Distributed University Timetabling with Multiply Sectioned Constraint Networks

Although timetabling has long been studied through constraint satisfaction based techniques, along with many alternatives, only recently work has been reported where distributed timetabling problems (DisTTPs) was studied as distributed constraint satisfaction problems (DisCSPs). We present an alternative method for solving DisTTPs based on multiply sectioned constraint networks (MSCNs). The proposed solution has several distinguishing features: Unlike the existing algorithms for DisCSPs whose worst-case time complexities are exponential, the algorithm suite based on MSCNs is efficient when the network topology is sparse. Unlike the existing DisTTP algorithm where a central agent is needed, there is no need for a central agent in the proposed solution. Unlike the existing DisTTP algorithm where partial timetables of other agents must be disclosed to the central agent, the proposed method keeps partial timetables of all agents private. We report our preliminary experimental result on distributed university timetabling problems (DisUTTPs)

Adaptive control system of slotless DC linear motor

Slotless DC linear motors (SDCLM) offer several benefits over traditional linear motors, including higher efficiency, smoother operation, and higher power density. These advantages make them a popular choice for a wide range of applications in various industries. One of the main benefits of a slotless DC linear motor is the absence of slot harmonics, which can cause vibration and noise in traditional slotted motors. This makes slotless motors ideal for applications that require precise and smooth motion, such as in medical equipment, robotics, and semiconductor manufacturing. However, one of the challenges of a Slotless DC linear motor is the presence of force ripple, which can limit the motor's performance, precision, and accuracy. Force ripple is caused by the mutual attraction of the translator's magnets and iron cores. It is independent of the motor current and is determined only by the relative position of the motor coils regarding the magnets. To overcome these challenges, motor redesign, magnetic field optimisation and the use of an adaptive control system. This research program focused on and investigated the above possible methods (i.e., motor redesign, magnetic field optimisation field and use of advanced control algorithms such as Sliding Mode Control SMC) to tackle the current challenges and improve the relevant industrial application performance and precision. The inquiry encompasses the analysis, design, and control of the SDCLM by proper modelling, building, and experimental validation of the modelled findings, applying both static and dynamic methodologies. Electrical, mechanical, and magnetic analyses were performed on the SDCLM design. The performance of the SDCLM was investigated using a finite element method (FEM), and the motor parameters were improved. Investigation and analysis are performed about additional difficulties such as force ripple and normal force, where the results indicated that the flux density in the airgap and the thrust force were different between the actual time and the simulation by 7.14% and 8.07%, respectively. Moreover, sliding mode control is designed to achieve desired system performance, such as reducing the power ripple of a slotless DC linear motor. where the proposed control shows experiments that it has stability despite disturbances and uncertainties. To improve the control method and reduce the steady-state error caused by the force ripple, the Bees algorithm has been used to tune the parameters of the controller. Finally, the outcomes indicate that the control method employing the disturbance observer and Bees algorithm has enhanced the performance of both position and speed, while concurrently reducing the force ripple. A comparison between simulation and experiment shows that there is a difference in the tracking performance, where the difference was around 13.6%. This error could have arisen from the omission of certain errors that cannot be accounted for within the simulation. These errors may stem from issues with the position sensor or discrepancies in the manual system design process

Measuring Quality of Life in Dystonia: An Ethnography of Contested Representations

