SO, what is Camden’s first academy school planned for Swiss Cottage going to be called? I assumed it would be simply known as the ‘UCL Academy’, after the university which will sponsor it. Lecturers on campus there seem to think the same thing. The Times Education Supplement suggested, however, it wasn’t so cut and dry in a long feature on the project, covering familiar ground, last week.

Nick Morrison for the TES suggested that UCL may want to provide a clear distinction about the management structure of the school, a source of much angry-faced controversy in the last few years locally. He wrote:

“At UCL, staff refer to it as “the UCL Academy”. Many London schools are named after individuals, but that doesn’t look to be on the cards for this one. UCL Academy is the obvious choice, but the university is keen to make it clear the school is not part of UCL, so this may end up being overtaken by a desire to clarify the relationship.”

But what’s the new school, which has been at the centre of rows over its location and its independent sponsorship, to be called if not the ‘UCL Academy’? How about naming it after the two Camden Council councillors who helped seal the deal? The John Bryant Academy maybe? Or Andrew Mennear High? That would be an honour for the men who reached the decision to open a new school in Camden was in Swiss Cottage – five minutes away from Quintin Kynaston and not that far from Haverstock – and not south of the Euston Road, where families remain stranded in their search for a secondary without a school in sight.

Ok, maybe not.. Anybody got any better ideas?

Täällä vaihdossa on mahdotonta välttää jatkuvaa vertailua Britannian ja Suomen välillä. “In Finland…” on myönnettäköön päässyt suustani vähän turhan monta kertaa. On siis pakko kirjoittaa yksi postaus näiden kahden maiden välisistä eroista, mutta, jotta en tylsistyttäisi teitä täysin hanavertailuillani sun muilla, keskityn lähinnä yliopistojen vertailemiseen. Eroja siis luonnollisesti löytyy, mutta en menisi ottamaan kantaa sen suhteen, onko jompi kumpi selvästi parempi. Ja on muistettava, että yliopistojärjestelmä on vain yksi osa koulutusjärjestelmää ja -politiikkaa. Luin viime viikolla Brittitaloutta toisen maailmansodan jälkeen vaivaneista ongelmista ja yhtenä syynä pidetään puutteita Britannian koulutusjärjestelmässä, jonka seurauksena korkeasti koulutettuja työntekijöitä ei ole tarpeeksi, työntekijöiden koulutustaso yleisesti ottaen ei ole ollut riittävä jne. Tämä on osaltaan vaikuttanut Britannian kyvyttömyyteen kilpailla maailmanmarkkinoilla muiden firmojen kanssa.

Kyllä Suomessa on asiat paremmin…

- Koulutus on maksutonta. Britanniassa opiskelijat maksavat kanditutkinnosta 3000 puntaa vuodessa (valtion lukukausimaksuille määrittelemä katto). Välillä hävettää myöntää, että opiskelen täällä vuoden ilmaiseksi ja samalla saan Suomen valtion maksamaa opintotukea. Toisaalta ainakin lukukausimaksujen maksaminen kannustaa valmistumaan mahdollisimman nopeasti.

- Opiskelu on joustavampaa. Täällä koko vuoden kurssit on pakko valita vuoden alussa ja osa kursseista kestää koko lukuvuoden. Joten jos et pidä jostain kurssistä tai hetkellisesti ei vain huvita opiskella, et voi jättää kurssia kesken, sillä mitään vaihtoehtoa, jonka voisi valita tilalle sillä hetkellä tai myöhemmin, ei ole. Jos et kykene hetkellisesti opiskelemaan vaikka kissan kuoleman vuoksi, koko vuosi menee siinä. Tietenkään systeemi ei todellisuudessa varmastikaan ole niin armoton, mutta minulle, joka olen tottunut jättämään kursseja kesken välillä vähän liikaakin, järjestely vaikuttaa turhan joustamattomalta. Minusta on nimittäin mahtavaa, että ainakin opiskeluaika sallii aika suuren vapauden ja joustavuuden verratuna tulevaisuudessa häämöttävään työelämään. Joku toinen voisi tietysti argumentoida, että tämä samainen joustavuus on mennyt liian pitkälle ja on syypää siihen, miksi suomalaisilla kestä kauemmin valmistua kuin briteillä.

- On Aleksandria, joka on auki 24/7. Täällä on kyllä erityisesti omalla laitoksellani hyvä kirjasto, mutta atk-tiloja on huomattavasti vähemmän suhteessa opiskelijamäärään. Tai ainakin siltä tuntuu, sillä iltapäivällä konetta joutuu jonottamaan. Mikään paikka ei myöskään ole aina auki kuten Aleksandria. Kirjastoissa on myös se hassu juttu, että kirjoja saa olla kerralla lainassa vain aika pieni määrä.

- Suomessa on Unicafe. Täälläkin on kyllä koulussa ruokala, josta voi ostaa vajaalla kolmella punnalla (reilut kolme euroa) aterian, patongin, salaatin tai pitsaa, mutta hinta-laatu -suhde jää kauaksi Unicafeesta. Olen kerran käynyt ruokalassa, mutten vielä kertaakaan ole ostanut ruokaa sieltä. Hyvä puoli siinä, että asuu viiden minuutin kävelymatkan päässä koulusta, on se, että lounaalla voi käydä kotona. Olenkin laittanut yllättävän paljon ruokaa itse.

- Kokeita on ympäri vuoden. Tai oikeastaan en osaa vielä sanoa, onko tämä paremmin vai huonommin Suomessa. Ainakin tällä hetkellä tuntuu ahdistavalta, että kaikkien kurssien kokeet ovat vasta touko-kesäkuussa. Eli vaikka minulla on kaksi kurssia, jotka kestävät vain syksyn, kokeet niistä ovat vatsa keväällä. Yritäpä siinä nyt sitten muistaa, mitä lokukuussa on jutusteltu.

