10,161 research outputs found
"A veritable Augustus": the life of John Winthrop Hackett, newspaper proprietor, politician and philanthropist (1848-1916)
No full textIrish-born Sir John Winthrop Hackett (1848-1916) achieved substantial political and social standing in Western Australia through his editorship and part-ownership of the West Australian newspaper, his position as a Legislative Council member and as a layman in the Anglican Church. The thesis illustrates his strong commitment to numerous undertakings, including his major role in the establishment of Western Australia's first University.
This thesis will argue that whatever Hackett attempted to achieve in Western Australia, his philosophy can be attributed to his Irish Protestant background including his student days at Trinity College Dublin. After arriving in Australia in 1875 and teaching at Trinity College Melbourne until 1882, his ambitions took him to Western Australia where he aspired to be accepted and recognised by the local establishment. He was determined that his achievements would not only be acknowledged by his contemporaries, but also just as importantly be remembered in posterity. After a failed attempt to run a sheep station, he found success as part-owner and editor of the West Australian newspaper.
Outside of his business interests, Hackett’s commitment to the Anglican Church was unflagging. At the same time, he was instrumental in bringing about the abolition of state aid to church schools in Western Australia, which he saw as advantaging the Roman Catholic Church. He was a Legislative Council member for 25 years during which time he used his editorship of the West Australian, to campaign successfully on a number of social, industrial and economic issues ranging from divorce reform to the provision of economic infrastructure. As a delegate to the National Australasian Conventions he continually strove to improve the conditions under which Western Australia would join Federation. His crowning achievement was to establish the state’s first university, which he also generously provided for in his will. One of the most influential men in Western Australian history, his career epitomised the energy and ambition of the well-educated immigrant
Metadata Representations for Queryable ML Model Zoos
No full textMachine learning (ML) practitioners and organizations are building model zoos of pre-trained models, containing metadata describing properties of the ML models and datasets that are useful for reporting, auditing, reproducibility, and interpretability purposes. The metatada is currently not standardised; its expressivity is limited; and there is no interoperable way to store and query it. Consequently, model search, reuse, comparison, and composition are hindered. In this paper, we advocate for standardized ML model metadata representation and management, proposing a toolkit supported to help practitioners manage and query that metadata.Web Information SystemsHuman-Centred Artificial Intelligenc
A Manifesto of Nodalism
No full textThis paper proposes the notion of Nodalism as a means describing contemporary culture and of understanding my own creative practice in electronic music composition. It draws on theories and ideas from Kirby, Bauman, Bourriaud, Deleuze, Guatarri, and Gochenour, to demonstrate how networks of ideas or connectionist neural models of cognitive behaviour can be used to contextualize, understand and become a creative tool for the creation of contemporary electronic music
Oxidative modification of albumin in the parenchymal lung tissue of current smokers with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
No full textBackground: there is accumulating evidence that oxidative stress plays an important role in the pathophysiology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). One current hypothesis is that the increased oxidant burden in these patients is not adequately counterbalanced by the lung antioxidant systems.Objective: to determine the levels of oxidised human serum albumin (HSA) in COPD lung explants and the effect of oxidation on HSA degradation using an ex vivo lung explant model.Methods: parenchymal lung tissue was obtained from 38 patients (15F/23M) undergoing lung resection and stratified by smoking history and disease using the GOLD guidelines and the lower limit of normal for FEV1/FVC ratio. Lung tissue was homogenised and analysed by ELISA for total levels of HSA and carbonylated HSA. To determine oxidised HSA degradation lung tissue explants were incubated with either 200 ?g/ml HSA or oxidised HSA and supernatants collected at 1, 2, 4, 6, and 24 h and analysed for HSA using ELISA and immunoblot.Results: when stratified by disease, lung tissue from GOLD II (median = 38.2 ?g/ml) and GOLD I (median = 48.4 ?g/ml) patients had lower levels of HSA compared to patients with normal lung function (median = 71.9 ?g/ml, P < 0.05). In addition the number of carbonyl residues, which is a measure of oxidation was elevated in GOLD I and II tissue compared to individuals with normal lung function (P < 0.05). When analysing smoking status current smokers had lower levels of HSA (median = 43.3 ?g/ml, P < 0.05) compared to ex smokers (median = 71.9 ?g/ml) and non-smokers (median = 71.2 ?g/ml) and significantly greater number of carbonyl residues per HSA molecule (P < 0.05). When incubated with either HSA or oxidised HSA lung tissue explants rapidly degraded the oxidised HSA but not unmodified HSA (P < 0.05).Conclusion: we report on a reliable methodology for measuring levels of oxidised HSA in human lung tissue and cell culture supernatant. We propose that differences in the levels of oxidised HSA within lung tissue from COPD patients and current smokers provides further evidence for an oxidant/antioxidant imbalance and has important biological implications for the disease.<br/
Optimizing ML Inference Queries Under Constraints
