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Aim: To systemically identify and synthesize information on health professionals' and students' perceptions regarding the development needs of incident reporting software. Design: A systematic review of qualitative studies. Data Sources: A database search was conducted using Medline, CINAHL, Scopus, Web of Science and Medic without time or language limits in February 2023. Review methods: A total of 4359 studies were identified. Qualitative studies concerning the perceptions of health professionals and students regarding the development needs of incident reporting software were included, based on screening and critical appraisal by two independent reviewers. A thematic synthesis was conducted. Results: From 10 included studies, five analytical themes were analysed. Health professionals and students desired the following improvements or changes to incident reporting software: (1) the design of reporting software, (2) the anonymity of reporting, (3) the accessibility of reporting software, (4) the classification of fields and answer options and (5) feedback and tracking of reports. Wanted features included suitable reporting forms for various specialized fields that could be integrated into existing hospital information systems. Rapid, user‐friendly reporting software using multiple reporting platforms and with flexible fields and predefined answer options was preferred. While anonymous reporting was favoured, the idea of reporting serious incidents with both patient and reporter names was also suggested. Conclusion: Health professionals and students provided concrete insights into the development needs for reporting software. Considering the underreporting of healthcare cases, the perspectives of healthcare professionals must be considered while developing user‐friendly reporting tools. Reporting software that facilitates the reporting process could reduce underreporting. Reporting Method: The ENTREQ reporting guideline was used to support the reporting of this systematic review. Patient or Public Contribution: There was no patient or public contribution. Protocol Registration: The protocol is registered in the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews with register number CRD42023393804. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The real-time judgment and screening of the dangerous parts of the whole structure is always one of the very difficult problems in the process of structural strength verification. As an important monitoring index in the static test of aircraft structure, the identification and judgment of the buckling position determines the degree of control of the field test personnel on the overall test. In the static strength test of aircraft structure, the test risk is more and more difficult to control, and unexpected structural failure occurs from time to time. In order to realize the identification of structural buckling parts accurately and efficiently, a buckling real-time detection system was designed and realized. The system realized real-time acquisition of collected data based on timer technology, and completes buckling position judgment based on nonlinearity, and finally visualized the buckling parts through two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms. The system has been applied in the test site, and the effect is remarkable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIndexes are useful for summarizing multivariate information into single metrics for monitoring, communicating, and decision-making. While most work has focused on defining new indexes for specific purposes, more attention needs to be directed toward making it possible to understand index behavior in different data conditions, and to determine how their structure affects their values and the variability therein. Here we discuss a modular data pipeline recommendation to assemble indexes. It is universally applicable to index computation and allows investigation of index behavior as part of the development procedure. One can compute indexes with different parameter choices, adjust steps in the index definition by adding, removing, and swapping them to experiment with various index designs, calculate uncertainty measures, and assess indexes’ robustness. The article presents three examples to illustrate the usage of the pipeline framework: comparison of two different indexes designed to monitor the spatio-temporal distribution of drought in Queensland, Australia; the effect of dimension reduction choices on the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) on countries’ ranking; and how to calculate bootstrap confidence intervals for the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). The methods are supported by a new R package, called tidyindex. Supplemental materials for the article are available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design patterns represent a means of communicating reusable solutions to common problems, provided they are implemented and maintained correctly. However, many design pattern instances erode as they age, sacrificing qualities they once provided. Identifying such instances of pattern decay is valuable because it allows for proactive attempts to extend the longevity and quality attributes of pattern components. Apart from structural decay, design patterns can exhibit symptoms of behavioral decay. We utilized a taxonomy that characterizes these negative behaviors and designed a case study wherein we measured structural and behavioral decay, hereafter referred to as pattern grime, as well as pattern quality and size, across pattern evolutions. We evaluated the relationships between structural and behavioral grime and found statistically significant cases of strong correlations between specific types of structural and behavioral grime. Furthermore, we extended the QATCH operational software quality model to incorporate design pattern evolution metrics and measured and correlated software quality to the presence of behavioral grime in software systems. Our results suggest a strong inverse relationship between software quality and behavioral grime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate estimation of software effort and time in the software development process is a key activity to achieve the necessary product quality. However, underestimation or overestimation of effort has become a key challenge for software development. One of the main problems is the estimation with metrics from late stages, because the product must already be finished to make estimates. In this paper, the use of statistical models and machine learning approaches for software estimation are used in early stages such as software design, and a data set is presented with metric values of design artifacts with 37 software projects. As results, models for the estimation of development time and effort are proposed and validated through leave-one-out cross-validation. Further, machine learning techniques were employed in order to compare software projects estimations. Through the statistical tests, it was proven that the errors were not statistically different with the regression models for effort estimation. However, with Random Forest the best statistical results were obtained for estimating development time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid societal development and increased engineering construction have exacerbated the disturbance of the geological environment. The impact of extreme climatic factors has grown, leading to a surge in geological disasters, with landslides emerging as particularly significant. Consequently, fundamental research in geological disaster detection or monitoring necessitates an in-depth study of the physical phenomena accompanying landslides' development, evolution, and occurrence. Exploring the signal characteristics associated with landslides is crucial to indirectly understanding their development and change processes—a scientific question deserving thorough exploration. Despite this research's importance, there is a notable gap in the investigation of the key design and specific implementation of electromagnetic instruments tailored for landslide detection. This gap is particularly pronounced in designing and implementing data acquisition software for electromagnetic instruments. This interdisciplinary research draws on theoretical frameworks from embedded computer science, software engineering, digital signal processing technology, geophysics, and engineering geology. It focuses on developing specialized data acquisition application software for landslide detection or monitoring, contributing to the scientific understanding of landslide development and providing independent intellectual property in the electromagnetic wave signal detection field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: at present, when the use of information and technology is essential for decision making, the data has become a resource of a lot of value to boost the success of hospital entities and improve the quality of life of the