What is Covenant in the Old Testament sense Research Paper

What is Covenant in the Old Testament sense - Research Paper Example These include Abraham, Noah and Adam among many others. A covenant formed an important component of the biblical history and modern day theology. The flow of the biblical covenants includes (Mason 177): First of all, God made a covenant with His Son regarding the elect before the creation of the universe and consisted of the Father promising to bring to His Son all the people the Father had given Him (John 17: 9-24 ; 6:39). Manifestation of the covenant occurred in the world through the sequence of additional covenants between God and individuals. These include Adam (Gen 2: 15-17), Abraham (Gen 17), Noah (Gen 9:12-16), Mt Sinai covenant with Israelites (Ex 34:28), David (Sam 7:12-16) and New covenant believers (Jer 31:31-37). All the additional covenants involved the ‘Covenant of Grace’ when God establishes covenants with His elect with the promise of salvation through Faith in Jesus Christ (Mason 178). According to some theologians, there is only one covenant referred as the covenant of redemption within which all other covenants originate. This involved the agreement between the Father and the Son that gave the Son as Redeemer and head of the elect. As a result, the Son took the place assigned by the Father voluntarily. This formed a twofold assurance of Son as a guarantee and surety to fulfil the requirements of God’s laws. ... Covenant in Hebrew depicted the development of God’s covenant ranging from the time of creation to the time of the new covenant. In Arabic, covenant involved the contract binding humanity and God. The concept of covenant provides a distinctive and unique fellowship with God. This fellowship depends on legal covenant, and this implies the existence of dependable and stable element in Old Testament religion (McAleese 237). Concepts of Covenant Faith inspiring Fellowship The covenant concept gave the Old Testament people a mighty anchor for their faith. This allowed them a vantage ground with their God where God remained obligated to them through the covenant. He remained to be their God, and they become His people. For instance, this covenant background enabled Jacob cling to the angel until He blessed him. This covenant required people turn away from their sins after which they could claim God’s favour (Wood 133). Exclusive Fellowship The covenant established exclusive f ellowship between Hebrews and God. Hebrews remained as His chosen people, and He remained Yahweh their God. The covenantal idea formed a background for the Jewish religion, and it demanded exclusive loyalty to preclude the possibility of multiple loyalties in other religions. The illustration of loyalty to God took place through marriages, where Hosea, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah charged Israelites against adultery. The expression of God as being their God and them being His people comprised of the legal formula taken from marriage sphere and attested through legal documents from Ancient Near east (Hosea 2:4). This explains why prophets such as Isaiah frowned on alliance made by Israelites with their neighbours (Wood 133). Douglas Stuart Guidelines on Old Testament

Analysis of Hospital Quality Management Team

Analysis of Hospital Quality Management Team Contents INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND History Vision Mission Core values MAIN SERVICES AVAILABLE, HOW SERVICES ARE DELIVERED AND TARGET POPULATION ISSUES IDENTIFIED ANALYSIS OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT PROGRAM REFERENCES INTRODUCTION This is an in-depth analysis of quality management program conducted in Villingili hospital. Improving the quality of care management practice is a concern in many countries regardless of differences in definition, organization, and funding of services. Quality assurance involves a commitment to guaranteeing the quality of services, not as an additional element attached to the service, but as part of an ongoing system in which performance is monitored and achievement measured against set standards or benchmarks (Camp, 1989; Crosby, 1979; Oakland, 1993 cited in Clarkson Challis, 2003). First a brief introduction of the hospital will be presented followed by the discussion of various quality related issues that can be identified within the hospital. Followed by this, one quality management effort, which is the indoor environment of the hospital, will be analyzed. Subsequently, recommendations for any other strategies that could be implemented to improve the present situation and to overcome quality issues that are not part of any quality program at present will be elaborated. BACKGROUND History Villingili hospital was first opened as a health center in 21st April 1994. The health center was initially opened as a branch of Male’ Health center. The health center was set up in a four room building provided by Male’ municipality. On 15th April 2002, the government changed the health center to a three story building. On 14th August 2014, the health center was changed to a third grade hospital; same level as an atoll hospital. Vision: strive to provide healthcare services to people of Villingili and to make the community aware regarding health life styles and to provide ideal, quality and acceptable health care service to residents of Villingili. Mission: To provide an uninterrupted health care to residents of Villingili. To diagnose and treat different types of diseases and work towards the prevention of these diseases. To further develop the laboratory services. Core values: no core values are identified by the organization. Even though the Villingili Hospital have a rich history, it was depressing to find that the staff of the hospital was unaware of the vision, mission and core values of the organization. MAIN SERVICES AVAILABLE, HOW SERVICES ARE DELIVERED AND TARGET POPULATION The main services available in this hospital are, consultation services from general practitioners, consultation from specialized practitioners, laboratory services, community health care, vaccination and nursing care services. The target population is the residents of Villingili, whose population is around 17,000 people according to Villingili hospital. Specialized doctors’ consultations are on specific days. Gynecological consultations are done on Sundays and Wednesdays from 08:00am to 04:00pm. Orthopedics consultations are done on Sundays and Mondays at 08:00am to 04:00pm by Orthopeadician Dr. Hussain Faisal. Pediatrician consultations are done on Mondays and Tuesdays at 08:00am to 04:00 pm. All consultants are arranged sent from IGMH. Vaccination and child growth monitoring is done on all working days from 09:00 am to 01:00 