Taken from a blog written at Irchester Primary School http://lab13network.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/dads-robot-lab/ about a robot activity. For more details about Lab_13 go to: http://lab13network.wordpress.com/

Dad’s Robot Lab!

Posted on November 28, 2012 

Hi! This is Morgan and Emily. Our Dads come to Dads Club in Lab_13.

Last week, we had some visitors! They demonstrated how all of the robots worked. There were some amazing remote controlled robots and a Lego robot. The name of the person who worked with all of the extraordinary robots was Scott Turner. We were amazed by the robots. Thank you for coming.

 The Lego robot could be controlled by the computer. The other robot could do handstands, roly-polys and cartwheels. Some were doing gymnastics, walking, bowing and dancing. The Lego robot just went all over the place!

 

Emily’s stepdad, Robin, said “It was fantastic – I want a robot for Christmas.”Unfortunately they are £800! And Kris, Kieran’s dad said “Thanks for organising the robot lab … a nice little event, an amazing robot!” 

BCS Event: Northampton Branch AGM

Northampton Branch AGM

Date

22nd November 2012

Agenda

Welcome and Introductions

Apologies for absence

Minutes of the previous AGM (and if appropriate EGM)

Matters arising from the minutes

A report from the Chair on the year's activities

A report from the Treasurer, including a review of income and expenditure against the budget agreed with BCS HQ for the past year and an explanation of next years budget request. 

Election of Chair, Treasurer and committee members

Any other business

Start Time

19:00

Location

Room MB8, Avenue Campus, University of Northampton, NN2 6JD

How to find Avenue Campus

BCS Event (update): Stakeholder Management: Hard tools and soft skills

Date: Wednesday, 12th December 2012

Title: ‘Stakeholder Management: Hard tools and soft skills’

Time: Evening session with networking opportunities and drinks

- Registration: 19:00

- Presentation: 19:30

- Q and A: 20:45

- End: 21:00

Presenter: Dr Peter Parkes FAPM CITP FBCS (Director, Peak Performance)

Venue: University of Northampton Park Campus , (Room C101), Cottesbrooke Building, Boughton Green Road, Northampton, NN2 7AL

Register here:

- Open to both BCS and non-BCS members, no cost.

- Students and young professionals are encouraged to attend

- To enable us to accurately monitor numbers can we ask that you please register for this event here: https://events.bcs.org/book/328/  

Synopsis: 
We want stakeholders to believe their project to be a success. Hence, a good understanding of stakeholder groups and networks is essential, not only to delivery of your project, but also in how it is perceived in terms of success, on delivery and afterwards during benefits realisation. But understanding who your key stakeholders are and what they expect is only half of the story. What is the best way to communicate with them in terms of not only channels but also style and language, and how do you find out? In this interactive talk Peter will describe some of the conventional stakeholder management tools that he has found effective and then go on to discuss some methods for determining communication preferences and developing flexibility in style.

Presenter Profile:

Peter has held project leadership roles in the private sector, public sector, PPPs and Big 4 management consultancies, usually leading technology enabled transformation or recovery of major projects. He has successfully engaged a range of stakeholders including; regulatory bodies, trade unions, government departments, MPs, investors, international JV partners, suppliers, CXOs, Sponsors / SROs, and of course customers and end users. He is an established platform speaker and regular contributor of articles to trade journals. His book, NLP for Project Managers, was published by the BCS in 2011 and he is currently delivering soft skills based training for PMs as a Director of Peak Performance - see www.NLP4PM.com. He is also a director and trustee with the Association for Project Management, being board champion for best practice groups (SIGs).

counting vicars!

Examples of some now historic work done at the University of Northampton looking at counting behaviours in historic data. In these studies looking at historic census data where the data was taken in the church on a particular sunday - was estimation occurring?

‘BASE-NUMBER CORRELATION’: A NEW TECHNIQUE 

FOR INVESTIGATING DIGIT PREFERENCE AND DATA HEAPING

R. G. M. CROCKETTA. C. CROCKETTS. J. TURNER

Citation Information. History and Computing. Volume 13, Page 161-179 DOI 10.3366/hac.2001.13.2.161, ISSN1753-8548, 

http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/hac.2001.13.2.161

Turner SJ, Triastuti E, Crockett RGM, Picton PD, Crockett AC (2002) Intelligent Techniques for Detecting Estimated and Falsified Numerical Data Proc. 6th Conference of the Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (SCI'2002) Orlando, Florida USA, July 14-18 2002 pp. 445-450, IIIS, Eds. Callaos N, Leng T, Sanchez B, ISBN 980-07-8150-1.

Turner SJ, Crockett RM, Picton PD, Triastuti E (2001) Genetic Algorithms for Simulating Counting Behaviour 19th Biennial Conference on Numerical Analysis Dundee.

Hospital Management in Rural Pakistan

A recent dissertation by an MSc Computing student at the University of Northampton Javed Ahmed looked at software for managing healthcare in rural Pakistan.

