K is a formal framework for defining the operational semantics of programming languages. It includes software tools for compiling K language definitions to Maude rewrite theories, for executing programs in the defined languages based on the Maude rewriting engine, and for analyzing programs by adapting various Maude analysis tools. A recent extension to the K tool suite is an automatic transfor...

OBJECTIVES To identify, review and evaluate the published literature on the incidence, type and causes of dispensing errors in community and hospital pharmacy. METHOD Electronic databases were searched from 1966 to February 2008. This was supplemented by hand-searching the bibliographies of retrieved articles. Analysis of the findings explored the research methods, operational definitions, in...

BACKGROUND In active living research, measures used to characterize the built environment have been mostly gross qualities such as neighborhood density and park access. This project has developed operational definitions and measurement protocols for subtler urban design qualities believed to be related to walkability. METHODS Methods included: 1) recruiting an expert panel; 2) shooting video ...

Democracy has been defined in various ways by different people including government of the people, by the people and for the people, government with the consent of the governed, and a form of regime that derives from popular sovereignty in which ordinary citizens are endowed with the right and ability to govern themselves. It is my contention that concepts may have real, nominal and operational...

An understanding of community development in resource-based areas must begin with an awareness of what a community is and how it develops. In this article I provide a conceptual foundation for operational definitions of community and community development. The proposed working definitions are grounded in sociological theory and empirical research. This endeavor is timely since so much of our so...

Memory models have been described using many techniques. In this paper we describe a framework for specifying memory models using both axiomatic and operational approaches. We show how, to be equivalent, axiomatic definitions must be prefix-closed.

Rewriting logic is a flexible and expressive logical framework that unifies algebraic denotational semantics and structural operational semantics (SOS) in a novel way, avoiding their respective limitations and allowing succinct semantic definitions. The fact that a rewrite logic theory’s axioms include both equations and rewrite rules provides a useful “abstraction dial” to find the right balan...

The emerging concept of ‘critical HRD’ is complex, ambiguous and lacks clarity. To address this problem, the technique of concept analysis (Walker & Avant 1988, Rodgers 1989) is employed to help clarify our understanding of CHRD. Concept analysis presents theoretical definitions and defining characteristics of CHRD, which can help provide clearer operational definitions, to assist practitioners...