pm. All available services are provided within the hospital. Even though they have a community health service unit, home visiting are not done. Services are provided 24 hours throughout the day, and shift duties are done by all consultants, nurses, receptionists, interpreters, ambulance drivers and attendants. Even though specialized consultations are done, it is evident that both the consultants and clients face enormous difficulty to diagnose and treat diseases and conditions as essential and compulsory diagnostic services such as ultra sound scanning and x-ray services are not available in the hospital. ISSUES IDENTIFIED After conducting surveys in the Villingili hospital and interpreting the results, I have identified some issues related to quality of service provided by the facility. Here are the results of the survey conducted in the facility. In the survey questionnaire, a question was used targeting to identify the staff response to patients need and their courteousness. The evaluation will be accurate if we analyze the situation in both directions. According to the hospital officials, clients can consult general practitioners through a walk in OPD. But the consultation for specialized practitioners such as the orthopeadician and gyneacologist, clients have to make appointment prior to consultation. Appointments are issued until the planned slots are filled. From the interviews conducted, we understood that the time delay dissatisfaction usually arose during busy situations where the doctor who is consulting in the OPD have to attend in patients or emergency cases. Some clients also noted that the doctors sometimes goes for break while more than 10 clients are waiting outside. A service provider have to consider suitable timings in order to provide a quality service to the clients. In order to evaluate this, we questioned whether they are satisfied with service timing of the facility, both general and specialized consultations. Among 10 clients, 2 clients (20%) informed that they are not satisfied with the time for specialized consultation while 3 clients (30%) told that they are moderately satisfied and 5 patients (50%) are fully satisfied with the service timing. Figure 1 Even though they get the appointment for specialized consultation and can consult the general practitioner through a walk in OPD, the time taken to consult the doctors vary. To verify the time taken to consult the doctor, we gave time ranges from 0-10 minutes, 20-30 minutes and more than 30 minutes. According to the clients who gave the interviews 5 clients (50%) informed that they had to wait between 0-10 minutes, 3 clients (30%) told that they waited between 20-30 minutes for the consultation and 2 clients (20%) stated that they waited for more than 30 minutes to consult the doctor. These findings are presented below in figure 2. Figure 2 Identification of the client satisfaction and dissatisfaction is crucial in order to upgrade and provide an ideal and acceptable quality service to the clients. In order to identify the overall satisfaction of the clients regarding the time they spent during consultation, we included questions targeting this issue. According to 7 clients, (70%) they are fully satisfied with the time they spent and 3 clients (30%) are not satisfied. These results are shown below in figure 3. According to the information we collected, we found that most clients highlighted that the biggest issue they face is the way the staff communicate with them. Some clients have informed that they were left feeling like a fool during consultations and some staff spoke rudely to them. Few noted they feel that the staff are overburdened with responsibilities and they seem very unenthusiastic. In addition to this, some clients informed that the staff seems to be involved in their personal things while attending the clients who goes to the counter for different things. Communication effectively with patient and family is a cornerstone of providing quality health care (Patient care improvement guide, 2008). The manner in which health care provider communicate information to a patient can be equally important as information being conveyed (Patient care improvement guide, 2008). Patient surveys have demonstrated when communication is lacking, it is palpably felt and can lead to patients feeling increased anxiety, vulnerability and powerlessness (Patient care improvement guide, 2008). Among 10 clients, 5 clients (50%) informed that the staff was poor in areas being respectful, friendly helpful and courteous. Another 3 clients (30%) noted that the staff was fair in this area while the remaining 2 clients (20%) informed that the staff was good in this area. It is depressing to note that not even one client told that the staff was great in this area. The information is shown in a pie chart below in figure 1. Figure 1 The next question was whether the staff explained the procedure and how they answer questions asked by clients. Among 10 clients, 6 clients (60%) informed that the staff was poor in explaining the procedure and answer questions asked by them. Another 3 clients (30%) noted that the staff was fair in this area. The remaining 1 clients (10%) informed that the staff was good in this area. The information is illustrated in figure 2. Figure 2. According to the information collected through survey, it is clear that most clients highlighted that the biggest issue they face is the way the staff communicate with them. Some clients have informed that they were left feeling like a fool during consultations and some staff spoke rudely to them. Few noted they feel that the staff are overburdened with responsibilities and they seem very unenthusiastic. In addition to this, some clients informed that the staff seems to be involved in their personal things while attending the clients who goes to the counter for different things. The issues identified through survey with clients of this facility that, may hinder the quality of service provided are, ineffective communication and unenthusiastic staff. Additionally, by conducting interview with the senior administrative officer of Villingili health center, it is evident that some staff lack knowledge in some areas such as care during emergency situations. Lack of knowledge is due to lack of practice as the institute have less inpatients who needs constant care. Communication effectively with patient and family is a cornerstone of providing quality health care (Patient care improvement guide, 2008). The manner in which health care provider communicate information to a patient can be equally important as information being conveyed (Patient care improvement guide, 2008). Patient surveys have demonstrated when communication is lacking, it is palpably felt and can lead to