OBJECTIVE: Develop a tool to disseminate integrated laboratory, clinical, and demographic case data necessary for improved contact tracing and outbreak detection of tuberculosis (TB). METHODS: In 2007, the Public Health Ontario Laboratories implemented a universal genotyping program to monitor the spread of TB strains within Ontario. Ontario Universal Typing of TB (OUT-TB) Web utilizes geographic information system (GIS) technology with a relational database platform, allowing TB control staff to visualize genotyping matches and microbiological data within the context of relevant epidemiological and demographic data. RESULTS: OUT-TB Web is currently available to the 8 health units responsible for >85% of Ontario's TB cases and is a valuable tool for TB case investigation. Users identified key features to implement for application enhancements, including an e-mail alert function, customizable heat maps for visualizing TB and drug-resistant cases, socioeconomic map layers, a dashboard providing TB surveillance metrics, and a feature for animating the geographic spread of strains over time. CONCLUSION: OUT-TB Web has proven to be an award-winning application and a useful tool. Developed and enhanced using regular user feedback, future versions will include additional data sources, enhanced map and line-list filter capabilities, and development of a mobile app.

In an empirical study of fourteen widely used open source PHP Web applications, we found that the vulnerability density of the aggregate code base decreased from 8.88 vulnerabilities/KLOC to 3.30 from Summer 2006 to Summer 2008. Individual web applications varied widely, with vulnerability densities ranging from 0 to 121.4 at the beginning of the study. While the total number of security problems decreased, vulnerability density increased in eight of the fourteen applications over the analysis period. We developed a security resources indicator metric, which we found to be strongly correlated (rho = 0.67, p < 0.05) with change in vulnerability density over time. Traditional software metrics, such as code size, cyclomatic complexity, nesting complexity, and churn, had significant (p < 0.05) but much smaller correlations (rho = 0.31 at best) with vulnerability density. Vulnerability density was measured using the fortify source code analyzer static analysis tool.

The architecture of an RISC (reduced instruction set computer) based on multiprocessor chip designed in the Briarcliff Multiprocessor Project is described. The processors operate in an MIMD (multiple instruction, multiple data) fashion, executing parallel instruction streams generated by a parallelizing compiler for the exploitation of fine-grained parallelism. Low-cost synchronization mechanisms are supported in hardware. The resulting system is tolerant of unpredictable delays in the progress of individual streams. Instruction level parallelism is exploited through the use of register channels and a mechanism for the collective branching of processors. For efficient synchronization during parallel execution of loops, fuzzy barriers are provided. On-chip memory is organized into multiple banks in order to provide sufficient bandwidth for the processors. The RISC processors are based upon the Sun SPARC architecture.>