12,710 research outputs found

    Identifying and responding to people with mild learning disabilities in the probation service

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    It has long been recognised that, like many other individuals, people with learningdisabilities find their way into the criminal justice system. This fact is not disputed. Whathas been disputed, however, is the extent to which those with learning disabilities arerepresented within the various agencies of the criminal justice system and the ways inwhich the criminal justice system (and society) should address this. Recently, social andlegislative confusion over the best way to deal with offenders with learning disabilities andmental health problems has meant that the waters have become even more muddied.Despite current government uncertainty concerning the best way to support offenders withlearning disabilities, the probation service is likely to continue to play a key role in thesupervision of such offenders. The three studies contained herein aim to clarify the extentto which those with learning disabilities are represented in the probation service, toexamine the effectiveness of probation for them and to explore some of the ways in whichprobation could be adapted to fit their needs.Study 1 and study 2 showed that around 10% of offenders on probation in Kent appearedto have an IQ below 75, putting them in the bottom 5% of the general population. Study 3was designed to assess some of the support needs of those with learning disabilities in theprobation service, finding that many of the materials used by the probation service arelikely to be too complex for those with learning disabilities to use effectively. To addressthis, a model for service provision is tentatively suggested. This is based on the findings ofthe three studies and a pragmatic assessment of what the probation service is likely to becapable of achieving in the near future

    Identification of Hindbrain Neural Substrates for Motor Initiation in the hatchling Xenopus laevis Tadpole

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    Animal survival profoundly depends on the ability to detect stimuli in the environment, process them and respond accordingly. In this respect, motor responses to a sensory stimulation evolved into a variety of coordinated movements, which involve the control of brain centres over spinal locomotor circuits. The hatchling Xenopus tadpole, even in its embryonic stage, is able to detect external sensory information and to swim away if the stimulus is considered noxious. To do so, the tadpole relies on well-known ascending sensory pathway, which carries the sensory information to the brain. When the stimulus is strong enough, descending interneurons are activated, leading to the excitation of spinal CPG neurons, which causes the undulatory movement of swimming. However, the activation of descending interneurons that marks the initiation of motor response appears after a long delay from the sensory stimulation. Furthermore, the long-latency response is variable in time, as observed in the slow-summating excitation measured in descending interneurons. These two features, i.e. long-latency and variability, cannot be explained by the firing time and pattern of the ascending sensory pathway of the Xenopus tadpole. Therefore, a novel neuronal population has been proposed to lie in the hindbrain of the tadpole, and being able to 'hold' the sensory information, thus accounting for the long and variable delay of swim initiation. In this work, the role of the hindbrain in the maintenance of the long and variable response to trunk skin stimulation is investigated in the Xenopustadpole at developmental stage 37/38. A multifaceted approach has been used to unravel the neuronal mechanisms underlying the delayed motor response, including behavioural experiments, electrophysiology analysis of fictive swimming, hindbrain extracellular recordings and imaging experiments. Two novel neuronal populations have been identified in the tadpole's hindbrain, which exhibit activation patterns compatible with the role of delaying the excitation of the spinal locomotor circuit. Future work on cellular properties and synaptic connections of these newly discovered populations might shed light on the mechanism of descending control active at embryonic stage. Identifying supraspinal neuronal populations in an embryonic organism could aid in understanding mechanisms of descending motor control in more complex vertebrates

    Working in ministries or public organizations in Saudi Arabia : A study of career development and job satisfaction of the Saudi Arabian middle managers

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    Career development and job satisfaction studies carried out in developing countries are very limited in number. Saudi Arabia is one of those developing countries which appeared on the political scene quite recently, but striving hard to develop its human resources due to its heavy dependence on expatriate labour to initiate and execute its development plans. The genesis of the study began when General Civil Service Bureau officials noticed a large movement of employees from ministries to other sectors (i.e. public organizations and the private sector). The purpose of this dissertation is to examine and analyze the factors behind this movement and relate this to the studies of career development and job satisfaction. The position of government organizations in Saudi Arabia is rather unique. Most of their employees are drawn from Universities due to the regulations of the GCSB of compelling them to work in ministries for a period equivalent to that spent in their University education until graduation. This situation has prevented such graduates from choosing their own occupations and seem to hinder their career development. As a consequence, this study, not only analyzes career development and job satisfaction in Saudi Arabia, but (v) job satisfaction in Saudi Arabia, but also makes a comprehensive evaluation of economic, social and organisational environments which seem to have an effect of the occupational choice of the Saudis. We take the assumption that the ideology of free occupational choice is not properly applied in Saudi Arabia due to some cultural variables (e.g. nepotism and strong family ties). Hence, this thesis will develop a definition of the concept of occupational choice and career development and the process of personnel flow and the ways in which such movement can be influenced within the Saudi context. The study will be primarily concerned with middle managers in two types of organization - government ministries and public organizations. This will hopefully give a profile of the Saudi situation as far as occupational choice, career development and job satisfaction are concerned

