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Ensuring Access to Safe and Nutritious Food for All Through the Transformation of Food Systems
Teaching offensive and defensive cyber security in schools using a Raspberry Pi Cyber Range
Computer Science as a subject is now appearing in more school curricula for GCSE and A level, with a growing demand for cyber security to be embedded within this teaching. Yet, teachers face challenges with limited time and resource for preparing practical materials to effectively convey the subject matter. We hosted a series of workshops designed to understand the challenges that teachers face in delivering cyber security education. We then worked with teachers to co-create practical learning resources that could be further developed as tailored lesson plans, as required for their students. In this paper, we report on the challenges highlighted by teachers, and we present a portable and isolated infrastructure for teaching the basics of offensive and defensive cyber security, as a co-created activity based on the teacher workshops. Whilst we present an example case study for red and blue team student engagement, we also reflect on the wide scope of topics and tools that students would be exposed to through this activity, and how this platform could then be generalised for further cyber security teaching
Grasping nothing: a study of minimal ontologies and the sense of music
If music were to have a proper sense – one in which it is truly given – one might reasonably place this in sound and aurality. I contend, however, that no such sense exists; rather, the sense of music takes place, and it does so with the impossible. To this end, this thesis – which is a work of philosophy and music – advances an ontology of the impossible (i.e., it thinks the being of what, properly speaking, can have no being) and considers its implications for music, articulating how ontological aporias – of the event, of thinking the absolute, and of sovereignty’s dismemberment – imply senses of music that are anterior to sound. John Cage’s Silent Prayer, a nonwork he never composed, compels a rerethinking of silence on the basis of its contradictory status of existence; Florian Hecker et al.’s Speculative Solution offers a basis for thinking absolute music anew to the precise extent that it is a discourse of meaninglessness; and Manfred Werder’s [yearn] pieces exhibit exemplarily that music’s sense depends on the possibility of its counterfeiting. Inso-much as these accounts produce musical senses that take the place of sound, they are also understood to be performances of these pieces. Here, then, thought is music’s organon and its instrument
A Design Science Research Approach to Smart and Collaborative Urban Supply Networks
Urban supply networks are facing increasing demands and challenges and thus constitute a relevant field for research and practical development. Supply chain management holds enormous potential and relevance for society and everyday life as the flow of goods and information are important economic functions. Being a heterogeneous field, the literature base of supply chain management research is difficult to manage and navigate. Disruptive digital technologies and the implementation of cross-network information analysis and sharing drive the need for new organisational and technological approaches. Practical issues are manifold and include mega trends such as digital transformation, urbanisation, and environmental awareness.
A promising approach to solving these problems is the realisation of smart and collaborative supply networks. The growth of artificial intelligence applications in recent years has led to a wide range of applications in a variety of domains. However, the potential of artificial intelligence utilisation in supply chain management has not yet been fully exploited. Similarly, value creation increasingly takes place in networked value creation cycles that have become continuously more collaborative, complex, and dynamic as interactions in business processes involving information technologies have become more intense.
Following a design science research approach this cumulative thesis comprises the development and discussion of four artefacts for the analysis and advancement of smart and collaborative urban supply networks. This thesis aims to highlight the potential of artificial intelligence-based supply networks, to advance data-driven inter-organisational collaboration, and to improve last mile supply network sustainability. Based on thorough machine learning and systematic literature reviews, reference and system dynamics modelling, simulation, and qualitative empirical research, the artefacts provide a valuable contribution to research and practice
Exploring the Training Factors that Influence the Role of Teaching Assistants to Teach to Students With SEND in a Mainstream Classroom in England
With the implementation of inclusive education having become increasingly valued over the years, the training of Teaching Assistants (TAs) is now more important than ever, given that they work alongside pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (hereinafter SEND) in mainstream education classrooms. The current study explored the training factors that influence the role of TAs when it comes to teaching SEND students in mainstream classrooms in England during their one-year training period. This work aimed to increase understanding of how the training of TAs is seen to influence the development of their personal knowledge and professional skills. The study has significance for our comprehension of the connection between the TAs’ training and the quality of education in the classroom. In addition, this work investigated whether there existed a correlation between the teaching experience of TAs and their background information, such as their gender, age, grade level taught, years of teaching experience, and qualification level.
A critical realist theoretical approach was adopted for this two-phased study, which involved the mixing of adaptive and grounded theories respectively. The multi-method project featured 13 case studies, each of which involved a trainee TA, his/her college tutor, and the classroom teacher who was supervising the trainee TA. The analysis was based on using semi-structured interviews, various questionnaires, and non-participant observation methods for each of these case studies during the TA’s one-year training period. The primary analysis of the research was completed by comparing the various kinds of data collected from the participants in the first and second data collection stages of each case. Further analysis involved cross-case analysis using a grounded theory approach, which made it possible to draw conclusions and put forth several core propositions. Compared with previous research, the findings of the current study reveal many implications for the training and deployment conditions of TAs, while they also challenge the prevailing approaches in many aspects, in addition to offering more diversified, enriched, and comprehensive explanations of the critical pedagogical issues
Differentiable programming tensor networks for Kitaev magnets
We present a general computational framework to investigate ground state
properties of quantum spin models on infinite two-dimensional lattices using
automatic differentiation-based gradient optimization of infinite projected
entangled-pair states. The approach exploits the variational uniform matrix
product states to contract infinite tensor networks with unit-cell structure
and incorporates automatic differentiation to optimize the local tensors. We
applied this framework to the Kitaev-type model, which involves complex
interactions and competing ground states. To evaluate the accuracy of this
method, we compared the results with exact solutions for the Kitaev model and
found that it has a better agreement for various observables compared to
previous tensor network calculations based on imaginary-time projection.
