Category / Computer Science

Rich-cores in networks

The next of our research seminars will take place on Wednesday the 23rd of July, 14:00 at PG10 (Poole House)

Our guest speaker is Dr Athen Ma, Senior Lecturer at the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London; Invited by our colleague Dr Darius Krol

The title of her exciting talk is “Rich-cores in networks”  a topic which is of wide interest way beyond computing ; for instance in areas such as Social Networks, Biology etc.

Abstract: “A core comprises of a group of central and densely connected nodes which governs the overall behaviour of a network, and it is recognised as one of the key meso-scale structures in complex networks. Profiling this meso-scale structure currently relies on a limited number of methods which are often complex and parameter dependent or require a null model, and as a result, scalability issues are likely to arise when dealing with very large networks together with the need for subjective adjustment of parameters. The notion of a rich-club describes nodes which are essentially the hub of a network, as they play a dominating role in structural and functional properties. The definition of a rich-club naturally emphasises high degree nodes and divides a network into two subgroups. Here, we develop a method to characterise a rich core in networks by theoretically coupling the underlying principle of a rich-club with the escape time of a random walker. The method is fast, scalable to large networks and completely parameter free. In particular, we show that the evolution of the core in World Trade and C. elegans networks correspond to responses to historical events and key stages in the physical development respectively.”

I very much encourage to the persons interested in the topic to attend. Coffee and cakes will be served.

Best wishes, Emili

Emili Balaguer-Ballester, PhD

Faculty of Science and Technology , Bournemouth University

Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, University of Heidelberg

Dr. Inventor – next generation “Google” search for researchers

Awarded & submitted bids, Research assessment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are you eager to have innovative ideas?  Are you keen to find an effective method to solve your research problems? Do you want to speed up your research information collection? Cooperated among eight universities and companies around Europe, we are developing a virtual personal research assistant in our new European Commission funded project “Dr. Inventor – Promoting Scientific Creativity by Utilising Web-based Research Objects”. 

DrInventorDr Inventor aims to develop an intelligent software system utilising machine-empowered search and computation to bring researchers extended perspectives for scientific innovation. By informing researchers of a broad spectrum of relevant research concepts and approaches, this system will help assess the novelty of research ideas and offer suggestions of new concepts and workflows for new scientific discovery. Dr Inventor will be the first web-based system that supports the exploration of scientific creativity via a computational approach, which will overcome a lot of human limitations.

If you would like our system to work the way you envisage to do, please join our user requirement study by finishing a short survey (taking about 5 minutes) at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/drinventor. You can tell us how you perform your research tasks, what is the most difficult part in your research, what you wish our system to do to help you. Your feedback will guide our design; your suggestions may steer the way how people undertake research in the next few decades.

          

 Jian J Zhang & Xiaosong Yang

National Centre for Computer Animation, The Media School, Bournemouth University

 

Attention all WordPress users – Wordcamp is coming to BU

WordPress is the powerhouse behind 1 in 5 sites on the web.  Everything from this research blog, JayZ’s lifeandtimes.com, Ebay, and even the New York Times online is based on a WordPress template.

This July, BU and Silicon South are hosting the 7th Wordcamp UK developers conference, inviting the best and brightest WordPress developers and users to come and share their tips and tricks to get the most out of your site.

Taking place in the EBC on the weekend of the 12th and 13th July there are lots of ways you can get involved:

  • Tickets cost £20 (including a free t-shirt), these are selling fast so purchase quickly to secure your place.  To find out more click here
  • Perhaps you know a thing or two about WordPress you’d like to share? You can submit your own sessions you might like to run, this could be an hours talk or a five minute lightning presentation – find out more about proposing a session here
  • If you’d like to be involved but don’t know want to run a session, we are looking for a few volunteers to help with the running of the event.  This would be fairly light touch, just helping with registration as people arrive and helping ensure sessions keep to time.  In return we can offer you a free ticket for the weekend, including lunch on both days. If you’d be interested, or know someone who might be, please send me an email and I can give you more details.