- Saa suoraan oikeuden opiskella maisteriksi asti. Täällä maisteriohjelmaan joutuu hakemaan erikseen ja on varmaan sanomattakin selvää, että niissä lukukausi maksut saattavat olla useita kertoja suurempia kuin kandivaiheessa. Moni opiskelija jättääkin tutkintonsa kandiin ja siirtyy työelämään. Mielenkiintoista nähdä, mihin tilanne kehittyy EU:n kontekstissa: alkaako yhä useampi britti jatkaa maisteriin vai eriytyvätkö kandi- ja maisteriohjelmat Suomessa selkeämmin toisistaan?

Kyllä Britanniassa on asiat paremmin…

- UCL on maailman neljänneksi paras yliopisto noin kuukausi sitten ilmestyneen Times Higher Education rankingin mukaan. Helsinki on tänä vuonna samaisen listauksen jaetulla 108. sijalla. Mielenkiintoista on se, että ihmiset täällä varmasti tekevät myös päätöksiä perustuen erilaisiin ranking-listoihin, sillä täällä yliopistoja on niin paljon enemmän kuin Suomessa, jossa opiskelupaikkaa koskeva päätös riippuu ensisijaisesti siitä, mitä haluaa opiskella ja missä tätä kyseistä ainetta edes opetetaan.

- Opetus on laadukasta. Se, että yliopistoilla on enemmän rahaa, näkyy opetuksen laadussa. Olen ollut erittäin tyytyväinen neljään kurssiini lukuun ottamatta yhden seminaaria. Suurin ero Suomeen tosiaan on se, että moniin kursseihin kuuluu viikossa yhden luentokerran lisäksi seminaari/tutoriaali eli pienryhmässä tapahtuvaa keskustelua. Tämä tarkoittaa tietysti myös enemmän töitä, sillä jos ei luennoille niin vähintään seminaareihin kuuluu joka viikko lukea useita artikkeleita.

- Opetuskerta kestää vain 50-55 minuuttia, joka on juuri se aika, minkä jaksaa keskittyä.

- Yliopistoon ei pyritä pääsykokeella vaan A-levels arvosanoilla (täkäläiset yo-kirjoitukset) ja hakemuksella. En nyt halua sanoa, että meidän pitäisi Suomessa siirtyä täysin pois pääsykokeista ja painottaa pelkästään kirjoituksia tai lukion päättötodistusta, mutta ei siinäkään ole mitään järkeä, että pänttäämme puoli vuotta yhtä kirjaa. Joku välimuoto pitäisi keksiä ratkaisuksi tai sitten Suomessa voitaisiin vähentää kirjoituksille lukio-opetuksessa annettavaa painoarvoa. Täällä tietysti hakemiseen vaikuttaa myös raha lainajärjestelmästä huolimatta.

Jamie West clutches his acoustic guitar at center stage. The venue is the Cobdon Club, a dim lit lounge with black leather sofas and graffiti artwork—about the size of a small living room. The sparse crowd is mostly twenty-somethings. Some are friends and fans. Others are strangers. All eyes are on West. Multi-colored spotlights cast a rainbow on his gaunt, scruffy face. Donning his signature striped fedora, he leans into the microphone with a cheeky smile and begins to sing.

West is the latest poster boy for the London Underground. He became the first ever champion of Boris Johnson’s Rhythm of London Busking Underground competition back in September, beating 10 other finalists, aged 16-to-25, in the live “busk-off” at the O2 Arena and garnering the title: “best young busker in the capital.” Since then, he has been offered a coveted invitation to appear on Simon Cowell’s tv talent show Britain’s Got Talent and his Facebook news feeds read: “Just did another interview with smooth radio.” But the majority of the time, West performs gigs like this one.

Tucked away in the inconspicuous nightclub, West is performing his winning tune, “Give Me Everything You’ve Got.” Hugging his guitar, he strums a cheery refrain and taps his red Converse trainers along with the contagious beat. “Because I’m making a list. I’m making a lot,” he sings with rock-and-roll panache, striving to imitate legendaries Chuck Barry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley.

These days, it’s West’s stage presence and command over the audiences that are gaining him popularity. “And even if you’ve got nothing,” he sings out and pauses for a few seconds to slip in an Ella Fitzgerald-esque improvised riff. “So give me that too!” He slides into falsetto and dances with his guitar. The crowd goes wild.

“He’s got it down. That energy,” Tai Tu mutters in between numbers. Tu, 23, has known West for 10 years and speaks highly of his comrade. “You can go and see professionals, but they don’t have half of what he’s got. He will make it definitely.”

When you ask West about “making it,” he admits that he has got a long way to go. Humble yet tenacious, fame is still a tangible goal in his eyes. Since learning to play the guitar at 5, West says he knew he wanted to be a pop star. “Frankly unpopular” at secondary school, he spent all of his time jamming with his father, a professor of psychology and hobbyist songwriter.

West’s big break came during his first year at St. Francis Xavier, when he was chosen by his teachers to perform in front of 300 parents and kids. “I remember all my peers coming up to me and congratulating me afterwards. It was weird,” he admits, with a tinge of pride. Relentlessly praised by Dad, his talent had never been that popular with classmates—the people that really mattered to a teenager.

At that time, he was already lead singer and songwriter for the Jamie West Band, a group that consisted of his father and the musically inclined medical students and doctors from Dad’s work. “I thought it was amazing that I was 13 and telling people twice my age or more what to do,” West confesses, laughing to himself. Beyond garage sessions, the band performed at birthday parties and charity fundraisers. “You can know all the theory and practice forever in your bedroom, but it isn’t until you play in front of people that you learn to entertain,” West says.

He continued to perform with the Jamie West Band through his teens while studying English Literature at UCL. Reading prose and brushing up on his poetry he says contributed a great deal to his lyrics. “I had reached a certain level where the songs were actually good,” West says. And then at 18, he broke away from his father to form a second band with younger (by three years) brother Daniel. For the ensuring five-and-a-half years, West tested out various techniques on stage with his sibling, ranging from reciting a T.S. Eliot poem, which “ended up being a hit” he says, to the intermittent question-and-answer method he uses today.

