Representation and learning of visual information for pose recognition

Recovering position from sensor information is an important problem in mobile robotics, known as localisation. Localisation requires a map or some other description of the environment to provide the robot with a context to interpret sensor data. The mobile robot system under discussion is using an artificial neural representation of position. Building a geometrical map of the environment with a single camera and artificial neural networks is difficult. Instead it would be simpler to learn position as a function of the visual input. Usually when learning images, an intermediate representation is employed. An appropriate starting point for biologically plausible image representation is the complex cells of the visual cortex, which have invariance properties that appear useful for localisation. The effectiveness for localisation of two different complex cell models are evaluated. Finally the ability of a simple neural network with single shot learning to recognise these representations and localise a robot is examined.

Teenage mothers' experiences of stigma and formal support services

This research has two focal points: experiences of stigma and experiences of formal support services among teenage mothers. Twenty teenage mothers were interviewed in depth, ten from a one-to-one support service, and ten from a group based support service. Contributions to knowledge consisted of the following. First, regarding experiences of stigma, this research integrated concepts from the social psychology literature and established the effects of stigma which are experienced by teenage mothers, offering reasons for the same. Additionally, further coping mechanisms in response to being stigmatized were discovered and grouped into two new headings: active and passive coping mechanisms. It is acknowledged that for a minority of participants, stigma does have negative effects, however, the majority experiences no such serious negative effects. Secondly, regarding experiences of support services, this research was able to directly compare one-to-one with group based support for teenage mothers. Knowledge was unearthed as to influential factors in the selection of a mode of support and the functions of each of the modes of support, which were categorised under headings for ease of comparison. It was established that there is indeed a link between these two research foci in that both the one-to-one and group based support services fulfil a stigma management function, in which teenage mothers discuss the phenomenon, share experiences and offer advice to others. However, it was also established that this function is of minor importance compared to the other functions fulfilled by the support services.

Teaching and learning German language and culture in higher education in Britain:problems, challenges and didactical implications. A case study

The aim of this thesis is to explore key aspects and problems of the institutionalised teaching and learning of German language and culture in the context of German Studies in British Higher Education (HE). This investigation focuses on teaching and learning experiences in one department of German Studies in the UK, which is the micro-context of the present study, in order to provide an in-depth insight into real-life problems, strengths and weaknesses as they occur in the practice of teaching and learning German. Following Lamb (2004) and Holliday (1994), the present study acts on the assumption that each micro-context does not exist in vacuo but is always embedded in a wider socio-political and education environment, namely the macro-context, which largely determines how and what is taught. The macro-analysis of the present study surveys the socio-political developments that have recently affected the sector of modern languages and specifically the discipline of German Studies in the UK. It demonstrates the impact they have had on teaching and learning German at the undergraduate level in Britain. This context is interesting inasmuch as the situation in Britain is to a large extent a paradigmatic example of the developments in German Studies in English-speaking countries. Subsequently, the present study explores learning experiences of a group of thirty-five first year students. It focuses on their previous experiences in learning German, exposure to the target language, motivation, learning strategies and difficulties encountered, when learning German at the tertiary level. Then, on the basis of interviews with five lecturers of German, teaching experience in the context under study is explored, problems and successful teaching strategies discussed.

(S)excerpts from a Life Told:sex, gender and learning lisability

This is an article about Sarah’s sexual teenage journey, seen through the lens of her mother, the author. It tackles learning disability, sexual experimentation, education, governance and responsibility. By using an autoethnographical method the article speaks personally to these intimate lived experiences and yet broadly and contextually these issues can give further insight into the difficult social processes that permeate surveillance and control, of sexual activity amongst a particular group of adults (young, learning disabled), by way of legal practice and sex education; family practices and the negotiation of power and control over sexual activity; and sexual citizenship and rights to a sexual identity.

Communities and emerging semantics in semantic link network:discovery and learning

The World Wide Web provides plentiful contents for Web-based learning, but its hyperlink-based architecture connects Web resources for browsing freely rather than for effective learning. To support effective learning, an e-learning system should be able to discover and make use of the semantic communities and the emerging semantic relations in a dynamic complex network of learning resources. Previous graph-based community discovery approaches are limited in ability to discover semantic communities. This paper first suggests the Semantic Link Network (SLN), a loosely coupled semantic data model that can semantically link resources and derive out implicit semantic links according to a set of relational reasoning rules. By studying the intrinsic relationship between semantic communities and the semantic space of SLN, approaches to discovering reasoning-constraint, rule-constraint, and classification-constraint semantic communities are proposed. Further, the approaches, principles, and strategies for discovering emerging semantics in dynamic SLNs are studied. The basic laws of the semantic link network motion are revealed for the first time. An e-learning environment incorporating the proposed approaches, principles, and strategies to support effective discovery and learning is suggested.