people. Objective: describe the "Dynamic data set generator for intensive care service" software. Methods: technological development research in the Intensive Care Service of the "Arnaldo Milián Castro" Hospital in the 2017 to 2022 period. The defined population were all the specialists (12) of the intensive therapy room that used the system since January of January 2017 to December 2022. Results: it allows to collect clinical data of patients from the intensive therapy room and generate dynamic data sets for intensive care specialists and data analysis. Conclusions: system in exploitation since 2017, the data sets generated have been used for the application of automatic learning techniques, which has enhanced medical research and timely decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is always difficult to analyze the law of ship movement, especially the behavior of ship. In this paper, a frequent pattern mining method based on a large number of historical track clustering of ships is proposed to estimate the future behavior of ships, and the software implementation is presented. In this paper, a comprehensive similarity measurement method of track is proposed and the meaning of frequent pattern mining based on track clustering is introduced. Secondly, the adaptive transformation of the classical density clustering algorithm is carried out and the implementation method of the clustering algorithm based on comprehensive similarity is given. Then, the most similar cluster of virtual trunk track calculation is extracted, and the estimation results of current ship behavior are obtained by statistics. Finally, the software design and test results based on C/S architecture are given. Experimental results show that this method can describe the behavior of track association, and the behavior estimation results obtained by the software can assist the research and judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Several studies have shown that involving users in design processes is a key factor in understanding user needs and essential for designing computer systems capable of providing valuable user experiences. However, many practitioners do not emphasize user needs sufficiently and neglect user involvement in software design and development. The UCD Sprint is a recently proposed, step-by-step, cost-effective process that focuses on involving users in design activities. This article reports a mixed-method study in which, for the first time, practitioners working in companies used the UCD Sprint; the study’s main objective was to investigate the impact of the UCD Sprint on practitioners’ design practices. The results show that, among the various activities associated with this process, those that involved users were particularly appreciated by practitioners. Thus, the UCD Sprint can enhance the innovativeness of company design practices; it enables practitioners to obtain sufficient information to create systems that fit users’ needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging daily, new devices and software-driven advancements pose challenges in software development, including errors, bugs, and evolving requirements. This leads to delays in delivery. Ensuring software security within the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is crucial. To address this, the research focuses on incorporating security aspects early in the SDLC through model transformation. Platform-independent models with security attributes like Integrity, Privacy, Security Audit, non-repudiation, and authentication are generated. A template-based source code generator is utilized to create the structure of the source model. The Secure Business Process Model (SBPM) encompasses Unified Modeling Language (UML) artifacts, such as analysis level classes and sequence diagrams, enriched with security attributes derived from the activity model. Security requirements are linked to elements extracted from the source model, and structural codes with security-enabled members are produced. Automation in software development is inevitable, though not complete, as it plays a vital role in addressing these challenges and improving the security of software applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise in initiatives such as software ecosystems and Internet of Things (IoT), developing robust web Application Programming Interfaces (web APIs) has become an increasingly important practice. One main concern in developing web APIs is that they expose back-end systems and data toward clients. This exposure threatens critical non-functional requirements, such as the security of back-end systems, the performance of provided services, and the privacy of communications with clients. Although dealing with non-functional requirements during software design has been long studied, there is still little guide on addressing these requirements in web APIs. In this paper, we present WEBAPIK, a body of structured knowledge on addressing non-functional requirements in the design of web APIs. WEBAPIK is comprised of 27 distinct non-functional requirements, 37 distinct design techniques to address some of the identified requirements, and the trade-offs of 22 design techniques, presented in two forms of natural language and knowledge graphs. The design knowledge compiled in WEBAPIK is systematically extracted and aggregated from 80 heterogeneous online literature resources, including 7 books, 15 weblogs and tutorial, 5 vendor white papers, 6 design standards, and 47 research papers. These resources are systematically retrieved from two search engines of Google and Google Scholar and five research databases of Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, SpringerLink, and ScienceDirect in two periods of March to August 2018 and August 2022. WEBAPIK gathers and structures expert and scholarly discussions to provide insight about addressing non-functional requirements in the design of web APIs. The structure brought to the design knowledge makes it amenable towards extension and creates the potential for employing it in the database of knowledge-based systems that aid software developers in design decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding disease prevention and control is developing due to global pandemics such as severe new coronavirus illness (COVID-19). In addition, the transmission of viruses in residential structures, particularly multi-story apartment complexes, is growing. This study examined the factors which characterise the reach in common interior spaces of social distance post-COVID-19. Secondly, the relationship between types of apartments and which are best after-COVID-19 can be observed. A questionnaire and data gathering for five apartment buildings selected in Erbil were used to the design technique. SPSS and space syntax (software design) and the correlation, regression, and descriptive statistics were then used to examine the data. This research investigates the essential link of social distancing factors in the living areas with independent variables, including physical, psychological, communication, and environmental aspects, in apartment spaces. This research also looks at social distancing factors in apartment spaces. In addition, multiple regression analyses revealed an equation that represents the best prediction of social distance in multi-story living areas with various independent factors of indoor communities. The study shows a favorable association between the components in common interior spaces and social distancing between units with many floors based on a hypothesis test. It also analyses five typical plan typologies of a building with several levels, based on the study and questionnaire evaluations of the inhabitants' space syntax. As a consequence, the advantages and defects of each building type were evaluated. The mixed-method employed in this research has contributed significantly to the acceptability and readability of the design of multi-story apartments as a control tool. Furthermore, the analyses led to a clear preference for the single-loaded (gallery) corridor layout for social distancing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Developmental disorders are a prevalent problem in the health sector of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and children in these countries are at greater risk. A registry system is helpful and vital to monitoring and managing this disease. Objective: The present study aims to develop an electronic registry system for children's developmental motor disorders. Methods: The study was conducted between 2019 and 2020 in three phases. First, the requirements of the system were identified. Second, UML diagrams were first drawn using Microsoft Visio software. Then, the system was designed using the ASP.NET framework in Visual Studio 2018, and the C# programming language was used in the NET 4.5 technology platform. In the third phase, system usability was evaluated from the users' viewpoint. Results: The findings of this research included system requirements, a conceptual model, and a web-based system. The client and system server connection was established through the IP/TCP communication protocol in a university physical network. End users approved the system with an agreement rate of 87.14%. Conclusion: The study's results can be used as a model for designing and developing systems related to children's developmental movement disorders in other countries. It is also suggested as a valuable platform for research and improving the management of this disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Computer-assisted arthroplasty supports the surgeons in planning, simulating, and performing the replacement procedure, using robotic or navigation technologies. However, the safety of the technology has not been widely ascertained. