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The problem of implanting synchronous interprocess communication is approached with reference to a Unix* o p erat i ng system. A software system is presented, called Server Manager, which is aimed at managing a set of user processes and a set of server processes. As an example of application, a memory management system is considered, designed for capability - based addressing environments: the Server Manager has been used to implant message exchanges between the processes which form this memory management system.

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The aim of this prototype is the development of integrated design methodologies for distributed multimicroprocessor systems for real time applications. The main goals are modularity, expandibility, error confinement and robustness: such goals have been approached by the definition of a system organization that unifies hardware configuration, fault tolerance and operating system kernel requirements. The system is conceived as a hierarchical structure, composed of several virtual levels. Starting from the higher level specifications, the next lower level functionalities have to be excerpted, without any previous binding of specific functions to specific levels. This means, for example, that fault treatment needs not to be delegated only to hardware level.

In this paper, a fault-handling approach for distributed architectures is presented by referring to a specific multimicroprocessor system, i. e., the MuTEAM prototype. The approach is intended to take into account the following hardware and software specifications: i) the system is not provided with mass storage devices; ii) its activity consists of running a set of concurrent processes, cooperating through message exchanges; and iii) no erroneous output is generated toward the external environment even when a fault is present.

The authors consider the problem of providing hardware support for the development of real-time software in the context of a specific computer architecture, the Selenia MARA family of multi-microprocessor systems, under the constraint that no modifications to existing MARA hardware be involved. The specification of a programmable debugging aid (PDA), that can support program performance evaluation as well as program debugging and testing is described. The PDA hardware has been fully designed, and is being implemented as a research prototype.

MuTEAM is a multimicroprocessor system, being developed in Pisa under the support of the National Computer Science Program of the Italian National Research Council /1/. The system is composed of several Computer Elements (essentially constituted of a processor and some memory), which are grouped in clusters o The Computer Elements of the same cluster communicate through a shared memory space, which is utilized for obtaining a fast message transmission among processes. The shared space is segmented, and a protection mechanism is provided, which associates an access control list to each segment: the list of a given segment specifies the access rights of each processor of the cluster on that segment. In this paper, the MuTEAM system architecture and protection mechanisms are described in some detail. The provided fault treatment strategy and the operating system kernel are related in /2/ and /3/, respectively.

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The MuTEAM is a multimicroprocessor system, intended for embedded real-time applications, whose main characteristics are expandibility, modularity, error confinement robustness. In this paper, the system architecture is described in some detail, with particular respect to the hardware supporting the required characteristics of fault tolerance and distributed message-oriented operating system.

A distributed debugging system for multi-processor environments is presented, based on the event is defined in terms of a range condition and an access mode for a memory location. Elementary events can be compounded to express event abstractions. On the occurence of an event, the actions connected with that event will be performed. Possible actions are trace and break traps, event counting, and the measurement of time intervals. Implementation issue are discussed with reference to an ad-hoc programmable hardware debugging module.

Research on teacher motivation has recently given evidence of being closely related to several variables such as pre-service and in-service teacher training, educational reform, teaching practice, student motivation, work environment, psychological fulfilment and general health conditions. Taking into consideration the most recent studies on EFL teacher motivation across different disciplines and cultures, this paper aims at sharing the author’s personal experience with colleagues who have taught in CLIL trainee courses for High School content teachers. The results of the project, carried out in university run-courses from 2013 to 2017, have shown that teaching certain linguistic aspects (such as WE and ELF features, or word-forming processes) makes teachers linguistically aware of the plurality of English in communication and education, stimulates them strategically, increases their intrinsic motivation and influences their teaching effectiveness.

Over the last decades, proposals to modernise legislative drafting have been choral and among the specific causes generally mentioned there are sentences of undue length, overuse of archaic expressions, repeated definitions and expressions, partiality of nominalisations, lack of gender neutrality. The aim of this analysis is to explore the legislative techniques adopted by drafters of English-speaking countries over the last decades, who are asked to write legal sentences aiming at gender fair and symmetric representation of men and women. The issue examined from a lexico-grammatical perspective culminates in the proposed questions whether certain techniques used to implement gender-neutral drafting can result in a product that is better than the one had before.

In recent years, English has become the lingua franca of medicine and the language teaching profession has seen the emergence of im- plementing English for Medical Purposes (EMP) courses. The needs of EMP learners are very specific and EMP teachers who are language experts and not medical ones need to develop materials that are in line with EMP learners’ specific needs. In response to recognizing EMP students’ needs, extensive corpus-based research has led to specialized medical wordlists (Chen and Ge 2007; Wang, Liang, Ge 2008; Mungra and Canziani 2013; Hsu 2013; Lei and Liu 2016). Such wordlists have given instructors the opportunity to focus on specific vocabulary facil- itating domain specific learning. Among these medical wordlists, the Medical Academic Wordlist for clinical cases (MAWLcc) seems to fur- nish a good base for medical students, since it identifies the specific lexis of patient care. The aim of this paper is to propose an EMP teaching model for lexi- cal verbs extracted from the MAWLcc. These verbs are used in differ- ent communicative contexts for the development of medical students’ academic linguistic competence in their professional context.