patients feeling increased anxiety, vulnerability and powerlessness (Patient care improvement guide, 2008). ANALYSIS OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT EFFORT As the Villingili Hospital is being rebuild to accommodate required facilities to function as a hospital, patients’ and staff are facing various difficulties. The major difficulty that most people face is that consultant rooms are situated in the first floor of the building. A person does not have to be elderly to have a difficulty to climb stairs, and because of this arrangement some patients have faced difficulty. It is evident that the changes to the present building is being brought on to provide a quality service to the customers. However, the effect of physical environment on healing process is evident through research. The arrangement of wards, labor rooms, consultant rooms and waiting areas and its physical environment such as ventilation, lighting, and temperature is important aspects to consider to provide a quality hospital environment. From my personal experience, it is clear that the physical environment of hospital is set to ease the staff only and patient prefer ence or perspective is rarely considered. As I have experienced, I have faced immense difficulty when I went for a consultation with high grade fever and wheezing. The consultant’s room air conditioner was set a temperature where it was difficult for me to utter a single word without clattering my teeth. Additionally, I have found that the present physical environment of the Villingili hospital can be considered dangerous for patient especially the elderly and young. The present construction activities and especially the smooth tiles put on the floor of the hospital is a hazard for falls. For this analysis, I will be looking into the extraneous factors of the hospital in order to deliver a quality service. Extraneous factor of hospital The physical work environment often influences (positively or negatively) the mindset of the service providers and their efficiency and capability to innovate in delivering expanded services (). Sometimes the aspects of the consultation rooms can have a negative impact. Such as the consultation room being too cold, hot, dark, noisy or unwelcoming (Moulton, 2007). Distractions in the room include visual distractions (eye catching photographs or art), auditory distractions (sounds from the waiting room or next consultation room) and olfactory distractions (bad odors or body odor of previous patients) (Moulton, 2007). Suboptimal seating arrangement also can be a negative extraneous factor of hospital, such as seats being hard and uncomfortable (Moulton, 2007). In recent years, the effects of the physical environment on the healing process and well-being have proved to be increasingly relevant for patients and their families as well as for healthcare staff (Huisman, Morales, Hool Korts, 2012) Studies have shown that excessive noise, glare and poor air quality can create stress as is evidenced by increased heart and blood pressure and reduced oxygen level in the blood in both adults and babies who are exposed to these environment (Blomkvist, Ericksen, Theorell, Ulrich, Rasmanis, 2005; Hagerman, Rasmanis, Blomkvist, Ulrich, Eriksen, Theorell, 2005;Zahr Traversay 1995 cited in Zborowsky Kreitzer, 2008). A healing environment with appropriate physical aspects contribute to patients’ outcome such as shorter length of stay, reduced stress, increased patients satisfaction and others (Ulrich et al., 2004 cited in Hussain Babalghith, 2014). REFERENCES Clarkson, P., Challis, D. (2003). Quality Assurance Practices in Care Management: A Perspective from the United Kingdom. Care Management Journals, 4, (3), 142-151. Huisman, E. R. C. M., Morales, E., Hool, J. V. Korts, H. S. M. (2012). Healing environment: A review of the impact of physical environmental factors on users. Building and Environment (58), 70–80. Moultan, L. (2007). The Naked Consultation: A Practical Guide to Primary Care Consultation Skill (1st ed). United Kingdom, UK: Radcliffe Publishing. WHO. (2004). Quality Improvement in Primary Health Care; A Practical Guide. WHO regional publication, Eastern Mediterranean Series 26. Zborowsky, T., Kreitzer, M. J. (2008). Creating Optimal Healing Environment in Health Care Setting. Clinical and Health Affairs, 91(3), 35-38. Saushan Rasheed Quality Assurance in Health Care Assignment 2

Free Yellow Wallpaper Essays: Physical and Mental Abuse :: Yellow Wallpaper essays

Physical and Mental Abuse in The Yellow Wallpaper What is Abuse? Abuse is not just being hit. Abuse is any action that is harmful or controlling and that affects the well being of another person. Many people use the term "Abuse" to signify physical abuse, but there are many more ways of abusing someone than beating them. Physical abuse is the most horrifying and most noticeable of them all, but it is only one of the many types of abuse. Here are some of the names for different categories of abuse: Physical abuse, Sexual abuse, Psychological and Verbal abuse, Forced confinement, abuse towards pets or property, Financial abuse, and Child abuse. The two abuses that I will be focusing on will be physical and mental abuse. I decided to pick the topic of abuse after viewing the movie The Yellow Wall- paper. After watching the movie and seeing how badly Mary Wollstonecraft was treated, it made me want to know more about abuse on women and what could be done to break the chain of abuse. I believe that no abuse is acceptable and that any man that has ever abused a woman in anyway should face major consequences. That is my main point to this paper, that the laws are not strong enough and that more effort should be done so that no women is ever abused in anyway shape or form again. To start, I will give some statistics about police and how they handle calls from wives that have been abused. "Police were more likely to respond within five minutes if the offender was a stranger than if an offender was known to the female victim" ("Response"1). Also, it has been recorded that once a women in Boston called in that her husband had beaten her and the policeman's response was, "Listen, lady, he pays the bills, does n't he? What he does inside of his house is his business"(Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz 301). With a response like this, why even bother calling the police. That is why we must come together and start over from the inside out. We need to make every one in any position of power know that any abuse on women is wrong. The truth is that, "90% of all family violence defendants are never prosecuted, and one-third of the cases that would be considered felonies if committed by strangers are filed as misdemeanors (a lesser crime)" ("Response"1).

