The mining of meaning - across the domains and years

individual
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

group

In September 2014 I visited Amsterdam to attend Drupalcon and arriving early spent a day at the Stedelijk Museum. Exhibitions included a project within On The Move by Witho Worms and Hans Gremmen

Witho Worms (Amersfoort, NL, 1959) is a photographer who lives and works in Amsterdam. Hans Gremmen (Langenboom, NL, 1976) is a graphic designer who works and lives in Amsterdam.  - See more at: http://www.stedelijk.nl/en/exhibitions/on-the-move/witho-worms-and-hans-gremmen#sthash.2lKS8S6r.dpuf

Witho Worms (Amersfoort, NL, 1959) is a photographer who lives and works in Amsterdam. Hans Gremmen (Langenboom, NL, 1976) is a graphic designer who works and lives in Amsterdam.  - See more at: http://www.stedelijk.nl/en/exhibitions/on-the-move/witho-worms-and-hans-gremmen#sthash.2lKS8S6r.dpuf

Around Wigan there were many spoil or slag heaps from the coal industry that once thrived across Lancashire. There is a leisure area known as The Three Sisters reclaimed land from the mining industry. Slag heaps can have a very physical presence over towns and villages.

For some communities these man-made mountains hold memories of a hard family life, of many loves and joys and disaster.

The exhibition of photographs and their book revealed how the coal mining spoil heaps are universal. They look the same and represent the same toil and graft. Whatever the country - risk is risk : dust is dust. In these modern pyramids we see mining as a global phenomenon not just coal and a happenstance of geology and local history. The process of production of the book's prints is fascinating too, saying far more than the images alone as with the socio-politics of this industry.

Stedelijk Museum

Stedelijk Museum

Stedelijk Museum

Stedelijk Museum

Cette Montagne, C’est Moi / This Mountain That’s Me (2006-2011)
http://www.alternativephotography.com/cette-montagne-cest-moi-this-mountain-thats-me-2006-2011/

and Happy New Year to all!

"Great Scot!" Ruby & Rails - Scotland On Rails

Just back from Edinburgh this evening. Took it steady about 60mph, so used just half a tank of fuel - not bad for 400 miles (return). Had to take it easy as it was just above freezing in places and I ended up playing Star Trek. It was snowing for a time North of Penrith. When I was able I put the head lights on full-beam: warp drive!

Scotland On Rails was great - the organisation, speakers, content and company. The sessions I attended included testing, testing testing, migrating to Ruby 1.9, DSLs .... and the last session on JRuby with the announcement of version 1.1 that provoked a round of applause:

JRuby on Rails: Up And Running!

Charles Oliver Nutter and Thomas Enebo
JRuby 1.1 has been released, and is becoming the Rails platform of choice for many Rails shops. In this session, we’ll show how to start from scratch or migrate your existing Rails app to JRuby. We’ll demonstrate the various deployment options on JRuby. We’ll show how to integrate Java libraries into your app. We’ll walk through NetBeans’ Ruby and Rails support and talk about how JRuby has enabled better tools and better solutions for Ruby developers. And we’ll have a conversation with the audience about where JRuby on Rails should go from here. Be prepared to talk shop and see lots of code and demos.

I'd been really looking forward to Joe's presentation on DSLs and was not disappointed. My enthusiasm here is not because Hodges' domains makes a DSL a dead-cert, far from it; it's just that I miss playing with Plasticine:

Domain Specific Languages : Moulding Ruby

Joe O'Brien

Ever wondered what all the fuss is about when it comes to DSL’s and Ruby? It seems to be all we hear about. This talk will peel away the onion and look at what it is about Ruby that makes it the perfect candidate for creating your own languages. I will show you, through examples, how you can create your own languages without the need for compilers and parsers. We will also cover some real world examples in areas of Banking and Medicine where DSL’s have been applied.

Amid the clamour that is Rails, Joe also stressed that people should focus and explore Ruby itself. Something I need to get on with. Paul Dix's talk this afternoon was fascinating in terms of scale, processing, math libraries and mention of clustering:

Collective Intelligence: Leveraging User Data to Create Intelligent Rails Applications
Paul Dix

Take advantage of user data to create intelligent Rails applications! This talk will focus on data mining to create complex application behavior and gain insight into the patterns and habits of your users. Examples of these techniques can be seen with recommendation systems like those created by Amazon, Netflix, last.fm, and others. Additional examples include spam filtering systems for email or comment filtering provided by Akismet.

