IDENTIFICATION OF COVER SONGS USING INFORMATION THEORETIC MEASURES OF SIMILARITY

13 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. v3: Accepted version13 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. v3: Accepted version13 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. v3: Accepted versio

On the spatio-temporal analysis of hydrological droughts from global hydrological models

The recent concerns for world-wide extreme events related to climate change have motivated the development of large scale models that simulate the global water cycle. In this context, analysis of hydrological extremes is important and requires the adaptation of identification methods used for river basin models. This paper presents two methodologies that extend the tools to analyze spatio-temporal drought development and characteristics using large scale gridded time series of hydrometeorological data. The methodologies are classified as non-contiguous and contiguous drought area analyses (i.e. NCDA and CDA). The NCDA presents time series of percentages of areas in drought at the global scale and for pre-defined regions of known hydroclimatology. The CDA is introduced as a complementary method that generates information on the spatial coherence of drought events at the global scale. Spatial drought events are found through CDA by clustering patterns (contiguous areas). In this study the global hydrological model WaterGAP was used to illustrate the methodology development. Global gridded time series of subsurface runoff (resolution 0.5°) simulated with the WaterGAP model from land points were used. The NCDA and CDA were developed to identify drought events in runoff. The percentages of area in drought calculated with both methods show complementary information on the spatial and temporal events for the last decades of the 20th century. The NCDA provides relevant information on the average number of droughts, duration and severity (deficit volume) for pre-defined regions (globe, 2 selected hydroclimatic regions). Additionally, the CDA provides information on the number of spatially linked areas in drought, maximum spatial event and their geographic location on the globe. Some results capture the overall spatio-temporal drought extremes over the last decades of the 20th century. Events like the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in South America and the pan-European drought in 1976 appeared clearly in both analyses. The methodologies introduced provide an important basis for the global characterization of droughts, model inter-comparison of drought identified from global hydrological models and spatial event analyse

The ''Disadvantaged'' - Unemployable or just unemployed?. A report on training for university employment

Job training, urban studies and socio-economic participation at University of Californi

Car Centres Placement Problem

Deciding on where to locate the next retail outlet is a problem with a long and distinguished history beginning with the early work of Hotelling (1929) and extended by Huff (1964). The basic idea is to view potential customers as sources of purchasing power while a retail store possesses attractiveness thus creating an interacting particle model. Here, we address the issue of where to locate a new car center based on a limited dataset. A method for distilling aggregate population information down to sub-regions is developed to provide estimates that feed into the optimization algorithm. Two measures were used in the optimization: (i) total market share and (ii) total attractiveness. Total market share optimization is found to lead to placing the center close to competitors, while total attractiveness optimization is found to lead to placing the center closer to centroid of the population

Impact of geography on Scottish cancer diagnoses in primary care:Results from a national cancer diagnosis audit

Funding The National Cancer Diagnosis Audit (NCDA) in Scotland received enabling support from Cancer Research UK and the Scottish Government. Acknowledgements This audit used data provided by patients and collected by NHS as part of their care and support. The authors would like to thank all GPs and health professionals who participated in the NCDA in Scotland, the members of the NCDA Steering Group, as well as contributing staff at Cancer Research UK; Information Services Division (NHS Scotland); Scottish Government; the Royal College of General Practitioners; and Macmillan Cancer Support. National Cancer Diagnosis Audit (2014) Steering Group: Sue Ballard (patient †), Patricia Barnett, David H Brewster, Cathy Burton, Anthony Cunliffe, Jane Fenton-May, Anna Gavin, Sara Hiom (chair), Peter Hutchison, Dyfed Huws, Maggie Kemmner, Rosie Loftus, Georgios Lyratzopoulos, Emma McNair, John Marsh (patient), Jodie Moffat, Sean McPhail, Peter Murchie, Andy Murphy, Sophia Nicola, Imran Rafi, Jem Rashbass, Richard Roope, Greg Rubin, Brian Shand, Ruth Swann, Janet Warlow, David Weller, and Jana Witt.Peer reviewedPostprin

Revisiting Cancer Diagnosis in Scotland : Further Insights from the Second Scottish National Cancer Diagnosis Audit

Acknowledgments The 2nd National Cancer Diagnosis Audit received enabling financial support from Cancer Research UK and the Scottish Government. This audit used data provided by patients and collected by NHS as part of their care and support. The authors would like to thank all GPs and health professionals who participated in the NCDA in Scotland and the members of the NCDA Steering Group, as well as contributing staff at Cancer Research UK, Information Services Division (NHS Scotland), Scottish Government, the Royal College of General Practitioners, and Macmillan Cancer Support.Peer reviewe

Cancer diagnosis in Scottish primary care: results from the National Cancer Diagnosis Audit