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) database was interrogated about software-related recalls in computer-assisted arthroplasty, aiming to assess: (1) the incidence, (2) the root causes, and (3) the actions taken due to recalls. Methods: The Medical Device Recalls database was investigated about software-related recalls in computer-assisted hip and knee arthroplasty surgery, between 2017 and 2022. The incidence of the software-related recalls, the root causes according to FDA and manufacturers, and the corrective actions taken by firms were determined. Results: Eighteen recall numbers could be identified (1.6%), corresponding to 11 recall events. A total of 4634 units were involved. The FDA determined root causes were: software design (66.6%), design change (22.2%), manufacturing deployment (1, 5.6%), and design manufacturing process (5.6%). Among the manufacturers' reasons for recalls, a specific error was declared in 16 cases (88.9%). In seven cases (43.8%), a coding error about lower limb alignment assessment was identified. Seventeen software-related recalls (94.4%) were classified as class 2; only one case was class 3 (5.6%). Return of the device was the main action taken by firms (8, 44.4%), followed by software update (7, 38.9%). Conclusion: Software-related recalls in computer-assisted hip and knee arthroplasty were quite uncommon among all the recalls, deemed non-life threatening and usually due to software design errors. The main actions taken by manufacturers were the return of the device or the software update. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: An oral examination might reveal important diagnostic information regarding a patient's general health. There are several natural changes in the soft tissue structures of the mouth that may resemble a pathological condition. The aim of this research was to develop an educational web- based application for diagnosis in oral medicine and evaluation of the students' attitudes towards it. Methods: This educational intervention involved one sample group and was conducted from September to December 2019. In the first step, the educational software was designed based on the ADDIE instructional design model. In the second step, 30 dental students were selected by census sampling, and their attitudes towards the designed educational web application were assessed. The web-based educational application was developed using the asp.net web form framework and the #c programming language. The standard kaplan educational product questionnaire was used to assess dental students' attitudes. Descriptive statistics including the mean, standard deviation, percentage, and frequency were used. Statistical significance was calculated for the components of the questionnaire using the one sample t-test and the cutoff point of 3. SPSS V26 was used to analyze the tests. Results: The majority of students had positive attitudes in all 12 domains of the questionnaire including objectives (P=0.0001), assessment (P=0.0001), practice (P=0.0001), examples (P=0.0001), information (P=0.001), multimedia (P=0.028), overviews (P=0.011), integration (P=0.144), motivation (P=0.0001); organization (P=0.003), usability (P=0.0001), and personalization (P=0.144) which were significantly greater than average and were acceptable. Despite the difference between the two domains (integration and personalization) with the average score, no statistically significant difference was seen. Conclusion: The innovative educational software was successfully developed. The results revealed that students were extremely satisfied with the quality of the educational software. As a result, it can be effectively employed as a teaching aid when combined with conventional education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study was to effectively solve the current problems such as lack of intelligence and scale in beef cattle breeding industry, and designed a new beef cattle feeding system based on internet of things technology. Based on whole process of beef cattle feeding, the beef cattle feeding system was deeply explored from two parts: Hardware design and platform design, mainly involving main control module, data information conversion module, environmental sensing module, automatic ingredient module and automatic recharge module, covering beef cattle identification, environmental detection and other links. The results showed that the beef cattle feeding system based on internet of things technology can significantly improve the beef cattle feeding efficiency and economic benefits. The experiment indicates that the beef cattle feeding system based on internet of things technology has strong practicability and autonomy, which can provide reference for large-scale beef cattle breeding application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The monitoring of patients with dementia who receive comprehensive care in day centers allows formal caregivers to make better decisions and provide better care to patients. For instance, cognitive and physical therapies can be tailored based on the current stage of disease progression. In the context of day centers of the Mexican Federation of Alzheimer, this work aims to design and evaluate Alzaid, a technological platform for assisting formal caregivers in monitoring patients with dementia. Alzaid was devised using a participatory design methodology that consisted in eliciting and validating requirements from 22 and 9 participants, respectively, which were unified to guide the construction of a high-fidelity prototype evaluated by 14 participants. The participants were formal caregivers, medical staff, and management. This work contributes a high-fidelity prototype of a technological platform for assisting formal caregivers in monitoring patients with dementia considering restrictions and requirements of four Mexican day centers. In general, the participants perceived the prototype as quite likely to be useful, usable, and relevant in the job of monitoring patients with dementia (p-value < 0.05). By evaluating and designing Alzaid that unifies requirements for monitoring patients of four day centers, this work is the first effort towards a standard monitoring process of patients with dementia in the context of the Mexican Federation of Alzheimer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Internal evaluations (IEs) are associated with various obstacles, including time consumption, high study costs, and extensive data analysis, requiring some educational groups (EG). Therefore, it is essential to provide a suitable solution to overcome these obstacles. Objectives: This study aimed to design and use Internal Evaluation Analysis Software for basic science educational groups (IESEG) at Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences (KUMS). Methods: This study tried to implement all the procedures necessary to conduct the IE of Basic sciences EGs in a particular software format. For this purpose, the MATLAB programming environment and its graphical interface were used for implementation after preparing the necessary standard procedures. The evaluation of the designed software, IESEG, was performed based on the results of several EGs by traditional (manual) and new software approaches. Results: Internal Evaluation Analysis Software for basic science educational groups showed that the calculation errors were reduced to zero during the IE process with the software compared to the manual method. In addition, the designed software could draw graphs and related tables to display the evaluation results. Conclusions: The use of designed software, IESEG, creates a systematic, uniform, and regular method of conducting IE. In addition, speeding up the IE and providing an accurate analysis are the benefits which increase the capabilities of the internal evaluation committees of EGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developers of the many promising quantum computing applications that currently exist are urging companies in many different sectors seriously consider integrating this new technology into their business. For these applications to function, not only are quantum computers required, but quantum software also. Accordingly, quantum software engineering has become an important research field, in that it attempts to apply or adapt existing methods and