Abstract

The adoption of information technology plays a vital role in the domain of health and patient care. Most of developed countries are using information technology in health care in order to provide better services to patients with quality care and getting more benefits. Apart from developed countries the developing countries like Pakistan and other are lacking behind from use of information technology in the field of healthcare.

This dissertation is based on the development of hospital management system for developing countries in order to enhance the performance and provide quality healthcare in rural areas. This web application reduces the paper work and keeps the computerized patient records. This web application will be considered as an initial step towards the betterment of patient care and also improve the hospital services delivery system in developing countries especially in rural areas.

The research is also done in this dissertation for development and controlling of user access rights dynamically at application level in enterprise web applications. Through this users are tightly controlled and within their assigned menus. These user menus and user role rights will be managed and update through GUI with administrator login.

Computing Courses

BSc and HND Computing Provision (click on the links below for more details of the courses)

• BEng/MEng Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• BEng/MEng Computing (Computer Systems Engineering) 

• BSc (Hons) Computing (also available part-time)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Graphics and Visualisation)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Mobile Computing)
• BSc (Hons) Computing (Software Engineering)
• BSc (Hons) Computing - One Year Top-Up 
• BSc  Computer Games Development
• HND Computing (Compute​r Net​works Engineering)
• HND Computing (Computer Systems Engineering)
• HND Computing (Graphics and Visualisation)
• HND Computing (Internet Tech​nolog​y and Security)
• HND Computing (Mobile Computing)
• HND Computing (Software Engine​ering) 
• HND Com​puting

The University of Northampton's, Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies offers five courses within the MSc Computing postgraduate provision (shown below) all available either part-time or full-time. 

• MSc Computing
• MSc Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• MSc Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Software Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Immersive Technologies)

The contents are the opinion of the author(s) and not necessarily the view of the University of Northampton.

Lifting and elevating modelling

• Salamaliki-Simpson R, Kaczmarczyk S, Picton P, Turner S (2006) Non-Linear Modal Interactions in a Suspension Rope System with Time-Varying Length Journal of Applied Mechanics and Materials Vol. 5-6 pp 217-224 ISSN 1660-9336

Abstract:
This paper focuses on the investigation of the autoparametric coupling effects and modal
interactions in a suspension rope system with a time varying length. Equations of motion of a
multi-degree-of-freedom discrete, non-stationary and non-linear model are presented and are used to analyze the dynamic response of an elevator suspension rope system under resonance conditions. The equations of motion involve quadratic and cubic non-linear terms which are responsible for the modal interaction between the lateral and longitudinal oscillations of the rope and the car motions. The model takes into account the periodic excitations caused by motion of the host structure. The
results confirm that adverse responses may arise and internal autoparametric resonance phenomena
may occur

http://www.scientific.net/AMM.5-6.217

• Terumichi Y, Kaczmarczyk S, Turner S, Yoshizawa M, Ostachowicz W (2003) Modelling, Simulation and Analysis Techniques in the Prediction of Non-stationary Vibration Response of Hoist Ropes in Lift Systems Materials Science Forums Vol. 440-441 pp 497-504

http://www.scientific.net/MSF.440-441.49

automatic image annotation

Bouyerbou, H., Oukid, S., Benblidia, N. and Bechkoum, K. (2012) Hybrid image representation methods for automatic image annotation: a survey. Seminar Presentation presented to: International Conference on Signals and Electronic Systems (ICSES 2012), Wroclaw, Poland, 18-21 September 2012.

Abstract:

In most automatic image annotation systems, images are represented with low level features using either global methods or local methods. In global methods, the entire image is used as a unit. Local methods divide images into blocks where fixed-size sub-image blocks are adopted as sub-units; or into regions by using segmented regions as sub-units in  images. In contrast to typical automatic image annotation methods that use either global or local features exclusively, several recent methods have considered incorporating the two kinds of information, and believe that the combination of the two levels of features is beneficial in annotating images. In this paper, we  provide a survey on automatic image annotation techniques according to one aspect: feature extraction, and, in order to complement existing surveys in literature, we focus on the emerging image annotation methods:  hybrid methods that combine both global and local features for image representation.

Full paper can be found at: http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/4440/1/Bouyerbou20124440.pdf

BCS Event update: Networking Event (Pub) Postponed

The networking event on 8th November 2012 at Silverstone has had to be postponed due to unforeseen circumstances. 

A similar event will be scheduled at a later date. The AGM for the BCS Northampton Branch is on the 22nd November 2012.

 

Details of other events can be found at: http://northampton.bcs.org/events.php?menu_id=4

Other News:

(1) BCS Coventry on the 6th November 2012 are running an event called

Networking Evening for IT focused Business start-ups"

For more details please go to: http://coventry.bcs.org/start_up.php

(2) BCS Leicester are running an event on the 8th November 2012 called: Fortran in the 21st Century more details can be found at: http://www.leicester.bcs.org/events/show/081111/Fortran_in_the_21st_Century

(3) BCS Oxfordshire are running an event on the 15th November 2012 called "

SECURITY and INNOVATION – an oxymoron?

More details can be found at: http://www.oxon.bcs.org/ai1ec_event/security-and-innovation-an-oxymoron/?instance_id=2