I will focus on techniques for gathering data, specific gems and plugins for performing various data mining and machine learning tasks, and performance issues like how to distribute the work to separate servers. Theory in this talk will be light and the specific algorithms will only get a mention by name. We’ll be looking at real world Ruby and Rails code examples for building recommendation, ranking, and classification systems.

I wasn't the only Ruby newbie and met a few of my peers, we noticed on the first day the number of sessions on the theme of testing. Last week I'd watched Matz' February talk on Ruby 1.9 and the future which helped me out through the past two days. Last night in The Crags one of the speakers Ritchie (whose session I missed) kindly explained about his conjoint talk and the significance of JRuby, NetBeans IDE and IntelliJ. Given Richie's knowledge, experience and that closing session, I'll definitely investigate these.

There's only one conclusion - totally overwhelming: but totally worth the brain ache.
So great job and many thanks to Alan and the team, plus the luminous speakers and sponsors.

SPT 2007 InfoVis / Infoaesthetics & history

I missed out the initial plenary at the conference the other day on The Moral Significance of Technical Artifacts. Reading Michel Serres introduced me to Latour, and the speaker Peter Kroes linked Latour and Verbeek - "What Things Do". There's lots of reading as discussed on design and technology blogs.

Peter Kroes' plenary included a slide with a PHYSICAL domain and an INTENTIONAL domain. Once I swapped these around (INTERPERSONAL - SCIENCES) something (at least) made sense to me. Like the other plenaries this was totally engaging.

This session on Tuesday 10 July 9:00-11:00
Session J: Aesthetic Computing (Laurens Room)
Michael Kelly (UNC Charlotte)
Robert Kosara (UNC Charlotte)

- resulted in 6+ pages of notes. Michael Kelly presented the paper and then Robert Kosara displayed and discussed examples of information visualization - which included:

• Sick leave in Germany (striking approach)
• Titanic visualization
• Map of the Market
• Parallel Sets (could see Public mental Health here)
• Dumpster
• Bus times - Sweden (Art or Data)

I found a web resource produced by Robert Kosara which displays the above. The discussion covered criteria for visualization, recognition and the readability of forms. (The use of basic colour within data tables can work wonders: see Tidwell, Designing Interfaces, chap. 6). Kosara has other examples of glyphs for data display in intensive care units.

In addition I found two blogs, the first I believe related to Lev Manovich - Language of New Media mentioned by the speakers:

information aesthetics

and

Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media

I'm no mathematician as will be revealed in future posts, but for some reason (!?) visualization and Hodges' model have me in their grip.

This interest started in the late 1980s, which was good timing since the 1990s saw a major UK initiative on visualization in the social sciences. To be clear I wasn't involved beyond managing to attend some really fascinating events:

1996 'Thinking with Diagrams' Colloquium, IEE, Savoy Place, London. 18 Jan BCS-SGES et al. Professional Group C4: Digest No: 96/010

9-11 Sept 1998, Visualization and Virtual Reality in the Social Sciences Workshop: Weetwood Hall, Leeds, UK, Advisory Group on Computer Graphics [Archive: website no longer maintained since 1999] Attended by Brian Hodges and PJ. Poster 'Show & Tell' session on Hodges' model. Event reported in Information Technology in Nursing (1999) 11,1,14-15

So after the presentation I had to ask about the possible need to review existing visualization techniques, to do a stock-take - a lessons learned if you will. The session was excellent especially the mix of philosophy and visuals.

Sometimes maybe there's a risk that if a picture paints a thousand words - "well let's go home then and read Harry Potter...."

The old Advisory Group on Computer Graphics produced some excellent work and reports:

Review of Visualization in the Social Sciences: A State of the Art Survey and Report
Scott Orford, Daniel Dorling, Richard Harris
School of Geographical Sciences
University of Bristol

From my limited perspective I still have a sense that the real revolution is yet to happen - for health and the social sciences. The fact that Michael Kelly and Robert Kosara are not only displaying the slides, but with the Society for Philosophy and Technology and others they are asking the tough philosophical questions could be a sign; a resurgence of interest in the transdisciplinary connection of art TO computing (TO social sciences) - with a dusting of philosophy across all.

