Generalised Swan modules and the D(2) problem

We give a detailed proof that, for any natural number n, each algebraic two complex over C_n \times C_\infty is realised up to congruence by a geometric complex arising from a presentation for the group.Comment: This is the version published by Algebraic & Geometric Topology on 24 February 200

Accessing the mobile web: myth or reality?

Emerging technologies for learning report - Article exploring open web standard

Open Access and the progress of science

There’s an old joke about asking the way to somewhere and being told it would be best not to start from where you are. It’s a good way to frame some thoughts about whether our present system of scholarly communication aids the progress of science or gets in the way. If we could start now, equipped with the World Wide Web, computers in every laboratory or institution and a global view of the scientific research effort, would we come up with the system for communicating knowledge that we have today? The system we have, which originated as an exchange of letters and lectures among scattered peers, does some things well. But in its current form—a leviathan feeding on an interaction of market forces within and outside science—one can hardly argue that the system satisfies the needs of a modern scientific community. And new developments in the way science is done will make it even less fit for its original purpose in the years ahead. No, we would think of a new way, one that would provide for rapid dissemination of results that any scientist could access, easily and without barriers of cost. We might debate how to implement quality control, how to ensure that originators of ideas or findings are given their proper due, how our new and better system should be In 1996, after more than two decades in medical cell biology research and scholarly publishing, Alma Swan cofounded Key Perspectives Ltd., a consultancy in the area of scholarly communication. She holds graduate degrees in cell biolog

An Algebraic Weak Factorisation System on 01-Substitution Sets: A Constructive Proof

We will construct an algebraic weak factorisation system on the category of 01 substitution sets such that the R-algebras are precisely the Kan fibrations together with a choice of Kan filling operation. The proof is based on Garner's small object argument for algebraic weak factorization systems. In order to ensure the proof is valid constructively, rather than applying the general small object argument, we give a direct proof based on the same ideas. We use this us to give an explanation why the J computation rule is absent from the original cubical set model and suggest a way to fix this

JISC Open Access Briefing Paper

What Open Access is. What Open Access is not. How is Open Access provided? Open Access archives or repositories. Open Access journals. Why should authors provide Open Access to their work? Further information and resource

Everything is liquid

textIf we are to imagine universal reality--a reality where both subjectivity and objectivity exist--mapped as a hollow sphere, the outer shell that defines its physical presence would be the objective reality and the vacuum of space encased would be subjectivity. The hollow core is not defined by--or representative of--a singular piece of the shell, but only of the shell in its entirety. The human subject solely roams this inner space since they are nothing outside themselves. Their task is to wander the spectrum of subjectivity completely until they have reached objectivity. The objective reality only defines shape and mass. It is concrete and monolithic. Energy is distributed equally along its surface and each point reinforces the structural existence of the adjacent points. All of humanity is a varying degree of subjectivity, but the spectrum is finite with objectivity always at one end; objectivity is subjectivity's ultimate experience. Death is the crystallization into the shell of objectivity for the subject becomes pure matter and form that is severed from will. It seems then the only real limit to an individual’s experience is death, the human's subjective experience permeating into objectivity and transforms from a state that is on the inside perceiving out, to a state that is outside of itself, which is to say nothing. It is possible to observe this transformation as a continuous seam of reality with varying degrees of transformation, and not a bold division of two states.Studio Ar

Evaluation of options for a UK electronic thesis service: study report

The British Library (BL), JISC, UK HE institutions and CURL have funded an 18-month project to develop a national framework for the provision, preservation and open access to electronic theses produced in UK HE institutions. The project, called EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service) was developed in response to a competitive tender invitation released by the JISC and proposes a service set up and run by the British Library. The British Library’s current service, the British Thesis Service, offers access to around 180,000 doctoral theses, predominantly from 1970 onwards, though it is estimated that overall some half million theses dating from the 1600s are in existence in the UK. Around 80% of requests are for theses published within the last 13 years and almost all of these exist only in hardcopy. Through this service, theses are acquired ‘on demand’ and delivered on microfilm at a cost of just over £60 to the user (and at this price the service runs at a loss). Whilst this service, coupled with the Index to Theses (Expert Information), enables the location of and access to relatively recent British theses by the determined seeker, no one could argue that the process is optimised. As a result, usage of theses is much lower than it might be and much research is going unnoticed and unused as a result. Conversely, it has been shown that when theses are easy to locate and access, usage is high: at Virginia Tech, a pioneer site in the provision of a formal, systematised ETD (electronic theses and dissertations) service, downloads have been shown to increase over 30-fold when a thesis is available free online and easily located. A national service for the UK that provides discovery and access to theses in electronic form via the Web will increase the utility of doctoral scholarship. A single interface that directs users to theses wherever they are held, and which addresses the issues of intellectual property, permissions, royalties, preservation, discovery, and other matters associated with the public provision of theses in electronic form, will be of great benefit to the scholarly community in the UK and across the world. The EThOS project (Electronic Theses Online Service) was commissioned to develop a model for a workable, sustainable and acceptable national service for the provision of open access to electronic doctoral theses. The EThOS project team have completed the task and UCL Library Services in partnership with Key Perspectives Ltd have been asked to undertake a consultative study to assess the acceptability of the proposed model to the UK higher education community in the context of other potential models. This document reports the results of this consultative study, including a set of recommendations to JISC and other stakeholders for setting up a UK national e-theses service. The stakeholders other than JISC are: The British Library University administrators (registrars) Graduate students and recent PhDs Librarians Institutional repository managers Other e-theses services including: DART-Europe DiVA DissOnline Australasian Digital Theses Theses Canada Networked Digital Library for Theses and Dissertations The EThOS tea