Harmonic Control: A Symbolic Language Aided Engineering Control Program

In education, we have noticed a significant gap between the ability of students to program in an educational visual programming environment and the ability to write code in a professional programming environment. The aim of our research was to verify the methodology of transition from visual programming of mobile applications in MIT App Inventor 2 to textual programming in the Android Studio using the Java Bridge tool as a mediator of knowledge transfer. We have examined the extent, to which students will be able to independently program own mobile applications after completing the transition from visual to textual programming using the mediator. To evaluate the performance of students, we have analysed qualitative data from teaching during 1 school year and determined the degree of achievement of educational goals according to Bloom’s taxonomy. The results suggest that students in the secondary education can acquire advanced skills in programming mobile applications in a professional programming environment, when they have knowledge of visual programming in an educational programming environment, and a suitable mediator is used to transfer such knowledge into a new context.

The article deals with the issue of development of the modern educational environment of Ukraine in the context of its ethical activity through the formation of topical academic values. It involves both general theory and practice of changes in educational establishments, of universal values, as well as the formation of specific academic values that are relevant for providing effective educational environment in modern higher educational, in particular pedagogical, establishments. Practice and experience testify that the importance of ethical activity in the educational environment in a higher educational establishment is determined by the changes in the model of a modern educational institution where the situation of value collisions occurs regularly. The article describes one of the theoretical models of the development of a higher educational establishment along with the outline of the reasons for its ineffective implementation. The study determines the basic factors in formation of the student's personality as a bearer of universal values, in particular academic ones. The results of the theoretical and empirical research regarding the state and conditions for the formation of personal and academic values of a future specialist with the help of pedagogical tools are presented. With the help of empirical data, the statement about the limited opportunities of educational process towards the formation of students’ personal values, both professional and socially significant, is explained. The relation between the concepts "responsibility of profession" and "responsibility of a person" is indicated. Based on the achievements of international and domestic scientists, philosophers and educators in the sphere of anthropological and socio-cultural studies, the author identifies the phenomena of honor and responsibility as the priority and universal values, which influence the efficiency and quality of the activity accomplished by a modern higher educational establishment and the development of educational and scientific environment in general. The emphasis is put on the key aspects of honor, which influence the personality formation and development of a future specialist. The personal honor, existentialist by its essence and nature, which serves as the basis for the formation of professional honor, is called system- forming measure.

This project aimed to develop an effective and efficient GridRPC-based environment for multiple clusters of computers distributed on the Grid. It contains programming and execution environments for GridRPC applications. The programming environment allows users to deploy GridRPC services and develop GridRPC applications to consume the existing services. In order to make the Grid transparent to the users, the GridRPC execution environment is equipped with many mechanisms for resource discovery, resource selection, request scheduling and dispatching. Especially, composite services and request bundling mechanisms are introduced and examined together with the aids of multithreaded programming techniques. They are useful to improve performance for embarrassingly parallel applications.

A modern educational environment of higher professional education is becoming more multicultural. However, not all universities are able to provide a comfortable multicultural educational environment: university staff experience different issues in communication with international students. The aim of the article is to specify the term “professional communication competence of the university staff with international students” and define the forms and methods for developing this competence. The term “professional communication competence of the university staff with international students” is defined in the basis of the analysis of research literature on the topic of intercultural communication in higher education. Taking into account the principles of andragogy and the concept of humane oriented education, the forms and methods of adult learning and teaching were defined (discussions, case study, gamification). The research results can be used to design and implement the training programs to advance university staff proficiency. The novelty of the research is in the description of the forms and methods of developing the university staff’s professional communication competence in view of age-specific features in a multicultural educational environment.