“I have to ask the obligatory question,” he faux-grudgingly tells his timid audience back at the Cobdon Club. He has just finished his opening number and is helplessly trying to rejuvenate the crowd. “How are you guys doing tonight?” Just feet away from the stage, a group of redheaded girls in pearls are giggling. The rest of the audience is silent. “Sometimes you could be bloody Frank Sinatra or Bruce Springsteen and the audience just doesn’t go for it,” he later tells me.

Tonight, he is performing alone. West’s longhaired and introverted graphic designer brother Daniel left the band in April. He could no longer make time for rehearsals. “Daniel is a very talented drummer, but he put a huge strain on the band,” he says. The lack of practice left West feeling vulnerable and exposed. So, these days, it is just Jamie West.

“I feel, in a sense, more confident,” he says of his band’s hiatus and recent solo career. “There is more freedom.” And after the big busking win, West is ready to make it big by himself. “I am on my mission to get my music out,” he says. Following his performance, West offers his CD for free. Even Paul McCartney’s producer has a copy, he shamelessly namedrops.

In the meantime, he works as an assistant in Wandsworth Library, playing songs and telling stories to kids. He says trying to get the attention of the children through nursery rhymes and storytelling is “the same as a performance.” Their imagination also inspires new lyrics for West. And during his spare time at his studio, which is in the house he shares with his older brother Matthew in Tooting, he continues to write music and record.

As for career plans, he recently turned down the Britain’s Got Talent gig. “That’s not me. No one should have power over my talent,” he says, referencing the infamous Simon Cowell. The next time Jamie West will take the big stage is in August, opening for Playing for Change, the multimedia music project and charity foundation, at Royal Festival Hall. “It looks like things could take off, but I am not there yet,” he says. “You never know when the big break is going to occur.” And until he does, Jamie West is giving it everything he’s got.

When I started searching web for applications of nanotechnology in OR, I came across an article entitled “Programming Nanotechnology: Learning from Nature” (You can reach to PDF of article at UCL’s website.)

I want to share one paragraph from that article:

To date, nanotechnology has been developed mostly from the basis in physics, chemistry, material science and biology. As nanotechnology is a truly multidisciplinary field, the cooperation between researchers in all related areas is crucial to the success of nanotechnology. Until now, computer science has taken a role mostly in research tools, for example: a virtual-reality system coupled to scanning probe devices in nanomanipulator project. However, according to M.C. Roco, the third and fourth generation of nanotechnology would rely heavily on research in computer science.

Do not think that there is not a room for OR, because authors say “nanotechnology would rely heavily on research in computer science“. After reading the rest of the article, you will see that there is a lot reference to OR topics: swarm intelligence, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, evolutionary algorithms.

I am hopeful. Are you?

Ok, here are two strange things:

1.  I saw a whole flock of long-tailed tits in Gordon Square Gardens.  These little birds are supposed to reside mostly in forests, and conifer forests at that, though – my bird guide says – they will venture into suburban gardens at times.  Excuse me?  Since when is Bloomsbury a suburban garden or a conifer forest?

I then heard what sounded like a parakeet – not the full-on squawk they do, but something more like that wittering you might hear from them if they’re a bit bothered.  I looked up to see a crow attacking a bird with a long, sharply squared-off tail.  Only saw the underside, which was pale.  Could’ve been a kestrel, maybe, or some other raptor – there have been sightings around Senate House, I think – so, was hard to be sure. 

Anyway, how delightfully ridiculous.  The Wild invading the City.

2.  Not so delightful.  A young woman handing out leaflets, the gusset of her shiny tights halfway down her thighs, which wouldn’t matter, except that she was wearing a t-shirt that ended mid-hip length a la Lady Ga Ga.  Oh dear.  Ga ga indeed.

Gruparea din Urziceni s-a impus în faţa ibericilor prin autogolul lui Dragutinovici din minutul 45. Brandan a executat o lovitură liberă de la mijlocul terenului până în careul spaniolilor, de unde Dragutinovici a trimis în poartă cu o lovitură de cap imparabilă pentru Varas.

Unirea Urziceni a câştigat, deşi a avut posesia balonului în numai 32% din timp, faţă de 68% cât au avut spaniolii. De asemenea, ialomiţenii au fost dominaţi şi la capitolul şuturi pe poartă, scor 2-5, dar şi la şuturi totale 5-15.După ce şi-a asigurat deja poziţia a treia, care o califică în 16-imile Ligii Europa, Unirea Urziceni mai are nevoie de un singur punct în deplasarea de la Stuttgart, din ultima etapă, programată pe 9 decembrie, pentru a se califica în optimile Ligii Campionilor, în premieră pentru o echipă din România.

După ce şi-a asigurat deja poziţia a treia, care o califică în 16-imile Ligii Europa, Unirea Urziceni mai are nevoie de un singur punct în deplasarea de la Stuttgart, din ultima etapă, programată pe 9 decembrie, pentru a se califica în optimile Ligii Campionilor, în premieră pentru o echipă din România.
Clasamentul arată astfel:

1. FC Sevilla 10p
2. Unirea Urziceni 8p
3. VfB Sttutgart 6p
4. Rangers 2p.

Sursa: money.ro

Press Release: 20^th Nov 2009, Friday        
7^th Maghar (Samvat 541 Nanakshahi )

Light a Candle on 27th Nov 2009 to Fight the Darkness of Continuing Injustice against the Victims of the 1984 Pogroms in India  

Ben and I have just got back from a rather long day in London.  We were visiting a couple of researchers who are interested in location based services on mobile devices.

