Aquatic invasive alien species – top issues for their management. Outcomes from the IFI/EIFAAC conference “Freshwater Invasives – Networking for Strategy”

In November 2014, a new EU Regulation to address Invasive Alien Species (IAS) and protect biodiversity was published. This entered into force across the EU in January 2015. The aim of the Regulation is to ‘prevent the introduction of, control or eradicate alien species which threaten ecosystems, habitats or species’. In an effort to provide focus to the Regulation prior to its publishing and to identify the major issues relating to Invasive Alien Species in Europe, the views of invasive species experts from around the world were sought. These were consolidated at an international conference (Freshwater Invasives - Networking for Strategy (FINS)) that was held in Ireland in April 2013. A major outcome from this meeting of experts was the production of the Top 20 IAS issues that relate primarily to freshwater habitats but are also directly relevant to marine and terrestrial ecosystems. This list will support policy makers throughout the EU as preparations are made to implement this important piece of legislation. A further outcome from the conference was the formation of an expert IAS Advisory Group to support EIFAAC in its work on invasive species

Studying Gender in Conference Talks -- data from the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society

We present a study on the gender balance, in speakers and attendees, at the recent major astronomical conference, the American Astronomical Society meeting 223, in Washington, DC. We conducted an informal survey, yielding over 300 responses by volunteers at the meeting. Each response included gender data about a single talk given at the meeting, recording the gender of the speaker and all question-askers. In total, 225 individual AAS talks were sampled. We analyze basic statistical properties of this sample. We find that the gender ratio of the speakers closely matched the gender ratio of the conference attendees. The audience asked an average of 2.8 questions per talk. Talks given by women had a slightly higher number of questions asked (3.2$\pm$0.2) than talks given by men (2.6$\pm$0.1). The most significant result from this study is that while the gender ratio of speakers very closely mirrors that of conference attendees, women are under-represented in the question-asker category. We interpret this to be an age-effect, as senior scientists may be more likely to ask questions, and are more commonly men. A strong dependence on the gender of session chairs is found, whereby women ask disproportionately fewer questions in sessions chaired by men. While our results point to laudable progress in gender-balanced speaker selection, we believe future surveys of this kind would help ensure that collaboration at such meetings is as inclusive as possible.

Think, code, succeed: The Programming Studio as a games-based collaboration:Paper published in the Proceedings of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe conference: Teacher Education through Partnerships and Collaborative Learning Communities, Glasgow, UK. ATEE, 2015

This paper investigates the profile of teachers in the island of Ireland who declared themselves willing to undertake professional development activities in programming, in particular to master programming by taking on-line courses involving the design of computer games. Using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), it compares scores for teachers “willing” to undertake the courses with scores for those who declined, and examines other differences between the groups of respondents. Findings reflect the perceived difficulties of programming and the current low status accorded to the subject in Ireland. The paper also reviews the use of games-based learning as a “hook” to engage learners in programming and discusses the role of gamification as a tool for motivating learners in an on-line course. The on-line course focusing on games design was met with enthusiasm, and there was general consensus that gamification was appropriate for motivating learners in structured courses such as those provided.

Special issue on the 6th Portuguese Conference on Automatic Control (Controlo 2004)

The Portuguese Association of Automatic Control (APCA) organizes, every two years, the Portuguese Conference on Automatic Control. Its 6th edition (Controlo 2004) was held from 7 to 9 June, 2004 at the University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal, by its Centre for Intelligent Systems (CSI). CONTROLO 2004 International Program Committee (IPC) has decided, from the very start, to ask for submission of full draft papers, to encourage special sessions with well-defined themes, and for student papers. All papers have been reviewed by three separate reviewers. From the 122 contributions submitted, the IPC selected 89 oral papers, 20 special session papers, and 5 student posters. CONTROLO 2004 Technical Programme consists of 33 oral sessions (5 being special sessions) and 1 poster session, covering a broad range of control topics, both from theory and applications. The programme also includes three plenary lectures, given by leading experts in the field, Professors Ricardo Sanz, João Miranda Lemos and Rolf Isermann.

An exploratory taxonomic study of IMP Group conference papers

The paper describes exploratory research into the nature of IMP conference papers with particular focus on content. A qualitative analysis of the proceedings of the 16th annual IMP conference is presented. The results provide insights into the diversity of academic thought that fuels the development of the IMP network and allows us to begin charting the development of knowledge structures within past IMP conferences. Of particular interest are, firstly, the tentative knowledge structure that emerges, secondly, the depth of analysis that emerges from using multi dimension coding and thirdly the utility of the process of successive categorisation.

Recollections of a conference interpreter: a brief encounter with the European Parliament

Polissema: Revista de Letras do ISCAP 2001/N.º 1- Tradução

IX International conference on Remote Engineering and Virtual instrumentation REV 2012

THE ninth edition of the International Conference on Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation (REV) [1] was held at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Deusto, Bilbao (Spain), from the 4th to the 6th of July, 2012. A world-class research community in the subject of remote and virtual laboratories joined the event.