techniques (or propose new ones) for the analysis, design, coding, and testing of quantum software, as well as playing a key role in ensuring quality in large-scale productions. The design of quantum software nevertheless poses two main challenges: the modelling of software quantum elements must be done in high-level modelling languages; and the need to further develop so-called "hybrid information systems", which combine quantum and classical software. To address these challenges, we first propose a quantum UML profile for analysing and designing hybrid information systems; we then demonstrate its applicability through various structural and behavioural diagrams such as use case, class, sequence, activity, and deployment. In comparison to certain other quantum domain-specific languages, this UML profile ensures compliance with a well-known international standard that is supported by many tools and is followed by an extensive community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graph convolutional networks (GCNs) have become a powerful deep learning approach for graph-structured data. Different from traditional neural networks such as convolutional neural networks, GCNs handle irregular input graph data, and GCNs are both computation-bound and memory-bound. How to efficiently utilize the underlying computation and memory resource becomes a critical issue. The emerging 3D-stacked computation-in-memory (CIM) architecture can reduce the data movement between computing logic and memory, thereby presenting a promising solution for the processing of GCNs. An unsolved key challenge is how to allocate GCNs to take advantage of fast near-data processing of the 3D-stacked CIM architecture. This article presents GCIM, a software–hardware co-design approach to exploit the efficient processing of GCNs on the CIM architecture. At the level of hardware design, GCIM integrates lightweight computing units near memory banks to fully exploit bank-level bandwidth and parallelism. At the level of software design, a locality-aware data mapping algorithm is proposed to partition the input graph and achieve workload balancing. GCIM is evaluated through a set of representative GCN models and standard graph datasets. The experimental results show that GCIM can significantly reduce the processing latency and data movement overhead compared with representative schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study introduces a calibration software system applied to the gas flow standard facility with master meter method. In view of the complicated design of programming software such as MFC and C#, this study uses configuration software with simpler programming as the development environment, and designs a set of calibration software to realize the functions of data collection, process visualization display, calibration data storage, calibration report generation and calibration historical data query during the gas flow calibration process of the standard meter method. The actual environment test shows that the software can be competent to monitor the flow calibration. The error of the calibrated value is within ±0.2%, and the repeatability is below 0.02%, which is consistent with the previous calibration certificate data and meets the 0.2-level accuracy turbine flowmeter national standard. After the uncertainty evaluation, the system uncertainty is below 0.4%, which meets the requirements of the standard facility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E-navigation provides the opportunity to apply modern digital and other electronic enhancements to improve the safety and efficiency of maritime navigation. Under the broad banner of e-navigation, the International Hydrographic Organization's S-100 product specification framework is facilitating the establishment of a standard maritime data structure to enable a free-flowing exchange of navigation information between ships, ship-to-shore and shore-to-ship. There are currently over 30 S-100 based product specifications at various stages of development. For the data standard to be properly used, navigation software products must be capable of reading as well as comprehending the data format and content. To develop robust and stable software, the S-100 data models and product specifications must be consistent, accurate and interoperable in conveying various types of information. This paper describes the results of research on S-100 based product specifications from the viewpoint of developing maritime navigation software. In particular, issues related to software development for Electronic Chart Display Information System (ECDIS) and Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) are discussed, including appropriate data model analysis, processing of features, and symbols overlapping with other product specifications. Proposed solutions for some identified issues are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehensive and efficient home safety assessments are needed to provide quality interventions for community living. This study explores early career and experienced home evaluator perspectives on content and usability of HESTIA, a home safety assessment app. Four early career and five experienced practitioners rated the HESTIA app using the uMARS usability evaluation and then participated in focus groups. Data were analysed using a key concept analytic approach. Results include "how to do" home safety evaluations and how prompts and training help practitioners "get it right." Early practitioner participants viewed the step-wise processes of the app as necessary whereas the experienced evaluators relied on own knowledge and experiences. Gobet and Chassy's TempT theory provides insight into the development of expertise in practice for rehabilitation professionals. The procedural complexities of assessment and ethical responsibility to provide competent, quality service to clients with disabilities are integrated into discussion of the development of professional intuition and ethical practice as guided by HESTIA. Home safety evaluations and home modifications are essential in helping persons with disabilities to live at home. Mobile applications such as HESTIA can serve as beneficial supports in facilitating effective decision making processes for rehabilitation practitioners conducting home safety evaluations. Technology driven assessments through mobile applications (apps) can help improve proper decision making and client outcomes, as well as aid in the development of intuition in students and early-career practitioners. Decision making support systems can help practitioners uphold their ethical responsibility to provide competent and quality rehabilitative services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decade, the demand for more flexible, responsive, and reliable software applications increased exponentially. The availability of internet infrastructure and new software technologies to respond to this demand led to a new generation of applications. As a result, cloud-based, distributed, independently deployable web applications working together in a microservice-based software architecture style have gained popularity. The style has been a common practice in the industry and successfully utilized by companies. Adopting this style demands software organizations to transform their culture. However, there is a lack of research studies that explores common practices for microservices. Thus, we performed a survey to explore the organizational choices on software analysis, design, size measurement, and effort estimation when working with microservices. The results provide a snapshot of the software industry that utilizes microservices. We provide insight for software organizations to transform their culture and suggest challenges researchers can focus on in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software engineering is a systematic approach that allows traceability of programming-oriented projects in the multiple paradigms that can be written, thus allowing the orderly planning of information flows and algorithms to reach the desired result through of the implementation of a robust and systematic methodology. On the other hand, the Indoor trend is a technological concept that has evolved with the entry of the 21st century, with the aim of promoting urban, peri-urban and rural agriculture. This concept creates agriculture anywhere from a department to a greenhouse. The present work presents the results of a research in software engineering referred to the design of a mini-PFAL, technified with multiple layers of software for the control of growth parameters in experimental lettuce crops, such as light intensity, temperature, humidity, light spectrum frequency, irrigation control, etc. The design strategies for the creation of the software architecture at its different levels are described, applying the software design methodology. The structure of the design process is ordered from the requirements analysis to the interface design, with them the final product reported is a PFAL IoT system that is interconnected via Bluetooth and WiFi with the SmartPhone, in turn via USB port to a GUI Visual Studio application, having a WareHouse data that administrates the information of the variables in a local database which manages the information on a SharePoint page that in turn, links with Access, having a Dashboard to directly control crop growth remotely, thus having an intelligent PFAL system for growing vegetable crops in vertical format. