Engineering an Open Web Syndication Interchange with Discovery and Recommender Capabilities

Web syndication has become a popular means of delivering relevant information to people online but the complexity of standards, algorithms and applications pose considerable challenges to engineers.  This paper describes the design and development of a novel Web-based syndication intermediary called InterSynd and a simple Web client as a proof of concept. We developed format-neutral middleware that sits between content sources and the user. Additional objectives were to add feed discovery and recommendation components to the intermediary. A search-based feed discovery module helps users find relevant feed sources. Implicit collaborative recommendations of new feeds are also made to the user. The syndication software built uses open standard XML technologies and the free open source libraries. Extensibility and re-configurability were explicit goals. The experience shows that a modular architecture can combine open source modules to build state-of-the-art syndication middleware and applications. The data produced by software metrics indicate the high degree of modularity retained

Triple-wavelength fiber ring laser based on a hybrid gain medium actively mode-locked at 10 GHz

A fiber ring laser based on a hybrid gain medium that produces three simultaneously mode-locked wavelength channels is presented. The lithium niobate based modulator used to actively mode-lock the laser cavity at 10 GHz is birefringence compensated to reduce its polarization sensitivity. A Lyot filter defines the lasers multiwavelength spectrum which has a wavelength spacing of 1 nm. The polarization sensitive nature of the laser cavity and its affect on the performance of the laser is discussed

Red clover for silage: management impacts on yield during the third year after sowing

Red clover is a perennial legume considered productive for a limited number of years. This experiment quantified the impacts of cultivar, companion grass, harvest schedule and nitrogen fertiliser on crop yield in the third year after reseeding, and compared these to grass receiving inorganic N fertiliser. Herbage yield was increased in swards with red clover by including ryegrass in the seed mix, by not applying inorganic N fertiliser in mid-March and by adopting the early harvest schedule. Red clover cultivar did not affect annual yield

Biodigital publics: personal genomes as digital media artifacts

The recent proliferation of personal genomics and direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomics has attracted much attention and publicity. Concern around these developments has mainly focused on issues of biomedical regulation and hinged on questions of how people understand genomic information as biomedical and what meaning they make of it. However, this publicity amplifies genome sequences which are also made as internet texts and, as such, they generate new reading publics. The practices around the generation, circulation and reading of genome scans do not just raise questions about biomedical regulation, they also provide the focus for an exploration of how contemporary public participation in genomics works. These issues around the public features of DTC genomic testing can be pursued through a close examination of the modes of one of the best known providers—23andMe. In fact, genome sequences circulate as digital artefacts and, hence, people are addressed by them. They are read as texts, annotated and written about in browsers, blogs and wikis. This activity also yields content for media coverage which addresses an indefinite public in line with Michael Warner’s conceptualisation of publics. Digital genomic texts promise empowerment, personalisation and community, but this promise may obscure the compliance and proscription associated with these forms. The kinds of interaction here can be compared to those analysed by Andrew Barry. Direct-to-consumer genetics companies are part of a network providing an infrastructure for genomic reading publics and this network can be mapped and examined to demonstrate the ways in which this formation both exacerbates inequalities and offers possibilities for participation in biodigital culture

Reducing The Cost of Beef Production by Increasing Silage Intake.

End of Project ReportGrass silage must support the predictable, consistent and profitable production of quality animal produce within environmentally sustainable farming systems. This can be quite a challenge for a crop that is so strongly influenced by the prevailing variable weather conditions, and the many interactions of the latter with farm management practices. Research and scientific progress must therefore continue to provide improved technologies if grass silage is to fulfil the above requirements. Yield, quality (including effects on intake, feed conversion efficiency, growth, meat quality, etc.), conservation losses, inputs and eligibility for EU financial supports determine the cost of providing cattle with silage, and this can have a major impact on the cost of producing milk or beef. Consequently, there has been an emphasis in the research reported here to add new information to the existing framework of knowledge on thes

Improving sentiment analysis through ensemble learning of meta-level features

In this research, the well-known microblogging site, Twitter, was used for a sentiment analysis investigation. We propose an ensemble learning approach based on the meta-level features of seven existing lexicon resources for automated polarity sentiment classification. The ensemble employs four base learners (a Two-Class Support Vector Machine, a Two-Class Bayes Point Machine, a Two-Class Logistic Regression and a Two-Class Decision Forest) for the classification task. Three different labelled Twitter datasets were used to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach to sentiment analysis. Our experiment shows that, based on a combination of existing lexicon resources, the ensemble learners minimize the error rate by avoiding poor selection from stand-alone classifiers

The end of life experiences of people living with socio-economic deprivation in the developed world:an integrative review