Achieving Fault-Tolerance in Operating System Essay

Introduction Fault-tolerant computing is the art and science of building computing systems that continue to operate satisfactorily in the presence of faults. A fault-tolerant system may be able to tolerate one or more fault-types including – i) transient, intermittent or permanent hardware faults, ii) software and hardware design errors, iii) operator errors, or iv) externally induced upsets or physical damage. An extensive methodology has been developed in this field over the past thirty years, and a number of fault-tolerant machines have been developed – most dealing with random hardware faults, while a smaller number deal with software, design and operator faults to varying degrees. A large amount of supporting research has been reported. Fault tolerance and dependable systems research covers a wide spectrum of applications ranging across embedded real-time systems, commercial transaction systems, transportation systems, and military/space systems – to name a few. The supporting research includes system architecture, design techniques, coding theory, testing, validation, proof of correctness, modelling, software reliability, operating systems, parallel processing, and real-time processing. These areas often involve widely diverse core expertise ranging from formal logic, mathematics of stochastic modelling, graph theory, hardware design and software engineering. Recent developments include the adaptation of existing fault-tolerance techniques to RAID disks where information is striped across several disks to improve bandwidth and a redundant disk is used to hold encoded information so that data can be reconstructed if a disk fails. Another area is the use of application-based fault-tolerance techniques to detect errors in high performance parallel processors. Fault-tolerance techniques are expected to become increasingly important in deep sub-micron VLSI devices to combat increasing noise problems and improve yield by tolerating defects that are likely to occur on very large, complex chips. Fault-tolerant computing already plays a major role in process control, transportation, electronic commerce, space, communications and many other areas that impact our lives. Many of its next advances will occur when applied to new state-of-the-art systems such as massively parallel scalable computing, promising new unconventional architectures such as processor-in-memory or reconfigurable computing, mobile computing, and the other exciting new things that lie around the corner. Basic Concepts Hardware Fault-Tolerance – The majority of fault-tolerant designs have been directed toward building computers that automatically recover from random faults occurring in hardware components. The techniques employed to do this generally involve partitioning a computing system into modules that act as fault-containment regions. Each module is backed up with protective redundancy so that, if the module fails, others can assume its function. Special mechanisms are added to detect errors and implement recovery. Two general approaches to hardware fault recovery have been used: 1) fault masking, and 2) dynamic recovery. Fault masking is a structural redundancy technique that completely masks faults within a set of redundant modules. A number of identical modules execute the same functions, and their outputs are voted to remove errors created by a faulty module. Triple modular redundancy (TMR) is a commonly used form of fault masking in which the circuitry is triplicated and voted. The voting circuitry can also be triplicated so that individual voter failures can also be corrected by the voting process. A TMR system fails whenever two modules in a redundant triplet create errors so that the vote is no longer valid. Hybrid redundancy is an extension of TMR in which the triplicated modules are backed up with additional spares, which are used to replace faulty modules -allowing more faults to be tolerated. Voted systems require more than three times as much hardware as non-redundant systems, but they have the advantage that computations can continue without interruption when a fault occurs, allowing existing operating systems to be used. Dynamic recovery is required when only one copy of a computation is running at a time (or in some cases two unchecked copies), and it involves automated self-repair. As in fault masking, the computing system is partitioned into modules backed up by spares as protective redundancy. In the case of dynamic recovery however, special mechanisms are required to detect faults in the modules, switch out a faulty module, switch in a spare, and instigate those software actions (rollback, initialization, retry, and restart) necessary to restore and continue the computation. In single computers special hardware is required along with software to do this, while in multicomputers the function is often managed by the other processors. Dynamic recovery is generally more hardware-efficient than voted systems, and it is therefore the approach of choice in resource-constrained (e.g., low-power) systems, and especially in high performance scalable systems in which the amount of hardware resources devoted to active computing must be maximized. Its disadvantage is that computational delays occur during fault recovery, fault coverage is often lower, and specialized operating systems may be required. Software Fault-Tolerance – Efforts to attain software that can tolerate software design faults (programming errors) have made use of static and dynamic redundancy approaches similar to those used for hardware faults. One such approach, N-version programming, uses static redundancy in the form of independently written programs (versions) that perform the same functions, and their outputs are voted at special checkpoints. Here, of course, the data being voted may not be exactly the same, and a criterion must be used to identify and reject faulty versions and to determine a consistent value (through inexact voting) that all good versions can use. An alternative dynamic approach is based on the concept of recovery blocks. Programs are partitioned into blocks and acceptance tests are executed after each