We talk about a web year, the vis year may turn slower but is an up-to-date review pending, perhaps it's under way somewhere..?

Journal of Learning Analytics - inaugural issue

ISSN 1929-7750 (online)
Homepage: http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/JLA
Twitter:  http://twitter.com/jla_editorial
Contact:  jla.editorial at gmail.com

Submission deadline (inaugural issue): April 30, 2013

Overview
Journal of Learning Analytics is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal, disseminating the highest quality research in the field. The journal is the official publication of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR). With an international Editorial Board comprising leading scholars, it is the first journal dedicated to research into the challenges of collecting, analysing and reporting data with the specific intent to improve learning and teaching practice. “Learning” is broadly defined across a range of contexts, including informal learning on the internet, formal academic study in institutions (primary/secondary/tertiary), and workplace learning.

The journal seeks to connect researchers and developers with practitioners, creating and disseminating new tools and techniques, studying transformations, and providing ongoing evaluation and critique of the conceptual, technical, and practical outcomes. The interdisciplinary focus of the journal recognizes that computational, pedagogical, institutional, policy and social domains must be brought into dialogue with each other to ensure that interventions and organizational systems serve the needs of all stakeholders. The journal seeks to bring into dialogue the intersection of the fields of Education, Computation and Sensemaking.
Journal of Learning Analytics welcomes papers that either describe original research or offer a review of the state of the art in a particular area. The journal also welcomes practice-focused papers that detail Learning Analytics applications in real-world settings, provided that they offer innovative insights for advancing the field (see the About section).

Focus and Scope
The following topics are indicative of the journal’s scope:

Education
- Connections between learning analytics and the learning sciences
- Personalization and adaptation in the learning process
- Educational research methods
- Learner modeling
- The study of emotion, flow, and affective data

Computation
- Social network analysis
- Web science, the Semantic Web, and linked data
- Data mining and machine learning techniques
- Natural language processing and text mining
- Recommendation engines

Sensemaking
- Visualization and user experience
- Data and multimedia literacy
- Decision-support
- Organizational dynamics
- Ethical issues

Research Papers
Journal of Learning Analytics welcomes papers that either describe original research or offer a review of the state of the art in a particular area of learning analytics. No submission, or substantially overlapping submission, be published or be under review elsewhere.  Submissions that extend previously published conference papers are welcome provided that the journal submission has sufficiently been extended (at least 25-30% of new contribution).

The Reflective Practitioner Section
This section of the Journal of Learning Analytics is peer-reviewed and  covers the application of learning analytics across a diversity of contexts. This section spotlights trends and practices; provides new insights and ideas; and analyzes the implications of learning analytics. This section is not intended as an avenue for publication of research articles.

Editors
- Shane Dawson, University of South Australia, Australia
- Dragan Gasevic, Athabasca University, Canada
- Phillip Long, University of Queensland, Australia

Editor of the Reflective Practitioner Section
- John Campbell, West Virginia University, USA

UK Evening Symposium: Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining - May 14th 2025

 UK Symposium on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining 2025

Wednesday May 14th 2025 from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Location

This will be a virtual event using the Zoom video-conferencing platform. 

Outline Programme

6.00 p.m. (UK time): 'Arrival' and Introduction

Chair: Prof. Max Bramer (SGAI)

6.10 p.m. to 6.40 p.m.

Prof. Dr. Anna Fensel (Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, Wageningen University, The Netherlands) BIO

Knowledge graphs, FAIR principles and generative AI for scientific discoveries in agri-food

6.40 p.m. to 6.50 p.m. Discussion and Questions

6.50 p.m. to 7.20 p.m.