Our first stop was at City University to visit David Mountain of the Informatics group.  David has been using geo-enabled mobile devices for research and teaching over the last couple of years.  He has looked specifically at geographic information retrieval on mobile devices and mixed reality interfaces for mobile devices.

Our next stop was at UCL where we met with Anthony Steed in the department of computer science.  Anthony has worked on data collection with mobile devices and how users might use geographic data beyond just consuming maps and utalising geoannotation and temporal tagging.  He has also investigated how real-world knowledge can be exploited in computing, particularly through GPS enabled devices.

It was really interesting to engage with these guys as they were able to tell us what they had done, what they found easy or difficult and what they would like to see in a GIS service for mobile devices.  It is fair to say that Ben and I learnt a great deal, many aspects seemed simple and obvious after the meetings, but we had not even considered them before.

We are on the road again this week, visiting Nottingham on Thursday.  I have no doubt that this will open our eyes to other aspects of service delivery that we have not previously appreciated. Fortunately the flight is at a slightly more civilised time, but only slightly.

We saw this window on the way home, i think it was some fancy design place, but it was pretty cool none the less.

Large parts of the UK architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector have proved resistant to ideas of partnering, knowledge-sharing and integrated collaborative working (despite the efforts of Latham and Egan, while only time will tell if Wolstenholme’s Never Waste a Good Crisis fares any better). The IT departments of many AEC organisations similarly adopt a closed approach when it comes to some collaborative technologies. I learned this when marketing web-based project collaboration software at BIW, and I’ve heard the same view expressed about social media tools. Fellow blogger Julian Dobson quotes responses from people working for an environmental quango and a major civil engineering firm:

‘I’m afraid my government laptop is so locked down that I’m unable to install any software at all.’

‘I have to let you know that I can’t/won’t download the dropbox application onto [our] heavily firewalled and controlled network.’

But I have found it can also be an attitude of mind held by the AEC professionals within firms. Call it inertia, arrogance, a “not invented here” syndrome, or maybe ’silo’ mentality, but resistance to consulting outside the organisation is certainly prevalent in some businesses. I spoke to an architect from a leading design firm at the RIBA recently, and he was adamant that a large multi-disciplinary consultancy had no need to interact with co-professionals from other firms through social networks – “our in-house resources are more than adequate,” he insisted.

This may be a common view within that firm. Soong M Kang, a university researcher at UCL, told me about a frustrating recent meeting with someone from the same company:

He brought two more guys to the meeting: one who deals with their web strategy and another who deals with their “community” efforts.  In essence, it seemed to me that they have their own internal system and are not willing to think outside of it. Especially the guy from web strategy was extremely hostile to my project, which is understandable if one sees his vested interests.

So in some AEC organisations there is almost an insular, anti-collaborative culture that pervades both the IT department and fee-earning professionals.

Social approaches to innovation

In other engineering design sectors, though, there appears to be more willingness to consider social computing solutions. I first wrote about social product development in this blog in July, and have just been reading an article by Tom Kevan in Desktop Engineering along similar lines. He argues that new economic realities (globalisation, increased competition, ‘mechatronic’ design approaches, and changing demographics) are forcing a rethink of how designers can achieve innovation.

No longer is it the product of one engineer’s genius or the skill of a company’s engineering team. Increasingly, the ideas of customers, suppliers, and outside experts are being tapped to create broader development networks. To enable the communication and collaboration needed by these networks, companies and technology providers are adapting social networking paradigms to the product design arena.

Kevan goes on to describe three pioneering technologies, including the crowd-sourced problem-solving InnoCentive.com (similar to ideabounty.com – post). Here:

“It is the diversity of the community that looks at these problems that matters most in ensuring that they get solved,” says InnoCentive’s Ritter, explaining that it is the social aspect of product development that makes it possible to find the one person in the world uniquely qualified to answer the specific question.

Having a closed mentality to problem-solving may satisfy the egos of old-school AEC design professionals (and will probably be supported by their IT departments), but I wonder if it could mean their firms inadvertently fail clients by not extending their search for innovation beyond the organisation’s firewalls?

Web 2.0 and construction collaboration

Incidentally, if anyone is interested in helping Soong with his research, please have a look at his outline (reproduced here) and get in touch with him. He is particularly looking for companies who want to test out the use of Web 2.0-type tools to improve their collaborative design efforts.

I sometimes wonder if it is worth drawing lines and generating comparisons between two seemingly disparate processes that are at work at different scales, and in different countries, but why not – I’m jetlagged with some late night time to spare.

First, the US Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) released a new report (Findings from the 2009 CGS International Graduate Admissions Survey, Phase III: Final Offers of Admissions and Enrollment), and associated press release, that flags the challenges the US has in attracting foreign students at the levels it once did. The full report (from which Figure 1 to the right is taken) is definitely worth reading. This segment of the final paragraph particularly caught my eye:

Despite the high quality of graduate education in the United States, we cannot continue to assume that our institutions are the number one destination of international graduate students. In the last three years, growth in the numbers of international graduate students coming to the United States has slowed, and now the numbers have flat lined, even though global student mobility has rapidly increased over the last decade. Given this new reality, policymakers and the graduate school community are faced with several key questions if the United States is to remain the destination of choice for international graduate students: Are there national policies that deter international students from coming to the United States for graduate school? How do we make U.S. graduate programs attractive to both domestic and international students? Within the constraints of the current economic situation, what can institutions do to more effectively attract international students to their graduate programs? And, what lessons can we learn from the successes of colleges and universities in other countries in attracting international students to their graduate programs?

