Final Research Report for Sound Design and Audio Player

This deliverable describes the work on Task 4.3 Algorithms for sound design and feature developments for audio player. The audio player runs on the in-store player (ISP) and takes care of rendering the music playlists via beat-synchronous automatic DJ mixing, taking advantage of the rich musical content description extracted in T4.2 (beat markers, structural segmentation into intro and outro, musical and sound content classification). The deliverable covers prototypes and final results on: (1) automatic beat-synchronous mixing by beat alignment and time stretching – we developed an algorithm for beat alignment and scheduling of time-stretched tracks; (2) compensation of play duration changes introduced by time stretching – in order to make the playlist generator independent of beat mixing, we chose to readjust the tempo of played tracks such that their stretched duration is the same as their original duration; (3) prospective research on the extraction of data from DJ mixes – to alleviate the lack of extensive ground truth databases of DJ mixing practices, we propose steps towards extracting this data from existing mixes by alignment and unmixing of the tracks in a mix. We also show how these methods can be evaluated even without labelled test data, and propose an open dataset for further research; (4) a description of the software player module, a GUI-less application to run on the ISP that performs streaming of tracks from disk and beat-synchronous mixing. The estimation of cue points where tracks should cross-fade is now described in D4.7 Final Research Report on Auto-Tagging of Music.EC/H2020/688122/EU/Artist-to-Business-to-Business-to-Consumer Audio Branding System/ABC D

Chemical applications of escience to interfacial spectroscopy

This report is a summary of works carried out by the author between October 2003 and September 2004, in the first year of his PhD studie

Business processes in the agile organisation: a socio-technical perspective

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This paper takes a cross-disciplinary view of the ontology of “business process”: how the concept is treated in the IS research literature and how related concepts (with stronger human behavioural orientation) from organisation and management sciences can potentially inform this IS perspective. In particular, is there room for socio-technical concepts such as technology affordance, derived from the constructivist tradition, in improving our understanding of operational business processes, particularly human-centric business processes? The paper presents a theoretical framework for understanding the role of business processes in organisational agility that distinguishes between the process-as-designed and the process-as-practiced. How this practice aspect of business processes also leads to the improvisation of various information technology enablers, is explored using a socio-technical lens. The posited theoretical framework is illustrated and validated with data drawn from an interpretive empirical case study of a large IT services company. The research suggests that processes within the organisation evolve both by top-down design and by the bottom-up routinisation of practice and that the tension between these is driven by the need for flexibility

UK Rules For Unfired Pressure Vessels

The present code PD 5500, formerly BS 5500 [1] evolved partly from the well-known BS 1500 [2] in the 1950's and BS 1515 [3] first published in 1965; the latter permitted higher level allowable stresses and more advanced rules. In 1969, following a report from the Committee of Enquiry into the Pressure Vessel Industry, the British Standards Institution brought all the pressure vessel interests together under one general committee in order to rationalise the activity. This became PVE/ and presides over a large committee structure. There are a series of functional sub-committees who deal with specific aspects and a large number of technical committees as well as many additional sub committees and working groups. Most of these meet regularly. The technical committee PVE/1, Pressure Vessels, has overall responsibility for BS 5500. The functional committee PVE/1/15 Design Methods has an overall responsibility relating to 'Design' with particular reference to the design section of BS 5500 (Section 3). The first edition of BS 5500 was issued in 1976. The actual issue was delayed for some time because, in the early 1970's, there was an attempt in Europe to produce an international pressure vessel standard. A draft of the international standard appeared as ISO DIS 2694 [4] in 1973 but it was not generally accepted and the attempt was abandoned in the mid 70's. It was decided to use some of the material from 2694 within BS 5500 so that although the Standard was long delayed it benefited to some extent from the international efforts. Initially, committee PVE/l set out the concept of a "master" pressure vessel standard which could readily be applied to any vessel in either ferrous or non-ferrous materials and for highly specialised application with the minimum of supplementary requirements. The layout of BS 5500 is consistent with this concept and although the Standard has perhaps not fulfilled this high ideal, it has certainly been employed widely in many industries including non pressure vessel type applications. When issued it had a number of distinctive features compared with other pressure codes viz; weld joint factors were removed, the present three categories of construction were introduced, there was a new novel external pressure section, it has a loose leaf format and an annual updating was introduced. Further editions of BS 5500 have been issued every three years since 1982

Authentic alignment : toward an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) informed model of the learning environment in health professions education

