Lion and The Unicorn

Exhibition 2-10 May 2011 to mark 60 years of RCA participation in post war UK design. Sponsored by Royal Commission for the Great Exhibition of 1851, Sandersins and Napier heritage Trust, RCA Gulbenkian Gallery Kensington Gore, Catalogue of exhibition boards by Claire Pajaczkowska and Henrietta Goodden and curatorial essay 1851-1951-2011 by Claure Pajaczkowska and Barry Curti

Probing Representations for Document-level Event Extraction

The probing classifiers framework has been employed for interpreting deep neural network models for a variety of natural language processing (NLP) applications. Studies, however, have largely focused on sentencelevel NLP tasks. This work is the first to apply the probing paradigm to representations learned for document-level information extraction (IE). We designed eight embedding probes to analyze surface, semantic, and event-understanding capabilities relevant to document-level event extraction. We apply them to the representations acquired by learning models from three different LLM-based document-level IE approaches on a standard dataset. We found that trained encoders from these models yield embeddings that can modestly improve argument detections and labeling but only slightly enhance event-level tasks, albeit trade-offs in information helpful for coherence and event-type prediction. We further found that encoder models struggle with document length and cross-sentence discourse.Comment: To appear in EMNLP 2023 Finding

The Role of the Safeguarder in the Children's Hearings System

1.1 Background In 2013, under the auspices of the Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011 (‘the 2011 Act’) responsibility for safeguarder recruitment, appointment and administration was transferred from local authorities to the Scottish Ministers and a national voluntary organisation, Children 1st, was contracted to set up and administer a national Safeguarders Panel. In September 2016, the Scottish Government commissioned the University of Strathclyde to undertake this study to understand the role of the safeguarder in the children’s hearings system. There have been two such previous studies: The Role of the Safeguarder in Scotland (Hill et al, 2000) and Safeguarders Research (Gadda et al, 2015). As in the 2000 study, the current research team was able to conduct interviews with sheriffs and to include them in the data collected through a questionnaire, thereby offering some further information on the safeguarder role in court proceedings. This current project has also been able to consider some aspects of the framework put in place by Children 1st to promote consistency and quality in performance of the role. There is little academic discussion of the role though it is covered by Sutherland (2008: 10-026 - 10-028) and by Norrie (2013: 2-21 – 2-33). The Scottish Government has also published Practice Notes on the Role of the Safeguarder (Scottish Government, 2016) which is a comprehensive statement, for safeguarders themselves, of the work which they should undertake. In implementing this, together with the statement on the Practice Standards for Safeguarders (Scottish Government, 2015), Children 1st has done much to ensure that the context in which safeguarders operate is clearly defined. 1.2 Aims and Objectives of the Research The aims of the research were as follows: 1. “to identify and quantify the added value that safeguarders bring to decisions relating to children and young people in children’s hearings proceedings from the perspective of practitioners and professionals (including safeguarders themselves); and 2. to inform future development and support requirements for the role of safeguarder within the children’s hearings system through delivering an understanding of how the role of a safeguarder is perceived in practice and how the role impacts on decision-making, both positively and negatively”. The research questions were: to explore how the current system of safeguarders operates, and is managed, from all agency perspectives; to elicit safeguarder and other agency perspectives of the role and effectiveness of safeguarders and how that role interacts/overlaps with other key roles in the children’s hearings system; to identify the skills and qualifications deemed essential to the effectiveness of the safeguarder role; and to identify the type and extent of management, support and training needs currently in place and potentially required to ensure the future effectiveness of the safeguarder role and safeguarder panel. In this report, Chapter 2 describes the methods used and outlines the demographics of the various respondents who participated in the fieldwork. Chapters 3 – 6 present findings, with some discussion at the end of each. Chapter 3 offers an understanding of how the safeguarder role is conceived in practice. Chapter 4 examines the reasons for appointment of safeguarders as part of its exploration of how the current system of safeguarding operates and ways in which the role impacts on decision-making. Chapter 5 continues this exploration from all agency perspectives through an examination of the work which safeguarders actually undertake including investigation, reporting and recommendations, and views of stakeholders on aspects of this. It also looks specifically at the structure, content and quality of safeguarder reports (by comparison also with social work reports). Chapter 6 explores stakeholder views on administration of the current system for safeguarders and also identifies skills and qualifications required for fulfilment of the role of safeguarder and safeguarders’ management, support and training needs. The final Chapter, Chapter 7, provides further analysis of the findings including in relation to the effectiveness and added value of safeguarders

Ex-vivo perfusion bioassay : an excellent technique to measure the bioactivity of inhalable insulin coated microcrystals