 

Goal Modelling for Investigating Fraud

Staff and students are invited to join us for the next Cyber Security Seminar…

‘Goal Modelling for Investigating Fraud’

Tuesday 17th June 2014

Lawrence Lecture Theatre, Talbot Campus

4pm – 5pm

 

Join us for this informative seminar presented by Clive Blackwell, who is currently a Research Engineer at Airbus Innovation Works.

This seminar will present a systematic process for analysing fraud using the KAOS tool, which is widely used in requirements engineering. Interestingly, Clive will analyse the case of Paul Ceglia vs Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, where Ceglia claims 50% of Facebook supported by an alleged contract signed by Zuckerberg. Clive believes this technique could be extended to help provide a general model for fraud and also aid better analysis of the cyber security of complex systems in general.

 If you would like to join us for this presentation, please book your place via Eventbrite. We will look forward to seeing you!

Speaker Bio: Clive Blackwell is currently a Research Engineer at Airbus Innovation Works where his main research is in threat detection and modelling. Clive was formerly a Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University between 2010 and 2013, where his main area of research was in cyber security and digital forensics with a particular interest in the development of a scientific basis for digital forensics. He has over 50 publications including two books to his name.

What happens next: can the future of tech-enabled crime ever be predicted?

Dr Christopher Richardson from the BUCSU delivered a thought provoking presentation at the CIFAS Fraud Conference, which was held at Dexter House London on the 3 June 2014. It was attended by the UK’s financial and insurance communities.

The conference was alerted to the fact that UK fraud is currently running at 25 incidents per hour; with an annual cost estimated above £52 billion.

Dr Richardson’s oversight expanded that through the continuance of pervasive technologies; increased crime wave and progressive skills shortage within the security industry, has all resulted in a perfect storm.

In forecasting the cyber threat landscape Dr Richardson projected the increase of insider threat, malicious software and human error, which if not corrected will bring the cost of fraud above £100 billion. The real question is, at what point will society, enterprise and individuals demand government action, and in particular a more determined approach to the investigation and prosecution of fraudulent activities? A characteristic of cybercrime is that it’s global, whereas policing is local.  In order to rescue our beleaguered and often under skilled law enforcement agencies, we need to tackle the issues from an international perspective, with global partnerships engaging business communities and overcoming their reluctance to breach reporting.

This conference follows on from the BUCSU’s strategic cyber policing conference in February, where cyber enabled and cyber dependent crimes were discussed. Please visit previous blog post for further info on the South West Police Cybercrime Conference.

   

 

IT as a Utility Community conference

As part of the community, BUCSU is supporting Southampton University with this UK network.

IT as aUtility: Network+ community conference

                                             Thursday 19th – Friday 20th June 2014

This will be a two-day presentation and reflection on the achievements so far and the future plans of the RCUK-funded IT as a Utility Network+. The event will be an opportunity to further examine the role of IT utilities in the digital economy both now and in the future.

If you are interested in booking onto this event, please book your place via Eventbrite.

In addition to this, BU will be hosting a ‘Data as a utility and analytics as a service’ workshop at the Executive Business Centre on Monday 9th June from 12pm – 6pm.

Understanding Crowdsourcing and CCTV surveillance

 

Staff, students and members of the public are invited to join us for the next Cyber Security Seminar…

‘Understanding Crowdsourcing and CCTV surveillance’

Tuesday, 27th May

Coyne Lecture Theatre 

4pm – 5pm

 

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) has many different uses but is often considered an archetypal surveillance technology. These infrastructures generate large amounts of data; so much so that the technique of crowdsourcing has recently been applied to the problem of searching for abnormalities in live surveillance video; the premise being that many inexpert watchers are cheaper but as efficient as a small number of experienced security experts. However, the merits of crowdsourcing watchers of surveillance video are largely unknown.

In this talk Dr. Paul Dunphy will describe exemplar infrastructures of this type, and two user studies that assess the performance of the watchers of CCTV video online. The results prompt a discussion regarding the effectiveness of using crowdsourcing in such contexts, and the role such infrastructures can play in society.

