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Despite progress in melanoma patient treatment and outcomes, these patients face sustained uncertainty about their disease trajectory.

With the integration of communication networks and distributed control in modern manufacturing and process industries, networked control systems (NCSs) are becoming increasingly important due to its simplicity, scalability, flexibility, and cost effectiveness. However, there are still significant technical barriers that limit the applications of NCS technologies. Two challenges are network-induced time delay and data packet dropout. Applying a real-time queuing protocol that we developed recently, we are able to limit the sum of the network-induced communication delay and the control computation delay within a control period. This one-period delay is further guaranteed by well designed compensation for control packet dropout. Then, this paper proposes to compensate for the control packet dropout at the actuator using past control signals. Three model-free strategies for control packet dropout compensation, namely, PD (proportional plus derivative), PD2 (proportional plus up to the second-order derivative), and PD3 (proportional plus up to the third-order derivative) are developed. They are suitable for a large number of NCSs without the need to tune the compensator parameters. The proposed dropout compensation schemes are demonstrated through numerical examples.

The ethical aspects of robotics have recently gained sufficient importance to be debated in international forums and to be endowed with their own collective nametag-roboethics. Almost all of the discussion within the roboethics community and elsewhere has thus far centred on questions of the form: "Is it ethical to develop and use robots for such-and-such a purpose?", questions based upon doubts about the effect that a particular type of robot is likely to have, both on society in general and on those with whom the robots will interact in particular. What has usually been missing from the debate is the complementary question: "Is it ethical to treat robots in such-and-such a way?" Here we attempt to redress the balance, having first reviewed some of the relevant literature.

Aims and objectives To explore nursing students’ subjective experience of emotions during first‐year clinical placements, strategies used to manage their emotions and socialisation to emotion management. Background Emotion regulation is a key source of stress for early career and student nurses. Clinical placement experiences can elicit strong emotions in nursing students; however, they may be unprepared for the challenge of regulating their emotions in real‐world practice. How nursing students learn to manage their emotions in the clinical setting, whether they receive support for this, and how they are socialised to manage their emotions during placements are not well known. Design An exploratory qualitative study. Methods Semi‐structured interviews (n = 19) were conducted with first‐year nursing students, exploring their experiences of emotion management during clinical placement. Interview transcripts were analysed using conventional qualitative content analysis. Reporting adheres to the COREQ Checklist. Results Interactions with patients and staff often elicited negative feelings. Structured guidance for emotion management by supervising staff was scarce. Students used informal self‐reflection and interpretation to guide emotion management. Conclusions In the absence of strategic socialisation and formal support for effective emotion management, students used emotional labour strategies that can negatively impact on well‐being. A focus on adequately preparing nursing students for emotion work is a necessary component of classroom and clinical learning environments. Structured debriefing during clinical placements may provide a relevant context to discuss emotions arising during clinical work and to learn emotion management strategies. Relevance to clinical practice Emotional competence, a fundamental ability for registered nurses and students, supports personal health maintenance and strengthens professional practice. Students are exposed to clinical environments and interpersonal encounters that evoke strong emotions. They need situated learning strategies and formal support to develop knowledge and strengthen capability for emotion management, as this is essential for promoting professional development and patient care.

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Students studying a third-year e-commerce subject experienced face-to-face and online discussions as an important part of their learning experience. The quality of the students' experiences of learning through those discussions is investigated in this study. This study uses qualitative approaches to investigate the variation in the students' understanding of what they were learning through discussions, and how they went about engaging in them. Quantitative analyses are used to investigate how the students' experience related to their performance. Key outcomes of the study include that the quality of the students' experience of learning through discussions is positively related to their performance and that face-to-face and online discussions have qualitatively different benefits for learning.