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High voltage cascaded step-up DC-DC Marx converter for offshore wind energy systems
Get PDFThis paper presents an improved cascaded DC-DC resonant converter for offshore windfarms. The improvements are reduced losses and the number of components. The topology is based on the Marx principle where charged capacitors are charged in parallel and discharged in series to achieve the voltage transformation. The four inductors of the converter are designed to resonate with the capacitors to create resonance forcing current zeros to enable zero current switching thereby reducing switching losses. The operating principles and design considerations of the proposed converter are discussed and the design equations are presented. In order to evaluate the operation of 50 MW converter aimed at connecting a 30 kV DC Busbar in a wind power collection system to a 360 kV high voltage DC bus for transmission to the onshore grid was simulated and the results are presente
Hollowing out national agreements in the NHS? The case of ‘Improving Working Lives’ under a ‘Turnaround’ plan
Get PDFPurpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider the resilience of a national-level initiative (Improving Working Lives (IWL)) in the face of local-level initiative (Turnaround) in an NHS hospital and compare to Bach and Kessler’s (2012) model of public service employment relations. Design/methodology/approach – Case study research consisting of 23 in-depth semi-structured interviews from a range of participants. Findings – The principles behind IWL were almost entirely sacrificed in order to meet the financial objectives of Turnaround. This indicates the primacy of localised upstream performance management initiatives over the national-level downstream employee relations initiatives that form the basis of the NHS’ claim to model employer aspiration. Research limitations/implications – The case study was conducted between 2007 and 2009. While the case study falls under previous government regime, the dualised system of national-level agreements combined with localised performance management – and the continued existence of both Turnaround and IWL – makes the results relevant at the time of writing. Originality/value – Some studies (e.g. Skinner et al., 2004) indicated a perception that IWL was not trusted by NHS staff. The present study offers reasons as to why this may be the case. Keywords Work-life balance, NHS, Collective bargaining Paper type Case stud
Westminster Briefing Confronting Sexual Violence: Reducing Offending and Supporting Victims
No full textThis presentation outlines effective strategies to combat sexual violence. It encompasses the techniques used to build evidence, listen to survivors and to repair the harm in rape and sexual assault cases. It provides an update on the national picture of historic sex crimes. It also outlines the key considerations in relation to supporting victims and the lessons learned to try and prevent large scale issues surrounding historic sexual offences occurring again
Collaborative Research into International Perspectives on Best Practice in Sexual Offence Investigations
No full textThe number of incidents of sexual offences recorded by the police in England and Wales increased by 12%, when compared with the previous year, up to 116,012 reports in the year ending December 2016. The number of complainants reporting sexual offences, or accessing services designed to support victims of these types of offences, is known to represent only a very small proportion of the true number of victims.
Whilst physical evidence is only one type of forensic evidence used in sexual offence investigations, it can be incredibly useful in identifying the perpetrator(s) of the crime. Therefore, it is imperative that the quality of any physical evidence is beyond reproach in order to maximise the potential for achieving a positive outcome. The equipment used in evidence collection, and the mechanisms by which any samples are recovered should be regularly reviewed in order to ensure that they remain fit for purpose.
This research has attempted to evaluate different stages of sexual offence investigations, from reporting of the offence to appropriate organisations through to the examination of the complainant in order to recover physical evidence. It has involved working alongside colleagues in Psychology and Health, as well as collaborating with external organisations such as Sexual Assault Research Centres (SARCs) and Police Forces.
Furthermore, this research, supported by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, aims to examine practices in the UK, the USA and Canada to gain a better understanding of best practice and to establish mechanisms for continual sharing of this practice in the future.
Future plans for development of this research include setting up a ‘Sexual Offences Research Group’ with representatives across the University, as well as key partner organisations, to develop a reputation as leading researchers into the criminal, health and societal impacts of sexual offences
The Use of Metaphor in Interactive Systems for Singer-Songwriters
No full textWorking with interactive systems for creation and performance of popular music offers several advantages to singer-songwriters. Such systems function as a partner in composition, allowing habitual patterns to be broken and extending the songwriter’s ‘idiolect’ as well as their virtuosity. In performance, interactive systems afford expressivity, spontaneity and polyphony. Visual presentation of the system allows audiences to relate to the performance of the machine partner and invites deeper engagement.
The use of metaphor provides a starting point for shared understanding between composer/performer and audience, as well as serving to create a field of possibilities for the composer at the start of the composition. The metaphor opens up several pathways for further development of creative ideas, through software programming, lyric-writing, creating visuals as well as musical composition.
This study relates to theories and models of composition involving the generation and refinement of possibilities (Eno, 2004), collaboration with tools (Prior, 2009), working with interactive systems (Chadabe, 2007) the use of metaphor in music (Emmerson, 2007) and the relationship between composing music, writing lyrics, creating software and performing live.
Popular music (and increasingly art music) involves the consideration of its reception (Landy, 1994; Reeves et al, 2005) by an active, creative audience (Small, 1988; Joeonwon and Song, 2002). Central to the development of this work is considerations of how the audience will relate to the piece, particularly through the ‘liveness’ of the performance (Emmerson 2007, Sanden, 2013).