Additionally, by finding out the ground state with lower variational energy
compared to previous studies, we provided convincing evidence for the existence
of nematic paramagnetic phases and 18-site configuration in the phase diagram
of the - model. Furthermore, in the case of the realistic
--- model for the Kitaev material -RuCl, we
discovered a non-colinear zigzag ground state. Lastly, we also find that the
strength of the critical out-of-plane magnetic field that suppresses such a
zigzag state has a lower transition field value than the previous
finite-cylinder calculations. The framework is versatile and will be useful for
a quick scan of phase diagrams for a broad class of quantum spin models
When to be critical? Performance and evolvability in different regimes of neural Ising agents
It has long been hypothesized that operating close to the critical state is
beneficial for natural, artificial and their evolutionary systems. We put this
hypothesis to test in a system of evolving foraging agents controlled by neural
networks that can adapt agents' dynamical regime throughout evolution.
Surprisingly, we find that all populations that discover solutions, evolve to
be subcritical. By a resilience analysis, we find that there are still benefits
of starting the evolution in the critical regime. Namely, initially critical
agents maintain their fitness level under environmental changes (for example,
in the lifespan) and degrade gracefully when their genome is perturbed. At the
same time, initially subcritical agents, even when evolved to the same fitness,
are often inadequate to withstand the changes in the lifespan and degrade
catastrophically with genetic perturbations. Furthermore, we find the optimal
distance to criticality depends on the task complexity. To test it we introduce
a hard and simple task: for the hard task, agents evolve closer to criticality
whereas more subcritical solutions are found for the simple task. We verify
that our results are independent of the selected evolutionary mechanisms by
testing them on two principally different approaches: a genetic algorithm and
an evolutionary strategy. In summary, our study suggests that although optimal
behaviour in the simple task is obtained in a subcritical regime, initializing
near criticality is important to be efficient at finding optimal solutions for
new tasks of unknown complexity.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2103.1218
Determining electron column density fluctuations in a dominant scattering region using pulsar scintillation
Density fluctuations in the ionised interstellar medium have a profound
effect on radio pulsar observations, through angular scattering, intensity
scintillations, and small changes in time delays from dispersion. Here we show
that it is possible to recover the variations in dispersive delays that
originate from a dominant scattering region using measurements of the dynamic
spectrum of intensity scintillations, provided that the pulsar velocity and
scattering region location are known. We provide a theoretical framework for
the technique, which involves estimating the phase gradient from the dynamic
spectra and integrating that gradient to obtain phase variations. It can be
used to search for "extreme scattering events" (ESEs) in pulsars for which
precision dispersion delay measurements are not otherwise possible, or to
separate true dispersion variations from apparent variability caused by
frequency-dependent pulse shape changes. We demonstrate that it works in
practice by recovering an ESE in PSR J16037202, which is known from
precision dispersion delay measurements from pulsar timing. For this pulsar, we
find that the phase gradients also track the long-term variations in electron
column density observed by pulsar timing, indicating that the column density
variations and the scattering are dominated by the same thin scattering screen.
We identify a sudden increase in the scintillation strength and magnitude of
phase gradients over days in 2010, indicating a compact structure. A
decrease in the electron density in 2012 was associated with persistent phase
gradients and preceded a period of decreased scintillation strength and an
absence of scintillation arcs.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRA
Inhomogeneous Enrichment of Radioactive Nuclei in the Galaxy: Deposition of Live 53 Mn, 60 Fe, 182 Hf, and 244 Pu into Deep-sea Archives. Surfing the Wave?
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. This article is license under a Creative Commons license. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/While modeling the galactic chemical evolution (GCE) of stable elements provides insights to the formation history of the Galaxy and the relative contributions of nucleosynthesis sites, modeling the evolution of short-lived radioisotopes (SLRs) can provide supplementary timing information on recent nucleosynthesis. To study the evolution of SLRs, we need to understand their spatial distribution. Using a three-dimensional GCE model, we investigated the evolution of four SLRs: 53Mn, 60Fe, 182Hf, and 244Pu with the aim of explaining detections of recent (within the last ≈1–20 Myr) deposition of live 53Mn, 60Fe, and 244Pu of extrasolar origin into deep-sea reservoirs. We find that core-collapse supernovae are the dominant propagation mechanism of SLRs in the Galaxy. This results in the simultaneous arrival of these four SLRs on Earth, although they could have been produced in different astrophysical sites, which can explain why live extrasolar 53Mn, 60Fe, and 244Pu are found within the same, or similar, layers of deep-sea sediments. We predict that 182Hf should also be found in such sediments at similar depths.Peer reviewe
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