A Comparison of Paediatric Occupational Therapy University Program Curricula in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada

Comparisons were made of the paediatric content of professional entry-level occupational therapy university program curricula in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada using an ex post facto surveymethodology. The findings indicated that in Australia/New Zealand, paediatrics made up 20% of the total curriculum, but only 13% in Canada. Canadian reference materials were utilized less often in Canadian universities than in Australia/New Zealand. Theories taught most often in Australia/New Zealand were: Sensory Integration, Neurodevelopmental Therapy, Client-Centered Practice, Playfulness, and the Model of Human Occupation. In Canada, the most frequent theories were: Piaget’s Stages ofCognitive/Intellectual Development, Neurodevelopmental Therapy, Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development and Sensory Integration. The most frequently taught paediatric assessment tools in both regions were the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency and Miller Assessment for Preschoolers. Paediatric interventionmethods taught to students in all three countries focused on activities of daily living/self-care, motor skills, perceptual and visual motor integration, and infant and child development. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: ©2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

Capital market equilibrium with moral hazard and flexible technology

(Magill, M., Quinzii, M., 2002. Capital market equilibrium with moral hazard. Journal of Mathematical Economics 38, 149-190) showed that, in a stockmarket economy with private information, the moral hazard problem may be resolved provided that a spanning overlap condition is satisfed. This result depends on the assumption that the technology is given by a stochastic production function with a single scalar input. The object of the present paper is to extend the analysis of Magill and Quinzii to the case of multiple inputs. We show that their main result extends to this general case if and only if, for each firm, the number of linearly independent combinations of securities having payoffs correlated with, but not dependent on, the firms output is equal to the number of degrees of freedom in the firm's production technology.

Transport diffusion of gases is rapid in flexible carbon nanotu

Molecular dynamics simulations of rigid, defect-free single-walled carbon nanotubes have previously suggested that the transport diffusivity of gases adsorbed in these materials can be orders of magnitude higher than any other nanoporous material (A. I. Skoulidas et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 2002, 89, 185901). These simulations must overestimate the molecular diffusion coefficients because they neglect energy exhange between the diffusing molecules and the nanotube. Recently, Jakobtorweihen et al. have reported careful simulations of molecular self-diffusion that allow nanotube flexibility (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2005, 95, 044501). We have used the efficient thermostat developed by Jakobtorweihen et al. to examine the influence of nanotube flexibility on the transport diffusion of CH4 in (20,0) and (15,0) nanotubes. The inclusion of nanotube flexibility reduces the transport diffusion relative to the rigid nanotube by roughly an order of magnitude close to zero pressure, but at pressures above about I bar the transport diffusivities for flexible and rigid nanotubes are very similar, differing by less than a factor or two on average. Hence, the transport diffusivities are still extremely large compared to other known materials when flexibility is taken into account.

Quality of service in flexible workflows through process constraints

Workflow technology has delivered effectively for a large class of business processes, providing the requisite control and monitoring functions. At the same time, this technology has been the target of much criticism due to its limited ability to cope with dynamically changing business conditions which require business processes to be adapted frequently, and/or its limited ability to model business processes which cannot be entirely predefined. Requirements indicate the need for generic solutions where a balance between process control and flexibility may be achieved. In this paper we present a framework that allows the workflow to execute on the basis of a partially specified model where the full specification of the model is made at runtime, and may be unique to each instance. This framework is based on the notion of process constraints. Where as process constraints may be specified for any aspect of the workflow, such as structural, temporal, etc. our focus in this paper is on a constraint which allows dynamic selection of activities for inclusion in a given instance. We call these cardinality constraints, and this paper will discuss their specification and validation requirements.

Problem-based learning: a case study in providing e-health education using the Internet

The current trend among many universities is to increase the number of courses available online. However, there are fundamental problems in transferring traditional education courses to virtual formats. Delivering current curricula in an online format does not assist in overcoming the negative effects on student motivation which are inherent in providing information passively. Using problem-based learning (PBL) online is a method by which computers can become a tool to encourage active learning among students. The delivery of curricula via goal-based scenarios allows students to learn at different rates and can successfully shift online learning from memorization to discovery. This paper reports on a Web-based e-health course that has been delivered via PBL for the past 12 months. Thirty distance-learning students undertook postgraduate courses in e-health delivered via the Internet (asynchronous communication). Data collected via online student surveys indicated that the PBL format was both flexible and interesting. PBL has the potential to increase the quality of the educational experience of students in online environments.

Flexible proof reuse for software verification

Proof reuse, or analogical reasoning, involves reusing the proof of a source theorem in the proof of a target conjecture. We have developed a method for proof reuse that is based on the generalisation replay paradigm described in the literature, in which a generalisation of the source proof is replayed to construct the target proof. In this paper, we describe the novel aspects of our method, which include a technique for producing more accurate source proof generalisations (using knowledge of the target goal), as well as a flexible replay strategy that allows the user to set various parameters to control the size and the shape of the search space. Finally, we report on the results of applying this method to a case study from the realm of software verification.