block. If an acceptance test fails, a redundant code block is executed. An approach called design diversity combines hardware and software fault-tolerance by implementing a fault-tolerant computer system using different hardware and software in redundant channels. Each channel is designed to provide the same function, and a method is provided to identify if one channel deviates unacceptably from the others. The goal is to tolerate both hardware and software design faults. This is a very expensive technique, but it is used in very critical aircraft control applications. The key technologies that make software fault-tolerant Software involves a system’s conceptual model, which is easier than a physical model to engineer to test for things that violate basic concepts. To the extent that a software system can evaluate its own performance and correctness, it can be made fault-tolerant—or at least error aware; to the extent that a software system can check its responses before activating any physical components, a mechanism for improving error detection, fault tolerance, and safety exists. We can use three key technologies—design diversity, checkpointing, and exception handling—for software fault tolerance, depending on whether the current task should be continued or can be lost while avoiding error propagation (ensuring error containment and thus avoiding total system failure). Tolerating solid software faults for task continuity requires diversity, while checkpointing tolerates soft software faults for task continuity. Exception handling avoids system failure at the expense of current task loss. Runtime failure detection is often accomplished through an acceptance test or comparison of results from a combination of â€Å"different† but functionally equivalent system alternates, components, versions, or variants. However, other techniques— ranging from mathematical consistency checking to error coding to data diversity—are also useful. There are many options for effective system recovery after a problem has been detected. They range from complete rejuvenation (for example, stopping with a full data and software reload and then restarting) to dynamic forward error correction to partial state rollback and restart. The relationship between software fault tolerance and software safety Both require good error detection, but the response to errors is what differentiates the two approaches. Fault tolerance implies that the software system can recover from —or in some way tolerate—the error and continue correct operation. Safety implies that the system either continues correct operation or fails in a safe manner. A safe failure is an inability to tolerate the fault. So, we can have low fault tolerance and high safety by safely shutting down a system in response to every detected error. It is certainly not a simple relationship. Software fault tolerance is related to reliability, and a system can certainly be reliable and unsafe or unreliable and safe as well as the more usual combinations. Safety is intimately associated with the system’s capacity to do harm. Fault tolerance is a very different property. Fault tolerance is—together with fault prevention, fault removal, and fault forecasting— a means for ensuring that the system function is implemented so that the dependability attributes, which include safety and availability, satisfy the users’ expectations and requirements. Safety involves the notion of controlled failures: if the system fails, the failure should have no catastrophic consequence—that is, the system should be fail-safe. Controlling failures always include some forms of fault tolerance—from error detection and halting to complete system recovery after component failure. The system function and environment dictate, through the requirements in terms of service continuity, the extent of fault tolerance required. You can have a safe system that has little fault tolerance in it. When the system specifications properly and adequately define safety, then a well-designed fault-tolerant system will also be safe. However, you can also have a system that is highly fault tolerant but that can fail in an unsafe way. Hence, fault tolerance and safety are not synonymous. Safety is concerned with failures (of any nature) that can harm the user; fault tolerance is primarily concerned with runtime prevention of failures in any shape or form (including prevention of safety critical failures). A fault-tolerant and safe system will minimize overall failures and ensure that when a failure occurs, it is a safe failure. Several standards for safety-critical applications recommend fault tolerance—for hardware as well as for software. For example, the IEC 61508 standard (which is generic and application sector independent) recommends among other techniques: â€Å"failure assertion programming, safety bag technique, diverse programming, backward and forward recovery.† Also, the Defense standard (MOD 00-55), the avionics standard (DO-178B), and the standard for space projects (ECSS-Q-40- A) list design diversity as possible means for improving safety. Usually, the requirement is not so much for fault tolerance (by itself) as it is for high availability, reliability, and safety. Hence, IEEE, FAA, FCC, DOE, and other standards and regulations appropriate for reliable computer-based systems apply. We can achieve high availability, reliability, and safety in different ways. They involve a proper reliable and safe design, proper safeguards, and proper implementation. Fault tolerance is just one of the techniques that assure that a system’s quality of service (in a broader sense) meets user needs (such as high safety). History The SAPO computer built in Prague, Czechoslovakia was probably the first fault-tolerant computer. It was built in 1950–1954 under the supervision of A. Svoboda, using relays and a magnetic drum memory. The processor used triplication and voting (TMR), and the memory implemented error detection with automatic retries when an error was detected. A second machine developed by the same group (EPOS) also contained comprehensive fault-tolerance features. The fault-tolerant features of these machines were motivated by the local unavailability of reliable