in 64 hospitals in Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and Tanzania.
This HFA tool is available open-access to adapt for use to comprehensively measure service readiness for level-2 SSNC, including respiratory support. The resulting facility-level data enable comparable tracking for Every Newborn Action Plan coverage target four within and between countries, identifying facility and national-level health systems gaps for action.
Neonates regulate iron at birth and in early postnatal life. We reviewed literature from PubMed and Ovid Medline containing data on umbilical cord and venous blood concentrations of hepcidin and ...iron, and transferrin saturation (TSAT), in human neonates from 0 to 1 mo of age. Data from 59 studies were used to create reference ranges for hepcidin, iron, and TSAT for full-term-birth (FTB) neonates over the first month of life. In FTB neonates, venous hepcidin increases 100% over the first month of life (to reach 61.1 ng/mL; 95% CI: 20.1, 102.0 ng/mL) compared with umbilical cord blood (29.7 ng/mL; 95% CI: 21.1, 38.3 ng/mL). Cord blood has a high concentration of serum iron (28.4 micromol/L; 95% CI: 26.0, 31.1 micromol/L) and levels of TSAT (51.7%; 95% CI: 46.5%, 56.9%). After a short-lived immediate postnatal hypoferremia, iron and TSAT rebounded to approximately half the levels in the cord by the end of the first month. There were insufficient data to formulate reference ranges for preterm neonates. Curr Dev Nutr 2020;4:nzaa104
Experiments were performed to measure the relationship of two software visualizations to software comprehension. The Control Structure Diagram (CSD) was examined for its influence on aiding the ...comprehension of software source code, and the Complexity Profile Graph (CPG) was examined for its ability to measure source code comprehensibility. Test subjects were asked to respond to questions regarding a code specimen written in Java. Statistical analysis of the data collected from the first experiment revealed that the CSD was highly significant in enhancing the subject’s performance in this program comprehension task. Similar analysis of data collected from the second experiment showed that the measure of complexity calculated by the CPG correlated with the amount of time required to correctly understand the source code. The CPG was found to cue the software developer to complex portions of the code that might require special attention; the CSD was found to aid in understanding specific details of the code. The results of these experiments along with the planned follow-on experiments promise to shed light on fundamental questions regarding the role software visualizations can play in program comprehensibility.
Background: Neonatal infection is the third largest cause of death in children under five worldwide. Nutritional immunity is the process by which the host innate immune system limits nutrient ...availability to invading organisms. Iron is an essential micronutrient for both microbial pathogens and their mammalian hosts. Changes in iron availability and distribution have significant effects on pathogen virulence and on the immune response to infection. Our previously published data shows that, during the first 24 hours of life, full-term neonates have reduced overall serum iron. Transferrin saturation decreases rapidly from 45% in cord blood to ~20% by six hours post-delivery. Methods: To study neonatal nutritional immunity and its role in neonatal susceptibility to infection, we will conduct an observational study on 300 full-term normal birth weight (FTB+NBW), 50 preterm normal birth weight (PTB+NBW), 50 preterm low birth weight (PTB+LBW) and 50 full-term low birth weight (FTB+LBW), vaginally-delivered neonates born at Kanifing General Hospital, The Gambia. We will characterize and quantify iron-related nutritional immunity during the early neonatal period and use ex vivo sentinel bacterial growth assays to assess how differences in serum iron affect bacterial growth. Blood samples will be collected from the umbilical cord (arterial and venous) and at serial time points from the neonates over the first week of life. Discussion: Currently, little is known about nutritional immunity in neonates. In this study, we will increase understanding of how nutritional immunity may protect neonates from infection during the first critical days of life by limiting the pathogenicity and virulence of neonatal sepsis causing organisms by reducing the availability of iron. Additionally, we will investigate the hypothesis that this protective mechanism may not be activated in preterm and low birth weight neonates, potentially putting these babies at an enhanced risk of neonatal infection. Trial registration: clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03353051) 27/11/2017
A new graphical representation, the Control Structure Diagram (CSD), has been created to visualize software at both the source code and program design language (PDL) level. The primary impetus for ...creation of the CSD was to improve the comprehension efficiency of software and, as a result, improve reliability and reduce costs. The CSD has the potential to replace traditional prettyprinted source code. As part of the GRASP (Graphical Representations of Algorithms, Structures, and Processes) research project at Auburn University, the GRASP software engineering tool has been successfully developed. GRASP automatically generates CSDs from source code written in Ada, C, C++, Java, and VHDL. The emphasis to this point has been on the automatic generation of the CSD to support development, maintenance, reverse engineering and reengineering through the use of GRASP. GRASP has been applied successfully to numerous programs ranging in size from several hundred to several thousand lines of source code and is efficient and sufficiently flexible for use in a production setting. To demonstrate the potential benefits of the CSD and its automatic generation using GRASP, a series of empirical studies has been planned and initiated. First, as reported in this article, the perceived usefulness of the CSD was evaluated using a preference instrument based on eleven performance characteristics in which a comparison was made with other well-known graphical representations for algorithms. Statistical analysis indicated numerous significant differences with a clear preference for the CSD in seven of the eleven performance characteristics. Further empirical studies, currently being implemented, will examine the effect of the CSD and GRASP on objective measures such as comprehension efficiency and effectiveness.PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
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