BackgroundThe specialty of emergency medicine is in its infancy state in the long history of the Indian health sciences education system. Little analytical published data is available at the moment in India regarding the quality of medical education as perceived by the students.Roff et al. (Med Teach 19: 295–299, 1997) developed a methodology using a Delphi panel to standardize the measurement of medical education known as the Dundee Ready Education Environment Measure (DREEM), which is widely utilized.The purpose of this survey is to investigate student perceptions of medical education environment among emergency medicine residents of an academic medical centre in Northern India using the DREEM tool.MethodsThe DREEM questionnaire was administered to the students undergoing 3-year post-graduate emergency medicine training in our residency programme. A total of 35 students enrolled from all 3 years of the residency programme completed the survey in May 2013. The results were analysed using STATA 9.0.ResultsThe reliability coefficient which was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha for the totality of items of this study was 0.92, which indicates high internal consistency.The mean (95 % CI) for the overall DREEM was 139.8 (133.3, 146.2), which showed excellent educational environment among the medical students.ConclusionsThe DREEM score is a universal tool for assessment of education provided by health science institutes. With a total score of 139.8, the study conducted at our institute showed comparable results to the original DREEM study conducted by Roff et al. The good scores in all the five subscales reveal an excellent educational programme and learning environment as perceived by the students enrolled at our institution.

The new Ukrainian school needs the teachers able to work on their continuous development and decide on their personal paths with regard to their interests, needs, motivation, opportunities, and experience. The educational environment of postgraduate education should fully allow for the choice of types, forms and pace of education as well as variability of programs. In the context of the national educational space, a number of professional development projects has been proposed to teachers in accordance with the declared change. Despite the diversity of their content and forms, postgraduate educational institutions need their own educational and information environment that would play a leading role in the professional development of teachers and enable them to continuously follow their individual educational trajectories. The article analyzes modern approaches to understanding the essence of educational and information environment of postgraduate pedagogical education institutions. Some results of sociological research on teachers’ readiness to design their own professional development are presented. The practice of individualizing advanced training and professional development of teachers through face-to-face and distance learning using the authors’ platform DLET (Distance Learning Environments for Teachers) at Volyn Institute for Postgraduate Pedagogical Education is described. The platform is based on the principles of accessibility, understandability, personal orientation, motivation and interests; and enables organization of guided independent work of participants under regional educational projects. The articles concludes by stressing the importance to update educational and information resources of postgraduate pedagogical education institutions and to use benefits of the information space objects of the industry and Internet platforms.

Elevating the status of women was among the primary Soviet objectives in Central Asia. One way of achieving this was to create a new profession—school teaching—that would become an important career for them. Newly minted women professionals were scientifically trained in pedagogical institutes, then placed in the growing number of secondary schools. As teachers they received a high measure of community esteem and relatively good salaries. Since independence, however, teaching and teachers have lost status in all Central Asian republics, while the former pedagogical institutes have been repurposed as state universities. Drawing primarily on participant observation and open-ended interviews, this ethnographic research investigated reemergent gender inequalities in the Republic of Tajikistan as experienced, perceived, and understood by university faculty, students, administrators, and staff. The fieldwork and interviews were primarily completed in the city of Khujand in February and March 2011.

Background. One of the most difficult tasks of modern neurosurgery at the present time, remains the development of targeted access to pathologic formations in the structures of the rhomboid brain. Detailed knowledge of anatomical features of the fourth ventricle structure allows to identify healthy brain tissue from tumor processes in nearby structures, which is important for timely diagnosis of a number of diseases. Objective. The aim of the study was to analyze the type and sex variability of the dimensional characteristics of the fourth ventricle of the rhomboid brain according to MRI studies. Material and methods. The parameters of the IV ventricle: vertical and sagittal dimensions were studied on 100 magnetic resonance tomograms of the heads of mature-aged people in sagittal projection with medio- and flexi basilar skull types. Statistical processing of the obtained data was performed using the application program «Statistica-6» in the Windows environment. Results. The study showed statistically significant variability in fourth ventricle parameters between males and females with different craniotypes. In male individuals with high or medium curvature, the skull base 4 ventricle is longer and higher than in females of the same skull types. The vertical dimension of the ventricle, i.e., the length of the rhomboid fossa prevails over the sagittal - distance (height) in males compared to females with different skull base type. Whereas the type variability of linear parameters within each sex has no statistical differences. Conclusion. The obtained results of the study on the type variability of linear parameters of the rhomboid brain cavity in mature men and women should be taken into account when interpreting magnetic resonance images, as well as used in the anatomical justification of the choice of optimal surgical accesses or other neurosurgical procedures.