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of particle transport in different environments plays an essential role in understanding interactions with humans and other living organisms. Importantly, obtained data can be directly used for multiple applications in fields such as fundamental biology, toxicology, or medicine. Particle movement in biorelevant media can be readily monitored using microscopy and converted into time-resolved trajectories using freely available tracking software. However, translation into tangible and meaningful parameters is time consuming and not always intuitive. We developed new software—MPTHub—as an open-access, standalone, user-friendly tool for the rapid and reliable analysis of particle trajectories extracted from video microscopy. The software was programmed using Python and allowed to import and analyze trajectory data, as well as to export relevant data such as individual and ensemble time-averaged mean square displacements and effective diffusivity, and anomalous transport exponent. Data processing was reliable, fast (total processing time of less than 10 s), and required minimal memory resources (up to a maximum of around 150 MB in random access memory). Demonstration of software applicability was conducted by studying the transport of different polystyrene nanoparticles (100–200 nm) in mucus surrogates. Overall, MPTHub represents a freely available software tool that can be used even by inexperienced users for studying the transport of particles in biorelevant media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software reliability is prioritised as the most critical quality attribute. Reliability prediction models participate in the prevention of software failures which can cause vital events and disastrous consequences in safety-critical applications or even in businesses. Predicting reliability during design allows software developers to avoid potential design problems, which can otherwise result in reconstructing an entire system when discovered at later stages of the software development life-cycle. Several reliability models have been built to predict reliability during software development. However, several issues still exist in these models. Current models suffer from a scalability issue referred to as the modeling of large systems. The scalability solutions usually come at a high computational cost, requiring solutions. Secondly, consideration of the nature of concurrent applications in reliability prediction is another issue. We propose a reliability prediction model that enhances scalability by introducing a system-level scenario synthesis mechanism that mitigates complexity. Additionally, the proposed model supports modeling of the nature of concurrent applications through adaption of formal statistical distribution toward scenario combination. The proposed model was evaluated using sensors-based case studies. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed model from the view of computational cost reduction compared to similar models. This reduction is the main parameter for scalability enhancement. In addition, the presented work can enable system developers to know up to which load their system will be reliable via observation of the reliability value in several running scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of detailed wheel/rail contact models has long been frustrated by the complicated preparations needed, to analyse the profiles for the local geometry and creep situation for the planar contact approach. A new software module is presented for this that automates the calculations in a generic way. Building on many components developed by others, this greatly simplifies the running of CONTACT for generic wheel/rail contact situations. Fully 3-d contact search algorithms are implemented. This uses the contact locus approach, that's simplified for wheel-on-rail situations and extended to wheel-on-roller contacts. A main characteristic of the new module is its extensive use of the multibody formalism, using markers to represent coordinate systems, using a newly designed, generic, object oriented-like software foundation. The contact geometry is analysed twice; first for the location of contact patches, and then for the local geometry of the contact patches. The contact search starts from profiles in their actual, overlapping positions. This yields the extent of interpenetration areas as needed for the potential contact definition. Different strategies may be employed for the tangent plane needed in the planar contact method. Creepages are formed automatically using rigid body kinematics, including wheel and track flexible bending. Numerical results illustrate the viability, generality, and robustness of the approach. The extension to conformal contacts is presented in an accompanying paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of software systems plays a crucial role in mitigating cybersecurity incidents. Security by Design (SbD) aims to ensure foundational security throughout the design process. However, it lacks a precise interdisciplinary definition. Comparing it with Privacy by Design (PbD), which has seen more conceptual development, highlights the need for a comprehensive understanding of SbD. This study systematically searches and reviews relevant definitions of SbD in comparison with PbD. Following PRISMA guidelines, we conducted a systematic review of SbD and PbD definitions, searching ACM Digital Library, EBSCO Library, IEEE Xplore, ProQuest, Scopus, and Web of Science. A total of 46 studies were included, identifying 86 definitions. Thirteen themes were identified, including ontology, object of protection, outcome to avoid, means of implementation, added value, and focus of the definition. Definitions varied in their descriptions of SbD and PbD, the objects of protection, outcomes to avoid, means of implementation, and lifecycle focus. PbD definitions adopted a rights-based approach, anchored in Ann Cavoukian's principles and an interdisciplinary perspective. SbD and PbD definitions lack clarity and uniformity. PbD is better defined, while SbD lacks anchorage and has varied approaches. Both should protect individuals and organizations, address cyber-attacks, and be implemented early in the development process. PbD is more comprehensive, involving technology and organization, while SbD focuses mainly on the technical product. PbD is associated with recognized rights, but the connection between SbD and human rights is unclear. Future research should clarify the specific value protected by SbD, adopt principles from PbD, and take an interdisciplinary approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Device authentication is an essential security feature for the Internet of Things (IoT). Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) are a promising technology for developing lightweight authentication protocols in these environments. This article presents the current progress and challenges in designing PUF-based authentication protocols for IoT devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this paper is to design and test new software application to support experts involved in decision-making in the field of energy security. The prototype named ESecFuzzy is designed for this purpose. It implements various fuzzy concepts (fuzzy rules, fuzzified input data, fuzzy variables utilized by fuzzy terms and related fuzzy sets) chosen to obtain reasoning in case of unclear, uncertain or even incomplete input data for reaching a conclusion about them. The research was conducted on a sample of 28 European Union countries over a ten-year period (2008–2017). The research outcomes are as follows: (a) ESecFuzzy application for energy security measurement was developed; (b) application testing; (c) measuring energy security on a given sample, and (d) evaluation of the accuracy and acceptability of fuzzy logic as an approach for energy security quantification. ESecFuzzy provides the experimenting with different input data (time series intersected with geospatial data) as well as fine-tuning of fuzzy rules in knowledge base. Through the evaluation and experimenting process, ESecFuzzy application demonstrated the advantage of fuzzy logic by obtaining the derived information based on mass of heterogeneous data organized in time series that indicate general trends in the target application domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: "Homework assignments," a critical element of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for depression, are a means of CBT skill generalization and maintenance. Yet, homework adherence is often low. We