PNEPs, NEPs for context free parsing: Application to natural language processing

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02478-8_59Proceedings of 10th International Work-Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, IWANN 2009, Salamanca, Spain.This work tests the suitability of NEPs to parse languages. We propose PNEP, a simple extension to NEP, and a procedure to translate a grammar into a PNEP that recognizes the same language. These parsers based on NEPs do not impose any additional constrain to the structure of the grammar, which can contain all kinds of recursive, lambda or ambiguous rules. This flexibility makes this procedure specially suited for Natural Languge Processing (NLP). In a first proof with a simplified English grammar, we got a performance (a linear time complexity) similar to that of the most popular syntactic parsers in the NLP area (Early and its derivatives). All the possible derivations for ambiguous grammars were generatedThis work was partially supported by MEC, project TIN2008-02081/TIN and by DGUI CAM/UAM, project CCG08-UAM/TIC-4425

Material Futures:Design-led Approaches to Crafting Conversations in the Circular Economy

This paper explores the work in the area of Material Futures – undertaken by researchers at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA). We begin by presenting current debates within the textile sector and outline the challenges of the circular economy. The Scottish Government have established a £17 million fund to catalyse innovative approaches for the circular economy, which support closed-loop systems including collaboration, evaluation of different methods and future material ecologies. We discuss future material ecologies in two case studies in order to extrapolate the ways in which creative and participatory design approaches can be used to stimulate dialogue around the circular economy, broader environmental and economic issues and the socio-cultural implications. We identify six design principles for researchers and practitioners to consider when facilitating circular conversations and the evolving role of the textile designer. We go on to highlight the significance of design-led approaches in strengthening communication, promoting creative action and embedding collaborative ways of working. We conclude by making recommendations for future research and practice and how the insights might be expanded upon to support ethical, responsible and sustainable material futures

Individual leader to interdependent leadership: A case study in leadership development and tripartite evaluation

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright @ 2013 Sage Publications.The Problem - In this case study we see a move away from orthodox views of school leadership as “headship” to a more contemporary model of educational leadership wherein we note a departure from functional, curricula-based school leadership toward more human resource development (HRD) approaches. The aim of this study was to consider the effectiveness of an educational development program for middle leaders within an educational establishment. The Solution - We examined the impact of a bespoke higher education leadership development intervention in Leadership (and Change) on the formation and cohesiveness of a newly formed innovative leadership structure. The Stakeholders - The leadership development intervention was designed through a tripartite collaboration including a university, senior school leaders, and staff. The intervention was designed to shift leadership from individual leader agency to interdependent human leadership agency. Through tripartite evaluation we uncover leadership development praxis that transcends the boundaries of conventional educational leadership and reemphasizes the benefits of bridging the academic/practitioner divide and the application of theory to praxis

Sex-Specific Differences in Shoaling Affect Parasite Transmission in Guppies

Background: Individuals have to trade-off the costs and benefits of group membership during shoaling behaviour. Shoaling can increase the risk of parasite transmission, but this cost has rarely been quantified experimentally. Guppies (Poecilia reticulata) are a model system for behavioural studies, and they are commonly infected by gyrodactylid parasites, notorious fish pathogens that are directly transmitted between guppy hosts. Methodology/Principal Findings:Parasite transmission in single sex shoals of male and female guppies were observed using an experimental infection of Gyrodactylus turnbulli. Parasite transmission was affected by sex-specific differences in host behaviour, and significantly more parasites were transmitted when fish had more frequent and more prolonged contact with each other. Females shoaled significantly more than males and had a four times higher risk to contract an infection. Conclusions/Significance: Intersexual differences in host behaviours such as shoaling are driven by differences in natural and sexual selection experienced by both sexes. Here we show that the potential benefits of an increased shoaling tendency are traded off against increased risks of contracting an infectious parasite in a group-living species

Integration of a Spanish-to-LSE machine translation system into an e-learning platform

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21657-2_61This paper presents the first results of the integration of a Spanish-to-LSE Machine Translation (MT) system into an e-learning platform. Most e-learning platforms provide speech-based contents, which makes them inaccessible to the Deaf. To solve this issue, we have developed a MT system that translates Spanish speech-based contents into LSE. To test our MT system, we have integrated it into an e-learning tool. The e-learning tool sends the audio to our platform. The platform sends back the subtitles and a video stream with the signed translation to the e-learning tool. Preliminary results, evaluating the sign language synthesis module, show an isolated sign recognition accuracy of 97%. The sentence recognition accuracy was of 93%.Authors would like to acknowledge the FPU-UAM grant program for its financial support. Authors are grateful to the FCNSE linguistic department for sharing their knowledge in LSE and performing the evaluations. Many thanks go to María Chulvi and Benjamín Nogal for providing help during the imple-mentation of this system. This work was partially supported by the Telefónica Móviles España S.A. project number 10-047158-TE-Ed-01-1

High-Power, High-Frequency, Annular-Beam Free-Electron Maser

The authors have developed a 15--17 GHz free electron maser (FEM) capable of producing high power pulses with a phase stability appropriate for linear collider applications. The electron beam source is a 1 {micro}s, 800 kV, 5 kA, 6-cm-dia annular electron beam machine called BANSHEE. The beam interacts with the TM{sub 02} mode Raman FEM amplifier in a corrugated cylindrical waveguide where the beam runs close to the interaction device walls to reduce the power density in the fields. They studied the phase stability by analyzing the dispersion relation for an axial FEL, in which the rf field was transversely wiggled and the electron trajectories were purely longitudinal. Detailed particle-in-cell simulations demonstrated the transverse wiggling of the rf mode and the axial FEL interaction and explicit calculations of the growing root of the dispersion relation are included to verify the phase stability

Schools and civil society : corporate or community governance

School improvement depends upon mediating the cultural conditions of learning as young people journey between their parochial worlds and the public world of cosmopolitan society. Governing bodies have a crucial role in including or diminishing the representation of different cultural traditions and in enabling or frustrating the expression of voice and deliberation of differences whose resolution is central to the mediation of and responsiveness to learning needs. A recent study of governing bodies in England and Wales argues that the trend to corporatising school governance will diminish the capacity of schools to learn how they can understand cultural traditions and accommodate them in their curricula and teaching strategies. A democratic, stakeholder model remains crucial to the effective practice of governing schools. By deliberating and reconciling social and cultural differences, governance constitutes the practices for mediating particular and cosmopolitan worlds and thus the conditions for engaging young people in their learning, as well as in the preparation for citizenship in civil society