Chapter 1: Introduction Describes my personal engagement with QOL measurement and disability. Situates research in a theoretical context by reviewing literature on the anthropologies of disability, audit, medicine, the body, and science and technology. Introduces dystonia and my field sites and briefly describes healthcare provision in the UK (including the role of the National Institute of Clinical Evidence). Section 1: Experiences of people living with dystonia Chapter 2 Living with dystonia Briefly reviews anthropological and sociological literature on living with a chronic illness, before focusing on the themes that characterise the experience of dystonia (understanding and representing changes in the body, obtaining a diagnosis and maintaining relations of trust with doctors, communicating dystonia to others, responding to dystonia, and external responses to dystonia). Chapter 3 Stories from people living with dystonia Explores the themes identified in chapter 2, using six stories to give a sense of how dystonia is integrated into people's lives. Looks at how people use narrative to make sense of illness and give it personal meaning and explores methodological problems with using narrative. Section 2: Encounters with bureaucracy Chapter 4 Encounters with medicine: Derek's story Examines individual encounters with medical bureaucracy through the story of Derek, an intelligent and articulate man with generalised dystonia. His story is contextualised by other interviews and accounts from people living with dystonia, and sociological and anthropological literature on "doctor-patient relations". Chapter 5 Professional or bureaucratic?: The dilemma of the Dystonia Society Examines the Dystonia Society (the main patient support organisation for people living with dystonia), which is an influential actor in the networks explored in chapter 6. Describes its history, culture, and relationship with members, and looks at how it constructs "the voice of people living with dystonia" in fundraising and media campaigns. Chapter 6 "Partnerships for progress"? Explores the relationships between pharmaceutical companies, patient support organisations, doctors, and the government, and their mediation through QOL, using ethnography from national and international meetings of neurologists, neurological patient support organisations, and QOL researchers. Treats QOL (and its related discourse on "the patients' voice") as a "boundary object" around which diverse alliances can form and explores these further in the context of submissions to the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. Section 3: Quality of life Chapter 7 Defining and measuring QOL Examines how the discipline of QOL research has expanded and professionalised, and constructs a "genealogy" of QOL to explore the links between its psychometric ancestry and the expansion of statistics and eugenics in the nineteenth century. Looks at the implications of definitions of QOL and assumptions underlying different measures. Explores how they are used in the health economic analyses that are increasingly guiding resource allocation in the UK and addresses the ethical and methodological problems of asking "healthy" people and health professionals to value the lives of people with disabilities. Chapter 8 An ethnography of QOL measurement Describes how measures of QOL are created and used, using ethnography from fieldwork on a multiple sclerosis-specific QOL measure and a European survey of the QOL of people living with dystonia. Chapter 9 Realising the potential of QOL: The World Health Organisation Uses the example of the WHO to demonstrate the double-edged nature ofQOL by examining three projects: a multilingual, multidimensional QOL measure to be used internationally with "healthy'' and sick populations; a universal classification of health (the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health); and the Global Burden of Disease Project, which uses health economic analyses to set international priorities for health spending using the Disability Adjusted Life Year. Conclusion Addresses key questions explored in the thesis, specifically how the rhetorics of QOL and the "voice of the patient" are used as resources in the struggles of doctors, patient support organisations, and pharmaceuticals; how QOL measures can represent "invisible" conditions like dystonia and make them visible and accountable; whether QOL measurement is an example of medicalisation and/or the extension of audit culture into health, and, finally, whether the voices of patients are currently being heard and what can be done to facilitate this

The new classroom teams : their nature, dynamics and difficulties

Adults are currently working alongside classteachers because of increased paren-tal involvement in schools and the integration of children with special needs. Although these new teams are likely to experience difficulties, they have formed the subject of minimal research. Teamwork research indicates that teams have difficulty in reconciling differences among members and that role definition is often problematic. Accounts of already-existing classroom teams confirm that such tensions exist. However, there are indications that by defining precisely the roles of participants, the team is made more effective. The nature of the new teams is documented through a regional survey which also gives clues to team tensions. A model is advanced on the basis of attribution theory to account for these tensions and this is tested and validated against the results of in-depth interviews with team participants. Classroom teams prove to possess little structure with minimal role definition. Team members erect defences against the tensions arising out of these loosely-structured teams; these take the form of 'status' or 'definitional' solutions to the problems participants confront. These are in turn associated with particular kinds of constructs and attributions on the part of participants. Participant observation in a secondary school support department confirms this dichotomy and indicates that in the absence of role definition, role-making evolves from interactions between participants; a model is advanced to account for and predict the nature of such interactions. The importance of clarity of role definition having been indicated throughout the research, the final element confirms experimentally an hypothesis that improving such definition will result in improved team effectiveness. Conclusions relate to the complexity and differentiation of dynamic within both homogeneous and heterogeneous classroom teams; operational strategies relat-ed to these conclusions are advanced

Tracing outsideness: young women's institutional journeys and the geographies of closed space

Understanding confinement and its complex workings between individuals and society has been the stated aim of carceral geography and wider studies on detention. This project contributes ethnographic insights from multiple sites of incarceration, working with an under-researched group within confined populations. Focussing on young female detainees in Scotland, this project seeks to understand their experiences of different types of ‘closed’ space. Secure care, prison and closed psychiatric facilities all impact on the complex geographies of these young women’s lives. The fluid but always situated relations of control and care provide the backdrop for their journeys in/out and beyond institutional spaces. Understanding institutional journeys with reference to age and gender allows an insight into the highly mobile, often precarious, and unfamiliar lives of these young women who live on the margins. This thesis employs a mixed-method qualitative approach and explores what Goffman calls the ‘tissue and fabric’ of detention as a complex multi-institutional practice. In order to be able to understand the young women’s gendered, emotional and often repetitive experiences of confinement, analysis of the constitution of ‘closed space’ represents a first step for inquiry. The underlying nature of inner regimes, rules and discipline in closed spaces, provide the background on which confinement is lived, perceived and processed. The second part of the analysis is the exploration of individual experiences ‘on the inside’, ranging from young women’s views on entering a closed institution, the ways in which they adapt or resist the regime, and how they cope with embodied aspects of detention. The third and final step considers the wider context of incarceration by recovering the young women’s journeys through different types of institutional spaces and beyond. The exploration of these journeys challenges and re-develops understandings of mobility and inertia by engaging the relative power of carceral archipelagos and the figure of femina sacra. This project sits comfortably within the field of carceral geography while also pushing at its boundaries. On a conceptual level, a re-engagement with Goffman’s micro-analysis challenges current carceral-geographic theory development. Perhaps more importantly, this project pushes for an engagement with different institutions under the umbrella of carceral geography, thus creating new dialogues on issues like ‘care’ and ‘control’. Finally, an engagement with young women addresses an under-represented population within carceral geography in ways that raise distinctly problematic concerns for academic research and penal policy. Overall, this project aims to show the value of fine grained micro-level research in institutional geographies for extending thinking and understanding about society’s responses to a group of people who live on the margins of social and legal norms

