The Advantage of Evidential Attributes in Social Networks

Nowadays, there are many approaches designed for the task of detecting communities in social networks. Among them, some methods only consider the topological graph structure, while others take use of both the graph structure and the node attributes. In real-world networks, there are many uncertain and noisy attributes in the graph. In this paper, we will present how we detect communities in graphs with uncertain attributes in the first step. The numerical, probabilistic as well as evidential attributes are generated according to the graph structure. In the second step, some noise will be added to the attributes. We perform experiments on graphs with different types of attributes and compare the detection results in terms of the Normalized Mutual Information (NMI) values. The experimental results show that the clustering with evidential attributes gives better results comparing to those with probabilistic and numerical attributes. This illustrates the advantages of evidential attributes.Comment: 20th International Conference on Information Fusion, Jul 2017, Xi'an, Chin

The structure and evolution of breast cancer genomes

Chromosome changes in the haematological malignancies, lymphomas and sarcomas are known to be important events in the evolution of these tumours as they can, for example, form fusion oncogenes or disrupt tumour suppressor genes. The recently described recurrent fusion genes in prostate and lung cancer proved to be iconic examples as they indicated that important gene fusions are found in the common epithelial cancers also. Breast cancers often display extensive structural and numerical chromosome aberration and have among the most complex karyotyes of all cancers. Genome rearrangements are potentially an important source of mutation in breast cancer but little is known about how they might contribute to this disease. My first aim was to carry out a structural survey of breast cancer cell line genomes in order to find genes that were disrupted by chromosome aberrations in “typical” breast cancers. I investigated three breast cancer cell lines, HCC1187, VP229 and VP267 using data from array painting, SNP6 array CGH, molecular cytogenetics and massively parallel paired end sequencing. I then used these structural genomic maps to predict fusion transcripts and demonstrated expression of five fusion transcripts in HCC1187, three in VP229 and four in VP267. Even though chromosome aberrations disrupt and fuse many genes in individual breast cancers, a major unknown is the relative importance and timing of genome rearrangements compared to sequence-level mutation. For example, chromosome instability might arise early and be essential to tumour suppressor loss and fusion gene formation or be a late event contributing little to cancer development. To address this question, I considered the evolution of these highly rearranged breast cancer karyotypes. The VP229 and VP267 cell lines were derived from the same patient before and after therapy-resistant relapse, so any chromosome aberration found in both cell lines was probably found in the common in vivo ancestor of the two cell lines. A large majority of structural variants detected by massively parallel paired end sequencing, including three fusion transcripts, were found in both cell lines, and therefore, in the common ancestor. This probably means that the bulk of genome rearrangement pre-dated the relapse. For HCC1187, I classified most of its mutations as earlier or later according to whether they occurred before or after a landmark event in the evolution of the genome - endoreduplication (duplication of its entire genome). Genome rearrangements and sequence-level mutations were fairly evenly divided between earlier and later, implying that genetic instability was relatively constant throughout the evolution of the tumour. Surprisingly, the great majority of inactivating mutations and expressed gene fusions happened earlier. The non-random timing of these events suggests many were selected.This work was supported by the Medical Research Council Studentshi

Assessing Scotland's Progress on the Environmental Agenda

For good reasons the environment has a high political profile in Scotland. This report is concerned with three important components of the environmental agenda and the way in which they are being taken forward by the responsible authorities in Scotland. The delivery of environmental outcomes on agricultural land by means of a range of current policies, including agri-environment schemes, cross-compliance conditions on direct payments to farmers and implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive.The selection and management of a new network of Marine Protected Areas.Policy measures designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to mitigate climate change.Each of these topics is addressed individually in three separate chapters, aiming to identify some of the leading questions and the policy responses that have been adopted. The progress that is being made in meeting the objectives and aspirations set out in legislation and other key policy documents is then considered. Some of the objectives under review are determined entirely by the Government and by more local authorities in Scotland. Others arise primarily from obligations under EU legislation

Philosophy as a religious experience in Plato

Plato is a philosophical theologian in whom philosophy and theology are synonymous, and the way of philosophy a religious endeavour. However, contemporary scholarship overlooks the importance of the religious dimension of Plato's philosophy, and in particular, neglects an examination of the theological ideas that are involved in this understanding. In answer to this, the thesis argues that, in Plato, philosophy is a religious human experience, that it is within such a perspective that Plato's philosophical theology can be properly understood, and that such a perspective provides both theological and philosophical insights. The thesis offers a unique contribution to scholarship in that it examines the issues of Plato's philosophical theology from the perspective of Plato's philosophy as a religious experience. Secondly, it relates the question of the religious nature of Plato's philosophy to the issue of humanity by seeing Plato's philosophy as a means of human transformation and as a religious way of life and existence. And thirdly, by interacting with recent scholarly interpretation and commentary, seeks ways in which such a perspective provides insights for contemporary theological and philosophical thought. To examine these issues, the thesis employs two overarching themes: philosophy as a religious experience as involved directly with the question of the human situation and life, and the human experience of the divine in Plato. Chapters One and Two consider, respectively, Plato's philosophy as a way of salvation and transformation in the individual and society, and the idea of the philosophical life. Chapters Three through Five examine the religious experience of the Forms as divine reality and the meaning to human existence, the idea of the personal relationship between the philosopher and the divine, and the philosophical experience of divine inexpressibility. Lastly, in the Conclusion, I seek to apply the idea of Plato's philosophy as a religious experience to a contemporary context by raising several ofthe important issues that are involved when Plato's philosophy is realised as a religious way of life today. The thesis concludes that what is manifested in Plato is a deep interrelation between philosophical and religious thought which gives rise to a vibrant and insightful philosophical theology of Plato's philosophy as a religious human experience

A Comparison of Fuel Efficiencies Between DC-9-30 and B-737NG Aircraft for Delta Airlines at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport

Improved fuel efficiency is one of aviation\u27s top priorities, as it impacts the economy and the National Airspace System\u27s environment. This descriptive study used data generated by the Total Airspace and Airport Modeler (TAAM) to show that the Boeing 737 Next Generation series aircraft would be more fuel-efficient than the McDonnell-Douglas DC-9-30 aircraft on various routes used by Delta Airlines out of Atlanta\u27s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Databases, such as Aircraft Situation Display to Industry (ASDI) and Base of Aircraft Data (BADA), were used to simulate the baseline flight route information. Simulations were performed on Boeing 737NG (-700, -800, -900) and the DC-9-30 aircraft. Statistically significant improvements were found in the fuel burn for the Boeing 737 aircraft, with an estimated yearly savings of about $26 million dollars

Topological geodesics and virtual rigidity

We introduce the notion of a topological geodesic in a 3-manifold. Under suitable hypotheses on the fundamental group, for instance word-hyperbolicity, topological geodesics are shown to have the useful properties of, and play the same role in several applications as, geodesics in negatively curved spaces. This permits us to obtain virtual rigidity results for 3-manifolds.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol1/agt-1-18.abs.htm

Microstructural evolution in coated conventionally cast Ni-based superalloys

The aim of this research project was to investigate the microstructural changes of MCrAlY coated Ni-based superalloys that are routinely used in industrial gas turbine engines for power generation. One of the main aims of the characterisation was to understand ageing time and temperature effects on the microstructural evolution so that a methodology could be developed where the characterisation of a thermally exposed microstructure can be used to estimate unknown service exposure conditions. [Continues.