No full textThe proliferation of pre-trained ML models in public Web-based model zoos facilitates the engineering of ML pipelines to address complex inference queries over datasets and streams of unstructured content. Constructing optimal plan for a query is hard, especially when constraints (e.g. accuracy or execution time) must be taken into consideration, and the complexity of the inference query increases. To address this issue, we propose a method for optimizing ML inference queries that selects the most suitable ML models to use, as well as the order in which those models are executed. We formally define the constraint-based ML inference query optimization problem, formulate it as a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) problem, and develop an optimizer that maximizes accuracy given constraints. This optimizer is capable of navigating a large search space to identify optimal query plans on various model zoos.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Web Information SystemsHuman-Centred Artificial Intelligenc
Building a generalisable ML pipeline at ING
No full textAdvances in data science have caused an increase in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically Machine Learning (ML), throughout various fields. Not only in research but in the industry as well, has ML been receiving increasing amounts of interest. Many companies rely on ML models to increase the efficiency of existing processes or offer new services and products. The industry, however, is facing several additional challenges compared to the academic context. One of those challenges is applying the Development Operations (DevOps) model to an ML application, also referred to as MLOps. This thesis sets out to find the specific challenges that practitioners encounter while operationalising ML models. To do so, we perform a single-case case study on an ML pipeline built by the Trade & Communication Surveillance team at the ING bank. This case study consists of conducting a set of interviews and performing a manual code inspection of the pipeline. The team faces challenges ranging from having insufficient time for operationalising each ML project individually to operating in the highlyregulated fintech context. Their pipeline is able to deploy a single ML model but it does not generalise well to other projects. We present the first version of an application that mitigates these challenges. The application is able to deploy ML models to the development environment at ING and can be operated by data scientists to reduce the effort of operationalising an ML model. Computer Science | Software Technolog
'Project smells' - Experiences in Analysing the Software Quality of ML Projects with mllint
No full textMachine Learning (ML) projects incur novel challenges in their development and productionisation over traditional software applications, though established principles and best practices in ensuring the project's software quality still apply. While using static analysis to catch code smells has been shown to improve software quality attributes, it is only a small piece of the software quality puzzle, especially in the case of ML projects given their additional challenges and lower degree of Software Engineering (SE) experience in the data scientists that develop them. We introduce the novel concept of project smells which consider deficits in project management as a more holistic perspective on software quality in ML projects. An open-source static analysis tool mllint was also implemented to help detect and mitigate these. Our research evaluates this novel concept of project smells in the industrial context of ING, a global bank and large software- and data-intensive organisation. We also investigate the perceived importance of these project smells for proof-of-concept versus production-ready ML projects, as well as the perceived obstructions and benefits to using static analysis tools such as mllint. Our findings indicate a need for context-aware static analysis tools, that fit the needs of the project at its current stage of development, while requiring minimal configuration effort from the user. Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Software EngineeringSoftware Technolog
Audiomobiles, Sculptures and Conundrums
No full textRoberto Gerhard was a pioneer of electronic music in England creating a number of substantial concert, theatre and radio works from as early as 1954. Gerhard’s electronic music is one of the richest repositories for understanding the development of the composer’s late compositional technique. Apart from the Symphony no.3, ‘Collages’, none of Gerhard’s electronic music is published. This paper will discuss aspects of Gerhard’s electronic music, focusing on Audiomobiles (1958-59) and Sculptures (1963)
Development of nanoplasmonic devices for biosensing applications
No full textNext-generation molecular diagnostic sensing systems seek to meet the needs of high-risk patients for portable, convenient, low-cost detection that is also reliable with a sufficient sensitivity and dynamic range for the chosen target. Optical micro- and nanosensors have incredible potential for early stage detection of cancer biomarkers in human serum samples for applications such as treatment monitoring and recurrence diagnosis due to their reliability for measuring protein-protein interactions. Plasmonic sensors are appealing for biosensing applications due to the high sensitivity of the generated evanescent fields to local refractive index changes. However, widespread applications of these sensors are limited due to bulky, high-cost instrumentation requirements and insufficient limit of detection for pertinent cancer biomarker proteins. These sensors are currently based on surface plasmon resonance, extraordinary optical transmission, localized surface plasmon resonance, or a combination of these mechanisms. In this thesis, a new type of plasmonic sensor and sensing method are developed and studied for the detection of the cancer biomarker carcinoembryonic antigen. The optical properties of this device are studied in detail and its distinct spectral properties simultaneously reduce instrumentation requirements and improve the limit of detection to a suitable level for cancer biomarker screening.