    Adaptive task selection using threshold-based techniques in dynamic sensor networks

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    Sensor nodes, like many social insect species, exist in harsh environments in large groups, yet possess very limited amount of resources. Lasting for as long as possible, and fulfilling the network purposes are the ultimate goals of sensor networks. However, these goals are inherently contradictory. Nature can be a great source of inspiration for mankind to find methods to achieve both extended survival, and effective operation. This work aims at applying the threshold-based action selection mechanisms inspired from insect societies to perform action selection within sensor nodes. The effect of this micro-model on the macro-behaviour of the network is studied in terms of durability and task performance quality. Generally, this is an example of using bio-inspiration to achieve adaptivity in sensor networks

    Smart factory benefits and specification for piloting

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    Abstract. This thesis aims to build a base for the road towards a smart factory and gather information about the field by examining related technologies, requirements and challenges, and available solutions from Finnish providers. Through these examinations, occurring challenges in the reference location are highlighted and ideas to tackle these are proposed, most suitable technologies and use cases are described, and the pilot is designed around the most suitable solution. In addition, an overview of the factory is examined, and ongoing projects and suitable data gathering methods are described so that the current situation, development activities, and necessary methods for data gathering are known. To gather all this information, a literature review, survey, and straight contacts were made. A literature review was used for the examination of the key areas of the topic, a survey to examine the occurring challenges, and straight contacts to gather the information about the available solutions and production. Based on the findings, the pilot is designed, a roadmap of the future steps is proposed, and to conclude the topic achievable benefits and specification for the piloting are described. This research led to the conclusion that the current situation is at the Industry 3.0 stage and there are some challenges on the road toward the era of Industry 4.0. In addition, many solutions and technologies are already available, and some ongoing projects are related to these. Now is the time to make the vision clear and compile all the individual projects together and change the target towards building a smart factory.Älykkään tehtaan hyödyt ja vaatimusmäärittely pilotoinnille. Tiivistelmä. Tämän diplomityön tavoitteena on rakentaa pohja älykkäälle tehtaalle ja sen pilotoinnille sekä kerryttää tietoa aihepiiristä. Pohjan rakentamisen keskiössä on aihepiiriin liittyvien teknologioiden, vaatimusten ja haasteiden sekä suomalaisten toimittajien tarjoamien ratkaisuiden tutkiminen. Tutkimusten pohjalta referenssikohteessa esiintyviä haasteita nostetaan esille ja niihin ehdotetaan ratkaisuja, sopivimpia teknologioita ja käyttökohteita esitellään ja pilotointi suunnitellaan sopivinta ratkaisua hyödyntäen. Näiden lisäksi tehtaan yleiskuvaa käydään läpi, aihepiiriin liittyviä meneillään olevia projekteja tarkastellaan ja sopivimpia datan keräysmentelmiä esitellään, jotta tehtaan tehtaan nykytila, meneillään olevat aihepiirin kehityshankkeet ja vaadittavat datan keräysmentelmät tiedetään. Näiden tietojen koostamiseksi hyödynnettiin kirjallisuuskatsausta, kyselyä sekä suoraa kontaktointia ratkaisujen tarjoajiin sekä tuotannon työnjohtajiin ja tuotannonsuunnittelijaan. Kirjallisuuskatsauksella hankittiin tietoa aihepiiristä ja siihen liittyvistä teknologioista, kyselyllä selvitettiin referenssikohteessa esiintyviä haasteita ja suoralla kontaktoinnilla hankittiin tietoa tarjolla olevista ratkaisuista ja tuotantoon liittyvistä asioista. Tulosten pohjalta suunnitellaan ratkaisun pilotointi, kehitetään tiekartta tulevista askelista ja tiivistetään saavutettavat hyödyt ja vaatimusmäärittely, jotta saavutetaan otsikon mukainen kokonaisuus. Tämä tutkimus on osoittanut, että tehtaan nykytila on teollisuus 3.0 tasolla ja matkalla kohti teollisuus 4.0 aikakautta haasteita tulee esiintymään. Lisäksi useita aihepiirin ratkaisuita ja teknologioita on jo tarjolla sekä osa meneillään olevista projekteista liittyy näihin. Nyt olisi hyvä aika kirkastaa visiota, yhdistää näitä yksittäisiä projekteja yhteen ja muuttaa kokonaisuuden suunta kohti älykkään tehtaan rakentamista

