The conundrum of categorising requirements: managing requirements for learning on the move

This paper reports on the experience of eliciting and managing requirements on a large European-based multinational project, whose purpose is to create a system to support learning using mobile technology. The project used the socio-cognitive engineering methodology for human-centered design and the Volere shell and template to document requirements. We provide details about the project below, describe the Volere tools, and explain how and why we used a flexible categorization scheme to manage the requirements. Finally, we discuss three lessons learned: (1) provide a flexible mechanism for organizing requirements, (2) plan ahead for the RE process, and (3) do not forget 'the waiting room

Safe Local Exploration for Replanning in Cluttered Unknown Environments for Micro-Aerial Vehicles

In order to enable Micro-Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) to assist in complex, unknown, unstructured environments, they must be able to navigate with guaranteed safety, even when faced with a cluttered environment they have no prior knowledge of. While trajectory optimization-based local planners have been shown to perform well in these cases, prior work either does not address how to deal with local minima in the optimization problem, or solves it by using an optimistic global planner. We present a conservative trajectory optimization-based local planner, coupled with a local exploration strategy that selects intermediate goals. We perform extensive simulations to show that this system performs better than the standard approach of using an optimistic global planner, and also outperforms doing a single exploration step when the local planner is stuck. The method is validated through experiments in a variety of highly cluttered environments including a dense forest. These experiments show the complete system running in real time fully onboard an MAV, mapping and replanning at 4 Hz.Comment: Accepted to ICRA 2018 and RA-L 201

Taking Tasers Seriously: The Need for Better Regulation of Stun Guns in New York

This report analyzes 851 Taser incident reports from eight police departments across the state as well as 10 departments' policies and guidelines for using the weapons, which deliver up to 50,000 volts of electricity and have caused the deaths of more than a dozen New Yorkers in recent years. The report concludes that police officers throughout New York State are consistently misusing and overusing Tasers

Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice: The Agile Research Network

We report an action research-oriented approach to investigating agile project management methods which aims to bridge the gap between academic research and agile practice. We have set up a research network of academics from two universities, through which we run focussed project-based research into agile methods. Organisations are invited to suggest an ‘agile challenge’ and we work closely with them to investigate how challenge affects them. Our approach is both academic and practical. We use appropriate research methods such as interviews, observation and discussion to clarify and explore the nature of the challenge. We then undertake a detailed literature review to identify practical approaches that may be appropriate for adoption, and report our findings. If the organisation introduces new practices or approaches as a result of our work, we conduct an academic evaluation. Alternatively, if we uncover an under-researched area, we propose undertaking some basic research. As befits the topic, we work iteratively and incrementally and produce regular outputs. In this paper we introduce our approach, overview research methods used in the agile research literature, describe our research model, outline a case study, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of our approach. We discuss the importance of producing outputs that are accessible to practitioners as well as researchers. Findings suggest that by investigating the challenges that organisations propose, we uncover problems that are of real relevance to the agile community and obtain rich insights into the facilitators and barriers that organisations face when using agile methods. Additionally, we find that practitioners are interested in research results as long as publications are relevant to their needs and are written accessibly. We are satisfied with the basic structure of our approach, but we anticipate that the method will evolve as we continue to work with collaborators

Open by Degrees: A Case of Flexibility or Personalization?

This chapter focuses on the history, development, and perceived value of The Open University UK’s BA/BSc (Hons) Open degree (hereafter referred to as “OUUK Open degree”) over the past half-century in the context of changing external pressures and addressing debates around the coherence and acceptance of such a personalized program of study. It touches on the changing views of “openness” over time, from the origins of The Open University’s “open entry” policy, through to ideas around flexibility of study, open education, and personalized learning. The chapter concludes with recommendations for other higher education institutions wishing to introduce a multidisciplinary open degree into their portfolio of curriculum

Structural characterization of the carbohydrate-binding module of NanA sialidase, a pneumococcal virulence factor