developed CBT MobileWork,© a smartphone application (app) to promote CBT skills practice "as-needed." Methods: We applied a user-centered design in a laboratory setting with 8 depressed patients and 5 therapists for the initial development and testing. We then completed a real-world evaluation of CBT MobileWork© with 15 depressed patients in CBT and their therapists. This report details the prototype development, presents data evaluating feasibility and usability in the lab and real-world, and presents preliminary findings of associated measures. Results: Our data indicates that both patients and therapists reported high levels of satisfaction and rated the application highly usable during testing in both controlled laboratory and under real-world conditions. A moderate association between app use and reductions in depression was found. Conclusions: CBT MobileWork© has preliminary feasibility for CBT skills practice and may benefit patients with CBT homework completion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To assess the use of a volumetric image display simulation tool (VDST) for the evaluation of applied radiological neuroanatomy knowledge and spatial understanding of radiotherapy technologist (RTT) undergraduates. Methods: Ninety-two third-year RTT students from three French RTT schools took an examination using software that allows visualization of multiple volumetric image series. To serve as a reference, 77 first- and second-year undergraduates, as well as ten senior neuroradiologists, took the same examination. The test included 13 very-short-answer questions (VSAQ) and 21 exercises in which examinees positioned markers onto preloaded brain MR images from a healthy volunteer. The response time was limited. Each correct answer scored 100 points, with a maximum possible test score of 3,400 (VSAQ = 1,300; marker exercise = 2,100). Answers were marked automatically for the marker positioning exercise and semi-automatically for the VSAQs against prerecorded expected answers. Results: Overall, the mean test score was 1,787 (150–3,300) and the standard deviation was 781. Scores were highly significantly different between all evaluated groups (p < 0.001). The interoperator reproducibility was 0.90. All the evaluated groups could be discriminated by VSAQ, marker, and overall total scores independently (p ≤ 0.0001 to 0.001). The test was able to discriminate between the three schools either by VSAQ scores (p < 0.001 to 0.02) or by overall total score (p < 0.001 to 0.05). Conclusion: This software is a high-quality evaluation tool for the assessment of radiological neuroanatomy knowledge and spatial understanding in RTT undergraduates. Key Points: • This VDST allows volumetric image analysis of MR studies. • A high reliability test could be created with this tool. • Test scores were strongly associated with the examinee expertise level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deliberative democracy requires both equality and difference, with structures that organize a cohesive public while still accommodating the unique perspectives of each participant. While institutions like laws and norms can help to provide this balance, the built environment also plays a role supporting democratic politics—both on- and off-line. In this article, I use the work of Hannah Arendt to articulate two characteristics the built environment needs to support democratic politics: it must (1) serves as a common world, drawing users together and emphasizing their common interests and must also (2) preserve spaces of appearance, accommodating diverse perspectives and inviting disagreement. I, then, turn to the example of Facebook to show how these characteristics can be used as criteria for evaluating how well a particular digital platform supports democratic politics and providing alternative mechanisms these sites might use to fulfill their role as a public realm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

deal.II is a state-of-the-art finite element library focused on generality, dimension-independent programming, parallelism, and extensibility. Herein, we outline its primary design considerations and its sophisticated features such as distributed meshes, h p -adaptivity, support for complex geometries, and matrix-free algorithms. But deal.II is more than just a software library: It is also a diverse and worldwide community of developers and users, as well as an educational platform. We therefore also discuss some of the technical and social challenges and lessons learned in running a large community software project over the course of two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Game-based learning related to software engineering aims to increase learning effectiveness in the classroom and allow knowledge acquired to be put into practice. Design patterns are reusable solutions to recurring problems in software design, creating clean and maintainable software. However, applying design patterns correctly requires experience, therefore, it is difficult for students to learn design patterns. In this article, the design patterns, their structure and possible applications were investigated, in addition to reviewing existing educational games in computing. Afterwards, we develop a game for teaching design patterns depending on the popularity of the pattern and its application to a web page. We evaluated the game with computer science students. Finally, we exhibit the results obtained by test pilot sessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supply chain literature has long recognized the benefits of information sharing. Researchers and practitioners see high potential for improving processes, enabling new replenishment policies, and enhancing supply chain integration. Even though information technology represents a vital role as a driver and a success factor for implementing information sharing, established technologies still do not reflect the highly decentralized and fragmented characteristics of complex and often global supply chains. Early research shows that blockchain might be an enabler for the supply chain management. However, little is known about how blockchain might improve information sharing for complex, multitier supply chains. Therefore, this article aims at analyzing how and to what extent blockchain can facilitate information sharing for vendor managed inventory by designing a software prototype based on Hyperledger Fabric using the design science research approach. This research took place in close cooperation with a leading German healthcare technology manufacturer, which allowed us to base our study both on literature and practical insights. With our results, we contribute to the supply chain knowledge base by introducing the decentralized information hub model, describing how companies utilize decentralized technologies, such as blockchain, to facilitate information sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The software system of liquid chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometer (model: HTQ2020) for clinical laboratory is based on the Windows operating system, C# programming realization, and its interface is implemented by Microsoft’s latest generation graphics system WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). Its main functions include instrument tuning control, instrument condition monitoring, data processing and visualization, quantitative analysis, method establishment, batch data acquisition, and clinical application modules. The software system is implemented with a four-layer software architecture, namely, the instrument control and data acquisition equipment layer, the application development platform layer, the application integration layer, and the application program layer. It isolates hardware control and other operations from data processing to achieve software and hardware decoupling. To facilitate future expansion of other advanced applications, this software system implements precise control, automatic tuning, and condition monitoring of the instrument based on the Modbus protocol. It includes data processing and visualization operations, such as total ion chromatogram, extracted ion chromatogram, mass spectrum, spectral filtering, peak identification, characteristic peak normalization, etc. It is convenient for users to perform basic processing and accurate quantitative analysis of data. It can be quickly collected in batches by connecting with the hospital LIS system, downloading the samples to be tested from the LIS system, and uploading the report to the LIS after the system is tested. The results were released, which greatly reduced the workload of clinical practitioner. Finally, it was proved that the HTQ2020 software system can meet the current clinical requirements by carrying out a test to detect Vitamin D in human serum. After several improvements, the HTQ2020 software system is now fully functional and stable, providing strong support for the commercialization of the HTQ2020 liquid chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometer and its application in clinical laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The number of medical mobile phone applications continues to grow. Although otorhinolaryngology-specific applications represent a small proportion, there are exciting innovations emerging for the specialty. This article will assess the number of applications available and review how they may be used in clinical practice. Method: The application stores of the two most popular mobile phone platforms, Apple and android, were searched using multiple search terms. Results: A total of 107 ENT applications were identified and categorised according to intended use. Eight applications were reviewed in more detail and assessed on whether a doctor or allied health professional was involved in their design and if they were evidence-based. Conclusion: There are a number of ENT-specific smartphone applications currently available. As the technology progresses, their scope has extended beyond being purely for reference. