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The teaching of programming has been implemented at elementary schools worldwide as early as at the age of six. Even though the subject matter in the teaching of programming is mostly given, the specific form and content of lessons can significantly influence the attitudes of pupils, yet there is no standardized tool for evaluation of pupils' attitude toward the course. This study aims to compare and analyze existing attitudes surveys specifically focused on programming while considering limitations of secondary school pupils (ISCED-2). The article is based on theoretical and methodological literature review and a comparative analysis of existing surveys. Current surveys are mostly focused on university students and the questions are far too complex to be understood by pupils at elementary schools, making it necessary to create and validate new attitudes survey purely for the purpose of the topic of programming, that would reflect secondary school pupils limitations. Such a survey could be further used to compare different programming courses and their impact on pupils' attitudes. The research serves as a foundation for the development and testing of a new attitudes survey derived from existing ones and specifically modified for secondary school pupils.

Rapidly increasing energy demand from the industrial and commercial sector, especially in the current climate of high oil prices, steadily reducing energy sources and at the same time increased concerns about environmental changes, have caused fast development of Distributed Power Generation Systems (DPGS) based on renewable energy. A recent concept is to group DPGS and the associated loads to a common local area forming a small power system called a microgrid. This small autonomous system formed by DPGS can offer increased reliability and effciency of future power system networks. Furthermore, the improvement of the control capabilities and operational features of microgrids brings environmental and economic benefits. The introduction of microgrids improves power quality, reduces transmission line congestion, decreases emission and energy losses, and effectively facilitates the utilisation of renewable energy resources. As a consequence of the fast expanding DPGS based on renewable energy sources, Transmission System Operators (TSO) have issued strict interconnection requirements (grid code compliance), e.g., on power quality control, reactive power control, fault ride-through etc. Among these different requirements issued by the grid operators, power quality have recently gained a lot of attention due to excessive non-linear and unbalanced loads over-stressing the power systems and causing system failure. As nonlinear and/or unbalanced loads can represent a high proportion of the total load in small-scale systems, the problem with power quality is a particular concern in microgrids. In this work, different control strategies are proposed and implemented for the grid and microgrid connected voltage-source inverters (VSI), based on Hinf and repetitive control techniques. The repetitive control, which is regarded as a simple learning control method, offers very good performance for voltage and current tracking as it can deal with a very large number of harmonics simultaneously. This leads to a very low Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) of the output voltage and/or the current even in the presence of nonlinear loads and/or grid distortions. Initially, a voltage controller proposed in the literature for microgrid applications is further developed and experimentally tested. The aim is to improve power quality and tracking performance, while considerably reducing the complexity of the controller design. The model of the plant is reduced for single-input-single-output (SISO) repetitive control design. As a consequence, the design becomes much simpler and the stability evaluation easier. Moreover, a frequency adaptive mechanism is proposed so that the controller can cope with grid frequency variations in the grid-connected mode. This mechanism allows the controller to maintain very good tracking performance over a wide range of grid frequencies. Then, a Hinf repetitive control strategy for the inverter current is proposed and validated with experiments. As a result, the power quality and tracking performance are considerably improved. In order to demonstrate the improvements, the proposed controller is compared with the traditional proportional-resonant (PR), proportional- integral (PI) and predictive deadbeat (DB) controllers. Finally, the advantages of the proposed voltage and current controllers based on Hinf and repetitive control techniques are put together for consideration in microgrid applications and experimentally tested. The proposed cascaded current-voltage control strategy is not a simple combination of the two control strategies, but a complete re-design after realising that the inverter LCL filter can be split into two separate partsfor the design of the controllers. As a consequence, the cascaded controller is able to maintain low THD in both the microgrid voltage and the current following into/from the grid at the same time. It also enables seamless transfer of the operation mode from standalone to grid-connected or vice versa. It turns out that the voltage controller can be reduced to a proportional gain cascaded with the internal model (in a re-arranged form), which can be easily implemented in real applications. Experiments under different scenarios (e.g. in the standalone mode or in the grid-connected mode, with linear, nonlinear or unbalanced loads etc.) are presented to demonstrate the excellent performance of the controllers.

The global pharmaceutical industry portfolio is skewed towards cancer and rare diseases due to more predictable development pathways and financial incentives. In contrast, drug development for major chronic health conditions that are responsible for a large part of mortality and disability worldwide is stalled. To examine the processes of novel drug development for common chronic health conditions, a multistakeholder Think Tank meeting, including thought leaders from academia, clinical practice, non-profit healthcare organizations, the pharmaceutical industry, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), payors as well as investors, was convened in July 2022. Herein, we summarize the proceedings of this meeting, including an overview of the current state of drug development for chronic health conditions and key barriers that were identified. Six major action items were formulated to accelerate drug development for chronic diseases, with a focus on improving the efficiency of clinical trials and rapid implementation of evidence into clinical practice:1.Involve implementation science in the early phases of drug development.2.Involve regulatory agencies early in drug development, simplify clinical trial conduct and improve inter-agency collaboration.3.Involve payors early in drug development.4.Investigate novel implementation strategies.5.Increase focus on and funding for implementation science to develop strategies that improve utilization of proven effective treatments.6.Change public perception.

The global pharmaceutical industry portfolio is skewed towards cancer and rare diseases due to more predictable development pathways and financial incentives. In contrast, drug development for major chronic health conditions that are responsible for a large part of mortality and disability worldwide is stalled. To examine the processes of novel drug development for common chronic health conditions, a multi-stakeholder Think Tank meeting, including thought leaders from academia, clinical practice, non-profit healthcare organizations, the pharmaceutical industry, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), payors as well as investors, was convened in July 2022. Herein, we summarize the proceedings of this meeting, including an overview of the current state of drug development for chronic health conditions and key barriers that were identified. Six major action items were formulated to accelerate drug development for chronic diseases, with a focus on improving the efficiency of clinical trials and rapid implementation of evidence into clinical practice: 1. Involve implementation science in the early phases of drug development 2. Involve regulatory agencies early in drug development, simplify clinical trial conduct and improve inter-agency collaboration 3.Involve payors early in drug development 4. Investigate novel implementation strategies 5. Increase focus on and funding for implementation science to develop strategies that improve utilization of proven effective treatments. 6. Change public perception.

The problematic of pitting corrosion on blades of Kaplan turbine is discussed. Corrosion behaviour was observed during the first year of service. Material of the water turbine blades is martensitic stainless steel GX4CrNi13-4. Chemical composition and hardness of blades was measured, EDS analysis of corrosion products and microstructural evaluation on replicas were carried out. The main problem was found in heterogeneities in the cast microstructure and local disproportions in chemical composition. Influence of microbiologically induced corrosion and surface roughness is considered.

Two types of steels used for production of heavy forgings were selected for the experimental evaluation of the effect of long time dwell at elevated temperatures and cooling during heat treatment on their mechanical properties in order avoid the possibility of grain boundary embrittlement. Samples from evaluated steels 26NiCrMoV14-5 and 22CrNiMoWV8-8 were austenitized for 2 hours at temperature of 1200°C and oil quenched. Subsequently the annealing at temperatures (200 - 700)°C for 1 hour and 100 hours was applied. Selected mechanical properties, especially hardness and impact energy, were monitored. It was found that for steels 26NiCrMoV14‑5 and 22CrMoNiWV8-8 exist the temperature intervals (300 - 400)°C and (500 ‑ 600)°C respectively with the possible potential for toughness decreasing.