This research was supported by the University of St Andrews and grants provided by the Medical Research Council.Background: Streptococcus pneumoniae Neuraminidase A (NanA) is a multi-domain protein anchored to the bacterial surface. Upstream of the catalytic domain of NanA is a domain that conforms to the sialic acid-recognising CBM40 family of the CAZY (carbohydrate-active enzymes) database. This domain has been identified to play a critical role in allowing the bacterium to promote adhesion and invasion of human brain microvascular endothelial cells, and hence may play a key role in promoting bacterial meningitis. In addition, the CBM40 domain has also been reported to activate host chemokines and neutrophil recruitment during infection. Results: Crystal structures of both apo- and holo- forms of the NanA CBM40 domain (residues 121 to 305), have been determined to 1.8 angstrom resolution. The domain shares the fold of other CBM40 domains that are associated with sialidases. When in complex with alpha 2,3- or alpha 2,6-sialyllactose, the domain is shown to interact only with the terminal sialic acid. Significantly, a deep acidic pocket adjacent to the sialic acid-binding site is identified, which is occupied by a lysine from a symmetry-related molecule in the crystal. This pocket is adjacent to a region that is predicted to be involved in protein-protein interactions. Conclusions: The structural data provide the details of linkage-independent sialyllactose binding by NanA CBM40 and reveal striking surface features that may hold the key to recognition of binding partners on the host cell surface. The structure also suggests that small molecules or sialic acid analogues could be developed to fill the acidic pocket and hence provide a new therapeutic avenue against meningitis caused by S. pneumoniae.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Detecting inbreeding depression in a severely bottlenecked, recovering species: The little spotted kiwi (Apteryx owenii)

Population bottlenecks reduce genetic variation and population size. Small populations are at greater risk of inbreeding, which further erodes genetic diversity and can lead to inbreeding depression. Inbreeding depression is known to increase extinction risk. Thus, detecting inbreeding depression is important for population viability assessment and conservation management. However, identifying inbreeding depression in wild populations is challenging due to the difficulty of obtaining long-term measures of fitness and error-free measures of individual inbreeding coefficients. I investigated inbreeding depression and our power to detect it in species that have very low genetic variation, using little spotted kiwi (Apteryx owenii) (LSK) as a case study. This endemic New Zealand ratite experienced a bottleneck of, at most, five individuals ~100 years ago and has since been subjected to secondary bottlenecks as a result of introductions to new predator-free locations. There is no behavioural pedigree data available for any LSK population and the status of the species is monitored almost exclusively via population growth. I conducted two seasons of field work to determine hatching success in the two LSK populations with the highest and lowest numbers of founders; Zealandia Sanctuary (40 founders) and Long Island (two founders). I also used simulation-based modelling to assess the feasibility of reconstructing pedigrees based on individual genotypes from LSK populations to calculate pedigree inbreeding coefficients. Finally, I used microsatellite genotypes to measure the genetic erosion in successive filial groupings of Long Island and Zealandia LSK as a result of their respective bottlenecks, and tested for inbreeding depression on Long Island. Hatching success was significantly lower on Long Island than in Zealandia in both years of the study despite significantly higher reproductive effort on Long Island. Although this was suggestive of inbreeding depression on Long Island, simulation results showed that constructing a pedigree for any LSK population based on the genetic markers and samples currently available would lead to inaccurate pedigrees and invalid estimates of individual inbreeding coefficients. Thus, an alternative method of detecting inbreeding and inbreeding depression was required. Microsatellite data showed continued loss of heterozygosity in both populations, but loss of allelic diversity on Long Island only. Individual genotypes indicated that the majority (74%) of the adult Long Island population is comprised of the founding pair (F) and their direct offspring (F1) rather than birds from subsequent generations (F2+). This is not what would be expected if survival was equal between these two filial classes. I suggest that the high levels of inbreeding (≥0.25) in F2+ birds is impacting on their survival, creating a demographic skew in the population and resulting in lower hatching success on average on Long Island when compared to the relatively outbred Zealandia birds. This inbreeding depression appears to have been masked, thus far, by positive population growth on Long Island resulting from the long life span of LSK (27-83 years) and continued reproductive success of the founding pair. Thus, it is likely that the Long Island population will go into decline when the founding pair cease to reproduce. This study highlights the challenges of measuring inbreeding depression in species with very low genetic variation and the importance of assessing the statistical power and reliability of the genetic tools available for those species. It also demonstrates that basic genetic techniques can offer valuable insight when more advanced tools prove error-prone. Monitoring vital rates such as hatching success in conjunction with genetic data is important for assessing the success of conservation translocations and detecting potentially cryptic genetic threats such as inbreeding depression. My results suggest that LSK are being affected by inbreeding depression and that careful genetic management will be required to ensure the long-term viability of this species