Interstitial crime analysis

Crime on public transport can be very difficult to analyse. 'Stealth crimes' like pick-pocketing present a particular challenge because victims often have an imprecise knowledge of the location and time of the offence. In this scenario crime has typically been recorded as happening at the reporting station (often at the ‘end of line’) which skews any analysis of the collective crime locations. Interstitial crime analysis (ICA) is a technique which overcomes this problem and improves the estimation of the spatial distribution of crime on networks when the exact location of offences is unknown. Based on the aoristic analysis technique (devised to estimate the temporal distribution of crime when only a time period is known), ICA is used to estimate the location of crimes in the interstices – the intervening spaces - of a network when the location is unknown

Rural-urban migration and subjective well-being the South African experience

This paper gives a detailed account of rural-urban migration in South Africa. Using data from the recent National Income and Dynamics Study (NIDS) it defines the determinants and nature of rural-urban migration in South Africa before providing a thorough analysis of changes in a range of economic and social factors that individuals experience when they leave their rural homes and relocate to the country’s urban areas. These factors include income, housing standards, access to utilities, relative deprivation, interpersonal trust, crime and safety, physical health and depression. In particular the paper looks at subjective well-being, defined in terms of individuals self-reported satisfaction with life

Developing an ontological sandbox : investigating multi-level modelling’s possible Metaphysical Structures

One of the central concerns of the multi-level modelling (MLM) community is the hierarchy of classifications that appear in conceptual models; what these are, how they are linked and how they should be organised into levels and modelled. Though there has been significant work done in this area, we believe that it could be enhanced by introducing a systematic way to investigate the ontological nature and requirements that underlie the frameworks and tools proposed by the community to support MLM (such as Orthogonal Classification Architecture and Melanee). In this paper, we introduce a key component for the investigation and understanding of the ontological requirements, an ontological sandbox. This is a conceptual framework for investigating and comparing multiple variations of possible ontologies – without having to commit to any of them – isolated from a full commitment to any foundational ontology. We discuss the sandbox framework as well as walking through an example of how it can be used to investigate a simple ontology. The example, despite its simplicity, illustrates how the constructional approach can help to expose and explain the metaphysical structures used in ontologies, and so reveal the underlying nature of MLM levelling

Charting the vowel space of Bequian creole

Little is known about the phonemic inventory and realizations of vowels in the Eastern Caribbean at present. Thomas and Bailey (1998) tried to examine the similarities between African American English and Anglophone Caribbean creoles but cite a lack of acoustic analysis of Caribbean creoles as one of the several stumbling blocks encountered. This dissertation aims to help build a better picture of how one island in the Eastern Caribbean articulates its vowels as well as to provide material to help answer questions such as what are similarities in terms of vowel spaces between AAVE and Anglophone Caribbean creoles. By using a mix of existing corpus data from Bequia and the development and implementation of a data collection we performed an acoustic analysis of the vowels and consonants in Bequia. Despite the challenges faced regarding literacy on the island this dissertation presents a basic descriptive framework of Bequian creole (BeqC)’s phonemic inventory and vowel space including a comparison to pre-existing literature on the phonology of the nearest island to Bequia. Overall this dissertation provides a starting point in understanding the acoustic properties of Anglophone Eastern Caribbean creoles. It also acts as something useable for comparisons with other Eastern and Western Caribbean creoles

A Survey of Top-Level Ontologies - to inform the ontological choices for a Foundation Data Model

The Centre for Digital Built Britain has been tasked through the Digital Framework Task Group to develop an Information Management Framework (IMF) to support the development of a National Digital Twin (NDT) as set out in “The Pathway to an Information Management Framework” (Hetherington, 2020). A key component of the IMF is a Foundation Data Model (FDM), built upon a top-level ontology (TLO), as a basis for ensuring consistent data across the NDT. This document captures the results collected from a broad survey of top-level ontologies, conducted by the IMF technical team. It focuses on the core ontological choices made in their foundations and the pragmatic engineering consequences these have on how the ontologies can be applied and further scaled. This document will provide the basis for discussions on a suitable TLO for the FDM. It is also expected that these top-level ontologies will provide a resource whose components can be harvested and adapted for inclusion in the FDM

Bright matter wave solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates

We review recent experimental and theoretical work on the creation of bright matter wave solitons in Bose–Einstein condensates. In two recent experiments, solitons are formed from Bose–Einstein condensates of 7Li by utilizing a Feshbach resonance to switch from repulsive to attractive interactions. The solitons are made to propagate in a one-dimensional potential formed by a focused laser beam. For repulsive interactions, the wavepacket undergoes dispersivewavepacket spreading, while for attractive interactions, localized solitons are formed. In our experiment, a multi-soliton train containing up to ten solitons is observed to propagate without spreading for a duration of 2 s. Adjacent solitons are found to interact repulsively, in agreement with a calculation based on the nonlinear Schr¨odinger equation assuming that the soliton train is formed with an alternating phase structure. The origin of this phase structure is not entirely clear