Meanwhile, I was reading the Guardian’s Tuesday education insert today, and one faculty vacancy advertisement also caught my eye: University College London (UCL) “wishes to appoint an International Relations Lecturer to contribute to research and teaching on the MSc in International Public Policy within the Department of Political Science/School of Public Policy“.  Given my interest in international/global public policy, I read through the advertisement to see what the new hire would have to teach, and came across an interesting number:

UCL is a multi-faculty college of the University of London with a population of over 17,000 students from more than 130 different countries. It is ranked by the Times Higher as one of the top five universities worldwide. Founded in 2005, the Department of Political Science has quickly established itself as a leading international centre for political research and came 6th in the UK in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) organised by the British Higher Education Funding Councils – 3rd in terms of the percentage of research deemed to be ‘world leading’ (20%) and ‘internationally excellent’ (45%). It is the only department in the UK centred on graduate teaching and research, and currently has almost 400 Masters students on its programmes.

Nearly 400 (and rising) Masters students from around the world, in a new graduate student only department.  Thus, across the Atlantic, albeit at two vastly different scales, we see flat-lining if not decline (in the US) versus rapid expansion (in UCL, London, UK).  Of course this is but one department’s experience, though I have seen broader signs that the UK has seen significant growth in graduate programmes, including at the Masters level.

Now, if you really wanted to unpack the developmental dynamic further, you would have to explore issues like the context (London, a global city which is also situated within the European Higher Education Area), the national system (which incentivizes departments to create one year taught Masters programs), an emerging sense that higher education is an export industry in the UK, and so on.  But let’s also burrow down to the level of academic practice, as captured in this advertisement, and ask this question: how do faculty members in UK universities like UCL or Oxford or King’s College London balance the need to generate revenue via taught Masters programmes, with the imperative to conduct ever more innovative research (which ideally needs to generate ’societal impact’ as well), all the while supporting increasingly large numbers of graduate students?

And where do they put them?! By my count this particular department has 16 faculty (17 with this hire), 13 teaching fellows (3 with PhD) and “almost 400” masters students. This equals 25 MA/MSc students per faculty member, or 21 per PhD holder.

I know the quality of higher education is high in the UK, and is likely excellent in this particular department, but are these numbers and proportions (students/faculty) typical at the UK level, manageable for faculty, and reflective of the attractiveness of one year Masters programs (which are not at all common in the US)?

Moreover, are learning outcomes of such programs on par across national boundaries (e.g., the UK versus the US or the Netherlands), and do PhD applicants (e.g., from the US to the UK, or from the UK to the US) come to their PhD programs from the MA/MSc with equitable levels of knowledge and capabilities, all things equal?

If so, then places like the UK (and UCL) are doing something right, and the US can perhaps learn from the UK experience.

If not, however, then it might be time to ask other questions about the nature and implications (especially with respect to quality) of the rapid growth of Masters degrees in London, and the UK more generally.

Can we learn from London, and if so what?

Kris Olds

University College London

University College London (UCL) has recently announced a partnership with Yale University to improve the human condition through translational medicine.

Translational medicine aims to improve patient treatments using molecular and cellular discoveries. This research focussed approach aims to increase the speed at which discoveries made in the laboratory are turned into remedies that can be used to treat patients.

Initial research will focus on cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurosciences but will also expand into other areas of basic research, including cancer biology, neuroscience and women’s health.

UCL was recently ranked fourth in The Times Higher Education/QS World University Rankings, and Yale ranked third.

Kevin – www.studylondon.ac.uk

Fees, cuts, racism, blueprints and boredom: The Cheese Grater looks into this year’s Welcome General Meeting.

Following much turbulence in recent years, UCL Union may finally be on the brink of democracy, albeit one akin to
herding cats. This year’s Welcome General Meeting led to the passing of several motions but, like an outbreak of diarrhoea, left some exhausted and saw others running quickly for the door.

Thankfully, there was no repeat of February’s AGM, when hundreds of students were left stranded outside after the Bloomsbury theatre had reached capacity (see CG 21). However, last year’s policy that each Union society must send two delegates to general meetings still applied – never mind that the WGM fell during ‘Try’ fortnight, when societies were still wooing potential members.

Still Josh…

The meeting began with a slideshow, rock music and cries of “get on with it”. After half an hour of introductions, including an even cheesier explanation of Union democracy by “I’m still Josh” Blacker, the meeting finally got round to dragging up last year’s big argument: should the Union refrain from condemning or supporting either side of the Israel/Gaza conflict?

The referendum held last March had in fact already provided an answer – 833 ‘Yes’ to 700 ‘No’ – but failed to reach the 10% quorum required for referenda by UCLU Standing Orders. As a result, the matter was passed back to the WGM, attended as it was by less than 2% of UCL students. With much squabbling between factions and the threat of a second round of speeches, a move to the vote was finally made, the result once more a resounding ‘Yes’.

Some hope, then, that the Union could start to focus on matters closer to home, such as saving the medics’ sports team
and having UCL pay workers the London Living Wage. Indeed, motions such as these were voted for and became Union
policy… but not without the odd cringe-worthy moment. For starters, the otherwise Socialist Stop the War types obviously deemed the London Living Wage unimportant, as they all buggered off once the Israel matter was over, leaving a patch of empty chairs directly in front of the podium. (It has since transpired that the Union doesn’t care much about the Living Wage either, and is only now considering adjustments to its bar staff ’s inadequate pay.)

The motion ‘For a United Policy on Cuts and Fees’ confused voters who only agreed with part of what was proposed, leading the General Secretary Pierre Deludet to advise them to abstain. The result was a winning 98 abstentions, leading to much cheering until Deludet pointed out that the motion would pass as, by definition, abstentions don’t count.

Particular mention should be made of Clinical President Amanda ‘Mandelson’ Smith, who made no less than four speeches that evening. One of Smith’s motions supported the NUS Blueprint’s graduate tax, thus conflicting with the increasingly ironically-named ‘United Policy on Cuts and Fees’. When pushed, Mandy admitted that she had been ‘too busy’ to read the Blueprint and suffered the evening’s only vote against.

