Program Development Time Research Articles

BRIDGE to liver health: implementation of a group telehealth psychoeducational program through shared medical appointments for MASLD management

BackgroundMetabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) represents a significantly costly and increasingly prevalent disease, with treatment focused on lifestyle intervention. Integrating education and behavioral health into clinical care offers opportunities to engage and empower patients to prevent progression of liver disease. We describe the design and implementation of Behavioral Resources and Intervention through Digital Group Education (BRIDGE), a 6-session group telehealth program led by advanced practice providers (APPs) in 90-min shared medical appointments (SMAs) with small groups of MASLD patients in an academic outpatient hepatology clinic. The program contains multi-component group interventions, with didactic education and behavioral coaching, while leveraging peer-based learning and support.MethodsA mixed-methods exploratory pilot study was conducted. Feasibility and acceptability of the clinical intervention were assessed by tracking recruitment, attendance, and retention of BRIDGE participants, patient interviews, and debriefing of clinician and staff views of the clinical program. Implementation metrics included program development time, workflow and scheduling logistics, and billing compliance for sustainability. Finally, patient parameters including changes in liver enzymes, FIB-4, weight, and BMI from pre- to post-BRIDGE were retrospectively analyzed.ResultsWe included 57 participants (median age 57, interquartile range (IQR) 50 – 65 years), 38 (67%) female, 38 (67%) white, and 40% had public insurance. Thirty-three (58%) participants completed all six sessions, while 43 (75%) attended at least five sessions. Patients who completed all sessions were older (median age 61 vs 53.5; p = 0.01). Gender, race/ethnicity, and insurance type were not significantly associated with missed sessions, and patients had similar rates of completion regardless of weight, BMI, or stage of liver disease. Barriers to completion included personal illness, family reasons, work commitments, or insurance issues. Prior to BRIDGE, median BMI was 31.9 (SD 29 – 36), with a median weight loss of 2 pounds (IQR -2 – 6) after BRIDGE.ConclusionThe BRIDGE telehealth SMA program was feasible, well-attended, and positively reviewed. This pilot study informs future iterations of program development and evaluation of outcome measures.

Increasing Employability of Indian Engineering Graduates through Experiential Learning Programs and Competitive Programming: Case Study

Background, Motivation and Objective With regard to engineering, there have been serious concerns about the employability of Indian graduates. There are alarming statistics in a NASSCOM report, which estimates that, of the 3 million joining the IT workforce, only twenty five percent of graduates with engineering background are employable. The figures are grave in the context of graduates from sciences and humanities, which is less than fifteen percent. Aspiring Minds has been administering a computer-based test called AMCAT to lakhs of students in 650+ engineering institutions measure employability of technical graduates. This considers parameters like Business Communication & English, Logical & Numerical skills, analytical & problem-resolution skills and coding. The results are a revelation, 47% of graduates cannot be employed in any domain or sector of the knowledge economy. 17.91%, 3.67% and 40.57% are the employability figures for software services, software products and BPO. Only 3.84% graduates are start-up ready and 6.56% are design job ready and the same trend for other core engineering jobs. There is an urgent need to improve employability of our engineering graduates. This calls for lateral thinking and out-of-the-box initiatives such as experiential learning programs and competitive programming; implementations of which we explore in a top-ranking private university as a case study. Statement of Contribution/Methods The case study of implementation of initiatives in experiential learning programs and competitive programming in a private university is highlighted. An Experiential learning program titled Live-in-Labs as part of the curriculum is explored. This program is student-centric, learner-centric, participatory and hands-on and they provide students an avenue to apply their acquired engineering knowledge, concepts and skills and deploy on a real-time basis in India’s villages. It’s Course Outcomes (CO) such as human-centered design concepts to document observations and user experiences, user-needs assessment and prioritization are enlisted. A very strong mapping to several Program Outcomes (PO) is observed unlike various regular courses in curriculum. Structured competitive programming initiative in which students compete with others in a contest environment in parameters such as program correctness, execution time, and development time is yet another effort towards student-centered learning. Platforms such as CodeChef, HackerRank and contests such International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), which is considered as the Olympics of Collegiate Programming with annual participation of 50,000 students in 2000+ universities in 100+ countries are efforts in this direction. Competitive Programming initiative’s learning objectives also spans several POs. Results, Discussion and Conclusions. Strong mapping of COs to POs inherent in the experiential learning programs improves the employability as also the progression and prospects of the students. Live-in-Labs® program exposes students to pressing issues confronted by village communities in India, through experiential learning opportunities, in order to apply theoretical concepts into application & deployment, by the devising of innovative technology remedies, and facilitation of crucial and collaborative problem-resolution capabilities of the students participating in the program. The participation of several students from foreign universities also enriches learning, collaboration and diversity. Every Live-in-Labs project results in a student paper published in reputed journals and conferences. It also improves student progression in terms of higher studies and high-paying jobs. Competitive programming dramatically improves student skills and capabilities in problem solving, coding, team work, innovation and creativity. It is also observed that code geeks from competitive programming initiatives are invariably the ones to secure the highest paying jobs in dream companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Design of Data Acquisition System Based on LabVIEW

