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Maths Goes Into Space

Space science is one of HM Government’s ‘eight great technologies’. In this lecture I will explain the mathematics behind satellites, showing how they are controlled, how they are sent to distant planets and how they transmit and receive data over vast distances.

English Landscape: Constable and Clare

Constable's Stour landscapes of the Regency period, during and just after the War with France, and his publication English Landscape Scenery, champion local and low-key rural England.

Is Society Ready For Driverless Cars?

Driverless cars will affect us all profoundly. They will save many lives, destroy many livelihoods and change our behaviour in unexpected ways. What are the barriers to achieving the benefits of this new technology and how can they be overcome?

How Maths Can Save Your Life

Many of us have been in a medical scanner and benefited from its use in medical diagnostics. But how many of us have considered how it works? The maths behind modern medical imaging (showing how CAT, MRI and Ultrasound scanners work) will be explained.

Artificial Intelligence

Alan Turing famously proposed a test of artificial intelligence. What has been achieved? Stephen Hawking has said that real artificial intelligence will mean the end of mankind. Is that a real threat? Are there limits to what a silicon brain might do?

Making Software 'Correct by Construction'

Is it possible to build software so that you know that is is correct? How could this be done? Has anyone tried? What would it cost?

The Poetry of Robert Frost, The Power and Intrigue of Simile

Frost's line, 'I found a dimpled spider... holding up a moth like a white piece of rigid satin cloth' exploits simile... But how can a moth be like cloth? -This is one of a number of examples that will be explored with a view to refining our understanding of smilie.

What Really Happened in Y2K?

As year 2000, 'Y2K', approached, many feared that computer programs would cause problems. There is a widespread belief that the millennium bug was a myth, invented by rapacious consultants as a way to make money. What was the truth? What, if anything, happened? Have we learnt all the right lessons?

What will happen when Artificial Intelligence and the Internet meet the Professions?

In the long run, in an Internet society, it is claimed, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others, to work as they did in the 20th century. - Is this true?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and Poetic Technique

In the line, 'The Western wave was aflame', the 'Western wave' refers to the sea. But is it this simple? What do forms of substitution, synecdoche for example, lend to this magnificent and shadowy poem?

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