    Knowledge Transfer for and through the Replication of Organisational Routines in Franchise Systems

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    Routines are dispositions to behave according to established sets of rules that are also repositories of the organisational memory about “how things get done”. Franchise systems are organisational forms which expand through the replication of routines by new units owned by franchisees. Drawing on insights from the literatures on organisational learning, organisational evolution (under generalised Darwinism), and cognitive psychology, this thesis identifies the building blocks for a conceptual explanation of routine replication in franchise systems. It then proposes an original case study of Yázigi, a large Brazilian franchise system of language schools, which is used to develop a novel process model that captures how knowledge is transferred for and through the replication of routines within an expanding franchise system. Four principal lessons are derived. First, when direct knowledge transfer is not available, artefacts, most notably template representations of routines, are essential. Second, intermediaries, as agents of routine compilation who direct participants to template representations, are crucial to the process of routine replication. Third, just as routines are analogues of habits, routine compilation seems to reproduce habit compilation. Finally, existing learning-related habits of thought may work in favour of or against the adoption of new habits in the replication process. This thesis outlines the prescriptive implications of these lessons for franchise practitioners and details opportunities for future research

    2021-2022 student handbook

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    Technical College of the Lowcountry publishes a student handbook with information about the university, student life and information about student programs and campus information

    Detecting Deepfakes with Deep Learning and Gabor Filters

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    The proliferation of many editing programs based on artificial intelligence techniques has contributed to the emergence of deepfake technology. Deepfakes are committed to fabricating and falsifying facts by making a person do actions or say words that he never did or said. So that developing an algorithm for deepfakes detection is very important to discriminate real from fake media. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are among the most complex classifiers, but choosing the nature of the data fed to these networks is extremely important. For this reason, we capture fine texture details of input data frames using 16 Gabor filters indifferent directions and then feed them to a binary CNN classifier instead of using the red-green-blue color information. The purpose of this paper is to give the reader a deeper view of (1) enhancing the efficiency of distinguishing fake facial images from real facial images by developing a novel model based on deep learning and Gabor filters and (2) how deep learning (CNN) if combined with forensic tools (Gabor filters) contributed to the detection of deepfakes. Our experiment shows that the training accuracy reaches about 98.06% and 97.50% validation. Likened to the state-of-the-art methods, the proposed model has higher efficiency

    Cooperatives in the social and solidarity economy: Sustainable development and decent work in Africa’s informal economy

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    How can the contribution of cooperatives and the wider social and solidarity economy (SSE) to global development frameworks (the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Decent Work Agenda (DWA) be made more effective, impactful and visible, in particular with regard the informal economy in sub-Saharan Africa? This thesis seeks to provide an answer to this question through the journey of my professional practice, bridging the gap to academic theory. The thesis critically analyses and builds upon the contributions to knowledge of my portfolio of seven ‘professional practice’ papers published between 1993 and 2020. The papers were written upon request or invitation by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs, the Plunkett Foundation, and the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation. The thesis starts with a contextual overview of the state of the field from both practice and theory. This is followed by a literature review which examines academic theory in relation to, and interaction between, the five focus areas of my thesis (cooperatives, SSE, DWA, SDGs, informal economy) within the context of neoliberal policies in Africa. I then critically reflect on the methodological, theoretical and political aspects of my seven publications. Finally, I pin-point directions for future research. I conclude that the SSE’s potential to contribute to sustainable development and decent work in Africa is far from being fully harnessed, for the reason that most policy-makers, researchers and practitioners lack cognizance of the existence and agency of member-based organizations that constitute the SSE. Through the journey of writing the theses I have developed a conceptual model and an accompanying tool to systematically identify and evaluate the synergies and complementarities between the four dimensions of sustainable development (economic, social, environmental and institutional), the four pillars of decent work (jobs, protection, dialogue, rights), and the four functions of the SSE (economic opportunities, social security, societal empowerment, environmental protection). This then helps to identify SSE-pertinent SDG targets, and to determine which types of organizations in the SSE are best suited to contribute to specific SDG targets. I consider this conceptual model and its accompanying tool as an original contribution to knowledge of theoretical and practical applicability
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