components and a high probability of reprisals by the ruling authorities should the machine fail. Over the past 30 years, a number of fault-tolerant computers have been developed that fall into three general types: (1) long-life, un-maintainable computers, (2) ultra dependable, real-time computers, and (3) high-availability computers. Long-Life, Unmaintained Computers Applications such as spacecraft require computers to operate for long periods of time without external repair. Typical requirements are a probability of 95% that the computer will operate correctly for 5–10 years. Machines of this type must use hardware in a very efficient fashion, and they are typically constrained to low power, weight, and volume. Therefore, it is not surprising that NASA was an early sponsor of fault-tolerant computing. In the 1960s, the first fault-tolerant machine to be developed and flown was the on-board computer for the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory (OAO), which used fault masking at the component (transistor) level. The JPL Self-Testing-and-Repairing (STAR) computer was the next fault-tolerant computer, developed by NASA in the late 1960s for a 10-year mission to the outer planets. The STAR computer, designed under the leadership of A. Avizienis was the first computer to employ dynamic recovery throughout its design. Various modules of the computer were instrumented to detect internal faults and signal fault conditions to a special test and repair processor that effected reconfiguration and recovery. An experimental version of the STAR was implemented in the laboratory and its fault tolerance properties were verified by experimental testing. Perhaps the most successful long-life space application has been the JPL-Voyager computers that have now operated in space for 20 years. This system used dynamic redundancy in which pairs of redundant computers checked each-other by exchanging messages, and if a computer failed, its partner could take over the computations. This type of design has been used on several subsequent spacecraft. Ultra-dependable Real-Time Computers These are computers for which an error or delay can prove to be catastrophic. They are designed for applications such as control of aircraft, mass transportation systems, and nuclear power plants. The applications justify massive investments in redundant hardware, software, and testing. One of the first operational machines of this type was the Saturn V guidance computer, developed in the 1960s. It contained a TMR processor and duplicated memories (each using internal error detection). Processor errors were masked by voting, and a memory error was circumvented by reading from the other memory. The next machine of this type was the Space Shuttle computer. It was a rather ad-hoc design that used four computers that executed the same programs and were voted. A fifth, non-redundant computer was included with different programs in case a software error was encountered. During the 1970s, two influential fault-tolerant machines were developed by NASA for fuel-efficient aircraft that require continuous computer control in flight. They were designed to meet the most stringent reliability requirements of any computer to that time. Both machines employed hybrid redundancy. The first, designated Software Implemented Fault Tolerance (SIFT), was developed by SRI International. It used off-the-shelf computers and achieved voting and reconfiguration primarily through software. The second machine, the Fault-Tolerant Multiprocessor (FTMP), developed by the C. S. Draper Laboratory, used specialized hardware to effect error and fault recovery. A commercial company, August Systems, was a spin-off from the SIFT program. It has developed a TMR system intended for process control applications. The FTMP has evolved into the Fault-Tolerant Processor (FTP), used by Draper in several applications and the Fault-Tolerant Parallel processor (FTPP) – a parallel processor that allows processes to run in a single machine or in duplex, tripled or quadrupled groups of processors. This highly innovative design is fully Byzantine resilient and allows multiple groups of redundant processors to be interconnected to form scalable systems. The new generation of fly-by-wire aircraft exhibits a very high degree of fault-tolerance in their real-time flight control computers. For example the Airbus Airliners use redundant channels with different processors and diverse software to protect against design errors as well as hardware faults. Other areas where fault-tolerance is being used include control of public transportation systems and the distributed computer systems now being incorporated in automobiles. High-Availability Computers Many applications require very high availability but can tolerate an occasional error or very short delays (on the order of a few seconds), while error recovery is taking place. Hardware designs for these systems are often considerably less expensive than those used for ultra-dependable real-time computers. Computers of this type often use duplex designs. Example applications are telephone switching and transaction processing. The most widely used fault-tolerant computer systems developed during the 1960s were in electronic switching systems (ESS) that are used in telephone switching offices throughout the country. The first of these AT&T machines, No. 1 ESS, had a goal of no more than two hours downtime in 40 years. The computers are duplicated, to detect errors, with some dedicated hardware and extensive software used to identify faults and effect replacement. These machines have since evolved over several generations to No. 5 ESS which uses a distributed system controlled by the 3B20D fault tolerant computer. The largest commercial success in fault-tolerant computing has been in the area of transaction processing for banks, airline reservations, etc. Tandem Computers, Inc. was the first major producer and is the current leader in this market. The design approach is a distributed system using a sophisticated form of duplication. For each running process, there is a backup process running on a different computer. The primary process is responsible for checkpointing