It is well established that the goals of education can only be achieved through the constructive alignment of instruction, learning and assessment. There is a gap in research interpreting the lived experiences of stakeholders within the UK learning environment toward understanding the real impact – authenticity – of curricular alignment. This investigation uses a critical realist framework to explore the emergent quality of authenticity as a function of alignment.This project deals broadly with alignment of anatomy pedagogy within UK undergraduate medical education. The thread of alignment is woven through four aims: 1) to understand the alignment of anatomy within the medical curriculum via the relationships of its stakeholders; 2) to explore the apparent complexity of the learning environment (LE); 3) to generate a critical evaluation of the methodology, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as an approach appropriate for realist research in the complex fields of medical and health professions education; 4) to propose a functional, authentic model of the learning environment.Findings indicate that the complexity and uncertainty inherent in the LE can be reflected in spatiotemporal models. Findings meet the thesis aims, suggesting: 1) the alignment of anatomy within the medical curriculum is complex and forms a multiplicity of perspectives; 2) this complexity is ripe for phenomenological exploration; 3) IPA is particularly suitable for realist research exploring complexity in HPE; 4) Authentic Alignment theory offers a spatiotemporal model of the complex HPE learning environment:the T-icosa

Deriving the full-reducing Krivine machine from the small-step operational semantics of normal order

We derive by program transformation Pierre Crégut s full-reducing Krivine machine KN from the structural operational semantics of the normal order reduction strategy in a closure-converted pure lambda calculus. We thus establish the correspondence between the strategy and the machine, and showcase our technique for deriving full-reducing abstract machines. Actually, the machine we obtain is a slightly optimised version that can work with open terms and may be used in implementations of proof assistants

Adaptive management of Ramsar wetlands

Abstract The Macquarie Marshes are one of Australia’s iconic wetlands, recognised for their international importance, providing habitat for some of the continent’s more important waterbird breeding sites as well as complex and extensive flood-dependent vegetation communities. Part of the area is recognised as a wetland of international importance, under the Ramsar Convention. River regulation has affected their resilience, which may increase with climate change. Counteracting these impacts, the increased amount of environmental flow provided to the wetland through the buy-back and increased wildlife allocation have redressed some of the impacts of river regulation. This project assists in the development of an adaptive management framework for this Ramsar-listed wetland. It brings together current management and available science to provide an informed hierarchy of objectives that incorporates climate change adaptation and assists transparent management. The project adopts a generic approach allowing the framework to be transferred to other wetlands, including Ramsar-listed wetlands, supplied by rivers ranging from highly regulated to free flowing. The integration of management with science allows key indicators to be monitored that will inform management and promote increasingly informed decisions. The project involved a multi-disciplinary team of scientists and managers working on one of the more difficult challenges for Australia, exacerbated by increasing impacts of climate change on flows and inundation patterns

Towards an understanding of business design within enterprise architecture management: a cautionary tale

Includes bibliographical references.Business Design represents a set of concepts that are described in the literature as providing a sound foundation for sustainable competitive advantage into the future. The particular values underpinning Business design are based on the enablement of a design thinking approach to solving the imponderable problems that organisations regularly encounter. In particular, the application of a design thinking approach to Business Design requires that resultant system designs are economically viable and technologically feasible. Enterprise Architecture Management plays a vital role in supporting these latter two requirements. Yet the definition of Enterprise Architecture Management as the 'normative restriction of design freedom' (Deitz, 2011) implies constraints that could impose limits on such business design. Consequently, the qualitative inductive research described in this document was undertaken to explore the perceived paradoxical relationship between Business Design and Enterprise Architecture Management. This dissertation recounts the process and results of this research initiative based on data recorded during interviews with a number of management level staff at a leading South African Insurance organisation. The participants were intimately involved in a programme to, amongst other objectives, establish a platform to support enterprise-wide Business Design within Enterprise Architecture Management, a programme that was experiencing a number of challenges and that was still underway at the time of completion of this research. Findings arising from this research were that the varying perceptions and levels of commitment of business and IT stakeholders associated with the programme and its requirements, contributed significantly to these challenges. In addition to providing a rich description of the case organisation's journey towards the establishment of a Business Design platform, a sensitising framework – 'The 6 Cs Framework in Support of the Successful Enablement of Business Design within Enterprise Architecture Management' – is proposed as a useful tool to assist organisations that might be considering a similar programme in the future