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to assess the validity and security of these applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the expansion of the gene circuits scale and its application, traditional approaches to design gene circuits for synthetic biology are faced with new challenges. The construction of the new synthetic genetic circuits requires a long experimental cycle with huge cost of trial and error, so it is difficult to get satisfying results in a short time by simply relying on experiments. The iGEM software design competition aims to make the design and prediction of genetic circuits more efficient and automatic. In order to understand the software design better and acquire new design ideas, the projects of iGEM software teams of recent years are summarized, where the background, purpose, design scheme, and application of the projects were investigated. After comparison and summarization, these projects could be classified into four categories according to their functions: 1 auxiliary design, 2 data sharing, 3 cooperation and communication, and 4 data analysis. The review could provide new ideas for the future iGEM software design, and the development of systematic genetic circuit design automation for synthetic biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two-sided platforms are gaining increasing attention in practice and as the subject of IS and management research. We explore an assumption of research and practice: that a platform’s architecture needs to be decoupled so that producers can easily mix and match the platform’s design elements (APIs, code libraries, process models, etc.) into apps that perform well competitively, and insulate the platform from skewed outcomes and low market performance. However, in practice, complete decoupling is not just difficult but almost impossible. Based on more than two million runs of an exploratory NK model in which producers use a platform’s design space for the creation of apps, we generate several surprising insights. First, we show that tighter coupling may not necessarily be harmful depending on the producers’ design strategies and the amount of constraints placed on design elements. Second, we observe that if moderate to tightly coupled platforms with optimizing producers focused exclusively on being competitive, platform performance is lower compared to platforms with satisficing producers who put a lower priority of being competitive because of other interests. This is surprising since optimizers are better suited to cope with the inherent uncertainty of coupling. Finally, moderately coupled platforms can outperform platforms with loose coupling when constraints nudge producers into distant design moves while also isolating them from downside uncertainty. These three findings offer implications for multiple streams of literature on platform architectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Requirements elicitation is one of the essential steps towards software design and construction. Business analysts and stakeholders often face challenges in gathering or conveying key software requirements. There are many methods and tools designed by researchers and practitioners but with the persistent development of new technologies, there is a need to make requirements gathering and design‐rationale process more efficient and adaptable. Storytelling is an emerging concept and researchers are witnessing its effectiveness in education, community building, information system, and requirement elicitation. Objectives of this study are to devise a method for requirements elicitation and improving design‐rationales using story‐based techniques and evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed activity. To answer the research objectives, the authors have conducted open‐ended interviews to get feedback on the proposed method; the authors have case requirement from a running project to map how this method can be useful; and performed empirical evaluation of the proposed card‐based activity. The estimated regression model, in our study, has shown that participants' perception about the simplicity/easiness and the joy of playing the game has an eventual positive effect on requirements elicitation through enhancing user's desire to play the game, which in turn increases the collaborative learning outcomes of the game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Big Data or Data-Intensive applications (DIAs) seek to mine, manipulate, extract or otherwise exploit the potential intelligence hidden behind Big Data. However, several practitioner surveys remark that DIAs potential is still untapped because of very difficult and costly design, quality assessment and continuous refinement. To address the above shortcoming, we propose the use of a UML domain-specific modeling language or profile specifically tailored to support the design, assessment and continuous deployment of DIAs. This article illustrates our DIA-specific profile and outlines its usage in the context of DIA performance engineering and deployment. For DIA performance engineering, we rely on the Apache Hadoop technology, while for DIA deployment, we leverage the TOSCA language. We conclude that the proposed profile offers a powerful language for data-intensive software and systems modeling, quality evaluation and automated deployment of DIAs on private or public clouds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Development of a GNSS/INS-based Automatic Navigation Land Levelling System. • An adaptive square root cubature Kalman filter was proposed for integrated positioning. • Design of the automatic steering and lifting control method. • The performance of developed system was verified in the field experiments. In this study, an automatic navigation land levelling system based on the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and an inertial navigation system (INS) was developed to improve the efficiency and accuracy of land levelling. The developed system platform was composed of an integrated positioning unit, steering and lifting controller, and vehicle control terminal. Automatic navigation land levelling vehicle terminal software was designed to realize data communication, processing and storage, and display. Through the cooperation of the platform and software, the system completed the automatic navigation terrain survey, automatic planning/design and automatic navigation land levelling functions. In addition, a GNSS/INS integrated positioning method based on an adaptive square root cubature Kalman filter (ASRCKF) was designed, which obtained the correction positioning points of the tractor and scraper and adaptively predicted the state and measurement noise of the SRCKF. An automatic steering and lifting control method was designed to realize synchronous automatic navigation land levelling control, which was combined with the positioning method. Field experiments were carried out to validate the path tracking effect of the dynamic filtering navigation and a comparison of the manual and automatic land levelling operation performance. The navigation experimental results showed that the average root mean square error (RMSE) of the tractor and the scraper were 2.94 cm and 3.15 cm in tracking a straight path and 8.61 cm and 9.83 cm in tracking a curved path, respectively. The average RMSE of the path tracking based on the ASRCKF positioning method was reduced by 75.2% and 67.4% for the tractor and the scraper, respectively. The land levelling experimental results showed that the elevation distribution around the datum elevation of the automatic navigation land levelling increased by 8.7% compared to the manual operation. The GNSS/INS-based automatic navigation land levelling system can notably reduce the lateral position deviations, improve the control accuracy and land levelling efficiency, and meet the control accuracy requirements of unmanned tractor-scraper land levelling operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to identify, understand and generate a Taguchi orthogonal array model for the formation of 10–50 μm microparticles