Repositioning teachers and learners in senior science for 21st century learning

This thesis explores how the turn towards ‘21st century learning’ might influence senior secondary science education in the context of high stakes summative assessment in Aotearoa New Zealand. Significant in the set of assumptions and ideals associated with 21st century learning is the expectation that learning is more personalised to address and allow for diverse student needs and interests. However, in the reality of classroom life, a question remains as to if and how 21st century ideals might translate into practice. A social constructionist theoretical orientation directed attention to the way 21st century learning as a discourse constructs certain conditions of possibility for teaching and learning. In turn, these conditions were viewed as shaping different possibilities for teacher and student positions and identities. Four macro-level elements of curriculum, assessment, physical spaces, and digital technologies were used to frame an examination of the ways in which the discourse of 21st century learning might play out in senior secondary science. Interpretations of science as a key learning area in the New Zealand curriculum (NZC) and the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) as the New Zealand secondary school exit qualification provided the contexts for elements of curriculum and assessment. Research was conducted in schools designed as open, shared, flexible learning spaces (FLS), incorporating wired and wireless technologies. This provided the context for the elements of physical space and digital technologies. The research was designed in two phases. In phase one, three case studies were undertaken to ask: What does senior secondary science learning look like in FLS schools when teachers and students are focussed on NCEA assessment? In phase two, three cycles of collaborative action research were undertaken over eight months with one teacher and her year 12 science class to explore: What could senior science learning look like? Qualitative data generated from interview and participant observation in both phases was analysed using thematic analysis to understand what science learning looked like or could look like. Social constructionist ideas of discourse, positioning, and identity were used to theorise and explore the overarching research question of how the discourse of 21st century learning might influence notions of senior secondary science to reposition teachers and learners of science. Findings show how the multifaceted identities taken up by teachers and students were shaped by the pedagogical possibilities created and available within the dynamic interplay between the four elements. Teachers and students could be seen to be positioned by and to position themselves within discourses of 21st century learning as personalisation and choice, and traditional science schooling, in action and tension. Some aspects of NCEA assessment acted to strengthen the traditional science schooling discourse which foregrounds science as knowledge-based and supports identities of teacher-expert as transmitters of knowledge. Other aspects of NCEA provided openings in line with science as inquiry as advocated in the NZC. Some aspects of FLS environments did not support some teachers’ view of traditionally effective approaches to science teaching and practical work. However, the affordances of digital technologies and the fluidity and social flow of flexible spaces enhanced possibilities for many forms of learning choices. Flexible spaces supported team teaching of larger groups and collaboration of teachers across science disciplines. Teachers responded to these openings by scaffolding different types of learning choices for diverse senior students in what, why, where, how, and with whom to learn, at different levels of openness in science inquiry. However, some students did not take up the full scope of the opportunities offered, especially where these were in tension with students’ ideas of how best to be successful in terms of achieving credits in NCEA. Findings reinforce the importance of the teacher’s role in scaffolding student autonomy to make choices and to achieve in student-directed inquiries. Overall, and in spite of the challenges and tensions that teachers and students faced, this research identifies opportunities for broadening the definition of ‘good’ science teacher and learner to include the offering and uptake of a range of learning choices in senior science inquiry as part of high stakes assessment. This research contributes insights in the form of situated stories of the struggles and achievements of teachers and students: what was happening and what did happen as they were positioned and as they acted to reposition themselves to take on different science teacher and learner identities in contexts of high stakes NCEA assessment in 21st century FLS environments. A range of implications for learning space design, curriculum and assessment policy, and directions for further research into science inquiry and digital pedagogies are outlined

PhD students´day FMST 2023

The authors gave oral presentations of their work online as part of a Doctoral Students’ Day held on 15 June 2023, and they reflect the challenging work done by the students and their supervisors in the fields of metallurgy, materials engineering and management. There are 82 contributions in total, covering a range of areas – metallurgical technology, thermal engineering and fuels in industry, chemical metallurgy, nanotechnology, materials science and engineering, and industrial systems management. This represents a cross-section of the diverse topics investigated by doctoral students at the faculty, and it will provide a guide for Master’s graduates in these or similar disciplines who are interested in pursuing their scientific careers further, whether they are from the faculty here in Ostrava or engineering faculties elsewhere in the Czech Republic. The quality of the contributions varies: some are of average quality, but many reach a standard comparable with research articles published in established journals focusing on disciplines of materials technology. The diversity of topics, and in some cases the excellence of the contributions, with logical structure and clearly formulated conclusions, reflect the high standard of the doctoral programme at the faculty.Ostrav