Based on LabVIEW, this paper presents a design scheme of data acquisition, which it proposes using computer and ordinary data collection card as the main hardware and LabVIEW as software development platform, thus constructs the virtual instrument system for signal acquisition. The system can realize synchronous data acquisition of single channel or multi-channel signal, as well as real-time display and preservation. The practice shows that this scheme can not only effectively play performance of ordinary data acquisition card, but also reduce greatly program development time and beautify interface through LabVIEW which has powerfully visual human-machine interface editor and graphical programming function.

An Assessment of PLC Software Structure Suitability for the Support of Flexible Manufacturing Processes

Industrial control engineers continue to make extensive use of ladder logic for programming programmable logic controllers (PLCs) although the limitations of the language are well recognized. Evaluations of alternative approaches have been conducted in academia but industrial users have shown little enthusiasm for the recommendations. This work addresses this by conducting an experimental evaluation using a range of skilled and unskilled participants to establish which of four software design methodologies is best suited to the support of flexible manufacture in a small program through an experiment in which ldquoright first timerdquo rates and completion time are measured. Unlike earlier work which had an emphasis on program creation, this paper reports on process modification. The object modelling tool tested, Enterprise Controls, was found to be the most effective methodology under study with the highest ldquoright first timerdquo rate as well as demonstrating a 80% time saving over traditional relay ladder logic. This was closely matched by step-based ladder logic, provided the concept is used correctly. Areas for further work include the assessment of program development time during setup and control performance in use.

Building Domain-Specific Languages for Model-Driven Development

Today, the popularity of dynamic languages such as Python and Ruby is growing beyond their use as scripting languages. In fact, Sun, Microsoft, and other companies are supporting some dynamic languages on their development platforms. Developers increasingly find that dynamic languages' features help them enhance their productivity, while common misconceptions about them, such as poor performance and reliability, are disappearing. Embedding domain-specific language in a dynamic language rather than constructing a compiler or interpreter can improve program readability and development time.

Financial “Rules” for Child and Youth Care Managers

Contemporary realities demand that child and youth care managers cast off their traditional avoidance of all things financial. This article offers a jargon-free list of twelve financial “rules” for thriving in turbulent times. Grounded in a concept of client-centered, results-based agency “performance,” rules include promoting an entrepreneurial spirit throughout the organization, destroying the “taboo” on open discussion of financial matters, slashing program development time, and spending lavishly on recruitment and universal staff training.

Effect of software structure attributes on software development productivity

Improving programming productivity and controlling software costs are very important tasks for an information system manager. Program structure is defined to be the organization of program elements within a program. In this research, we examine the relationship between programming productivity and program structure measures in a COBOL programming environment. Structure measures considered are span of control, levels of control, and their derivatives. The productivity measures considered are program development time and number of computer runs needed. Our results indicate that program development time is significantly associated with span of control and levels of control used in the program. Furthermore, programs having smaller span of control at the top (initial paragraphs) relative to that at the bottom (concluding paragraphs) are associated with the least development times. For illustration purposes, we showed two different program structures, one with low program development time and the other with high development time.

IVE (Image Visualization Environment): A Software Platform for All Three-Dimensional Microscopy Applications

IVE (Image Visualization Environment) is a software platform designed from the outset to handle all aspects of modern computerized multidimensional microscopy. This platform provides users with an execution environment in which 5D data (XYZ, wavelength, and time) can be easily manipulated for the purpose of data collection, processing, display, and analysis. During the entire process, powerful data display functions are readily available for extracting complicated three-dimensional information through data visualization. By employing both the shared memory and multitasking features of the UNIX operation system, individual functions can be implemented as separate programs, and multiple programs can access the same data pool simultaneously. This enables users to combine the functionalities of different programs to facilitate each unique data analysis task. Furthermore, by defining an appropriate program execution model, commonly shared functional components such as data display, data I/O and user interface, etc. can be implemented using simple IVE library calls. This dramatically reduces the program development time and ensures consistency throughout the entire software system. As a result, users can quickly master the microscopy software system and new functions can be easily integrated, as different functional requirements arise for different research projects.