First, a gold plasmonic nanocup array, which operates based on a combination of extraordinary optical transmission and localized surface plasmon resonance, is studied for two biosensing applications. The first is a drug binding study to cytochrome P450 proteins and the second is a cell adhesion imaging study. From these studies, the advantages and disadvantages of the plasmonic nanocup array are identified and a new plasmonic sensor is developed. This sensor design begins with the plasmonic nanocup array and adds an insulator layer followed by a second gold layer, such that the final device consists of a metal-insulator-metal cavity embedded in the 3D nanocup array. The spectral properties of this device include a sensitive, on-resonance, relative change in transmission intensity with a refractive index change without a spectral shift and spectral locations with no intensity change with refractive index change. Therefore, this device shows a great potential for spectrometer-free plasmonic sensing, which greatly reduces instrumentation costs for portable diagnostic systems and also enables imaging-mode detection.
The limit of detection for the cancer biomarker carcinoembryonic antigen is 1 ng/mL with the metal-insulator-metal plasmonic nanocup array, 1 µg/mL for the plasmonic nanocup array without any multilayered nanocavity structure, and 100 ng/mL for a commercialized conventional surface plasmon resonance sensor. Therefore, this new type of plasmonic sensor makes relevant limits of detection possible for cancer biomarker proteins. Several different multilayered nanostructured cavity devices are studied in this dissertation, including a metal-insulator-metal nanopillar device for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy sensing. In each case, the sensing method is critically studied and the device is optimized. The plasmon-photon interaction in the multilayered system is examined in detail and it is shown that the plasmonic mode and cavity mode can be engineered to optimally couple. Overall, the multilayered plasmonic sensors developed in this dissertation are promising for future portable sensing systems to fill the gap for low-cost, high performing molecular diagnostics.Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2019-12-01The student, Lisa Hackett, accepted the attached license on 2017-11-25 at 09:19.The student, Lisa Hackett, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2017-11-25 at 09:40.This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2017-11-27 at 09:09.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #11753 on 2018-03-13 at 10:33:28Made available in DSpace on 2018-03-13T17:32:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
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Music for classical guitar by South African composers : a historical survey, notes on selected works and a general catalogue
No full textIncludes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 296-309).This is the first comprehensive investigation of music for, or including, the classical guitar by South African composers. The focus of this research has been, firstly, to uncover as much of the repertoire as possible, and, secondly, to collate, study, catalogue and report on the information. A brief historical survey of the guitar in South Africa provides the context within which this study was conducted. The primary sources of quantitative data collection were through the archival catalogues of the South African Music Rights Organisation and through personal contact with guitarists, composers and guitar teachers. Other sources consulted were publishers, broadcasting corporations, recording companies, libraries and the internet. The body of the dissertation comprises biographical sketches, background notes, analyses and technical notes on 17 selected solo and chamber works dating from 1947 to 2007 by some of South Africa's most prominent composers and guitaristcomposers. The repertoire ranges in style from the traditional and ethnically inspired to the experimental and abstract. As this is an empirical survey, each selected entry includes details on instrumentation, duration, level of difficulty, number of pages, scordatura, commissions or requests, sources or publishers, premières and recordings. A biography of each composer is provided as well as background notes which offer an overview of the selected work. The notes discuss historical, cultural, musical and extra-musical influences, and frequently include references to interview material. The commentaries on the selected works, with musical examples, include an analytical component describing structure, form, stylistic and compositional elements, while the technical observations include performance suggestions and a grading for each work
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