The Museum of London 1976-2007: Reimagining Metropolitan Narratives in Postcolonial London

Since the 1990s, cultural historians have developed exciting new scholarship charting shifting representations of empire at museums. Yet city museums feel strangely absent from these conversations, which have principally focused on national and regional museums in Britain, its former colonies and Europe. This thesis responds to this gap in the literature by mapping the shifting representation of empire and colonial histories at the Museum of London between 1976-2007. Opened in 1976 by Queen Elizabeth II, the Museum of London was an amalgamation of the London Museum (1912) and the Guildhall Museum (founded 1826), situated in the heart of the City, at the south-west corner of the Barbican Centre. Given its location, once the heart of the British Empire, the Museum of London provides a unique space to examine the changing place and value of empire in Britain’s foremost metropolitan museum. The thesis begins then by charting the origins of the Museum of London, analysing the place and value of empire within the Museum’s permanent galleries in 1976. It proceeds by untangling the complex relations underlying shifting representations, to explore how and why changes in narrative orientation occurred in 1989 when the Museum started planning a new exhibition, ‘The Peopling of London’, launched in 1993. This marked the Museum’s initial serious engagement with the legacies of British colonialism in relation to its urban constituents. The legacy of this small exhibition led to increased engagement with postcolonial histories, culminating with ‘London, Sugar and Slavery’ in 2007, staged at the Museum of London Docklands to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. The cumulative picture is a complex, sometimes ambiguous, relationship between the Museum and London’s colonial past

A new approach to social behavior simulation: the mask model

This paper proposes a new perspective, based on the concept of social masks, for the simulation of a realistic NPC (Non-Player Character) behavior. The Mask Model goal is to support AI techniques for autonomous agents by encouraging or discouraging behaviors according to the social environment and by providing knowledge about possible reactions to the agent actions. In this approach, the NPC tendencies are controlled by the interactions of three overlapping mask layers: self- perception layer, social layer and interpersonal layer. The masks mould the tendencies, the feelings and the ethics of a NPC. By changing the links between characters and masks, a wide variety of different behaviors and story-lines may arise. The paper present an algorithm for the selection of the actions and an example implementation

Changing word usage predicts changing word durations in New Zealand English

This paper investigates the emergence of lexicalized effects of word usage on word duration by looking at parallel changes in usage and duration over 130 years in New Zealand English. Previous research has found that frequent words are shorter, informative words are longer, and words in utterance-final position are also longer. It has also been argued that some of these patterns are not simply online adjustments, but are incorporated into lexical representations. While these studies tend to focus on the synchronic aspects of such patterns, our corpus shows that word-usage patterns and word durations are not static over time. Many words change in duration and also change with respect to frequency, informativity and likelihood of occurring utterance-finally. Analysis of changing word durations over this time period shows substantial patterns of co-adaptation between word usage and word durations. Words that are increasing in frequency are becoming shorter. Words that are increasing/decreasing in informativity show a change in the same direction in duration (e.g. increasing informativity is associated with increasing duration). And words that are increasingly appearing utterance-finally are lengthening. These effects exist independently of the local effects of the predictors. For example, words that are increasing utterance-finally lengthen in all positions, including utterance-medially. We show that these results are compatible with a number of different views about lexical representations, but they cannot be explained without reference to a production-perception loop that allows speakers to update their representations dynamically on the basis of their experience

Development of Re-Setting Toxin Delivery Devices and Long-Life Lures for Rats

Introduced rats continue to have a major impact on biodiversity around the world, and improved control techniques are required to avoid further extinctions. We are trialing re-setting toxin-delivery systems (Spitfires) targeting a range of predators, including rats. The rat Spitfire works by firing 800 mg of a toxic paste onto the belly of the rat as it passes through a tunnel; the device then resets. When the rats groom the paste from their fur, they ingest the toxin. Each Spitfire is capable of approximately 100 doses and is fitted with a counter and a delay mechanism. We trialed 0.55% 1080 paste in the Spitfire and 15 of 15 wild Norway rats and 14 of 15 black rats died. Further trials are planned with a range of toxins to allow flexibility of use. Resetting devices that are expected to work for long periods without being serviced also require long-life lures. Preliminary trials showed urine and scats from female Norway rats were attractive to both male and female Norway rats. The volatile components from these and further trials will be identified to aid in developing a long-life lure. The long-term, effective control of introduced rats will require a range of toxins with different modes of action, a number of different delivery systems, and long-life lures

Efficacy of lethal-trap devices to improve the welfare of trapped wild dogs

Context. Wildlife and pest managers and stakeholders should constantly aim to improve animal-welfare outcomes when foot-hold trapping pest animals. To minimise stress and trauma to trapped animals, traps should be checked at least once every 24 h, normally as soon after sunrise as possible. If distance, time, environmental or geographical constraints prevent this, toxins such as strychnine can be fitted to trap jaws to induce euthanasia. However, strychnine is considered to have undesirable animal-welfare outcomes because animals are conscious while clinical signs of intoxication are present. A toxin considered more humane, para-aminopropiophenone (PAPP), is available to induce euthanasia in trapped animals but is untested for presentation and efficacy.Aim. We tested the efficacy of two types of lethal trap device (LTD's), each using a paste formulation of PAPP as the active toxin to replace the use of strychnine on foot-hold jaw traps.Methods. Elastomer LTDs and PAPP-cloths were fitted to jaw traps set to capture wild dogs (Canis familiaris). Camera-trap data was used to record animal behaviours after capture and to determine the efficacy of both modalities.Key results. Every trapped wild dog (n = 117) gnawed at the elastomer LTD's or PAPP-cloth attached to the trap jaws that restrained them; one dog failed to liberate the toxin. From the dogs caught in the main trial (n = 56), a mortality rate of 84% and 87% was reported respectively. The mean time from trap-to-death for elastomer LTDs was 64 min and 68 min for PAPP-cloths.Conclusions. Elastomer LTDs and PAPP cloths combined caused the mortality of 85% of captured dogs. This efficacy could be improved by adopting the recommendations discussed in the present study for deploying PAPP-based LTDs during trap deployment.Implications. PAPP-based LTDs offer an alternative option to the use of strychnine and improve the welfare outcomes for trapped predators, especially where traps are not checked within the recommended 24-h period

Preface

Planning and Scheduling is the field of Artificial Intelligence that is concerned with all aspects of the system-supported or fully automated synthesis, execution, and monitoring of courses of actions, activities, and tasks. With that, it provides a technology for increasing the autonomy of systems by making them more flexible, robust, and adaptive. Consequently, it has a particularly large application potential in a variety of industrial and administrative areas including the growing e-business and ework sectors. This road map document aims to take stock of current exploitation of the technology and points out future research and development steps for both improving the technology in current applications and widening the spectrum of future ones. The road map is joint work by members of PLANET, the European Network of Excellence in AI Planning – funded by the European Union under the Esprit programme from October 1998 to December 2000. The road map addresses a number of themes under the global view of aiming to extend the exploitation of the technology far beyond the current stage. To this end, two main aspects are considered: further technological developments required and a number of key application areas for various industrial and business sectors