Multidisciplinary systems are described most suitably by bond graphs. In order to determine unnormalized frequency domain sensitivities in symbolic form, this paper proposes to construct in a systematic manner a bond graph from another bond graph, which is called the associated incremental bond graph in this paper. Contrary to other approaches reported in the literature the variables at the bonds of the incremental bond graph are not sensitivities but variations (incremental changes) in the power variables from their nominal values due to parameter changes. Thus their product is power. For linear elements their corresponding model in the incremental bond graph also has a linear characteristic. By deriving the system equations in symbolic state space form from the incremental bond graph in the same way as they are derived from the initial bond graph, the sensitivity matrix of the system can be set up in symbolic form. Its entries are transfer functions depending on the nominal parameter values and on the nominal states and the inputs of the original model. The sensitivities can be determined automatically by the bond graph preprocessor CAMP-G and the widely used program MATLAB together with the Symbolic Toolbox for symbolic mathematical calculation. No particular program is needed for the approach proposed. The initial bond graph model may be non-linear and may contain controlled sources and multiport elements. In that case the sensitivity model is linear time variant and must be solved in the time domain. The rationale and the generality of the proposed approach are presented. For illustration purposes a mechatronic example system, a load positioned by a constant-excitation d.c. motor, is presented and sensitivities are determined in symbolic form by means of CAMP-G/MATLAB.

The quality of teaching and maintenance of all university processes depends on the level and state of health of university employees. The health of scientific and pedagogical workers and employees of higher educational institutions is an important component of the active organization of the educational process of the university. In this regard, the creation of a health-saving environment for research and teaching staff and university staff seems to be a fairly urgent task that will preserve and strengthen health, reduce psycho-emotional stress, create a positive attitude to work, develop a desire to create, show a creative approach to work. Positive emotions will create an atmosphere of trust, mutual assistance, and a non-standard approach to solving important and complex tasks. The paper presents an analysis of a study on the problem of accessibility and quality of conditions for active physical education and sports in a university environment. The survey was attended by research and teaching staff and staff of universities in the Far East. The authors note that assessing the accessibility and quality of infrastructure for physical education and sports at universities is an important aspect that affects the health and physical activity of research and teaching staff and employees. The educational environment of the university should create appropriate conditions for the healthy life of both the teacher, employee and student. An integrated approach to assessing the accessibility and quality of infrastructure will help identify both strengths and weaknesses, as well as identify ways to improve conditions for physical education and sports at universities.

Academic underachievement among children and young people is an area of considerable concern, and it is often linked to particular groups. Two groups that have attracted concern when it comes to underachievement are gifted children and boys. This study examines the intersection between the underachievement of these two groups by examining underachievement among intellectually gifted boys. A meta-analysis of the research literature concerning underachievement in gifted boys was conducted to identify factors that may be associated with this phenomenon. The findings suggest that underachievement in gifted boys may be primarily caused by social emotional factors, rather than by factors of their educational environment. It is noted that the factors relating to underachievement in gifted students have only been studied in a limited way, and this research addresses part of that gap. Further areas of study – in particular the impact of twice-exceptionality and of bullying on underachievement - are suggested for future study.

The paper is devoted to the issues of the subjectivity formation in the educational environment, as well as the application of the relative psycho-technologies of facilitation and optimization of the process. The correlation between the notions of personality and subject is considered, though their scientific and semantic distinctions still remain obscure. In the frame- work of the competence approach, based on the concepts of accepted in education and psychology functional paradigm, the above terms are widely spread. Therefore, finding out the specifics of their genesis is both relevant and up-to-date. The authors conclude that the personality and subject are not equivalents, the same as the personality growth is not equivalent to the subjectivity formation. By means of theoretical analyses of the domestic approaches to the phenomena of subject and subjectivity, the four-stage process of the subject-genesis in the educa- tional environment has been modeled. At every stage of subjectivity formation in the particular conditions, it is necessary to use psycho-technologies relating to the actual targets of subject-genesis, which makes it possible to optimize the educational process in the context of the competence approach. The level-based description of the given process is proposed along with the model of its optimization in implementing the target psycho-technologies. The model can be applied both as a methodology basis for the complex development and optimization of psycho-pedagogical facilitation of the sub- jectivity formation, and as a theoretical basis for the educational strategy development and correction in a particular educational establishment.

