The early fiction of J.G.Farrell as influenced by the writing of Albert Camus, with special reference to <i>L'Étranger</i>

The task of this study has been to show how French existentialist writing, in particular the novels and essays of Albert Camus, contributed to the early development of the unique voice of the writer J.G.Farrell, and provided themes, imagery and characterisation which eventually transferred to, and grew within his Empire fiction. By doing this, it also attempts to review the place of the early fiction in Farrell's work, and to draw that and the later novels towards a coherent whole. The first chapter examines the links established by critics between Farrell and modern French writers, including Camus. Existentialist features found in his work, especially those from Camus' L'Étranger, are identified in Chapter 2. It is argued that, from these, Farrell derived elements central to all his work. Amongst such elements are the siege-metaphor, the pervading tone of comic irony and the figure of the outsider-protagonist. Chapter 3 examines Farrell's 'outsiders', makes comparisons between these characters and the protagonist in L'Étranger, and shows how the 'outsider' develops in the early novels and is carried forward into the Empire fiction. Death and disease as metaphors are discussed in Chapter 4, with particular reference to Camus' La Peste and L'Étranger. Some sources in Camus' work are suggested for the symbolical use of dogs in Farrell's novels, and for the doctor-figure featuring importantly in nearly all his work. A specific type of death is dealt with in Chapter 5, where the central murder episode in L'Étranger, and its connection with both Farrell's life and his preoccupation with kinds of death on beaches, is explored. In conclusion, this study argues that Farrell's early fiction and Camusian existentialist writing are very close, that concerns from both sources form a significant part of his Empire novels, and that a consideration of Camus' influence is a key to viewing Farrell's work as a single, developing entity rather than as two separate units

Phonological (un)certainty weights lexical activation

Spoken word recognition involves at least two basic computations. First is matching acoustic input to phonological categories (e.g. /b/, /p/, /d/). Second is activating words consistent with those phonological categories. Here we test the hypothesis that the listener's probability distribution over lexical items is weighted by the outcome of both computations: uncertainty about phonological discretisation and the frequency of the selected word(s). To test this, we record neural responses in auditory cortex using magnetoencephalography, and model this activity as a function of the size and relative activation of lexical candidates. Our findings indicate that towards the beginning of a word, the processing system indeed weights lexical candidates by both phonological certainty and lexical frequency; however, later into the word, activation is weighted by frequency alone.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted at: Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics (CMCL) 201

Conversational Sensing

Recent developments in sensing technologies, mobile devices and context-aware user interfaces have made it possible to represent information fusion and situational awareness as a conversational process among actors - human and machine agents - at or near the tactical edges of a network. Motivated by use cases in the domain of security, policing and emergency response, this paper presents an approach to information collection, fusion and sense-making based on the use of natural language (NL) and controlled natural language (CNL) to support richer forms of human-machine interaction. The approach uses a conversational protocol to facilitate a flow of collaborative messages from NL to CNL and back again in support of interactions such as: turning eyewitness reports from human observers into actionable information (from both trained and untrained sources); fusing information from humans and physical sensors (with associated quality metadata); and assisting human analysts to make the best use of available sensing assets in an area of interest (governed by management and security policies). CNL is used as a common formal knowledge representation for both machine and human agents to support reasoning, semantic information fusion and generation of rationale for inferences, in ways that remain transparent to human users. Examples are provided of various alternative styles for user feedback, including NL, CNL and graphical feedback. A pilot experiment with human subjects shows that a prototype conversational agent is able to gather usable CNL information from untrained human subjects

Developing Work-Ready Software Engineers using Real-world Team-based Projects as a Catalyst for Learning

The National Software Academy in Wales is a recentlyestablished collaboration between Cardiff University, WelshGovernment, the Alacrity Foundation and the technologyindustry. The aim is to address the gap in the skills market forwork ready software engineers. The Academy runs an industryfocused BSc degree in Applied Software Engineering that seeslocal and national industry partners actively participating in therunning of the program and gives students the opportunity towork on real-world team-based projects throughout their degreecourse. This paper reports on the first year of the program: thesuccess and positive engagement from industry partners, theintegrated style of delivery across program modules, and thechallenges faced going into year 2