Purpose: To measure the bioactivity of inhalable insulin coated microcrystals using a perfusion bioassay that measures its vasodilatory effect on smooth muscle arterial tissue. Methods: The bioactivity of an insulin protein coated microcrystal (PCMC), a potential candidate for pulmonary drug delivery and commercial insulin was determined on a Danish Myo Tech P110 pressure myograph system. 12 week old Mesenteric resistance arteries from Male Wistar rats were isolated and immersed in a physiological salt solution (PSS) and attached to 2 opposing hollow glass micro-cannula (outer diameter 80 microns). The PSS was gradually warmed to 37°C (at a pressure less than 5mm Hg) for 1hr. Subsequently the pressure was increased up to 40mm Hg over a period 15 minutes and equilibrated for a further 15 minutes after gassing with 95%O2 / 5%CO2 to achieve a pH of 7.4 at 37°C. After normalisation by two washes of 123mM KCl and exposure to 1-10mM noradrenaline the arteries were exposed intraluminally to each insulin preparation by gradual infusion directly into the lumen via a fetal microcannulae inserted to the tip of the glass mounting cannula, at a constant pressure. Results: The preliminary results (full cummulative response curve yet to be determined) demonstrate insulin mediated relaxation to noradrenaline preconstriction. The level of constriction drops from 100% to 42% as the concentration of insulin increases from -11 to -9 Log M for the PCMC compared with a drop from 100 % to 65% for the commercial insulin preparation. However the more potent vasodilatory effect found for the insulin PCMC is more likely to be a result of variance introduced in each dilution step than a real increase in potency. Conclusion: The perfusion bioassay technique provides an excellent method of measuring insulin bioactivity and indicates the insulin loaded on the microcrystal support is fully active

Narratives of pedagogical gaps in emerging professional identities of second career teachers in South Africa

Abstract: Very rarely does education reform address the training that teachers receive. This thesis investigated the potential gaps in teacher training, specifically in the post graduate certificate in education (PGCE). The focus on the PGCE allowed for the focus on the experiences of second career teachers, those who have studied and worked in a field other than education and have now chosen to become teachers. These narratives of the PGCE qualification, and its offering to these teachers in their careers, provided valuable professional insights into teacher training. This thesis addressed three research questions (one primary, and two secondary): • How do the central themes that emerge from South African PGCE students’ narratives indicate pedagogical gaps around identity and emotional intelligence in teacher training? • How can the training and induction narratives of second career teachers be used to develop a conceptual framework for teacher professional identity? • What recommendations can be made to include an awareness of identity formation and emotional intelligence in traditional teacher education programmes in South Africa? The introduction to the study situated it in the unique South African educational landscape and clarified the role of second career teachers. The literature set the conceptual and theoretical framework by focusing on teacher professional identity as conceptualised by Tateo (2012) and Akkerman and Meijer (2010). The data was collected through snowball sampling which resulted in ten individual interviews with second career teachers, eight written submissions on Google Forms and a focus group interview with five experienced teachers. The data provided a thick description of the different facets of the PGCE, developing teacher professional identity and recommendations for the improvement of teacher training. The findings demonstrated the importance of modelling effective teaching practice in the school practical, the need for more collaboration between universities and schools in teacher training and the importance of regulated mentorship. A synthesis of Tateo (2012) and Akkerman and Meijer’s (2010) models of teacher professional identity is presented and the importance of emotional intelligence as an underpinning factor in all facets of teacher professional identity. Key words: PGCE, second career teachers, teacher professional identity, emotional intelligence, mentorship.Ph.D. (Educational Psychology

DNA-coated microcrystals

Coprecipitation leads to self-assembly of bioactive DNA on the surface of salt, sugar or amino-acid crystals and provides a rapid inexpensive immobilization method suitable for preparing dry-powder formulations of nucleic acids, useful for storage, imaging and drug delivery

A Study of First Year Undergraduate Computing Students\u27 Experience of Learning Software Development in the Absence of a Software Development Process

Despite the ever-growing demand for software development graduates, it is recognised that a significant barrier for increasing graduate numbers lies in the inherent difficulty in learning how to develop software. This paper presents a study that is part of a larger research project aimed at addressing the gap in the provision of educational software development processes for freshman, novice undergraduate learners, to improve proficiency levels. As a means of understanding how such learners problem solve in software development in the absence of a formal process, this study examines the experiences and depth of learning acquired by a sample set of novice, freshman university learners. The study finds that without the scaffolding of an appropriate structured development process tailored to novices, students are in danger of failing to engage with the problem solving skills necessary for software development, particularly the skill of designing solutions prior to coding

A Reflection on Teachers\u27 Experience as E-learners

This chapter explores the insights gained by a group of teachers from their lived experience as eLearners participating in a blended module on Designing eLearning. An understanding of the student perspective on online learning was obtained but we were also able to reflect on our participation in the module on the basis of our other roles; as teachers and potential eTutors and as course designers. As a result, important considerations were identified for the design and facilitation of online courses. These include; the support provided to online learners, particularly over the first few weeks, appropriate assessment methods, facilitation of online collaboration, access to the Internet, time management and contextualising and scaffolding learning activities. Some issues relating to implementation of effective eLearning in Higher Education Institutions were also considered. Our lived experience as eLearners was invaluable to our development as eTutors and module designers and this approach is strongly recommended to achieve effective learning on how to be an effective online tutor and facilitator and how to design and develop online programmes and activities that make full use of the strengths of online learning