The roles of Emma Carduff and Maire O'Riordan are funded by Marie Curie. Emma Carduff is Co-Applicant on an Economic and Social Research Council grant (ES/S014373/1) entitled Dying in the Margins: uncovering the reasons for unequal access to home dying for the socio-economically deprived.Background: Those experiencing socioeconomic deprivation have poorer quality of health throughout their life course which can result in poorer quality of death - with decreased access to palliative care services, greater use of acute care, and reduced access to preferred place of care compared with patients from less deprived populations. Aim: To summarise the current global evidence from developed countries on end-of-life experience for those living with socio-economic deprivation. Design: Integrative review in accordance with PRISMA. A thorough search of major databases from 2010-2020, using clear definitions of end-of-life care and well-established proxy indicators of socio-economic deprivation. Empirical research describing experience of adult patients in the last year of life care were included. Results: Forty studies were included from a total of 3508 after screening and selection. These were deemed to be of high quality; from a wide range of countries with varying healthcare systems; and encompassed all palliative care settings for patients with malignant and non-malignant diagnoses. Three global themes were identified: 1) multi-dimensional symptom burden, 2) preferences and planning and 3) health and social care interactions at the end of life. Conclusions: Current models of healthcare services are not meeting the needs of those experiencing socioeconomic deprivation at the end-of-life. Further work is needed to understand the disparity in care, particularly around ensuring patients voices are heard and can influence service development and delivery.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Concentrate Supplementation of Pasture for Beef Production

End of Project Report* Unsupplemented cattle offered a high grass allowance (18 kg (DM)/head/day), achieved 0.97 of the DM intake of a positive control offered concentrates ad-libitium. At a low grass allowance (6 kg/DM/head/day), there was no effect of supplementary concentrates on grass intake. At a medium (12 kg/DM/head/day), and high grass allowance, supplementary concentrates reduced grass intake by 0.43 and 0.81 kg/DM respectively per kg/DM concentrate offered. * Supplementary concentrates increased complete diet digestibility even though offering supplementary concentrates also increased total DM intake. Complete diet digestibility was higher than the additive values of the grass and concentrates. This would imply that the supplementary concentrates increased the grass DM digestibility. * Increasing the grass allowance increased plasma urea concentration; supplementary concentrates increased total dietary nitrogen intake and reduced plasma urea concentration. These findings suggest that the concentrate supplement enabled greater utilisation by rumen micro-organisms of the degradable nitrogen supplied by the grass. * Supplementing with concentrates increased carcass growth by 116 g/kg concentrate DM eaten whereas increasing the grass allowance increased carcass growth by 38 g/kg/DM grass eaten. The carcass weight response to concentrates of grazing animals was twice that of animals offered concentrates ad-libitum which gained 57 g carcass per kg concentrate DM eaten. * The relationship between carcass gain (Y) (kg/day) and supplementary concentrates (X) (kg/day) was quadratic (P< 0.001) and was best described by the equation: Y = -0.0099X2 + 0.1364X + 0.2459 (R2 = 0.60). The relationship between carcass gain (Y) (kg day-1) and grass intake (X) was also quadratic (P< 0.01) and was best described by the equation: Y = -43X2 + 275X + 133 (R2 = 0.48). Although there was a much larger (double) carcass growth response to supplementary concentrates than to additional grass DM eaten, increasing grass intake significantly increased carcass fat scores whereas offering supplementary concentrates did not. This would imply that relative to concentrates, autumn grass led to a change in the partitioning of energy from muscle towards subcutaneous fat. * As a strategy for increasing the performance of cattle grazing the type of autumn grass used in this study, offering supplementary concentrates offers more scope to improve animal performance than altering grass allowance. * The carbohydrate source of the three concentrates formulated to differ in rate of degradability did not alter rumen fluid pH, volatile fatty acid (VFA) concentration or the rate of grass DM or N degradation when grass supply was considered to be limiting or liberal. The autumn grass was apparently capable of buffering the effects of concentrate DM degradation rate which varied by up to two fold. * The rumen fluid parameters were more influenced by the pat-tern of grass intake than type of concentrate offered. Hence, there was no effect of concentrate type on animal performance.European Union Structural Funds (EAGGF

The fatty acid profile and stable isotope ratios of C and N of muscle from cattle that grazed grass or grass/clover pastures before slaughter and their discriminatory potential

peer-reviewedConsumption of grazed pasture compared to concentrates results in higher concentrations, in beef muscle, of fatty acids considered to be beneficial to human health. Little information is available on the influence of the type of grazed forage. Our objectives were to determine 1) the effect of inclusion of white clover in a grazing sward on the fatty acid profile of beef muscle and 2) the potential of the fatty acid profile and stable isotope ratios of C and N to discriminate between beef from cattle that grazed grass-only or grass/clover swards before slaughter. A total of 28 spring-born Charolais steers grazed from March until slaughter in October, either on a perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) sward that received approximately 220 kg N/ha or a perennial ryegrass–white clover (Trifolium repens L.) sward that received 50 kg N/ha. The longissimus muscle from cattle finished on grass/clover had a higher (P < 0.05) proportion of C18:2 and C18:3 but a lower (P < 0.05) proportion of conjugated linoleic acid and δ15N value than animals finished on the grass-only sward. Discriminant analysis using the fatty acid data showed that, after cross-validation, 80.7% of grass/clover and 86.1% of grass-only muscle samples were correctly classified. Discriminant analysis using the stable isotope data showed that, after cross-validation, 95.7% of grass/clover and 86.5% of grass-only muscle samples were correctly classified. Inclusion of white clover in pasture is likely to have little effect on healthiness of meat for consumers. However, changes in fatty acids and stable isotopes can be used to distinguish between grass/clover-fed and grass-only-fed beef