…And Still Mandy

Next up was Smith’s motion to mark out the new Union bar as a replacement for the medics’ Huntley Street, which will likely be demolished in 2011. When asked who would pay to rename the new bar ‘The Huntley’, Smith replied ‘it’s just a sign, it won’t cost much’. Indeed – the site of the new bar, 23 Gower Place, is a Grade II listed building and cannot have a fancy new sign slung on it, thus making the cost to the Union very small indeed.

As the last normal motion of the evening was passed, many more students poured out of the room. Pi Newspaper has helpfully reported how these were all medics disinterested in the motions that followed. Indeed: everyone else had left earlier on. Pierre Deludet called quorum and closed the meeting, so the ‘emergency’ motions that followed did not become policy. Perhaps this was for the best – one of the motions aimed to erase a swathe of last year’s motions just to protect the General Secretary’s role as Returning Officer for Union elections.

Minority Report

Last up was a motion from Shawn Sherwin-Williams, the Medical and Postgraduate Officer. During a training day run by a contractor, the casually-dressed MPO believed he was the victim of racial discrimination when he was mistaken for a cleaner. The sabbatical officers rushed to sever the contract, only to be advised that the company should be given a chance to respond. A mediation with the company the day before the WGM did not produce an admission of racism, leading the outraged MPO to bring an emergency motion demanding that the Union terminate the company’s contract
‘with immediate effect’.

Activities Officer James Hodgson opposed the motion on behalf of the other sabbs, and has since been singled out by the student media for stating, in response to a query, that he did not feel the incident to have been racist. Sherwin-Williams’ motion was indicatively passed by the minority of students remaining, but he still threatened to call for an Extraordinary General Meeting over the matter. A week later, the sabbs had ‘completed an internal investigation’ and decided not to offer any further contracts to the company in question.

By Alex Ashman

UCL’s quick-fix Microsoft contract has shored up some gaping holes in college but may produce many empty pockets in the long term.

Under-funded and neglected for years, UCL’s email and calendaring services have been pushed to the point that they are “either failing, or in danger of failing”, and are “increasingly difficult and expensive to maintain”. Rather than invest £1 million in a new in-house system, College is now looking to make short-term savings by outsourcing to Microsoft, who have offered three years’ service for free. But just how good an offer is this, and how risky is it for UCL to place its trust in the virtual monopoly that is Microsoft?

The ‘free’ service, known as Live@UCL, provides a Hotmail-style email account and Outlook calendaring. It is under the direct control of Microsoft, so any problems will have to be dealt with via the company’s own staff. The
contents of inboxes and calendars are currently stored in Ireland, but could be moved to any country within the European Economic Area on a whim. Any files uploaded onto the ‘Live Spaces’ and ‘Skydrive’ provided as part of Live@UCL are not guaranteed to be secure and are stored in the United States, beyond the reaches of the Data Protection Act.

Interestingly, one motivation for UCL to outsource is that it would prefer to have all staff actively use the same calendaring service – that way, College can report to the Home Office that it is ‘tracking and monitoring’ non-EU
staff according to immigration law. While most staff who currently use
calendaring prefer Oracle Calendar, the outsourcing means they will
all be forced to move to Outlook.

And what of the deal itself? Microsoft is well known for ‘endloading’ contracts by providing a ‘free’ service and then charging once the customer is hooked. While UCL claims that Microsoft’s commercial rates are comparable to the cost of running in-house email and calendaring services, the potential charges once the honeymoon is over are as yet unknown.

So what if Microsoft does start charging? Surely UCL can just take everything back in-house? Unfortunately, migrating from one email system to another would cost UCL around £250,000 – this would be the penalty for terminating the contract with Microsoft. Combine this with the inevitable drain of inhouse
knowledge once the service is outsourced, and UCL is liable to stick with the contract regardless.

No Such Thing As A Free Launch

The deal is in fact a coup for Microsoft. Not only has the company been given carte blanche when it comes to charging for the service in three years’ time, but UCL will become dependent on Microsoft software regardless of whether the contract continues. Furthermore, UCL will act as an advertisement for other universities, helping Microsoft to forge ahead with a new monopoly. It is telling that Cambridge University, when offered a free service not for three years but ‘for life’, turned Microsoft down.

By Alex Ashman

Alex Ashman reviews the Provost’s latest slasher

Back in 2005, UCL Provost, Professor Malcolm Grant went on a mission to cut 15% of staff. The resulting 167 redundancies left College increasingly reliant upon PhD students taking up the slack. Now the Provost is looking to be even more ‘prudent’ with the budget. This time, planned spending cuts of 6% threaten a ‘reduction in head count’ of up to 400 jobs.

Official discussion about the cuts began in January this year. Ever keen to skirt around employment law, UCL failed to inform the staff trade union, University and College Union, until May. What, though, is this dire situation that our College is in? A quick look at the figures shows that rather than suffering from cuts, UCL has practically been inviting them.

Back in May, when the 6% cuts were first proposed, UCL was looking to receive an increase ingovernment funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England, a body on which Malcolm Grant happens to sit. However, College’s Head of Finance predicted that this would soon become a small decrease in funding – and so it did. How, though, does this 2% drop in funding explain a call for 6% cuts? Well, the Provost reckons that next year will see a further decrease in funding of 10% and is planning UCL’s staff reductions in advance. In other words, the man who sits on the board of the funding council is inviting cuts at his own institution.

After all, Grant has long made it clear that he is firmly on the taxpayer’s side when it comes to university funding, and would rather see uncapped tuition fees (see CG 12). If the 6% cuts go ahead, they will almost certainly be just the beginning – in fact, Grant now looks to form a Redundancy Committee, which would allow compulsory redundancies to begin. This would be the nuclear option for UCL, and would lead to a damaging fight with the unions.

A little history would help here. Back in 2005/06, the Provost’s ‘Regeneration Plan’ aimed to cut 15% of staff in order to correct a deficit that equated to 1.5% of UCL’s turnover (see CG 7). This led to a “terror campaign” by senior management to force academics into voluntary redundancy or early retirement. As one senior UCU member puts it, “they shook the tree to see who would fall out”. Though staff refused to go quietly, causing a stalemate that prevented College from making compulsory redundancies, the damage had been done.