The National Cancer Diagnosis Audit (NCDA) in Scotland received enabling support from Cancer Research UK and the Scottish Government. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThis audit used data provided by patients and collected by the NHS as part of their care and support. The authors would like to thank all GPs and health professionals who participated in the NCDA in Scotland and England, the members of the NCDA Steering Group (National Cancer Diagnosis Audit (2014) Steering Group: Sue Ballard (patient †), Patricia Barnett, David H Brewster, Cathy Burton, Anthony Cunliffe, Jane Fenton-May,Anna Gavin, Sara Hiom(chair),Peter Hutchison, Dyfed Huws, Maggie Kemmner, Rosie Loftus, Georgios Lyratzopoulos,Emma McNair, John Marsh (patient), Jodie Moffat, Sean McPhail, Peter Murchie, Andy Murphy, Sophia Nicola, Imran Rafi, Jem Rashbass, Richard Roope, Greg Rubin, Brian Shand, Ruth Swann, Janet Warlow, David Weller and Jana Witt.) and contributing staff at Cancer Research UK; Information Services Division (NHS Scotland); Scottish Government; the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (Public Health England); NHS England; the Royal College of General Practitioners; and Macmillan Cancer SupportPeer reviewedPostprin

A roadmap to the economic evaluation of the activities of the Newhaven Community Development Association

NCDA provides a range of services to the local community with the general aim of supporting regeneration in the Newhaven area. We were asked to provide an economic evaluation of NCDA’s services and we chose to focus on a subset of those activities where the better quality data are available. These are the nursery, the family learning programme and the youth service. These three accounted for 20% of the costs of all services provided by NCDA (another 31% goes to the government-sponsored Work Programme). The paucity of good quality data meant that it proved difficult to obtain solid evidence on the benefits of the services provided (e.g. youths abstaining from drug abuse). We therefore had to look at research evidence from similar activities elsewhere, such as pre-school programmes in the USA or the Families and Schools Together (FAST) programme, which runs in several countries. These programmes are likely to provide benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) and rates of return which suggest such activities are worthwhile investments. Investment in pre school typically has BCRs of around 2; the FAST programme has a ratio of around 3. For the youth service, evidence from research gives a wide range of results, from a BCR of 1.2 all the way up to 13. In the literature we surveyed, small projects seem to have higher rates of return: there are diminishing returns to such activities. Using these research findings we have estimated the potential economic benefits of the NCDA activities, assuming that both the delivery of the interventions by NCDA and the characteristics of their client groups are identical to these programmes. If this holds true, the annual cost of the nursery of £240,000 could yield benefits in the order of £635,000, while the benefit-cost ratio of the youth service could be positive or negative depending on which existing programme is used as the basis of the estimation. There are many shortcomings with this approach. While similar programmes appear to have substantial benefits relative to theirs costs, Newhaven’s programmes need to be evaluated in their own right to be certain that they are realising the same benefits. We suggest some simple measures, which NCDA might like to take to improve the quality of the data they have and the use of it for analysis of their work

Characterization of a Biosynthetic Pathway Yielding Anticancer Natural Products from a Marine Bacterium

Natural products are bioactive secondary metabolites produced by living organisms and are prevalently utilized as pharmaceutical drugs. Marine adapted organisms are a promising source of new natural products possessing unique chemical structures and biological activities. By studying the biosynthetic pathways employed by living organisms to produce natural products, insights into new strategies to generate molecules to combat disease and overcome drug resistance may be gained. This thesis study aimed to uncover the biosynthetic pathway employed by a marine actinomycete, Nocardiopsis sp. CMB-M0232, to catalyze the assembly of the nocardioazines. These molecules are a group of 2,5-diketopiperazine natural products that feature structurally unique functional groups. Nocardioazine A, the hypothesized end product of the nocardioazine biosynthetic pathway, exhibits anticancer activity. Bioinformatics analyses revealed three biosynthetic gene clusters from Nocardiopsis encoding proteins with hypothesized roles in nocardioazine A biosynthesis. Two cyclodipeptide synthases (CDPSs), NozA and NcdA, were biochemically characterized in vivo and in vitro to reveal that both are substrate specific enzymes that utilize tryptophan-charged tRNA substrates to catalyze assembly of cyclo(L-Trp-L-Trp), a proposed precursor of nocardioazines. Fidelity is uncommon amongst characterized CDPSs, making NozA and NcdA important CDPS family additions. This study also aimed to characterize NozD and NozE, two cytochrome P450 homologs with predicted roles as diketopiperazine-tailoring enzymes. Heterologous expression of these enzymes in Streptomyces strains was not able to confirm the functions of NozD and NozE but set the stage for future studies to optimize conditions for probing their roles in nocardioazine A biosynthesis. The results gathered from this study, along with future work to better understand the engineering of unique functional groups from Nocardiopsis may provide opportunities to produce new bioactive molecules