Getting to Outcomes: A User's Guide to a Revised Indicators Framework for Education Organizing

Research for Action (RFA) has been among those engaged in education organizing research and has drawn on its previous efforts–as well as the knowledge built by community organizing groups and other researchers–to create this User's Guide. The Indicators Framework can serve as a tool to help education organizing groups engage in self-reflection and evaluation of their efforts. Communities for Public Education Reform (CPER) commissioned RFA to update its theory of change, developed in partnership with CPER in 2002. The theory of change explains how education organizing works to strengthen communities and improve schools. Accompanying this theory of change was a set of indicators that could be used to assess the outcomes of the organizing process. This updated Indicators Framework reflects the adaptations education organizing groups are making in response to the new education realities, and to over a decade of experience working to change schools in low-income neighborhoods

Swarm shape manipulation through connection control

The control of a large swarm of distributed agents is a well known challenge within the study of unmanned autonomous systems. However, it also presents many new opportunities. The advantages of operating a swarm through distributed means has been assessed in the literature for efficiency from both operational and economical aspects; practically as the number of agents increases, distributed control is favoured over centralised control, as it can reduce agent computational costs and increase robustness on the swarm. Distributed architectures, however, can present the drawback of requiring knowledge of the whole swarm state, therefore limiting the scalability of the swarm. In this paper a strategy is presented to address the challenges of distributed architectures, changing the way in which the swarm shape is controlled and providing a step towards verifiable swarm behaviour, achieving new configurations, while saving communication and computation resources. Instead of applying change at agent level (e.g. modify its guidance law), the sensing of the agents is addressed to a portion of agents, differentially driving their behaviour. This strategy is applied for swarms controlled by artificial potential functions which would ordinarily require global knowledge and all-to-all interactions. Limiting the agents' knowledge is proposed for the first time in this work as a methodology rather than obstacle to obtain desired swarm behaviour

Application of an expert system shell in the preliminary design of offshore supply vessels

This paper presents the application of expert system programming in preliminary ship design with particular emphasis on offshore supply vessels. Instead of using one of the conventional programming expert system languages, the system is developed using an expert system shell, Leonardo. The design program is written in such a way that it is user friendly as well as giving the user full control over the progress of the design. The algorithms developed in this system are based on extensive research on existing offshore supply vessels

Towards Understanding the Origin of Genetic Languages

Molecular biology is a nanotechnology that works--it has worked for billions of years and in an amazing variety of circumstances. At its core is a system for acquiring, processing and communicating information that is universal, from viruses and bacteria to human beings. Advances in genetics and experience in designing computers have taken us to a stage where we can understand the optimisation principles at the root of this system, from the availability of basic building blocks to the execution of tasks. The languages of DNA and proteins are argued to be the optimal solutions to the information processing tasks they carry out. The analysis also suggests simpler predecessors to these languages, and provides fascinating clues about their origin. Obviously, a comprehensive unraveling of the puzzle of life would have a lot to say about what we may design or convert ourselves into.Comment: (v1) 33 pages, contributed chapter to "Quantum Aspects of Life", edited by D. Abbott, P. Davies and A. Pati, (v2) published version with some editin

Strategic considerations for construction in the People’s Republic of China: the case of German contractors in the 1990s

The construction industry has been struggling to integrate business strategies that are anticipating the internationalisation and infiltration of international markets. This article attempts to evaluate the China operations of German contractors from a strategic management decision perspective in the period between 1990 and 2000. Existing internationalisation theories have appeared to be inappropriate to explain international construction due to the unique project nature of construction business. The Ownership, Location and Internationalisation (OLI)-paradigm was initially developed to explain international production pattern was revised to form the basis for the evaluation of the Construction contractors’ market activities. The interviews indicate an industry-specific culture that affects how companies approach foreign markets. Some exceptional companies illustrated a higher degree of openness towards a more strategic and consistent approach in terms of the development of overseas markets

Clinical stakeholders' opinions on the use of selective decontamination of the digestive tract in critically ill patients in intensive care units : an international Delphi study

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