With academics increasingly using their time to apply for research funding in order to combat funding shortfalls, UCL has replaced the redundant lecturers with Postgraduate Teaching Assistants. As pointed out in the last issue, PGTAs are often overworked, underpaid, under-represented and simply not as experienced as the lecturers they are replacing. Meanwhile, the research funding gained by academics is being diverted elsewhere, leaving UCL’s largest faculties continually in the red. Combine this with the historical expense of combining UCL Medical School with the Royal Free and the Middlesex; and the result is a 10% cut to Life Sciences.

While Grant has long hoped that market forces will drive up tuition fees, he is leaving students with a budget education, where all the expensive professors have been cut to save the embarrassment of asking for taxpayers’ money. Regardless of the reassurances made by UCL Union’s Education Officer, any further cuts will surely result in further damage to “the world’s 4th best university”.

By Alex Ashman

How incompetence and a dodgy transformer ended classes, destroyed research and almost killed a lot of fish

On Thursday, 15th October, London’s “Global University” provided a taste of life on the receiving end of the Iraqi National Grid. The electricity supply to most of UCL’s Anatomy Building, Medical Sciences Building, and Darwin Building was cut off for six hours, owing to a faulty transformer on the verge of exploding.

Despite the severity of the situation, UCL staff were only warned five minutes prior to the cutoff, at around 5pm – two hours after the initial decision for the large-scale shutdown had been made. This late notice meant that many researchers had to interrupt and discard their experiments. Within the affected buildings, expensive equipment was put at risk. Indeed, a laser, worth around £100,000, was damaged due to the sudden disconnection.

Moreover, one of the world’s largest zebrafish laboratories – holding around 30,000 of the creatures – was affected by the electricity outage. Whilst this primarily brings up matters of animal welfare, it is also worth noting that the fish are fundamental to many world-class research projects at UCL.

An external emergency generator (the large noisy container opposite the Science Library) was only put in place after a two-and-a half hour hiatus.

Professor John Carroll (Associate Dean of the Division of Biosciences) has said that the installation of an uninterrupted power supply for valuable equipment is planned in the future. However, it is shocking that such measures were not already in place, owing to a similar incident a number of years ago. On that occasion, a loss of power to fridges and freezers caused expensive lab material to defrost, with massive financial implications.

By Anne C. Wolfes

I kväll blev det debut för min egen del. Såg min första UCL match sen finalen i sommras. Har nog fortfarande inte smällt att Barca “stal”  titeln från Manchester United.  Fotbollen kommer och går i mitt liv, i långa perioder är jag fanatisk och sedan avtar det succesivt.

Laget i mitt hjärta har alltid varit AC Milan.  Som smågrabb var idolerna Basten, Rijkaard, och Gullit. De glamorösa dagarna då anfall var bästa vapnet och försvar vara en nödvändig åtgärd när laget blev trött.

Glade mig extra mycket åt Milan vinst på Santiago Bernabéu stadion för två veckor sen.  Skönt att Pato glänste med två mål och tre viktiga poäng mot ett miljard bygge som börjat under all kritik.

Själva matchbilden under aftonen var inte  riktigt vad jag väntade mig. Trodde nog att Milan skulle forcera tydligare än vad de gjorde.

Real Madrid stod för allt anfall de första 30 minuterna. Karim Benzama och Kaka stod för de mesta framåt för Real. Något alla nog noterade var spanjorernas skjutvilja. Tror de avlossade 17 skott i första och 10 i andra halvlek. Man behöver inte djupanalysera för att förstå att detta lag är enormt ineffektivt med tanke på spelfördelningen och skjutvilligheten. Tror spelarna lider av prestationsångest blandad med hederliga demoner.

1-0 målet för Real Madrid kändes mer än rättvist, Kaka pangar en bit utanför straffområdet. Dida lämnar retur samtidigt som milanbackarna räknar checkar. Påpassligt står Benzama vid returen och gör mål. Kalldusch för Milans ego men helt rätt sett till matchbilden.

Några minuter senare rensar Pepe i Real försvaret en instickare från Milan. Olyckligt tar den på handen och kanariefågeln till domare blåser straff för Milan. Ytterst hårddömt straff även om jag ville ha en kvittering.  Straffen tar latmasken Ronaldinho hand om. Högt upp i krysset.

Känner en LÄTTNAD!  Hinner knappt fylla på kaffemuggen innan Pato vinner en nickduell och skjuter in 2-1. Vråålar som en tok för att bli besviken några sekunder senare. Målet döms bort. Pato har varit ful i närkampen. Nu talar vi om kompensations beslut. Tveksam straff resulterar i ett bortdömt mål. Domaren ville rädda sin mask är jag övertygad om i den stunden. Tycker att domaren borde uppsöka optikern i morgon bitti och lämna in avskedsansökan till FIFA. Urkass kvalite i första halvlek.

Tycker att andra halvan av matchen var odramatisk och rätt tråkig. Väl behövda byten gjorde att det klickade sista 10 för Milans Inzaghi och Nistelrooij i Real. Båda hade halvfarliga lägen. Sett till matchspelet var 1-1 rättvist. Men min stora fråga är hur Real Madrid kan vara så ineffektivt. Tränaren och klubbledningen har nog en rejäl funderare framför sig.

There’s nothing I love more than festivity, so obviously getting to celebrate my first holiday in London was quite magical.

Halloween definitely isn’t as big of a deal here as it is in the States, but at least it’s a deal at all– I’ve heard from Brits that the American-style way of celebrating it headed across the pond rather recently.