This study involved the exploration of singer-songwriter creative process when using a metaphor as the basis for both an interactive system and the composition itself. The selected metaphor was a physical model – as this provides an immediate point of shared understanding between performer and audience (Johnston, 2013), while complex interactions and polyphony ensure that some mystery and intrigue remains. The use of live instruments and voice with an interactive system allows the exploration of combining human and machine sounds, as well as the space between them (Estibeiro, 2015). While much current work in art music and human-computer interaction focusses on improvisatory systems, the use of interactive systems in the creation and performance of popular music remains relatively unexplored.
This study is part of a PhD project looking at the relationships between singer-songwriting, interactive music systems and liveness. The study uses a practice as research methodology (Nelson, 2013) that involves literature/media review, composition, system-building and performance.
A simple, physical metaphor was realised in software, and its behavior mapped to live input from a guitar. This allowed generation of musical ideas through improvisation. Further compositional developments took place with iterative stages of play involving software exploration and refinement, followed by further improvisation. Lyrics were generated that are rooted to the metaphor, along with additional output sounds. Score following algorithms allowed the system behaviour to evolve in real time during the piece, and reinforce its narrative and emotional message. Insights were also gained into the balance of real-time and non-real time agencies of the system and composer-performer
The psychiatric paradox: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of the experience of being assessed and detained under the English Mental Health Act (1983).
Get PDFThe aim of this qualitative study was to explore the experience of being assessed and detained under the English Mental Health Act (1983). Semi-structured interviews with a sample of seven adult service-users were analysed. The methodology employed was interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three super-ordinate themes were identified: The psychiatric paradox – chiefly concerned with the finding that treatment actually increased distress in many cases; fear of the unknown – considering the role that a lack of information plays in perpetuating distress; and, playing the game – exploring the finding that some people presented falsely in order to be discharged. Recommendations include a cultural shift from the dominant model of biomedical conceptualisation and treatment of “mental illness”, to a more psychosocial conceptualisation utilising the Open Dialogue approac
Cognitive Approach to Natural Language Processing
No full textAs natural language processing spans many different disciplines, it is sometimes difficult to understand the contributions and the challenges that each of them presents. This book explores the special relationship between natural language processing and cognitive science, and the contribution of computer science to these two fields. It is based on the recent research papers submitted at the international workshops of Natural Language and Cognitive Science (NLPCS) which was launched in 2004 in an effort to bring together natural language researchers, computer scientists, and cognitive and linguistic scientists to collaborate together and advance research in natural language processing.
The chapters cover areas related to language understanding, language generation, word association, word sense disambiguation, word predictability, text production and authorship attribution. This book will be relevant to students and researchers interested in the interdisciplinary nature of language processing
Sharing Ideas and Practice In Higher Education
Get PDFSharing Ideas and Practice in Higher Education
There is a substantial literature on teaching and learning in Higher Education. The majority of this literature is student facing, focusing on the student learning experience. There is also a strand in the literature which examines teaching and learning from the tutor perspective, looking at the experience of teaching in Higher Education. In both student and tutor facing approaches, the aim is to facilitate and enhance teaching and learning and tutor facing approaches emphasise in particular the contribution of staff communication and reflection in improving teaching and learning. Tutor facing approaches include Scholarship in Teaching and Learning, Communities of Practice and Disciplinary Commons. This paper discusses the experience of a School of Computing Commons (School Commons) developed in the School of Computing in a UK university. The School Commons was inspired by the Disciplinary Commons approach but also draws on the Scholarship for Teaching and Learning and Communities of Practice approaches. Elements from these three approaches were used to develop a model which brought together teaching staff from the different disciplines in the School of Computing, creating a forum in which to share practice and expertise. The main focus of the School Commons was on process, providing space for reflection and facilitating communication and the exchange of ideas. However, the School Commons also facilitated a bottom up approach to staff development, allowing staff to feed ideas and expectations into the university framework. The paper describes the motivation for the development of the School Commons, the process of establishing the School Commons and the way in which it was structured. The operation of the School Commons is reviewed and the effectiveness and value of this type of approach in terms of contribution to teaching and learning is critically evaluated. The outcomes from the project are discussed and the paper makes a number of suggestions for building on the achievements of the School Commons and future development
TRAWL: Protection against rogue sites for the masses
Get PDFAbstract:
The number of smartphones reached 3.4 billion in the third quarter of 2016 [1]. These devices facilitate our daily lives and have become the primary way of accessing the web. Although all desktop browsers filter rogue websites, their mobile counterparts often do not filter them at all, exposing their users to websites serving malware or hosting phishing attacks. In this paper we revisit the anti-phishing filtering mechanism which is offered in the most popular web browsers of Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Our results show that mobile users are still unprotected against phishing attacks, as most of the browsers are unable to filter phishing URLs. Thus, we implement and evaluate TRAWL (TRAnsparent Web protection for alL), as a cost effective security control that provides DNS and URL filtering using several blacklists
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