English language education in Europe has recently been affected by a number of factors: the growingly plurilingual profile of its population; the implementation of European multilingual education policies; the widespread use of online communication; the global spread of English and the emergence of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) as the most widely used form of communication among speakers of different lingua-cultures to communicate with each other. Another feature that characterizes the current status of English is the growing number of English teachers that are by large non-native speakers with a role in English language programmes. These new scenarios are challenging existing paradigms, demanding for a shift in English language teaching (ELT) and education and the adoption of an ELF-informed frame of reference. Ways of devising and implementing these shifts have been explored in several research studies, as is the case of this contribution about an Italian research project aimed at devising an ELF-aware pedagogical model for ELT education. The authors discuss the challenges and preliminary findings of the study.

ELF research has showed that processes of accommodation are more important than linguistic correctness according to a NS model. Recently more studies have explored accommodation, pragmatic and multilingual strategies in different ELF corpora of naturally-occurring exchanges. However, what research still needs to address is how the participants themselves orient to these phenomena, how they view the idea of prioritizing effective communication instead of accuracy, as well as issues of ownership and nativeness versus the multilingual speaker. This paper addresses the views of business professionals through ethnographic interviews in a BELF community of practice. Findings show that professionals tend to prioritize intercultural accommodation and show open attitudes towards multilingual resources and non-nativeness in ELF. They also report challenges to their communication, which they overcome by relying on a shared repertoire and multilingual resources. Other reported challenges concern the company’s language policy and the access to languages other then English. Finally, it is argued that more research needs to address the link between sociolinguistic investigations of naturally-occurring corpus data with ethnographic explorations of practices and ideologies at the local level, both in ELF groups generally and ELF communities of practice specifically.

This paper investigates how the ‘New Evangelization’ (NE) process in the Catholic Church is enacted through ELF by Italian clergy offering spiritual practical assistance to immigrants. A case study will show how the NE discourse requires from immigrants the activation a ‘suspension of disbelief ’, epistemically inducing them to believe that the clergy’s possible-world ‘metaphysical’ representations can be true, ‘experiential pliability’, deontically compelling immigrants to adapt their actual-world experience to such counterfactual constructions.

The aim of this paper is to report on a research project that regards the pedagogical implications of using English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) at high school. It demonstrates how web-mediated activities such as cooperative writing and fanfiction can bridge the gap between the scholastic dimension of English Language Teaching (ELT) and the reality of authentic communication situated in multilingual and multicultural contexts. This study, which is essentially informed by Vygotsky's (1978) sociocultural theory (SCT), examines the controversial nature of ELF from a social constructionist theoretical perspective on second language learning (Lantolf, 2000). It takes into consideration the typical double identity of most L2-users, who are simultaneously students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) attending regular language classes, and ELF speakers who use English as an additional language for real social practice (e.g. travelling abroad, interacting on the Internet, etc.). Interestingly, the results of this research indicate that these two identities are not necessarily conflictual, but become more and more convergent and complementary in the L2-user's successful performance. A number of Italian high-school classes from Rome, Palermo and Messina were interconnected online by way of aNobii (a social network dedicated to book readers), and a wiki that was designed specifically in order to let students create a web-mediated community of practice (Cop) (Wenger, 1998) working on English literature and fanfiction. In this way, students had the opportunity to a) use ELF as a mediational means to participate in an open forum with a large number of fellow readers and share their views on their favourite authors and novels, and b) use ELF as an affordance (Gibson, 1979) to express their creative power in writing fanfiction collaboratively, and share their work with other fanfiction networkers. In addition, working as a community of practice favoured the creation of a zone of proximal development (ZPD), whereby participants could improve their texts through peer reviewing. At the end of the project, both student and a teacher survey were conducted to collect pertinent information as regards the participants' use of digital tools (at home and at school), and their feedback on the experience of using ELF to connect the class to a wider community of speakers. In conclusion, this research indicates that the use of ELF to carry out real Web-mediated activities is not a hindrance to language learning and could well be incorporated into ELT as a valuable resource for a more effective communicative approach to English.

This paper is about the production of knowledge and meaning through discourse. It is about the knowledge and power which organise conduct, understanding, practice and belief. The production of knowledge is always crossed with questions of power and this greatly expands the scope of what is involved in representation. The article offers some reflections on power and discourse, predominantly grounded in Foucault’ s theory of power and discourse, but it also includes some examples from the research conducted at the Faculty of Maritime Studies, University of Rijeka.