A method for measuring programmer debugging performance from key strokes

AbstractIn software development management, a method is necessary that is capable of measuring programmer performance objectively, and easily. This paper presents a method to measure programmer debugging performance from key strokes. Debugging performance is defined as the efficiency of programmer activities from discovery of software failures to correction of their causes. In this method, programmer activity is first categorized into several classes by monitoring key strokes. Programmer property parameters are then extracted by applying model‐based analysis on monitored programmer activity sequences. The programmer model defined here is based on the assumption that a programmer activity sequence is a Markov process. Finally, several programmer performance values are computed from the extracted parameters. The major value is D, which is the estimated length of time required for debugging one fault. Experiments show that the method is effective enough in practical software development. One of these findings is that D shows strong correlation with a value that represents programmer productivity (the length of program development time for common specifications).

Validation and further development of a novel thermal analysis method

The design of thermal and energy efficient buildings requires inter alia the investigation of the passive performance, natural ventilation, mechanical ventilation as well as structural and evaporative cooling of the building. Only when these fail to achieve the desired thermal comfort should mechanical cooling systems be considered. Few computer programs have the ability to investigate all these comfort regulating methods at the design stage. The QUICK design program can simulate these options with the exception of mechanical cooling. In this paper, therefore, QUICK's applicability is extended to include the analysis of basic air-conditioning systems. Since the design of these systems is based on indoor loads, it was necessary to validate QUICK's load predictions before extending it. Most thermal analysis programs are not extensively verified. However, in many other disciplines more than 50% of program development time is used for validation purposes. This article addresses validation in general and proposes a procedure to establish the efficiency of a program's load predictions. This proposed procedure is used to compare load predictions by the ASHRAE, CIBSE, CARRIER, CHEETAH, BSIMAC and QUICK methods for 46 case studies involving 36 buildings in various climatic conditions. Although significant differences in the results of the various methods were observed, it is concluded that QUICK can be used with the same confidence as the other methods. It was further shown that load prediction programs usually under-estimate the effect of building mass and therefore over-estimate the peak loads. The details for the 46 case studies are available to other researchers for further verification purposes. With the confidence gained in its load predictions, QUICK was extended to include air-conditioning system analysis. The program was then applied to different case studies. It is shown that system size and energy usage can be reduced by more than 60% by using a combination of passive and mechanical cooling systems as well as different control strategies.

A hierarchical analog test bus framework for testing mixed-signal integrated circuits and printed circuit boards

Progress in analog circuit testing has been hindered by the lack of structured design-for-testability methodologies. With the increasing complexity of analog/mixed-signal circuits, test program development time is now a major obstacle in achieving shorttime-to-market, while production testing cost is a prominent factor in total production cost. TheAnalog Autonomous Test is a structured design-for-testability scheme for analog circuits. Originally developed for testing analog circuits at chip level, AAT extends naturally to cover testing of mixedsignal integrated circuits mounted on printed circuit boards. With the addition of an analog test bus to PCBs, testability for analog components (bothcore circuits andglue circuits) can be improved, in a manner similar to that achieved for digital boards by the IEEE 1149.1 boundary scan scheme. Details on the implementation of thisAnalog Autonomous Test Bus, both at chip level and board level, are presented here. Its limitations and potential applications are also discussed.

Structure of the test program for vlsi memory devices and its application

AbstractVLSI memories have been diversifying along with high density and high speed. With diversification, the evaluation test program also must handle each VLSI memory, and the efficiency of its generation is an important issue.In this paper, to evaluate diversifying VLSI memories, a program structure is described which can create evaluation test programs quickly for semiconductor test equipment, especially memory testers. The test program presented herein has a module structure consisting of utility groups for evaluation, a main program, and subroutine programs which describe the specific test conditions for each VLSI memory. Also, it can handle the evaluation of various VLSI memories with minimum programming.As a result of using this program structure for the evaluation test programs for 16 kinds of VLSI memories, it has been confirmed that the program development time can be reduced to one‐fifth that of the conventional method and the evaluation time can also be reduced by one hour.

Software metrics as a programming training tool

Software metrics have been recommended for quite some time as a tool to help manage the development and maintenance of computer software; however, little attention has been focused on using software metrics as a programmer training tool. Training on software complexity metrics was integrated into an advanced Cobol programming class, and a simple experiment was performed to determine if the training had any effect on program complexity, development time, and several dimensions of quality. This article describes the results of the study and presents a general outline of software complexity concepts that should be included in programming courses.

Program tools for algorithm animation

AbstractThis paper proposes graphics primitives for constructing programs for algorithm animation. Our experiments show that these primitives can reduce program development time. Future directions of the current research is also discussed.