with applications in topical/ocular controlled drug delivery. Poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) microparticles were fabricated by the single emulsion oil-in-water method and the particle size was characterized using laser diffraction and scanning electronic microscopy (SEM). Sequential Taguchi L12 and L18 orthogonal array (OA) designs were employed to study the influence of ten and eight parameters, respectively, on microparticle size (response). The first optimization step using the L12 design showed that all parameters significantly influenced the particle size of the prepared PLGA microparticles with exception of the concentration of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) in the hardening bath. The smallest mean particle size obtained from the L12 design was 54.39 μm. A subsequent L18 design showed that the molecular weight of PLGA does not significantly affect the particle size. An experimental run comprising of defined parameters including molecular weight of PLGA (89 kDa), concentration of PLGA (20% w/v), concentration of PVA in the emulsion (0.8% w/v), solvent type (ethyl acetate), organic/aqeuous phase ratio (1:1 v/v), vortexing speed (9), vortexing duration (60 seconds), concentration of PVA in hardening bath (0.8% w/v), stirring speed of hardening bath (1200 rpm) and solvent evaporation duration (24 hours) resulted in the lowest mean particle size of 23.51 μm which was predicted and confirmed by the L18 array. A comparable size was demonstrated during the fabrication of BSA-incorporated microparticles. Taguchi OA design proved to be a valuable tool in determining the combination of process parameters that can provide the optimal condition for microparticle formulation. Taguchi OA design can be used to correctly predict the size of microparticles fabricated by the single emulsion process and can therefore, ultimately, save time and costs during the manufacturing process of drug delivery formulations by minimising experimental runs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large number of genetic studies in yeast rely on the use of expression vectors. To facilitate the experimental approach of these studies, several collections of expression vectors have been generated (YXplac, pRS series, etc.). Subsequently, these collections have been expanded by adding more diversity to many of the plasmid features, including new selection markers and new promoter sequences. However, the ever growing number of plasmid features makes it unrealistic for research labs to maintain an up-to-date collection of plasmids. Here, we developed the COSPLAY toolbox: a Golden Gate approach based on the scheme of a simple modular plasmid that recapitulates and completes all the properties of the pRS plasmids. The COSPLAY toolbox contains a basal collection of individual functional modules. Moreover, we standardized a simple and rapid, software-assisted protocol which facilitates the addition of new personalized modules. Finally, our toolbox includes the possibility to select a genomic target location and to perform a single copy integration of the expression vector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Glaucoma screening can be performed by assessing the vertical-cup-to-disk ratio (VCDR) of the optic nerve head from fundus photography, but VCDR grading is inherently subjective. This study investigated whether computer software could improve the accuracy and repeatability of VCDR assessment. Methods: In this cross-sectional diagnostic accuracy study, 5 ophthalmologists independently assessed the VCDR from a set of 200 optic disk images, with the median grade used as the reference standard for subsequent analyses. Eight non-ophthalmologists graded each image by two different methods: by visual inspection and with assistance from a custom-made publicly available software program. Agreement with the reference standard grade was assessed for each method by calculating the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and the sensitivity and specificity determined relative to a median ophthalmologist grade of ≥0.7. Results: VCDR grades ranged from 0.1 to 0.9 for visual assessment and from 0.1 to 1.0 for software-assisted grading, with a median grade of 0.4 for each. Agreement between each of the 8 graders and the reference standard was higher for visual inspection (median ICC 0.65, interquartile range 0.57 to 0.82) than for software-assisted grading (median ICC 0.59, IQR 0.44 to 0.71); P = 0.02, Wilcoxon signed-rank test). Visual inspection and software assistance had similar sensitivity and specificity for detecting glaucomatous cupping. Conclusion: The computer software used in this study did not improve the reproducibility or validity of VCDR grading from fundus photographs compared with simple visual inspection. More clinical experience was correlated with higher agreement with the ophthalmologist VCDR reference standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents a MATLAB-based software package for high-throughput microscopy image analysis development, making such development more accessible for a large user community. The toolbox provides a GUI and a number of analysis workflows, and can serve as a general framework designed to allow for easy extension. For a new application, only a minor part of the object-oriented code needs to be replaced by new components, making development efficient. This makes it possible to quickly develop solutions for analysis not available in existing tools. We show its use in making a tool for quantifying intracellular transport of internalized peptide-drug conjugates. The code is freely available as open source on GitHub () [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: A semester-long, open-ended design project was implemented to promote intellectual development of first-year students while reinforcing event-driven/procedural programming principles. This paper describes this approach, and an evaluation strategy using Perry’s model for intellectual development. The results show that students can reach the relativism stage of Perry’s model in their first year of studies. Background: Students must move beyond a dualistic worldview to be engineers. Felder and Brent provided a list of recommendations to promote this type of intellectual development in students; active learning strategies strongly align with these recommendations. While active learning is common in programming courses (sometimes taking the form of project-based learning), they are typically tightly controlled by the instructor, and limited in scope (both in time and complexity), potentially reducing their impact on students. Intended Outcomes: This course and term-long project provided students a supportive environment in which to develop their decision-making skills, and promoted their intellectual development through Perry’s stages related to software design. Application Design: Aligned with Felder and Brent’s recommendations and Kuh’s High Impact Practices, a course was built to: 1) teach students procedural programming, with 2) a focus on software design and open-ended problem solving, while maintaining 3) a supportive environment for skill acquisition. Findings: A mixed methods study showed the majority of students align themselves with the relativism stage of intellectual development at the end of the course. This study also illuminated the decision-making processes of teams of students in a first-year software design course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Orphan diseases are a heterogeneous group of conditions involving the structure and functioning of several organs and systems; this represents a significant challenge for the anesthesiologist and the surgical team. Specific knowledge of each disease reduces the risk of any adverse events secondary to perioperative management errors in these patients. Objective: Developing a strategy to quickly and effectively look up for the perioperative risks of patients with rare diseases. Methods: An academic literature review was conducted and the information available in databases was selected. A group of engineers and designers summarized the information and developed a software application for mobile devices, to look up at a list of rare diseases, their description, any surgical implications, and the most relevant anesthetic considerations. Results: The CARAN App (CARAN is the Spanish acronym for Rare Cases in Anesthesia) was developed, which may be downloaded into any iOS (Apple) and Android mobile device at no cost. The App makes available information on the major anesthetic implications, with a view to improving patient care safety. This article discusses the first part of the project which comprises the development and design of the App and the review of 60 diseases. Additional diseases are expected to be included in the second phase of the project. Conclusion: We are introducing the first App available in Spanish to quickly and effectively look up for the most relevant anesthetic implications in 60 rare diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]