Are there changes in characteristics of UK higher education around the time of the 2006 Reforms (BIS research paper no. 14)

Analysis of Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data, 2002/3 to 2007/8 in response to the research question 'Are there any changes in the Characteristics of UK Higher Education around the time of the 2006 Reforms?' In analysing trends in student characteristics over the period between 2002 and 2007 the researchers identify areas where the 2006 reforms may have had an effect. It should be noted that the tables and charts presented in the report are descriptive

Guided Open Vocabulary Image Captioning with Constrained Beam Search

Existing image captioning models do not generalize well to out-of-domain images containing novel scenes or objects. This limitation severely hinders the use of these models in real world applications dealing with images in the wild. We address this problem using a flexible approach that enables existing deep captioning architectures to take advantage of image taggers at test time, without re-training. Our method uses constrained beam search to force the inclusion of selected tag words in the output, and fixed, pretrained word embeddings to facilitate vocabulary expansion to previously unseen tag words. Using this approach we achieve state of the art results for out-of-domain captioning on MSCOCO (and improved results for in-domain captioning). Perhaps surprisingly, our results significantly outperform approaches that incorporate the same tag predictions into the learning algorithm. We also show that we can significantly improve the quality of generated ImageNet captions by leveraging ground-truth labels.Comment: EMNLP 201

Sources d'erreur dans une série de cartes, ou: la démarche scientifique, objet de négociations

Les cartes peuvent comporter des erreurs de nature temporelle ou spatiale, des erreurs de définition, des erreurs dues à des insuffisances dans le signalement des faits, ou à des estimations incorrectes. C’est ce qu’illustre cette série de cartes sur la diffusion du sida aux États-Unis, qui démontrent la dimension herméneutique de la démarche scientifique et le fait qu’elle doit se négocier socialement

Self-organized Critical Model Of Biological Evolution

A punctuated equilibrium model of biological evolution with relative fitness between different species being the fundamental driving force of evolution is introduced. Mutation is modeled as a fitness updating cellular automaton process where the change in fitness after mutation follows a Gaussian distribution with mean $x>0$ and standard deviation $\sigma$. Scaling behaviors are observed in our numerical simulation, indicating that the model is self-organized critical. Besides, the numerical experiment suggests that models with different $x$ and $\sigma$ belong to the same universality class. PACS numbers: 87.10.+e, 05.40.+jComment: 8 pages in REVTEX 3.0 with 4 figures (Figures available on request by sending e-mail to [email protected]

Mental Maps and Information Surfaces in Québec and Ontario

Les cartes de préférences résidentielles et de surfaces d'information du Québec et de l'Ontario varient considérablement entre les enfants et les jeunes adultes des deux provinces. Elles reflètent une expérience différente de migration, d'éducation et de politique économique. D'importantes questions d'ordre méthodologique sont aussi soulevées concernent l'effet de barrière joué par la langue et la culture dans un tel contexte.Maps of residential desirability and information surfaces in Québec and Ontario vary consider-ably between children and young adults in the two provinces. Such differences reflect variations in migration, education and economic factors. Difficult methodological questions are raised concerning the measurement of cultural and linguistic barrier effects

Equality Act 2010: Law, Reason and Morality in the Jurisprudence of Robert P. George

This thesis provides a critical application of Robert P. George’s views to English equality law. The research question is what George, with his view of religion as a basic human good, might think about the religious liberty cases taken under the provisions of the Equality Act 2010. In addressing this question, it will be necessary to look at those - to some eyes - irreconcilable tensions which have emerged between laws protecting religious freedom. A number of legal claims have been brought by employees who have been instructed to carry out new legal obligations which they have been unwilling to perform. Questions have arisen regarding the current state of reasonable accommodation and proportionality analysis within indirect discrimination law. To examine these questions, this thesis will be in two parts: first, it will consider Robert George’s distinctive contribution to new natural law theory (NNL) and critically analyse George’s NNL approach that arises from this. To do so the key themes: a) practical reason and b) natural rights, will be considered in George’s work. Second, by reading George’s views on practical reason in line with his approach to natural rights, from this position this thesis will give an applied example of NNL, displaying George’s critique of the relevant equality law and arguing for an innovative understanding and approach to religious equality law. This is in an effort to find whether George’s theory is useful in exploring English religious equality law. By doing so this will reconstruct George’s NNL approach through using religious equality law as an applied example. This thesis argues that at a time when religious liberty often loses out in a balancing of rights, legitimate interests and protected characteristics, a superior way to approach equality law in this area may be through an application of a modified version of George’s NNL thought presenting religion as a public good. This will emphasise the priority of the good in religious conscience over legal rights within law viewed by George as a public morality. Viewing religion not only as a basic human good but also as a public good could provide the basis for future accommodation towards freedom of religious conscience and solve the tensions regarding the protection of religion or belief at work. Religion and religious freedom will be shown to be a form of flourishing within an understanding of the public good.KLIC