Centro de Documentación de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música
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How Did We Get Here?: A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence
No full textIn the last decade or so, AI has become an important mainstream technology. It has gone from the preserve of specialist research projects to being ubiquitous in consumer goods and industrial and medical applications. Generative AI is having a major impact in many fields because of its ability to produce text and images on demand. However, despite the promise of contemporary AI, there are also many concerns about its use. This chapter attempts to trace AI’s development to this point. AI has gone through several phases, from early attempts to build complex robots that attempted to replicate the intelligence and behaviours of humans, to today’s Generative AI systems, which learn behaviours from data. AI techniques have moved from hand-crafted models, informed by cognitive theories in disciplines such as psychology and linguistics, to machine learning models in which behaviour emerges from patterns seen in large data sets. To give a sense of some directions in which AI might be headed, consideration is given to how unpredictable AI systems should be managed, and the ethical issues around AI’s use of data. The chapter ends by outlining some of the benefits that AI could bring to fields such as education
SLaVEgents: Digital Prosopography of Enslaved Persons in Western Eurasia and North Africa (1000 BCE–300 CE)
No full textTo achieve in-depth analysis of slave agency, SLaVEgents is building a digital prosopography that will transform the study and understanding of ancient slavery across the board. The open-access, interlinked prosopography will provide a single point of entry for the study of all attested ancient slaves, freedpersons and possible slaves found in ancient sources from 1000 BCE to 300 AD. It will enable the examination of all ancient slaveries from Mesopotamia to the Atlantic, based on and documenting sources across multiple ancient languages (Assyrian, Babylonian, Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician, Egyptian, Greek and Latin) alongside relevant archaeological data. SLaVEgents not only collects the names of all known enslaved persons from antiquity, including both former possible slaves and freed-persons, but also identifies other pertinent factors, such as biographical information (masters, family and kinship, ethnicity, recorded activities and known associates). Its research objectives focus on identifying, tracing and investigating the multiple identities of enslaved persons; the networks and communities that they created or participated in; and the ways in which slave agency led to major political, social, economic and cultural changes in antiquity
Topic counts and quality in topic models for historic corpora
No full textTopic modelling methods enable the identification of potential topics within a corpus of historical texts, in particular they enable the identification of latent topics that are not described just by a single word. Like so many computational methods for the automatic processing of historical text corpora, they come with a number of parameters with which the method can be tuned and adapted. Each change in the settings of any of these parameters will generate a new set of topics that will differ in larger or smaller ways and which may be qualitatively better or worse. One of the main parameters for tuning topic models is setting the number of topics to be generated. In this paper we present an analysis of the impact of the number of topics on the quality of topic models for two historical text corpora. Two manual evaluation approaches are combined with an automated evaluation metric and based on the results we propose a formalised process for choosing the final set of parameters for a topic model. The process ensures the quality of the final model, while minimising the amount of manual evaluation work. The more structured process also allows for better documentation of the choices and in that way enables better reproducibility of any research using topic models
Adaptive Alignment of Human Values in Cyber-Physical Supply Chains
No full textSupply chains are fundamental to the economic functioning of society, through the assembly and transport of essential goods such as food, clothes and medicine. Technological advancements have driven supply chains to become increasingly automated, to optimise for efficiency and cost, and to respond to disturbances. However, optimising for social concerns is less prevalent. Increasing consumer preferences towards purchasing goods whose production is more aligned with those consumers’ values (such as sustainability), requires values-management capabilities within supply chain software. Such capabilities include tracing, monitoring, and verifying values-alignment between end-consumers and stakeholders. In this paper, we advocate for adaptive values-alignment between end-consumers and stakeholders in cyber-physical supply chains. We motivate this by means of an example of a coffee supply chain, which in turn surfaces social and technical challenges to values-alignment. We then propose a distributed, locally adaptive values-alignment approach. We implement this approach within a software framework and quantitatively illustrate its impact in increasing alignment from two competing perspectives: supply chain stakeholders and end-consumers. We show that end-consumer bias performs better by reducing values-misalignment by up to 85%. We also find that the homogeneity of stakeholders’ values is not correlated with an increase in values-alignment with end-consumers and that mixed values-alignment across the supply chain may be beneficial for supporting stakeholder engagement
Early Years Essentials: Linking Theory to Provision in the Early Years
No full textEarly Years Essentials offers a wealth of evidence-based strategies and ideas to enhance the learning and development of young children. Linked to the EYFS framework and drawing on a wide range of case studies from across the sector, it shows what excellent provision looks like in practice alongside summaries of key research.