The disguise theme in the Middle English metrical romances: Its use, origins and influences

The romances dealt with in Part I were written between 1225 and approximately 1500. They are examined from individual texts to show what functions the theme of disguise performed within the narrative, and what literary and moral concerns they reflect in English authors. The discussion, divided under headings, examines the educative use of disguise, disguise used to determine and alter the nature of society, and episodes of individuals concealing their identity in order to prove themselves. Following sections deal with the comic use of disguise, with disguise episodes which contain social comment, with disguise symbolising the inner state of the individual, and with romances whose central concern is identity. Finally, there is an examination of the few examples where disguise features as a stock literary convention. Disguise in these romances, is defined as the assumption of alien dress, and also the witholding, sometimes unintentional, of identity. Part II looks at some sources of disguise themes in legends, popular tales and monastic writings, also at some themes having their origins in myth and ritual. This part finally deals with apparent literary conventions of disguise which are, however, found commonly used in contemporary social life. Part III assesses the later social and literary influence of the disguise theme. Chapter 6 examines its political use as gaining monarchical prestige and national unity, discusses its influence upon the changing form of the tournament, and traces its contribution to the development of the masque. The final chapter examines its use in the secular drama evolving contemporaneously with the masque, the Moral Interlude. Techniques of disguise, soon to become important in the Elizabethan period of high drama, were shared by writers of romance and interlude alike. Tudor dramatists, borrowing in other respects from romances, betray a similar debt in their use of the romance disguise theme.<p

Using local and global knowledge in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have advanced rapidly in recent years and the volume of raw data received at an endpoint can be huge. We believe that the use of local knowledge, acquired from sources such as the surrounding environment, users and previously sensed data, can improve the efficiency of a WSN and automate the classification of sensed data. We define local knowledge as knowledge about an area that has been gained through experience or experimentation. With this in mind, we have developed a three-tiered architecture for WSNs that uses differing knowledge-processing capabilities at each tier, called the Knowledge-based Hierarchical Architecture for Sensing (KHAS). A novel aligning ontology has been created to support K-HAS, joining widely used, domain-specific ontologies from the sensing and observation domains. We have shown that, as knowledge-processing capabilities are pushed further out into the network, the profit - defined as the value of sensed data - is increased; where the profit is defined as the value of the sensed data received by the end user. Collaborating with Cardiff University School of Biosciences, we have deployed a variation of K-HAS in the Malaysian rainforest to capture images of endangered wildlife, as well as to automate the collection and classification of these images. Technological limitations prevented a complete implementation of K-HAS and an amalgamation of tiers was made to create the Local knowledge Ontology-based Remote-sensing Informatics System (LORIS). A two week deployment in Malaysia suggested that the architecture was viable and that, even using local knowledge at the endpoint of a WSN, improved the efficiency of the network. A simulation was implemented to model K-HAS and this indicated that the network became more efficient as knowledge was pushed further out towards the edge, by allowing nodes to prioritise sensed data based on inferences about its content

Demo: Using industrial engagement to create and develop research ties within academia

Cardiff University has developed a new software engineering degree that is influenced by, and works directly with, industry. Through this degree scheme, dedicated staff members have been used to interact with and source industrial partners. From these interactions, new research opportunities have been identified and one has been funded

Indeterminacy in process type classification

Clausal analysis within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is generally based upon a classification of the clause into one of six process types. Although this allocation is often portrayed as clear-cut, in practice process distinction can be unclear, and a single verb may meet the coding criteria of a number of categories. The aim of this paper is to examine the nature of indeterminacy within a transitive SFL analysis, by surveying experienced SFL users for their classification of 20 clauses. Our main findings are threefold: 1) inconsistency of analysis was very prevalent - we find only one of the critical clauses to be unanimously categorised for process type; 2) the main area of disagreement between analysts was the selection of Material vs. Verbal processes; 3) clauses with low consistency ratings appeared to include performative main verbs. These findings are discussed in the light of the semantic properties of performativity, which may contribute to the difficulty in process type identification; further, possible alleviations to these issues are discussed in order to allow for a full consideration of both the syntactic and semantic realisation of the clause, in situations where these streams of information may diverge