The digitizing tablet offers PC users the ability to input data from a strip chart or from printed graphs directly into disk files. To connect the digitizing tablet to the computer and to interpret correctly the stream of numbers output from the tablet, a driver program must be designed and implemented. This paper discusses digitizers for PCs and the design of driver programs for different applications.

Research projects in ecology or biodiversity either start with an area of study or a target species list. Working with these species lists or taxonomic lists is not as straightforward as it seems. The taxonomic names that are considered to be “standard,” are surprisingly dynamic. Over time, the names keep changing with ongoing research and advancements in taxonomy. Additionally, they undergo all sorts of reorganization, such as one species being split into multiple species and/or subspecies, the grouping of multiple species into a single species, and the reclassification of species from one genus to another. Compiling a consistent target species list can be very time consuming and tricky. However it is the initial step in most research projects and needs to be completed in order to continue the research. Advancements in biodiversity informatics are helping simplify and automate some of these tasks. There are several web services that provide taxonomic data with either a taxonomic or a geographic focus. An increasing number of experts are opening access to their carefully curated taxonomic lists. Even with the help of these services, a lot of time needs to be spent to create a working list of names that can be linked to data such as Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) mediated occurrence data. The package “taxotools” (Barve 2021) provides basic taxonomic list processing functions within the R programming environment (R Core Team 2021). Even though it is a work in progress, the functions available so far are applicable to diverse projects. The tools available can be categorized into the following broad areas: Name manipulation: A set of helper functions to check scientific names with global name resolution services like Global Names Architecture (GNA) & GBIF Name Parser, and to construct and deconstruct scientific names to and from components like genus, species and subspecific units. Name matching: Matches names either with global name services or with user-created master taxonomy lists using fuzzy matching, testing combinations of genus level synonyms, subspecies elevation to species, trying to match with higher level taxonomic entities like genus and family, and employing a user-defined lookup table to manually resolve names. List processing: Updates list fields such as unique identifiers (id), higher taxonomy and taxonomic ranks. List matching: Compares user generated lists with each other and finds differences in the two lists, then prepares the lists for merging together to form a masterlist. Format conversion: Converts taxolist to and from formats like HTML and Darwin Core (Wieczorek et al. 2021), which is useful in data exchange or checking the lists manually. Name harvesting functions: Acquires additional names from Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) and Wikipedia (taxonomy infobox). Name manipulation: A set of helper functions to check scientific names with global name resolution services like Global Names Architecture (GNA) & GBIF Name Parser, and to construct and deconstruct scientific names to and from components like genus, species and subspecific units. Name matching: Matches names either with global name services or with user-created master taxonomy lists using fuzzy matching, testing combinations of genus level synonyms, subspecies elevation to species, trying to match with higher level taxonomic entities like genus and family, and employing a user-defined lookup table to manually resolve names. List processing: Updates list fields such as unique identifiers (id), higher taxonomy and taxonomic ranks. List matching: Compares user generated lists with each other and finds differences in the two lists, then prepares the lists for merging together to form a masterlist. Format conversion: Converts taxolist to and from formats like HTML and Darwin Core (Wieczorek et al. 2021), which is useful in data exchange or checking the lists manually. Name harvesting functions: Acquires additional names from Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) and Wikipedia (taxonomy infobox). Detailed function listings under each category are listed in Table 1. This package has been effectively used in several biodiversity studies and projects like Map of Life, ButterflyNet, Terrestrial Parasite Tracker etc. It has been successfully tested on a masterlist constructed with ~1M names from World Flora Online and performs well. The package is available on The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) [https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=taxotools] and the developmental release is on GitHub [https://github.com/vijaybarve/taxotools].

Dual-channel response ratios from an integrative algorithm