Speaker Bio: Paul is a postdoctoral researcher in the Culture Lab at Newcastle University. He is interested in multi-disciplinary approaches to understand and design security and privacy technologies.

 If you would like to join us for this presentation, please book your place via Eventbrite.

Neuroscience@BU seminar: “Emergent oscillatory activity in the cerebral cortex” Friday the 2nd of May 14:00 PG 10 (Poole House)

Next Friday the 2nd of May at 14:00 h in PG10, we will have a research seminar in neuroscience entitled “Emergent oscillatory activity in the cerebral cortex”.

Our guest is Prof. Maria Victoria Sanchez-Vives, http://www.sanchez-vives.org/,  ICREA Research Professor at the IDIBAPS (Institut d’Investigacions Biomediques August Pi i Sunyer) in Barcelona, head of the Systems Neuroscience group.

Prof. Maria Victoria Sanchez-Vives has published a number of influential papers in journals like e.g. Science, Nature Neuroscience or PNAS and is currently the Chief Editor of Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. She has been funded by Human Frontier Science Program, national and international agencies and has been partner in six European Projects. She is currently coordinator of the FET EU project CORTICONIC.

Her main interests include how neuronal and synaptic properties as well as connectivity determine the emergent activity generated by neuronal networks. The integration of the cortical information giving rise to bodily representation and the combination of brain-computer interfaces and virtual reality for understanding these processes, is another research line of her group.

We strongly suggest not to miss the opportunity to attend to this seminar. Afternoon cakes, coffee and tea will be served during the event.

Best wishes, Emili

Emili Balaguer-Ballester, PhD
Faculty of Science and Technology , Bournemouth University
Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, University of Heidelberg

———————————

Title: “Emergent oscillatory activity in the cerebral cortex”.

Abstract: “Understanding complex systems like brain networks is a challenge. Cortical networks can perform computations of remarkable complexity, accounting for a large variety of behaviours and cognitive states. At the same time, the same networks can engage in stereotypical patterns of spatio-temporal activation, such as the ones that can be observed during sleep, anaesthesia and in cortical slice. Collective phenomena emerging from activity reverberation in cortical circuits at different spatio-temporal scales results in a rich variety of dynamical states. Slow (around or below 1 Hz) and fast (15-100 Hz) rhythms are spontaneously generated by the cortical network and propagate or synchronize populations across the cortex. This is the case even in isolated pieces of the cortical network, or in vitro maintained cortical slices, where both slow and fast oscillations are also spontaneously generated. The similarity between some of these patterns both in vivo and in vitro suggests that they are somehow a default activity from the cortical network. We understand that these emergent patterns provide information on the structure, dynamics and function of the underlying cortical network and their alterations in neurological diseases reveal the circuits dysfunction”.

 

 

 

Low-Power High-Quality Interactive Digital Media: The Challenges

PG research

Dear all,

We would like to invite you to an additional guest talk for the Creative Technology Research Centre that will be delivered by Professor Edmond C. Prakash from the University of Bedfordshire.

Title: Low-Power High-Quality Interactive Digital Media: The Challenges

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Thursday 3rd April 2014

Room: P302 (Poole House, Talbot Campus)

Abstract: Traditional GPUs have super graphics performance and have been extremely utilised for media rich applications. However, they are not suitable for low-power mobile devices. Digital media research and development are at the crossroads. This talk looks at some of the key challenges faced in Embedded GPUs for next generation media rich applications (interactive 3D graphics and games) on low-power mobile devices. Graphics programmers, 3D modellers, animators and game developers will benefit from this talk.

Biography:  Edmond is a Professor in Computer Games Technology and the Director for the Institute for Research in Applicable Computing at the University of Bedfordshire. He is the founding editor of the International Journal of Computer Games Technology.  Edmond has worked at top institutions across the globe including MIT, UIUC, BNU, NTU, MMU, PUJ and IISc. Edmond’s research interests are in volume graphics, real-time visualisation, game based learning and game engines.