Each chapter includes a ‘pondering question’ which offers the reader the opportunity to reflect on their own knowledge, as well as providing a framework to consider how to enhance their own teaching skills. Covering all aspects of early years practice, the chapters include:
The indoor and outdoor learning environment
Observation, planning, and assessment
Working with parents and carers
The prime and specific areas of learning
Adult-child interactions
The characteristics of effective learning
Inclusion and diversity
Child and practitioner wellbeing
Including reflective questions and key takeaways in every chapter, this essential text will support student and practitioner knowledge and understanding of how the EYFS principles can be effectively embedded into best practice
Build a sense of belonging in online learning environments
No full textThis chapter describes three projects that have piloted different ways to create a sense of belonging in an online academic setting. The Law School Peer-Mentoring Project uses technology to connect students with each other to develop supportive communities. The Law School Belonging Project takes a programme-wide approach through online events to provide opportunities for peer and staff interaction to create a sense of belonging. Finally, the Business School’s Belonging in Business Project has created a digital space where students can interact synchronously and asynchronously to foster connections.
The chapter explains the findings from the evaluations of these projects and the reflections of the practitioners running them. It includes practical advice and guidance for other education providers who may wish to develop their own intervention to create a sense of belonging for students within an online or blended education environment
Galaxy Zoo: Cosmic Dawn – morphological classifications for over 41 000 galaxies in the Euclid Deep Field North from the Hawaii Two-0 Cosmic Dawn survey
No full textWe present morphological classifications of over 41 000 galaxies out to zphot ∼ 2.5 across six square degrees of the Euclid Deep Field North (EDFN) from the Hawaii Twenty Square Degree (H20) survey, a part of the wider Cosmic Dawn survey. Galaxy Zoo citizen scientists play a crucial role in the examination of large astronomical data sets through crowdsourced data mining of extragalactic imaging. This iteration, Galaxy Zoo: Cosmic Dawn (GZCD), saw tens of thousands of volunteers and the deep learning foundation model Zoobot collectively classify objects in ultra-deep multiband Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) imaging down to a depth of mHSC − i = 21.5. Here, we present the details and general analysis of this iteration, including the use of Zoobot in an active learning cycle to improve both model performance and volunteer experience, as well as the discovery of 51 new gravitational lenses in the EDFN. We also announce the public data release of the classifications for over 45 000 subjects, including more than 41 000 galaxies (median zphot of 0.42 ± 0.23), along with their associated image cutouts. This data set provides a valuable opportunity for follow-up imaging of objects in the EDFN as well as acting as a truth set for training deep learning models for application to ground-based surveys like that of the Ultraviolet Near-Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS) collaboration and the newly operational Vera C. Rubin Observatory
Just Like a Woman
No full textIt seems to be widely supposed that the shock-jock question ‘What is a woman?’ is an unanswerable gotcha for trans people or trans allies. Here I answer the question (my answer is ‘an adult human female’) and explain why this isn’t a transphobic answer, and why, actually, the question is a gotcha for the other side – for trans-exclusionaries. I also answer the question ‘Can a woman have a penis?’ My answer is ‘Yes, and whether you are trans-inclusionary or trans-exclusionary, it’s still yes’
Residual mass-independently fractionated oxygen present in solids accreted during planetesimal formation in the early Solar System: potential evidence from main group pallasites
No full textRefractory Ca-Al-rich inclusions (CAIs) in chondritic meteorites, the oldest known solids in the Solar System, are characterised by ‘mass-independently fractionated’ (MIF) oxygen isotopic compositions, with δ17O variations approximately equal to those of δ18O. The apparent absence of this characteristic from nearly all other oxygen-bearing constituents of early-formed asteroids, together with the brief formation interval for CAIs, indicates that the process responsible was localised and of short duration in the context of Solar System evolution. From reassessing a recent study of main group pallasite meteorites, it is argued that the oxygen isotopic compositions of their coexisting olivine and chromite potentially provide evidence that a minor component of solids containing MIF oxygen was accreted during formation of the parent planetesimal, or its precursors, shortly after CAI formation. Modelling indicates that a contribution of ∼1.6 ± 0.3 % conforming to δ17O ∼ δ18O – γ, for γ assigned as –1.21 or –3.45 (from literature data) is consistent with the reported measurements. If true, and the pallasite olivine and chromite derived from the mantle of an impacted planetesimal and the IIIAB parent body respectively, as proposed elsewhere, then a ‘residual’ MIF oxygen component must have been present in solids accreted by those early planetesimals, probably in the same feeder zone. A testable prediction is that such residual MIF oxygen may similarly have been accreted in more early-formed planetesimals than recognised hitherto. If so, its presence should be detectable from comparable measurements of coexisting oxygen-bearing minerals in the associated meteorites, subject to the δ18O range being of sufficient magnitude
Employer Forums on Degree Apprenticeship programmes: facilitating stakeholder engagement and learning
No full textSuccess in apprenticeship programmes is a collective endeavour. This paper presents an initiative which supports work-based mentors working alongside The Open University on the Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship (CMDA). Through a regular programme of online meetings – which we term ‘Employer Forums’ – we provide work-based mentors with a community of practice to share and develop knowledge together. Feedback gathered from the nearly 200 mentors who have attended sessions to date confirm that they value the opportunity to attend and contribute. Attendance benefits carry over into the tripartite relationship between apprentice, workplace mentor and HEI Tutor, furthering confidence, and effective working relationships