Dr. Anelia Kurteva (Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK) BIO

Responsible AI through responsible data management and governance enabled by knowledge graphs

7.20 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. Discussion and Questions

7.30 p.m. Close

Please see links, e.g. 'programme' at: http://ukkdd.org.uk/2025/

My source: BCS-SGAI list

Book: "The Elements of Power"

individual

|
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES             

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL   

|

group

logicical OR	the periodic table | mining | elements COBALT
the 'table' ... family communities	CHILD LABOUR   power

“A tale of rapacious colonialism, Cold War spy games, dazzling technical innovation, big business rivalry, big power geopolitics . . . Niarchos has produced an unflinching, landmark work on the nature of extractive capitalism.” —Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times best-selling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing

Epic, shocking, and deeply reported, The Elements of Power tells the story of the war for the global supply of battery metals—essential for the decarbonization of our economies—and the terrible, bloody human cost of this badly misunderstood industry

'Congo is rich. Swaths of the war-torn African country lack basic infrastructure, and, after many decades of colonial occupation, its people are officially among the poorest in the world. But hidden beneath the soil are vast quantities of cobalt, lithium, copper, tin, tantalum, tungsten, and other treasures. Recently, this veritable periodic table of resources has become extremely valuable because these metals are essential for the global “energy transition”—the plan for wealthy nations to wean themselves off fossil fuels by shifting to sustainable forms of energy, such as solar and wind. The race to electrify the world’s economy has begun, and China has a considerable head start. From Indonesia to South America to Central Africa, Beijing has invested in mines and infrastructure for decades. But the U.S. has begun fighting back with massive investments of its own, as well as sanctions and disruptive tariffs. ...'

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/709025/the-elements-of-power-by-nicolas-niarchos/

My source: James McConnachie, The dirty truth behind our 'clean energy' cars, saturday review, The Times, 17 January 2026, p.13.

Previously: 'mining' : 'corruption' : 'Africa' 

Political space: 'Forum Internum'

... Or, how do they 'read' the model?

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group - population

Forum Internum ([{Private - mental space}]) Freedom of Thought	Neuroscience Technology Brain-Machine Interface
Social media technologies Data aggregation data mining Profiling Vulnerable groups	Political space Human Rights Lawyers, Courts - NeuroLaw Arrival of fMRI imaging in court Protection of Freedom of Thought Thought-crime?

 

Please also consider here the position of the individual, their mental health and mental health law.

My source:

BBC Radio 4: Political Space - Forum Internum 3/3

Ada Lovelace Day: Enid Mumford - Socio-technical perfume down the mine

I had to enter a pledge and join the call today to post in response to Ada Lovelace Day - an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.

Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants. The list of tech-related careers is endless.

Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. That’s a relatively simple problem to begin to address. If women need female role models, let’s come together to highlight the women in technology that we look up to. Let’s create new role models and make sure that whenever the question “Who are the leading women in tech?” is asked, that we all have a list of candidates on the tips of our tongues.

It was soon after this blog first appeared that I learned of the news of Enid Mumford's death. I never had the pleasure of meeting Prof. Mumford, but came across her work whilst doing my own studies and a degree at Bolton. We have something in common in being raised in Merseyside. In the NW of England there is also a tradition of mining...

Studying geology at school we went on a field trip down the pit at Golborne Colliery. Strange to be told after an underground train ride we where under the East Lancashire A580. Enid Mumford's early work took her underground, but her impact extended far beyond her perfume bottle:

'A woman down the mines?" Enid Mumford's classic sociological research for the National Coal Board had a strong impact on unbelieving miners. Later, as an active advocate for women's rights, Enid, who has died aged 82, enjoyed recounting her early experiences: "They were terribly nice to me whenever I turned up, but they were awfully embarrassed at what I might catch them doing." Enid would "drench herself with perfume", so that the ventilation system would give the miners a chance to prepare themselves for her arrival at the coalface. In such ways, Enid began her contributions to social theory, with its challenges to action researchers like herself.
The Guardian obituary

As posted previously this year sees a chapter published on Hodges' model and socio-technical structures in nursing informatics (See bibliography in the blog's side bar). I really latched on to Enid Mumford's approach and needless to say Professor Mumford's invaluable work figures in my overview:

Background: Existing socio-technical structures and methods

This section scratches the pages of the socio-technical literature by introducing two seminal contributions and briefly references other sources. The two authors discussed are Mumford (1983) in the socio-technical sense and Giddens (1984) who is more generic socially and organisational oriented. Enid Mumford created ETHICS, a systems design methodology: Effective Technical and Human Implementation of Computer-based Systems. The need for ETHICS is to help manage change with three objectives.

