Multifunctional MIMO systems: A combined diversity and multiplexing design perspective

In this treatise we investigate the design alternatives of different multiple-input multiple-output schemes while considering the attainable diversity gains, multiplexing gains, and beamforming gains. Following a brief classification of different MIMO schemes, where the different MIMO schemes are categorized as diversity techniques, multiplexing schemes, multiple access arrangements, and beamforming techniques, we introduce the family of multifunctional MIMOs. These multifunctional MIMOs are capable of combining the benefits of several MIMO schemes and hence attaining improved performance in terms of both their bit error rate as well as throughput. The family of multifunctional MIMOs combines the benefits of both space-time coding and the Bell Labs layered space-time scheme as well as those of beamforming. We also introduce the idea of layered steered space-time spreading, which combines the benefits of space-time spreading, V-BLAST, and beamforming with those of the generalized multicarrier direct sequence code-division multiple access concept. Additionally, we compare the attainable diversity, multiplexing, and beamforming gains of the different MIMO schemes in order to document the advantages of multifunctional MIMOs over conventional MIMO schemes

Review of the complaints system in the Secure Estate for Children and Young People: summary and action plan

"This document summarises the full report Review of the Complaints System in the Secure Estate for Children and Young People,1 and also provides an action plan outlining how we will be taking forward the recommendations made in the full report. All secure establishments for under 18-year-olds operate a system that allows young people to complain about any aspect of their care or treatment while in custody. The purpose of the full report was to review the complaints system across the secure estate for children and young people, and to address the key concerns on the issue raised in recent reports." - Page 2

Creating business value from big data and business analytics : organizational, managerial and human resource implications

This paper reports on a research project, funded by the EPSRC’s NEMODE (New Economic Models in the Digital Economy, Network+) programme, explores how organizations create value from their increasingly Big Data and the challenges they face in doing so. Three case studies are reported of large organizations with a formal business analytics group and data volumes that can be considered to be ‘big’. The case organizations are MobCo, a mobile telecoms operator, MediaCo, a television broadcaster, and CityTrans, a provider of transport services to a major city. Analysis of the cases is structured around a framework in which data and value creation are mediated by the organization’s business analytics capability. This capability is then studied through a sociotechnical lens of organization/management, process, people, and technology. From the cases twenty key findings are identified. In the area of data and value creation these are: 1. Ensure data quality, 2. Build trust and permissions platforms, 3. Provide adequate anonymization, 4. Share value with data originators, 5. Create value through data partnerships, 6. Create public as well as private value, 7. Monitor and plan for changes in legislation and regulation. In organization and management: 8. Build a corporate analytics strategy, 9. Plan for organizational and cultural change, 10. Build deep domain knowledge, 11. Structure the analytics team carefully, 12. Partner with academic institutions, 13. Create an ethics approval process, 14. Make analytics projects agile, 15. Explore and exploit in analytics projects. In technology: 16. Use visualization as story-telling, 17. Be agnostic about technology while the landscape is uncertain (i.e., maintain a focus on value). In people and tools: 18. Data scientist personal attributes (curious, problem focused), 19. Data scientist as ‘bricoleur’, 20. Data scientist acquisition and retention through challenging work. With regards to what organizations should do if they want to create value from their data the paper further proposes: a model of the analytics eco-system that places the business analytics function in a broad organizational context; and a process model for analytics implementation together with a six-stage maturity model

A methodology for integrated risk management and proactive scheduling of construction projects.

An integrated methodology is developed for planning construction projects under uncertainty. The methodology relies on a computer supported risk management system that allows to identify, analyze and quantify the major risk factors and derive the probability of their occurrence and their impact on the duration of the project activities. Using project management estimates of the marginal cost of activity starting time disruptions, a proactive baseline schedule is developed that is suffciently protected against the anticipated disruptions with acceptable project makespan performance. The methodology is illustrated on a real life application.Risk; Risk management; Management; Scheduling; Construction; Planning; Uncertainty; Factors; Probability; Impact; Project management; Cost; Time; Performance; Real life;

Neural Responding Machine for Short-Text Conversation

We propose Neural Responding Machine (NRM), a neural network-based response generator for Short-Text Conversation. NRM takes the general encoder-decoder framework: it formalizes the generation of response as a decoding process based on the latent representation of the input text, while both encoding and decoding are realized with recurrent neural networks (RNN). The NRM is trained with a large amount of one-round conversation data collected from a microblogging service. Empirical study shows that NRM can generate grammatically correct and content-wise appropriate responses to over 75% of the input text, outperforming state-of-the-arts in the same setting, including retrieval-based and SMT-based models.Comment: accepted as a full paper at ACL 201