Report on the Information Retrieval Festival (IRFest2017)

The Information Retrieval Festival took place in April 2017 in Glasgow. The focus of the workshop was to bring together IR researchers from the various Scottish universities and beyond in order to facilitate more awareness, increased interaction and reflection on the status of the field and its future. The program included an industry session, research talks, demos and posters as well as two keynotes. The first keynote was delivered by Prof. Jaana Kekalenien, who provided a historical, critical reflection of realism in Interactive Information Retrieval Experimentation, while the second keynote was delivered by Prof. Maarten de Rijke, who argued for more Artificial Intelligence usage in IR solutions and deployments. The workshop was followed by a "Tour de Scotland" where delegates were taken from Glasgow to Aberdeen for the European Conference in Information Retrieval (ECIR 2017

Further education in transition

This paper provides an overview of the national perspective in further education (FE) developments in Information and Learning Technology (ILT) since 1992, from the unique perspective of a number of key staff members at the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) and a member of staff with a role in quality improvement in the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC). It sets in context the research reported in this section in the papers by Cockrill et al. and Caven‐Atack

On blocks of Deligne's category Rep(S_t)

Recently P. Deligne introduced the tensor category Rep(S_t) (for t not necessarily an integer) which in a certain precise sense interpolates the categories Rep(S_d) of representations of the symmetric groups S_d. In this paper we describe the blocks of Deligne's category Rep(S_t).Comment: 43 pages, final version, includes an added appendix as well as other modifications recommended by the refere

Valuing Fuelwood Resources Using a Site Choice Model of Fuelwood Collection

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

An update on nuclear calcium signalling

Over the past 15 years or so, numerous studies have sought to characterise how nuclear calcium (Ca2+) signals are generated and reversed, and to understand how events that occur in the nucleoplasm influence cellular Ca2+ activity, and vice versa. In this Commentary, we describe mechanisms of nuclear Ca2+ signalling and discuss what is known about the origin and physiological significance of nuclear Ca2+ transients. In particular, we focus on the idea that the nucleus has an autonomous Ca2+ signalling system that can generate its own Ca2+ transients that modulate processes such as gene transcription. We also discuss the role of nuclear pores and the nuclear envelope in controlling ion flux into the nucleoplasm

Circuit Design for Predictive Maintenance

Industry 4.0 has become a driver for the entire manufacturing industry. Smart systems have enabled 30% productivity increases and predictive maintenance has been demonstrated to provide a 50% reduction in machine downtime. So far, the solution has been based on data analytics which has resulted in a proliferation of sensing technologies and infrastructure for data acquisition, transmission and processing. At the core of factory operation and automation are circuits that control and power factory equipment, innovative circuit design has the potential to address many system integration challenges. We present a new circuit design approach based on circuit level artificial intelligence solutions, integrated within control and calibration functional blocks during circuit design, improving the predictability and adaptability of each component for predictive maintenance. This approach is envisioned to encourage the development of new EDA tools such as automatic digital shadow generation and product lifecycle models, that will help identification of circuit parameters that adequately define the operating conditions for dynamic prediction and fault detection. Integration of a supplementary artificial intelligence block within the control loop is considered for capturing non-linearities and gain/bandwidth constraints of the main controller and identifying changes in the operating conditions beyond the response of the controller. System integration topics are discussed regarding integration within OPC Unified Architecture and predictive maintenance interfaces, providing real-time updates to the digital shadow that help maintain an accurate, virtual replica model of the physical system.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, position pape