A redundancy test-time reduction technique in 1-Mbit DRAM with a multibit test mode

To realize an efficient redundancy test using the multibit test (MBT) mode, a redundancy flag on a memory LSI tester and an effective redundancy technique which cooperates with the MBT mode have been introduced. This simple redundancy architecture needs only the RFLG (512 bits for the 1 M*1-bit DRAM) as a hardware option on a memory LSI tester. The program development time for the redundancy test has been shortened. Throughput improvement of six to ten times has been achieved in the actual 1-Mb DRAM redundancy test.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Designing a flexible user interface for both users and programmers

The design of a user interface for computers is examined from both the end user's and the programmer's point of view. Different methods of menu selection and user feedback are discussed. A graphics interface using pull down menus and dialog boxes is ideal for simplifying user interaction and program organization. This style of interface also provides for a modular program development environment, reduced program development time, program portability, and reduced maintenance. Software tools for programming the user interface are explored and pseudo-code examples are given.

Evaluation of Computer-Assisted Instruction Versus Traditional New-Employee Training

Personnel time and costs associated with computer-assisted instruction (CAI) and traditional "one-on-one" instruction in basic computer drug-order entry procedures were compared. Both programs consisted of an introduction to the training session, familiarization of users with the computer hardware and keyboard, and step-by-step instructions in unit dose and intravenous admixture order-entry procedures. The CAI module was developed by a pharmacist with no prior programming experience. It was designed to be used side-by-side with the actual inpatient pharmacy computer system. Fifth-year pharmacy students in their clinical clerkship rotation served as the study population. The personnel (both subject and pharmacy supervisor) time and costs associated with each method were evaluated for significant differences by a two-tailed Student's t test. Of 21 subjects who participated in this study, 11 received CAI and 10 received traditional instruction. CAI was associated with significantly less mean total personnel time (99.64 +/- 18.78 minutes) than one-on-one instruction (133.60 +/- 22.89 minutes). Mean total salary expense was significantly lower for CAI ($13.03 +/- 2.15) than for one-on-one instruction ($28.79 +/- 4.91). Program development time for the CAI module was 18.5 hours longer than that for the one-on-one program. The CAI module cost $1577.77 more to develop than the one-on-one program; however, 24 new employees would be required to offset development costs if the hardware were already available and 100 new employees if hardware had to be purchased. Computer-assisted instruction of new employees in computer order-entry procedures can be a cost-effective alternative to traditional training methods.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

DISCRETE-TIME MODELLING OP DISPERSION IN ESTURARIES

This paper aims to put forward a case in favour of a simple discretetime model describing mixing in an estuary. The model derives from the remarkably simple concepts developed by Ketchum (1951 a,b) which describe mixing in terms of tidal prism exchanges between segments. The author's view is that Ketchum1s ideas were abandoned before they were fully explored. A major factor was the advent of the high-speed computer which opened up the possibility of using an approach based on the space-time formulation of the problem in terms of the partial differential equations of transport theory. Intrinsically this approach, based on a continuum description, is more attractive than a gross description based on relatively large segments: one obvious reason is the possibility of providing a comprehensive space-time prediction of the spread of a pollutant. In practice, though, significant problems arise in its use: in particular, the following can be mentioned - a) substantial computing costs relating to computer program development and machine time b) specification of transport parameters inherent in the partial differential equations of transport: for example, dispersion coefficients c) model validation and state/parameter estimation. The last of these is the primary concern of this paper. It is probably true to say that, to date, too little attention has been given to these topics, in the context of estuarine modelling. The point to be made is that there is small justification in using a sophisticated description of a system if the resulting predictions of the model cannot be effectively validated. The ideas used in this paper stem from those put forward by Beck and Young (1975) in studies on non-tidal river pollution. The subsequent discussion suggests an extension to estuarine systems-.

A Descriptive Model of Medical Infonnation Processing

A descriptive model of medical information processing is presented. The model, consisting of multiple inter-regulated functional systems, transcends traditional organizational boundaries in support of patient care, professional education, and research. Relation of the model both to previously proposed medical models and to general communication models is discussed. Use of the functional model in delineating the scope of a medical information system, defining user requirements, and providing a substructure for detailed system design is expected to encourage standardized, parallel, modular design of application programs, with resultant decrease of program complexity, cost, and development time.

Some basic determinants of computer programming productivity

The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between processing characteristics of programs and experience characteristics of programmers and program development time. The ultimate objective was to develop a technique for predicting the amount of time necessary to create a computer program. The fifteen program characteristics hypothesized as being associated with an increase in programming time required are objectively measurable from preprogramming specifications. The five programmer characteristics are experience-related and are also measurable before a programming task is begun. Nine program characteristics emerged as major influences on program development time, each associated with increased program development time. All five programmer characteristics were found to be related to reduced program development time. A multiple regression equation which contained one programmer characteristic and four program characteristics gave evidence of good predictive power for forecasting program development time.