Team-based fixed-time containment control for multi-agent systems with disturbances

We investigate the fixed-time containment control(FCC)problem of multi-agent systems(MASs)under discontinuous communication.A saturation function is used in the controller to achieve the containment control in MASs.One difference from using a symbolic function is that it avoids the differential calculation process for discontinuous functions,which further ensures the continuity of the control input.Considering the discontinuous communication,a dynamic variable is constructed,which is always non-negative between any two communications of the agent.Based on the designed variable,the dynamic event-triggered algorithm is proposed to achieve FCC,which can effectively reduce controller updating.In addition,we further design a new event-triggered algorithm to achieve FCC,called the team-trigger mechanism,which combines the self-triggering technique with the proposed dynamic event trigger mechanism.It has faster convergence than the proposed dynamic event triggering technique and achieves the tradeoff between communication cost,convergence time and number of triggers in MASs.Finally,Zeno behavior is excluded and the validity of the proposed theory is confirmed by simulation.

Team-based stepped care in integrated delivery settings

Fragmented health care delivery is recognized as increasingly problematic.Integrated care has been advanced as a reform that will improve quality of care and lower costs.Despite the application of integrated care systems in the United States,there has been a limited amount of empirical work explicating the most effective health care pathways.Stepped care has been proposed as a framework by which to implement coordinated team-based care and has gained preliminary empirical support.In this manuscript a rationale for team-based stepped care is presented,tools for implementation are provided,and future research directions are suggested.

Raising Awareness of the Constituents of Software Design – The Case of Documentation

This research was performed within a software engineering workshop for Computer Science students. For addressing the soft skills issues required by the industry, the course was delivered as a workshop with various (inter and intra) team based activities. An additional objective of outlining the importance of software maintainability issues was achieved through team-based role play. There were three assignments in which each team had to continue the work performed by another team, thus creating a dependency between the teams as might happen during maintenance. The main research study objective was to examine the effect of employing this kind of a team-based role-play peer-review on the students’ learning process regarding maintainability. Data referring to the students’ perceptions is presented and analyzed in addition to student reflections on the workshop which demonstrate their expanded understanding of the design and application process.

Current Situation of the Teaching of Ophthalmology in General Practice Medical Education and the Application of TBL

Ophthalmology is an integral part of general practice education,and it is of great significance to have some knowledge on ophthalmology even if the general practitioner is not an ophthalmologist.The subject characteristics,the traditional mode of teaching,and the cognitive deviation of students have greatly influenced its teaching quality.The application of team-based learning(TBL)in ophthalmology education responds to the demand of modern medical education.Building a team,designing questions that combine theory and clinical practice,as well as employing a fair scoring system can stimulate students’learning interest and improve their learning autonomy and ability to ask questions and solve problems.

A review of whole-medical systems and holistic care approach for type 2 diabetes and associated metabolic syndrome

Whole-person care and holistic care approach has been proposed for complementary and integrative health care for type 2 diabetes mellitus.However,some doubts still exist on the feasibility of replicating processes followed in clinical trials and observational studies in real-world settings.This narrative literature review summarized and assessed existing clinical evidence(clinical trials,observational studies,and case reports)describing holistic and integrated care approach in adult and adolescent individuals with type 2 diabetes mellitus in clinical practice.The goal was to highlight existing evidence for implementation and outcomes of whole-medical systems and holistic integrated care approach for type 2 diabetes mellitus.A nonsystematic literature search was performed on Google Scholar,PubMed,Web of Science,ProQuest and ScienceDirect to identify clinical evidence from different parts of the world,evaluating the use of whole-medical systems and/or holistic care interventions in clinical practice for management of type 2 diabetes mellitus.Relevant keywords were used in the search.Data were analyzed using content analysis and simple descriptive statistics(percentages).Most of the studies(64%)were mainly conducted in Eastern countries(India,China and Israel)while 36%of the studies were conducted in the Western countries(USA,Netherlands,Canada and Mexico).Lifestyle medicine and integrated naturopathy were shown to be the commonly used whole-medical systems for type 2 diabetes mellitus management.Significant improvements in type 2 diabetes parameters,medication use,other symptoms,and overall feeling of wellness were observed in all studies.This review study revealed limited utilization and/or documentation of whole-medical systems or holistic care treatments for type 2 diabetes mellitus in regions of the world other than eastern countries.Lifestyle medicine,naturopathy,yoga,Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine were shown to be effective for type 2 diabetes mellitus,either as an alternative or as a complementary therapy.