its state to duplex disks. If it should fail, the backup process can restart from the last checkpoint. Stratus Computer has become another major producer of fault-tolerant machines for high-availability applications. Their approach uses duplex self-checking computers where each computer of a duplex pair is itself internally duplicated and compared to provide high-coverage concurrent error detection. The duplex pair of self-checking computers is run synchronously so that if one fails, the other can continue the computations without delay. Finally, the venerable IBM mainframe series, which evolved from S360, has always used extensive fault-tolerance techniques of internal checking, instruction retries and automatic switching of redundant units to provide very high availability. The newest CMOS-VLSI version, G4, uses coding on registers and on-chip duplication for error detection and it contains redundant processors, memories, I/O modules and power supplies to recover from hardware faults – providing very high levels of dependability. The server market represents a new and rapidly growing market for fault-tolerant machines driven by the growth of the Internet and local networks and their needs for uninterrupted service. Many major server manufacturers offer systems that contain redundant processors, disks and power supplies, and automatically switch to backups if a failure is detected. Examples are SUN’s ft-SPARC and the HP/Stratus Continuum 400. Other vendors are working on fault-tolerant cluster technology, where other machines in a network can take over the tasks of a failed machine. An example is the Microsoft MSCS technology. Information on fault-tolerant servers can readily be found in the various manufacturers’ web pages. Conclusion Fault-tolerance is achieved by applying a set of analysis and design techniques to create systems with dramatically improved dependability. As new technologies are developed and new applications arise, new fault-tolerance approaches are also needed. In the early days of fault-tolerant computing, it was possible to craft specific hardware and software solutions from the ground up, but now chips contain complex, highly-integrated functions, and hardware and software must be crafted to meet a variety of standards to be economically viable. Thus a great deal of current research focuses on implementing fault tolerance using COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) technology. References Avizienis, A., et al., (Ed.). (1987):Dependable Computing and Fault-Tolerant Systems Vol. 1: The Evolution of Fault-Tolerant Computing, Vienna: Springer-Verlag. (Though somewhat dated, the best historical reference available.) Harper, R., Lala, J. and Deyst, J. (1988): â€Å"Fault-Tolerant Parallel Processor Architectural Overview,† Proc of the 18st International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing FTCS-18, Tokyo, June 1988. (FTPP) 1990. Computer (Special Issue on Fault-Tolerant Computing) 23, 7 (July). Lala, J., et. al., (1991): The Draper Approach to Ultra Reliable Real-Time Systems, Computer, May 1991. Jewett, D., A (1991): Fault-Tolerant Unix Platform, Proc of the 21st International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing FTCS-21, Montreal, June 1991 (Tandem Computers) Webber, S, and Jeirne, J.(1991): The Stratus Architecture, Proc of the 21st International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing FTCS-21, Montreal, June 1991. Briere, D., and Traverse, P. (1993): AIRBUS A320/ A330/A340 Electrical Flight Controls: A Family of Fault-Tolerant Systems, Proc. of the 23rd International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing FTCS-23, Toulouse, France, IEEE Press, June 1993. Sanders, W., and Obal, W. D. II, (1993): Dependability Evaluation using UltraSAN, Software Demonstration in Proc. of the 23rd International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing FTCS-23, Toulouse, France, IEEE Press, June 1993. Beounes, C., et. al. (1993): SURF-2: A Program For Dependability Evaluation Of Complex Hardware And Software Systems, Proc. of the 23rd International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing FTCS-23, Toulouse, France, IEEE Press, June 1993. Blum, A., et. al., Modeling and Analysis of System Dependability Using the System Availability Estimator, Proc of the 24th International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing, FTCS-24, Austin TX, June 1994. (SAVE) Lala, J.H. Harper, R.E. (1994): Architectural Principles for Safety-Critical Real-Time Applications, Proc. IEEE, V82 n1, Jan 1994, pp25-40. Jenn, E. , Arlat, J. Rimen, M., Ohlsson, J. and Karlsson, J. (1994): Fault injection into VHDL models:the MEFISTO tool, Proc. Of the 24th Annual International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing (FTCS-24), Austin, Texas, June 1994. Siewiorek, D., ed., (1995): Fault-Tolerant Computing Highlights from 25 Years, Special Volume of the 25th International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing FTCS-25, Pasadena, CA, June 1995. (Papers selected as especially significant in the first 25 years of Fault-Tolerant Computing.) Baker, W.E, Horst, R.W., Sonnier, D.P., and W.J. Watson, (1995): A Flexible ServerNet-Based Fault-Tolerant Architecture, Pr oc of the 25th International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing FTCS-25, Pasadena, CA, June 1995. (Tandem) Timothy, K. Tsai and Ravishankar K. Iyer, (1996): â€Å"An Approach Towards Benchmarking of Fault-Tolerant Commercial Systems,† Proc. 26th Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing FTCS-26, Sendai, Japan, June 1996. (FTAPE) Kropp Nathan P., Philip J. Koopman, Daniel P. Siewiorek(1998):, Automated Robustness Testing of Off-the-Shelf Software Components, Proc of the 28th International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing , FTCS’28, Munich, June, 1998. (Ballista). Spainhower, l., and T.A.Gregg, (1998):G4: A Fault-Tolerant CMOS Mainframe Proc of the 28th International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing FTCS-28, Munich, June 1998. (IBM). Kozyrakis, Christoforos E., and David Patterson, A New Direction for Computer Architecture Research, Computer, Vol. 31, No. 11, November 1998.