First, ETHICS stresses that the future users of computer systems, whether directly or indirectly involved should play a major part in designing these systems. User involvement is closely related to subsequent job satisfaction and efficiency gains and hence the realization of benefits. The users of systems are credited as experts; if this knowledge and experience is recognized and utilized then job satisfaction gains are likely as the users are active agents in the change process and not passive. There is an interesting correspondence here with the continuing emphasis on patients and carers being acknowledged as experts in their care assessment, management and evaluation.

The second objective focuses on the human – behavioural response to change. It is important that specific job satisfaction objectives are factored into the design from the outset and not left to chance, lost amid technical specifications and objectives. In this way potential negative change impacting the quality of work life can be anticipated and avoided or at least ameliorated. Technology has frequently been associated with de-skilling and of course the loss of traditional jobs. The prospect of technical, management led change can cause consternation in the user community. If alienated employees may be absent, seek alternate employment, and overall be less productive.

ETHICS is not restricted to the computer system; the third objective highlights the need for a new computer system to be ‘surrounded by a compatible, well functioning organizational system’ (Mumford, 1983). Design must be viewed globally as a whole. The technical design is just one part of a very complex design process that must also incorporate the details of human-machine interaction; what would be called gap analysis, the differences in existing processes and proposed new processes and procedures. In addition, as per objectives one and two, individual jobs and workgroup activities must be reviewed; how are existing roles and relationships altered and newly defined? What new management arrangements are needed, since (middle) management is rarely untouched?

<>

I wish I could spend more time on Hodges' model, socio-technical thought and its application. Women in ICT? This is not a new call.

Women must have role in IT - not just to ensure the social in SOCIO-technical.

Not just to ensure that the 'c' in ICT happens.

Whether in programming, instructional technology, internet infrastructure, semantic web, the games industry and a whole host of other areas - Ada Lovelace, Enid Mumford - and of course others past and present must not be lone pioneers. ...

Additional links:

BCS Women

Daphne Jackson Trust

The Register (2008) Women IT EU Job Shortage

For BR

AI-2026 46th SGAI International Conference on Artificial Intelligence CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND, DECEMBER

THIRD CALL FOR PAPERS AND POSTERS

The proceedings of the AI-20xx conference series are now published by Springer in Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI), a sub-series of the distinguished Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series of conference proceedings.

AI-2026: Cambridge, UK, December 15th-17th 2026

Organised by BCS SGAI: The British Computer Society Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence (a EurAi Member Society).

The leading series of UK-based international conferences on Artificial Intelligence and one of the longest running AI conference series in Europe.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

http://www.bcs-sgai.org/ai2026/

AI-2026 is the forty-sixth SGAI International Conference on Innovative Techniques and Applications of Artificial Intelligence.

The scope of the conference comprises the whole range of AI technologies and application areas. AI-2026 reviews recent technical advances in AI technologies and shows how these advances have been applied to solve business problems. Key features are:

• Papers will be published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) subseries of the popular Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series (www.springer.com/lncs).
• Papers are invited in two streams. The Technical Stream presents the best of recent developments in AI, covering a wide range of technical areas. The Application Stream is the largest annual showcase in Europe of real applications using AI technology.
• It is expected that the best papers will be reprinted in expanded form in a special issue of an international journal.
• A mixture of full papers (maximum 14 A4 pages) presented orally and short papers (maximum 6 A4 pages) presented as posters. Papers of both kinds will be included in the proceedings.
• Prizes for best paper and best student paper in each stream and best presented short/poster paper.
• Invited keynote lectures.
• The first day comprises tutorials and workshops to provide greater depth in selected topics. (Separate one-day registration for this day is also available.)
• A panel session on a topical subject.
• An 'AI Open Mic' session to allow delegates to have their say about any aspect of AI.
• In addition to the formal sessions, the conference programme includes a welcome reception and a Gala Dinner.

AI-2026 offers a valuable opportunity to keep up to date with developments in AI and to share experiences in the practical issues of developing AI systems.