We hope to see you there,

Dr. David John

Bournemouth European Network in Cyber Security (BENICS)

Fusion

In recent years, the field of Cybersecurity has attracted researchers and practitioners from academic fields ranging from Computer Science and Design, through to Psychology and Business Studies. To date, however, these communities have not been influenced by each other. Their research are disseminated in a variety of workshops and conferences across these fields. As a result, there is a misunderstanding of the role these different fields play in improving cybersecurity. For example, some researchers describe people are “the weakest link” and encourage designers to build systems that “Homer Simpson” can use safely. Unfortunately, treating users as a problem limits opportunities for innovation when people are engaged as part of a solution. Similarly, treating practitioners like cartoon characters disenfranchises the very people that a design is meant to support. Bournemouth University is one of the few institutions in the world with interests across the disciplines contributing to Cybersecurity, a small enough size for academics across these disciplines to engage with each other, and the vision necessary to fuel this engagement. To take advantage of the opportunities afforded to Bournemouth, an interdisciplinary seminar series in cybersecurity was launched in September 2013. The seminar series has attracted both staff and students from across the university, together with practitioners from local industry with interests in cybersecurity. So far, this has led to connections forming across the Faculty of Science & Technology, and the Media and Business schools. Resulting collaborations with our seminar speakers have also led to prospective KTP and Horizon 2020 proposals, and invitations to deliver guest lectures at other universities.

To build on this momentum in interdisciplinary cybersecurity activity at Bournemouth, we have created the Bournemouth European Network for Interdisciplinary Cyber Security (BENICS): a FUSION funded SMN activity. Over the coming year, BENICS will bring five invited European cybersecurity academics to Bournemouth to engage in short (one-week), focused collaborative visits. These visits will introduce invited academics to Bournemouth’s cybersecurity capabilities, allow them to share their interests with us as part of the cybersecurity seminar series, and engage in short and focused proposal building, research, or teaching resource creation activities.

Following each visit, Bournemouth and the visiting academic will engage in pump-priming activities; these will refine deliverables produced to sustain the momentum created during the visit. These deliverables will form the basis of a joint publication at an agreed international conference or journal.

Watch this space for more information about these visits, and please get in touch if you’re interested in engaging with BENICS and our cybersecurity research in general.

Workshop on Streaming Analytics Thursday 13th March 10:30.

Fusion, PG research

As part of a collaboration between BU and several other EU based universities and intitutions we will be hosting SAAT 2014 a workshop on the emerging area of streaming analytics. The workshop is open to all for the first day (the second day is taken up with management meetings). The focus of this workshop is on the technical aspects of how to provide streaming analytics.

Scalability and responsiveness of algorithms and architectures for large scale data streams are fundamental to harvesting the power of data generated in real-time networks. The workshop seeks to bring together industry and academic partners to explore specifically the requirements of data processing, the real-world target applications and develop from there the techniques required. The scope thus includes applications, scaling algorithms, streaming platforms, integration of streaming and batch algorithms, graph partitioning together with machine learning for streaming, concept drift and dynamic data analysis. Additional topics such as security issues and tool and platform development are of interest.

Aims:
The key aims in this workshop are several fold. Primarily we seek to identify the key issues associated real world streams of data, including key target applications. Integrated  solutions, combining appropriate topics from the scope which target likely directions in this field is the end goal. Specifically, the aim of the workshop is to facilitate interaction as a crucible for consortium building in advance of Horizon 2020 (call 1.A.1.1 from the 2014-15 draft work programme.).

Organisers: Dr. Hamid Bouchachia(DEC) , Dr. Damien Fay (DEC)

Neuroscience@BU seminars next week, Wednesday the 12th and Friday the 14th

Research themes

Dear colleagues,
Next week we will have two thematic research seminars in neuroscience organized by Dr Julie Kirby and me.