Communication and Professional Relationships with Children, Young People and Adults

Effective communication is important in developing positive relationships with children, young people and adultsEffective communication creates positive relationships. You have to model excellent communication skills with the children and adults you work with on a daily basis. You should always think about how you approach people and how you respond back, doing so in a positive manner will help you achieve more information and communication in the long run because you are beginning to build a positive relationship with that child/person and this benefits them.We must always think about how we communicate and always make sure it is for the good of the pupil and the school. Always set a good example by behaving the way you would expect your pupil to. If you do not communicate effectively it can break down and that’s where misunderstandings occur and this can lead to negative feeling.When you use effective communication this creates a strong and positive relationship and your pup ils will benefit fully from that given situation.Explain the principles of relationship building with children, young people and adultsThe main principle of relationship building is to make others feel comfortable and at ease, if they are, they are more likely to communicate effectively. It is very important to be respectful and courteous and to listen to what they have to say. Always respect the views of others, especially if they have different cultural beliefs or values.Take the time to listen to others, this is not always easy when you are so busy but it is extremely important to build a positive relationship, always show that you are interested in what they have to say, they may need to confide in you.Have a good sense of humour, when appropriate this lightens peoples perception of you and can help people who are feeling stressed, laughter is a good way of relaxing.Always be clear on the reason you are communicating, giving people mixed messages does not create a good working r elationship, a good way of making sure people have received clear information is by asking them to repeat what is expected of them.Being considerate is a must as you may be working with a child or adult who is under strain due to work or home matters. If you are being considerate in that situation this will help you understand if they respond out of character and you may be able to help.Explain how different social, professional and cultural contexts may affect relationships and the way people communicateIt is important that you adapt your communication in different situations and always consider the context in which you are working. It is extremely important how we dress and present ourselves to others, if you are going into a formal meeting with managers and parents wearing jeans and trainers for example, this would not give a professional image of you or the school you work for.It is important if you say to either a child or an adult that you are going to get back to them with an answer, you do so as efficiently as you can, this also applies to how we respond to letters and messages and always make sure you check your spelling and grammar.Try to increase your knowledge of different cultures, as the way they behave or respond maybe different to you for example it is not polite to look another person in the eye when speaking to them in some cultures.Explain the skills needed to communicate with children and young peopleThere are certain skills needed and these skills must be used everyday in order to communicate effectively and to make the child/adult feel valued.Always make eye contact when a child is speaking to you, if you say you are listening but continue to write or look at something else it shows you are not really interested in what they have to say, giving your full attention shows that you are engaged and listening.Bring yourself to the level of the child this is less intimidating than towering over them. Always smile and react positively, use posit ive body language, don’t sit there with your arms tightly folded or your shoulders tense this can create tension, express your face when responding to what they have said this shows you are listening.A good way of showing that you are listening is to repeat what they have said and this can extend their communication by telling you more or you may need to comment on incorrect use of words to help them for next time.Always give a child an opportunity to speak this will help with their confidence and their need to express themselves and encourage them to ask questions, this will help them build conversation skills.Explain how to adapt communication with children and young peopleThe age of the child or young personDifferent ages require different levels of attention. You may need to use more physical contact to reassure very young children then as the children become older you can help talk through their concerns, you will always listen and react positively choosing correct vocab ulary.The context of the communicationDepending on the situation you need to be aware that you may need to change your verbal communication accordingly, always make sure the children are focused and pre-empt any distractions and get ready to deal with them with as little interruption as possible or if you are having general chit chat in the playground, use humour to respond to difficult questions such as Where do you live, What is your first name etc..Communication differencesMake yourself aware of the children with communication issues and always be sensitive to them by giving them more time so they do not feel pressured when speaking or signing. Some children can be very anxious so it is important to make them feel comfortable in the setting. It is important if a child has a stammer or speech impediment you do not speak for them, you cannot guess or assume you know what they wanted to say and this can create anger and stress. Do not be afraid of asking for additional training if y ou are working alongside children who use signing to communicate, for example – Makaton.Explain the main differences between communicating with adults and communicating with children and young peopleAlways remember that certain things stay the same such as being courteous and respectful and showing that you are interested, however, you must remember that if you are in a school setting and you are dealing with a child or young person you maintain that carer/child relationship and responsibility. You should not offer physical contact with children. Always be clear in what you say and what is expected of them and adapt your vocabulary accordingly.Explain how to adapt communication to meet different communication needs of adults.You must be sensitive when communicating with other adults, try and find out as much as you can beforehand, you may find they have communication difficulties, they maybe hearing impaired so always make sure you are facing them and speak clearly so they ca n lip read or the person may speak another language or very little English, make sure you have plans in place if required.Explain how to manage disagreements with children, young people and adultsA lot of the time disagreements are due to a lack of communication in the first instance and the best thing to do is to sort things out very carefully so the bad feelings do not persist. You must always respond with a positive attitude and polite manner and be sensitive to the other person’s feelings, if you feel the disagreement is spiralling out of control you may need to call in a mediator this being another member of staff who can maybe help sort things out, but hopefully if you are using the correct communication this should not be required unless you were somehow in a disagreement with a child, always seek advice from your line manager if this is the case.The best way to resolve disagreements is to find the cause and then decide on a course of action together. Offer encourageme nt and support.Summarise the main points of legislation and procedures covering confidentiality, data protection and the disclosure of informationData protection act 1998 – To provide a safe environment for our children we as a school are able to obtain certain information which is relevant such as, health and medical information, records from previous schools, records for children who have special educational needs. All this information is confidential. Parental consent would be required if this information was requested by another source.Every child matters (England 2003) – stresses the importance of sharing information between professionals, communication between us, is the key to help prevent tragic cases.You should not pass on information about the school or the children without being 110% certain you can, do not feel pressured to do so, always seek advice from your line manager if you are unsure.Explain the importance of reassuring children, young people and adul ts of the confidentiality of shared information and the limits of thisIt is extremely important that you communicate and explain fully your reasons for requiring the confidential information, you would make sure that you followed correct procedures and ask for consent if required, you also need to promote a professional image so people trust you to deal with the confidential information with the utmost respect that is needed. By doing this the children, young people and adults feel reassured their confidential information is handled appropriately and used effectively.Justify the kinds of situation when confidentiality protocols must be breached.If a child, young person or adult confides in you and you suspect child abuse or they are at risk or danger of someone or something never promise to keep it a secret you would have to tell the child, young person or adult that you are unable to keep it confidential for this reason and then you must tell and seek advice from your safeguarding point of contact.