FAIRS '26, the eighteenth annual forum for AI research students will immediately precede the AI-2026 conference at Peterhouse College on Monday December 14th, 2026. The aim of FAIRS is to support student members of the AI community providing advice and feedback on their research plans and work. This event is free of charge for research students except for a contribution towards the cost of refreshments and lunch in the College and no conference registration is required.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Paper/Poster Submission: Friday 26th June 2026

This deadline is considerably later than for previous conferences in this series and will not be extended.

• Notification of Acceptance: Tuesday September 1st 2026
• Camera Ready Paper: Monday 14th September 2026

CONTRIBUTIONS

Contributions presenting original work in AI are invited for both the technical and the application stream. Contributions may be submitted either as full papers of up to fourteen A4 pages for oral presentation or as short papers of up to six A4 pages for poster presentation.

• Technical Stream

Areas of interest include (but are not restricted to): knowledge engineering; semantic web; constraint satisfaction; intelligent agents; machine learning; model based reasoning; verification and validation of AI systems; natural language understanding; speech-enabled systems; case based reasoning; neural networks; genetic algorithms; data mining and knowledge discovery in databases; knowledge representation, inference and reasoning; robotics and pervasive computing; qualitative and temporal reasoning; knowledge management; AI languages and environments; robotics and pervasive computing; large language models.

• Application Stream

Case studies are welcomed describing the application of AI to real-world problems. Papers in recent years have covered all application domains, including commerce, manufacturing and government, and every major AI technique. In addition to case studies and specific applications of AI, we would welcome papers that discuss issues such as managing the transfer from research to production of AI-based products. Papers are selected to highlight critical areas of success (and failure) and to present the benefits and lessons of value to other developers. Submitted papers should make these points clear.

• Short Papers for Poster Presentation

Short papers are intended for the presentation of work which meets the high standards of the conference, but which is more topical and preliminary than the work presented in full papers. They provide an excellent forum for disseminating new developments and latest work in progress, especially suited to PhD students. Work submitted in the form of full-length papers that fall short of the standard for oral presentation will automatically be considered as candidates for reworking as short papers for poster presentation.

• Submission of Papers

Final versions of accepted papers must be prepared in either Microsoft Word or Latex together with a copy in PDF format. Initial versions of papers should be submitted in PDF format only and uploaded to the conference website by the deadline given above. Instructions for authors and templates for both Word and Latex are given at

http://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines

In order for an accepted paper to be published at least one author must register for the conference and undertake to attend and present the paper in person. Presenting authors will be asked to register for the conference at the discounted speakers' rate when they return the final camera-ready versions of their papers.

• Tutorials & workshops

The Conference Committee invites proposals for tutorials and workshops to be presented on the first day of the conference. These should be directed in the first instance to the Tutorial/Workshop Organiser.

• Prizes

There are prizes for the best paper and best student paper submitted in each stream, chosen by the relevant program committee, and also a prize for the best presented short/poster paper, awarded on the basis of delegate voting.

All further information including details of the conference committee, program committees, paper format and uploading instructions is given on the conference website.

ALL CORRESPONDENCE SHOULD BE SENT BY EMAIL TO THE CONFERENCE SECRETARIAT:
sgai-conference AT bcs.org.uk

My source: BCS-SGAI

South Sudan Medical Journal - November 2025

SSMJ Vol 18 No 4 November 2025

 Dear reader,

The full issue of our November 2025 issue is now online; this is a bumper issue featuring 14 full articles and other news items, listed below. We thank the copyeditors and reviewers who helped prepare these papers. Let us know if you would like to join the Editorial team. We need you if you have time and editing skills.
 