I decided to go frugalista while also London appropriate by being Amy Winehouse, a costume some teasing, black eyeliner, and bold clothing choices easily took care of.  I added my festive touches around Flat 17, went costume hunting with Lauren and Sarah during the afternoon, got to enjoy candy corn thanks to a flatmate’s parental package (Brits clearly don’t know what they’re missing…), and headed to University College of London to celebrate with Annie and her flatmates as I have for the past two years–roomies who JYA together stay together!  It also happened to be 1000 days until the 2012 Olympics, and Annie’s neighbors just happened to have a perfect view of the BT Tower where fireworks were lit to mark the countdown.

I’ll let the pictures take care of the rest…

C’est l’histoire d’un « serpent de mer » de l’audioprothèse : les fabricants utilisent-ils les seuils subjectifs d’inconfort que nous prenons la peine de mesurer ?

Et je pense que beaucoup de monde a fait la même chose : saisir un audiogramme tonal à 60dB HL plat à droite, sans inconfort, et le même à gauche avec un SSI (Seuil Subjectif d’Inconfort) à 90dB HL sur toutes les fréquences. On rentre dans un logiciel d’adaptation, on choisi le même appareil des deux côtés, et on regarde ce qui se passe avec la formule par défaut du fabricant…

Et là, trois possibilités :

• Aucune différence de réglages entre les deux oreilles (assez courant)
• Aucune différence dans le réglage des compressions MAIS le niveau de sortie maximum, si le réglage existe, est corrélé au SSI (a tendance à se développer)
• L’oreille présentant la dynamique réduite a des réglages adaptés en compression et niveau maximum de sortie (assez rare par défaut)

Donc on peut en déduire que majoritairement, les fabricants n’utilisent pas les seuils d’inconfort mesurés par les audioprothésistes, en tout cas pour leur calcul des compressions et autres points d’enclenchements.

Ce n’est pas tout à fait surprenant car la formule de calcul utilisée est souvent NAL-NL1 ou une adaptation « maison » de NAL-NL1. Or la formule australienne utilise un seuil d’inconfort statistique. Un peu vexant pour les audios qui pratiquent la mesure du SSI !

L’apparition de systèmes de gestion des bruits impulsionnels en entrée a modifié un peu cette approche puisque certains fabricants proposant ces systèmes proposent des « mix » entre un calcul des compressions basé sur la dynamique statistique et un MPO ou « pseudo-écrêtage » basé sur le SSI. C’est mieux, mais on ne nous laisse pas encore toutes les clés de la maison…

Par contre, il est toujours possible d’utiliser des formules de calcul intégrant le SSI mesuré dans le calcul des compression et MPO, c’est le cas de DSL I/O par exemple, souvent proposée par défaut lors des appareillages pédiatriques, bien qu’il ne soit pas évident d’obtenir un SSI avant 10ans.

Il faut reconnaître aussi que la mesure d’un seuil d’inconfort est très subjective (c’est le cas de le dire) : elle dépend presque autant du patient, de sa peur ou au contraire de sa bravoure (!), que du testeur et de sa limite posée (douleur ? limite du supportable ? réflexe cochléo-palpébral ?…). Pour ma part, après une consigne assez sommaire type « limite du supportable », je trouve que l’observation du visage est assez précise, et un re-test quelques années après donne souvent des résultats assez proches. Le seuil d’inconfort n’évoluerait donc pas trop avec le temps, ce qui n’est pas le cas du seuil de confort (que je ne mesure pas) mais qui semble évoluer à mesure que les patients nous demandent plus de gain « pour les voix », donc à niveau « moyen ». Ce fameux passage de courbes de transfert « concaves » à « convexes » qui rendait difficile il y a quelques années un renouvellement du Siemens Prisma 4D (courbes de transfert « convexes » à l’époque), et qui fait que les Widex sont très confortables au début (courbes de tranfert très « concaves ») mais un peu « mous » après quelques semaines (il faut redonner du gain à niveau moyen).

Mais le « grand maître » du seuil d’inconfort statistique est toujours sur son trône depuis les années 80 : c’est PASCOE la plupart du temps qui décide du seuil d’inconfort de votre patient. Ses recherches ont donné en 1988 des abaques de corrélation entre seuil d’audition et seuil d’inconfort par mesures de progression de la sensation sonore (tests LGOB). Et depuis, beaucoup de fabricants utilisent ces tables si vous ne rentrez pas de seuil d’inconfort, et même si vous en rentrez un d’ailleurs (pour certains) !!

Des études plus récentes ont affiné ce « seuil d’inconfort statistique » de Pascoe, et je suis surpris du « nuage statistique » dans lequel on fait passer ces droites de régression qui serviront de base à ces inconforts statistiques…

Et ces fameux « nuages statistiques », nous les voyons tous les jours : les patients sans aucun inconfort, ceux aux aigus insupportables, aux graves très gênants (ça arrive), etc… et pour des seuils HL finalement pas si éloignés. Alors au final, c’est vrai, il doit bien exister une « droite » qui passe par le centre de gravité de tous ces cas particuliers. Et ce que cherchent les fabricants qui utilisent ces statistiques n’est peut-être pas dénué de fondement : il vaut mieux une statistique 70% du temps juste plutôt qu’un inconfort 70% du temps mal mesuré (= aide auditive 100% mal réglée pour son porteur !).

Et si même, ne seraient-ce que 90% de nos évaluations du SSI étaient assez bonnes (pas moins bonnes que celles de Mr Pascoe en tout cas), je crois que de toutes façons nous n’avons rien à perdre à « individualiser » l’adaptation.

Vous trouverez en téchargement ici une étude sur l’utilisation des seuils d’inconforts saisis pour différents logiciels de réglages. Plusieurs choses ont été analysées: si un seuil d’inconfort est trouvé par le logiciel, l’utilise t-il pour le calcul des compressions ? juste pour le calcul du MPO/PC/SSPL90 ? pas du tout ? quelques surprises…

Article et étude rédigés conjointement par Thibaut DUVAL (pour l’étude des logiciels et tableau), Sébastien GENY et Xavier DELERCE.