title: Conflict-preserving abstraction of discrete event systems using annotated automata

authors: Ware, Simon

subjects: computer science

abstract: This paper proposes to enhance compositional verification of the nonblocking property of discrete event systems by introducing annotated automata. Annotations store nondeterministic branching information, which would otherwise be stored in extra states and transitions. This succinct representation makes it easier to simplify automata and enables new efficientmeans of abstraction, reducing the size of automata to be composed and thus the size of the synchronous product state space encountered in verification. The abstractions proposed are of polynomial complexity, and they have been successfully applied to model check the nonblocking property of the same set of large-scale industrial examples as used in related work.

text: Conflict-preserving abstraction of discrete event systems using annotated automata This paper proposes to enhance compositional verification of the nonblocking property of discrete event systems by introducing annotated automata. Annotations store nondeterministic branching information, which would otherwise be stored in extra states and transitions. This succinct representation makes it easier to simplify automata and enables new efficientmeans of abstraction, reducing the size of automata to be composed and thus the size of the synchronous product state space encountered in verification. The abstractions proposed are of polynomial complexity, and they have been successfully applied to model check the nonblocking property of the same set of large-scale industrial examples as used in related work.

year: 2012

title: Teaching Ethics in Nursing Education - A case study of teaching in a New Zealand tertiary education context

authors: Song, Wen Jie

subjects: nursing ethics

abstract: Nurses face a plethora of ethical challenges in their everyday practice. In order to help trainees become aware of the multiple issues they will face beyond the classroom, nursing educators have acknowledged the criticality of having an ethical component taught throughout the nursing curriculum of a tertiary education institution. The purpose of this study was to explore what experiences and challenges nursing educators faced teaching such content and to identify the sorts of difficulties being encountered in their own classroom practice. 
A self-selecting sample of seven nursing educators working at a large, New Zealand tertiary institution in the North Island were interviewed. After transcribing data from the interviewing process, seven dominant themes emerged from the inductive data analysis process. A general model of teaching was adopted to analyse these multiple themes. In this respect, the variables identified in this model involved considerations of the teaching content, the teacher, the learner, the context, and the educators’ ideals. 
Adopting a principled approach to teaching ethics was acknowledged as a challenge by the participants because of the friction identified between culturally specific and universalist principles. Nonetheless, the importance of promoting students’ ethical awareness through the adoption of codes of ethics in the nursing programme was emphasised. Sharing cases from personal experience to supplement textual narratives was an important way to bridge the divide between theory and practice. That ethics be integrated throughout the whole nursing programme was the general consensus. 
The challenge in teaching ethics lies in the changing context of nursing and the changing context of ethics itself. Despite such hurdles, the nursing educators in this study were confident teachers who all had positive experiences in teaching ethics to their students.

text: Teaching Ethics in Nursing Education - A case study of teaching in a New Zealand tertiary education context Nurses face a plethora of ethical challenges in their everyday practice. In order to help trainees become aware of the multiple issues they will face beyond the classroom, nursing educators have acknowledged the criticality of having an ethical component taught throughout the nursing curriculum of a tertiary education institution. The purpose of this study was to explore what experiences and challenges nursing educators faced teaching such content and to identify the sorts of difficulties being encountered in their own classroom practice. 
A self-selecting sample of seven nursing educators working at a large, New Zealand tertiary institution in the North Island were interviewed. After transcribing data from the interviewing process, seven dominant themes emerged from the inductive data analysis process. A general model of teaching was adopted to analyse these multiple themes. In this respect, the variables identified in this model involved considerations of the teaching content, the teacher, the learner, the context, and the educators’ ideals. 
Adopting a principled approach to teaching ethics was acknowledged as a challenge by the participants because of the friction identified between culturally specific and universalist principles. Nonetheless, the importance of promoting students’ ethical awareness through the adoption of codes of ethics in the nursing programme was emphasised. Sharing cases from personal experience to supplement textual narratives was an important way to bridge the divide between theory and practice. That ethics be integrated throughout the whole nursing programme was the general consensus. 
The challenge in teaching ethics lies in the changing context of nursing and the changing context of ethics itself. Despite such hurdles, the nursing educators in this study were confident teachers who all had positive experiences in teaching ethics to their students.

year: 2017

title: The cultural perspective: Lakeweed and pest animals

authors: Douglas, Nicki

abstract: I have been with the Department of Conservation for about 15 years now and worked in Rotorua for 11 of those 15 years in various roles. I was lucky enough to be the Operations Manager for Lake Tarawera so I have a very strong association from a practitioner perspective. Practitioner is probably the key word for me. Most of my korero today will be based on experience and practice in working with communities and that is my area of expertise. I will talk about collective impact. It does say that I am talking about lake weeds and pests and I will mention them at least twice.

text: The cultural perspective: Lakeweed and pest animals I have been with the Department of Conservation for about 15 years now and worked in Rotorua for 11 of those 15 years in various roles. I was lucky enough to be the Operations Manager for Lake Tarawera so I have a very strong association from a practitioner perspective. Practitioner is probably the key word for me. Most of my korero today will be based on experience and practice in working with communities and that is my area of expertise. I will talk about collective impact. It does say that I am talking about lake weeds and pests and I will mention them at least twice.

year: 2017