Editorial

• Save lives by ending postpartum haemorrhage. Edward Kenyi

Research Articles

• Comparative study between classical two-layer and one-layer extra-mucosal intestinal anastomosis in elective and emergency abdominal operations. John Chol Ajack, Galal Abouelnagah, Haytham Fayed
• Comparison of improvised negative pressure wound therapy and conventional wound dressing in abdominal wounds dehiscence after surgery. Nasra Lichika, Edward Ketson Msokwa, Alphonce Chandika
• River contamination and community health: mining impacts in rural central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Nawan, Septi Handayani, Agnes I. Toemon, Hepryandi L. D. Usup, Seth Miko, Joni Rusmanto
• Iron deficiency in cardiorenal anaemia syndrome in Dodoma, Tanzania Gidion Edwin
• Guerrilla investors: Firm-level innovation and productivity in South Sudan’s private pharmaceutical sector Garang M. Dut
• Paediatric deaths at Al-Sabbah Children’s Hospital, Juba, South Sudan – an audit Zechariah J. Malel, Garang Dakjur Lueth, Mary Poni Jackson, Nicolas Kazimiro Sasa
• Prevalence of anaemia among pregnant women attending the antenatal clinic at Bor State Referral Hospital. Mark Kuoi Jongkuch Kuoi and Shalini Ninan Cherian
• The impact of dietary compliance on diabetic foot ulcer healing: A cross-sectional study. Dadi Santoso, Rajesh Kumar Muniandy, Putra Agina Widyaswara Suwaryo

Review Articles

• Personal determinants of gender-based violence: a review of intimate partner violence in South Sudan. Nyinypiu Adong
• Misdiagnosing Muslims: The hidden risk of using the CAGE questionnaire in some Islamic contexts. Anas Ibn Auf and Sayed Halaly
• Impact of healthcare worker training on paediatric tuberculosis detection and reporting: A systematic review. Suryanti Chan, Hamzah Hamzah, Miftahul Falah

Case Reports

• Lupus nephritis overlap syndrome in a male with albinism: A case report. Adam Gidion Edwin, Baraka Alphonce, Sabina Mmbali, Alfred Meremo
• Rare isolation of Pseudomonas mendocina from a postoperative wound in a diabetic patient: A case report. Vimal Kumar Karnaker, Asem Ali Ashraf, Bhadra Jyothikumar

Short Communications

• News: Physicians Association of South Sudan and Association of Gynecologists and Obstetricians of South Sudan. Sudan

Back Page: Supporting Wet Nursing During Emergencies
 
Articles in SSMJ are indexed by Scopus, African Journals Online (AJOL), and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and as well as being on our website. SSMJ is included in the EBSCO scientific research collection.
 
Thanks to everyone who supports SSMJ. Tell your colleagues they can join our mailing list here.
 
The SSMJ team
Email: southsudanmedicaljournal AT gmail.com
Website: http://www.southsudanmedicaljournal.com

Follow us on Twitter@SSMedJournal and our Facebook Group

Virtual Evening Seminars on Topics in Artificial Intelligence - BCS-SGAI

BCS Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence (BCS-SGAI)
Virtual Evening Seminars on Topics in Artificial Intelligence

The first three events in this year's programme of virtual evening seminars will be on March 26^th, April 9^th and May 14^th. All the virtual seminars are free of charge and open to all. No registration is necessary. 

Further details are given below.

 

(1) Wednesday March 26th 2025 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. (UK time): 

'Symbolic AI versus Neuro-Symbolic AI'

Dr George Baryannis (University of Huddersfield) on 'Knowledge-based Artificial Intelligence: Achieving Inherent Explainability in Intelligent Applications'.

Dr Mercedes Arguello Casteleiro (SGAI) on 'One Digital Health: Symbolic AI versus Neuro-Symbolic AI' and -

Dr Safaa Menad (University of Rouen, France) on 'Merging and Validating Health Ontologies'.

Website (including Zoom link): 

https://www.bcs-sgai.org/seminars/2025-03-26/

 

(2) Wednesday April 9th 2025 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. (UK time): 'Computer Vision Applications'.

There will be two talks: Dr James Haworth (University College London) on 'Progress in computer vision for scene understanding in urban analytics' and Dr Tianjin Huang (University of Exeter) on ' Benchmarking the Robustness of Remote Sensing Foundation Models'.