-The first of the seminars of this series will take place next Wednesday the 12th of March, 15:00, P302 LT. The invited speaker is Dr Dimitris Pinotsis, http://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/browse/profile?upi=DPINO08.
Dr Pintosis obtained his PhD in September 2006 from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) of the University of Cambridge. After an EPRSC Research Fellowship and lectureship in Reading University he moved to UCL where he is working at the Welcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging ; having secured funding from EPSRC and the Wellcome Trust.
Dr Pinotsis has a strong track record and a number of landmark publications in imaging neuroscience modelling; he is also the author of the most advanced versions of the state-of the art models for neuroimaging data, the dynamic causal models. I am familiar with Dimitris work and I very strongly encourage the attendance to researchers both in machine learning and in cognitive psychology.
The title of his exciting talk is “Electrophysiological Data and the Biophysical Modelling of Local Cortical Circuits”. “Dynamic Causal Modelling (DCM) is a general framework that allows for a formal (Bayesian) analysis of the properties of neuronal populations, based upon realistic biophysical models. In the past few years, a wide variety of such models has been implemented in the DCM framework. In this talk, I will first review some of these recent advances and then focus on models that allow one to infer spatial parameters of cortical infrastructures generating electrophysiological signals (like the extent of lateral connections and the intrinsic conduction speed of signal propagation on the cortex). I will try to highlight the links between different models and address how the experimental hypothesis or question asked might inform the choice of an appropriate model”.

-The second seminar of this series will take place on Friday the 14th of March, at 14:00 in K101. Our guest is Prof. Maria Victoria Sanchez-Vives, http://www.sanchez-vives.org/

Maria V. Victoria Sánchez-Vives, M.D., PhD in Neurosciences has been ICREA Research Professor at the IDIBAPS (Institut d’Investigacions Biomediques August Pi i Sunyer) in Barcelona since 2008, where she is the head of the Systems Neuroscience group. She is currently co-director of the Event Lab (Experimental Virtual Envir onments in Neuroscience and Technology).
After obtaining her PhD at the University of Alicante in Spain, MVSV was postdoctoral fellow/research associate at Rockefeller University (1993-1994) and Yale University (1995-2000). She next established her own laboratory at the Neuroscience Institute of Alicante (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) while being Associate Professor of Physiology. Her independent research has been supported by national and international agencies. She has been funded by Human Frontier Science Program and has been partner in six European Projects. She is currently coordinator of the FET EU project CORTICONIC.
Her main interests include how neuronal and synaptic properties as well as connectivity determine the emergent activity generated by neuronal networks. The integration of the cortical information giving rise to bodily representation and the combination of brain-computer interfaces and virtual reality for understanding these processes is another research line of her group.
She is currently Chief Editor of Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience.
For information see www.sanchez-vives.org
Maria Victoria Sanchez-Vives is a renowned neuroscientist which has published a number of highly influential papers in journals like e.g. Science, Nature Neuroscience, PNAS or Journal of Neuroscience. I strongly encourage not missing the opportunity to attend to this seminar and to discuss perhaps potential synergies.
The title of her talk will be “Emergent oscillatory activity in the cerebral cortex”.
“Understanding complex systems like brain networks is a challenge. Cortical networks can perform computations of remarkable complexity, accounting for a large variety of behaviours and cognitive states. At the same time, the same networks can engage in stereotypical patterns of spatio-temporal activation, such as the ones that can be observed during sleep, anaesthesia and in cortical slice. Collective phenomena emerging from activity reverberation in cortical circuits at different spatio-temporal scales results in a rich variety of dynamical states. Slow (around or below 1 Hz) and fast (15-100 Hz) rhythms are spontaneously generated by the cortical network and propagate or synchronize populations across the cortex. This is the case even in isolated pieces of the cortical network, or in vitro maintained cortical slices, where both slow and fast oscillations are also spontaneously generated. The similarity between some of these patterns both in vivo and in vitro suggests that they are somehow a default activity from the cortical network. We understand that these emergent patterns provide information on the structure, dynamics and function of the underlying cortical network and their alterations in neurological diseases reveal the circuits dysfunction”.

If you would like to talk to the guests kindly let me know.
Best wishes, Emili

Emili Balaguer-Ballester, PhD
Faculty of Science and Technology , Bournemouth University
Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, University of Heidelberg