‘Crossing the Road’: The value of inclusive pedagogical practice for South Asian women in Burnley, East Lancas

Abstract In 2007, the University of Central Lancashire developed a Foundation Degree in Community Leadership. This course was initially conceived to meet a demand within the female South Asian community of Burnley for a higher education programme that would build their capacity to be more effective community activists, and moreover, a requirement for a course that would be able to meet family, cultural and social needs. The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of widening participation to higher education for South Asian women from Burnley in terms of social capital, community cohesion and contribution to the local knowledge economy. The authors used an action research methodology as part of a reflective research process influenced by the work of Paulo Freire (Freire, 1996). This paper argues that widening participation to higher education for women from minority backgrounds is a valuable tool in addressing cultural and social segregation. Moreover, it demonstrates an added value that by broadening the knowledge economy of the Pakistani diaspora in Burnley there is a resulting resonance within the heritage domicile of Gujrat, Pakistan

Koszul-Morita duality

We construct a generalization of Koszul duality in the sense of Keller--Lef\`evre for not necessarily augmented algebras. This duality is closely related to classical Morita duality and specializes to it in certain cases.Comment: 12 page

Financial liberalization and macroeconomic performance, empirical evidence from selected Asian countries

Financially repressed economy cannot grow with an increasing growth rate. That’s why most of the developing countries move toward liberalized financial system. The basic objective of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of Pakistan, China, and India financial sector liberalization and its impact on macroeconomic performance. This study uses Johansen co integration to provide cross country evidence of long run relationship between macroeconomic variables and financial openness. Results show that there is long run relation among financial openness and macro economic performance in all three countries. Financial liberalization has positive and significant effect on Pakistan macroeconomic performance while negative and significant effect on china economy. The relationship in India is positive but not significantFinancial liberalization, financial depth. Economic growth

Machine Learning with Abstention for Automated Liver Disease Diagnosis

This paper presents a novel approach for detection of liver abnormalities in an automated manner using ultrasound images. For this purpose, we have implemented a machine learning model that can not only generate labels (normal and abnormal) for a given ultrasound image but it can also detect when its prediction is likely to be incorrect. The proposed model abstains from generating the label of a test example if it is not confident about its prediction. Such behavior is commonly practiced by medical doctors who, when given insufficient information or a difficult case, can chose to carry out further clinical or diagnostic tests before generating a diagnosis. However, existing machine learning models are designed in a way to always generate a label for a given example even when the confidence of their prediction is low. We have proposed a novel stochastic gradient based solver for the learning with abstention paradigm and use it to make a practical, state of the art method for liver disease classification. The proposed method has been benchmarked on a data set of approximately 100 patients from MINAR, Multan, Pakistan and our results show that the proposed scheme offers state of the art classification performance.Comment: Preprint version before submission for publication. complete version published in proc. 15th International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology (FIT 2017), December 18-20, 2017, Islamabad, Pakistan. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8261064

Information visualisation and data analysis using web mash-up systems

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyThe arrival of E-commerce systems have contributed greatly to the economy and have played a vital role in collecting a huge amount of transactional data. It is becoming difficult day by day to analyse business and consumer behaviour with the production of such a colossal volume of data. Enterprise 2.0 has the ability to store and create an enormous amount of transactional data; the purpose for which data was collected could quite easily be disassociated as the essential information goes unnoticed in large and complex data sets. The information overflow is a major contributor to the dilemma. In the current environment, where hardware systems have the ability to store such large volumes of data and the software systems have the capability of substantial data production, data exploration problems are on the rise. The problem is not with the production or storage of data but with the effectiveness of the systems and techniques where essential information could be retrieved from complex data sets in a comprehensive and logical approach as the data questions are asked. Using the existing information retrieval systems and visualisation tools, the more specific questions are asked, the more definitive and unambiguous are the visualised results that could be attained, but when it comes to complex and large data sets there are no elementary or simple questions. Therefore a profound information visualisation model and system is required to analyse complex data sets through data analysis and information visualisation, to make it possible for the decision makers to identify the expected and discover the unexpected. In order to address complex data problems, a comprehensive and robust visualisation model and system is introduced. The visualisation model consists of four major layers, (i) acquisition and data analysis, (ii) data representation, (iii) user and computer interaction and (iv) results repositories. There are major contributions in all four layers but particularly in data acquisition and data representation. Multiple attribute and dimensional data visualisation techniques are identified in Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 environment. Transactional tagging and linked data are unearthed which is a novel contribution in information visualisation. The visualisation model and system is first realised as a tangible software system, which is then validated through different and large types of data sets in three experiments. The first experiment is based on the large Royal Mail postcode data set. The second experiment is based on a large transactional data set in an enterprise environment while the same data set is processed in a non-enterprise environment. The system interaction facilitated through new mashup techniques enables users to interact more fluently with data and the representation layer. The results are exported into various reusable formats and retrieved for further comparison and analysis purposes. The information visualisation model introduced in this research is a compact process for any size and type of data set which is a major contribution in information visualisation and data analysis. Advanced data representation techniques are employed using various web mashup technologies. New visualisation techniques have emerged from the research such as transactional tagging visualisation and linked data visualisation. The information visualisation model and system is extremely useful in addressing complex data problems with strategies that are easy to interact with and integrate

The D(2) property for D8D_8

Wall's D(2) problem asks if a cohomologically 2-dimensional geometric 3-complex is necessarily homotopy equivalent to a geometric 2-complex. We solve part of the problem when the fundamental group is dihedral of order $2^n$, and offer a complete solution for the case where it is $D_8$ the dihedral group of order 8.Comment: Paper published in peer reviewed journal in 200

Behavior and Strength of Non-Prestressed and Prestressed Hillman Composite Beam Including CFRP Retrofitting

The Hillman Composite Beam (HCB) is a recent innovation used for the first time in 2008 for a bridge construction in USA. It essentially consists of an FRP outer shell, concrete arch inside the shell and steel strands used to tie the two ends of the arch. Being new in the field, the behavior of HCB has not been thoroughly studied. This dissertation presents a study of the flexural behavior and strength of HCB up to the collapse as well as explores the influence of using carbon reinforced polymer (CFRP) retrofitting and prestressed steel for a further increase in HCB stiffness and strength. Materially nonlinear computational algorithms are formulated and programmed to develop moment-curvature relations which are then combined with a finite-difference scheme to predict HCB behavior and strength using Bernoulli beam approach. The nonlinear analysis is performed for various cross sectional configuration of the HCB. A tied arch-and-beam model for predicting the elastic response of HCB is also developed. This model as well as that based on Bernoulli beam approach provided results which are in good agreement with HC Bridge company experiment. A new method involving the combined use of CFRP and steel prestressing resulting in increasing HCB strength by a factor of more than two-and-a-half times is also presented

The third homotopy module of a 2-complex

Given a connected 2-complex X with fundamental group G, we show how pi_3(X) may be computed as a module over Z[G]. Further we show that if X is a finite connected 2-complex with G (the fundamental group) finite of odd order, then the stable class of pi_3(X) is determined by G.Comment: Paper published in peer reviewed journal in 2008. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2308.1184