Website (including Zoom link): https://www.bcs-sgai.org/seminars/2025-04-09/

 

(3) Wednesday May 14th 2025 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. (UK time), as part of our Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining series. There will be two talks: Prof. Dr. Anna Fensel (Wageningen University, The Netherlands) on 'Knowledge graphs, FAIR principles and generative AI for scientific discoveries in agri-food' and Dr Anelia Kurteva (Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK) on 'Responsible AI through responsible data management and governance enabled by knowledge graphs'

Website (including Zoom link): (link to follow)

 

To register for information about future SGAI events go to https://www.bcs-sgai.org/register/

Max Bramer, Chair BCS-SGAI

(- and my source BCS-SGAI list)

The mining of meaning: copper - in and out of the ground

individual
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

group

	West O'okiep Mine, Okiep (1862 to the early 1970s) 284,000 tonnes of copper extracted
Communities	$ £ ...

Image source and with thanks to Dillon Marsh
http://dillonmarsh.com/copper02.html

My original source: New Scientist 6 Sept 2014 pp. 24-25.

HC@AIxIA AI&Health May Seminar: 'Building Trustworthy AI for Health'

Dear Madam/Sir,

This is to officially announce the MAY 2025 seminar of the "AI & Health: Seminars 2025" series as hosted by HC@AIxIA, i.e., the "Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare" working group of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence.

*** Save the date: 12 MAY 2025. 3:30 CET ***

We hope you will attend and participate in the discussion on the relevant topics that will be presented and by our speakers. Feel free to share this with those potentially interested.

Link for participating: https://bit.ly/hc-2025-05 (PLEASE CHECK the site https://aixia.it/en/gruppi/hc/ for any changes or updates) - Please find some details below, and a poster attached.

== May 2025 seminar ==
2025 May 12 - 3:30PM CET

Prof. Barbara Di Camillo, Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Italy

Title: Building Trustworthy AI for Health: Robust and Generalizable Models with a Focus on Challenging Cases

Abstract: To make artificial intelligence useful in real clinical settings, it is crucial that AI tools follow the principles of trustworthy AI. This means ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the results, defining the areas where the results are valid, and making sure the predictions are understandable. This approach ensures that humans remain at the center of the decision-making process. BRAINTEASER (https://brainteaser.health/) is a data science project that uses artificial intelligence to help patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and multiple sclerosis (MS), along with their doctors. In the presentation, I will show how, during the development of the machine learning methods within the project, we took into account the robustness and generalizability of the model, and how we identified and characterized the subjects for whom making predictions is more challenging.

Short Bio: Barbara Di Camillo is full professor in computer science with the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova. Her research activity is centered in the development and application of advanced modeling, data mining and machine learning methods for high-throughput biological data analysis in the field of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology. In particular, she has developed and applied different methods for robust biomarker discovery, predictive modeling and clustering of clinical data and next generation sequencing data. She has also a great expertise in the development and application of differential equation based models, Boolean and Bayesian Networks for modeling the relationships between the variables and the pathways along which they influence the disease progression.

Flyer: https://drive.google.com/open?id=15badJ0Nfj8lrA0gZdFc9aOGeR3pelms-&usp=drive_fs

====

Some notes
Serving as coordinators of the working group on AI for Healthcare of the Italian Association of Artificial Intelligence (AIxIA, see: https://aixia.it/en/gruppi/hc/), part of our commitment consists of fostering contamination and collaboration between AI researchers and experts and operators in Medicine and Healthcare; in particular, we aim to contribute in building a two-way road for informing healthcare operators about AI results and opportunities, while also raising awareness among AI researchers about challenges and problems in medicine and healthcare.
Therefore, the 2025 seminar series, in the trail of the 2024 edition, will feature a number of experts presenting research results, projects, best practices, ideas, and more to a mixed audience of AI researchers and healthcare operators.

Thank you for your interest in the AI & Health seminar series and the HC@AIxIA working group, and see you soon!

Sincerely,
Francesco Calimeri, Mauro Dragoni, Fabio Stella
(coordinators of the HC@AIxIA working group)

Lessons NOT learned: Bhopal, Brumadinho, Fundão, Kafue River ...?

Individual

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

Group

	Bhopal Brumadinho Fundão Kafue River - ( clearly - not a 'person', nor the Rio Doce ) Signs of Life Signs of Government, Law & Accountability

See also: 

Person & Sense of Place: A River runs through it ...

BBC - Artist explores the toxic mining legacy of Zambia's 'black mountains'

Heritage Management Process: Before & After

My prompt: Channel 4 News, UK 28 August 2025 1900.