Regionalized Models with Spatially Continuous Predictions at the Borders

Creating maps of continuous variables involves estimating values between measurement locations scattered throughout a geographic region. These maps often leverage observed similarities between geographically close measurements, but may also make predictions using other geographic information such as elevation. The relationship between the available geographic information and the variable of interest can vary with location, especially when mapping large areas like a continent. A simple way to account for the changing relationship is to divide the space into different sub-regions and model the relationship at each region. The naive implementation of this approach has the side effect of making sudden changes in predictions at the borders of each region. This thesis describes a novel regional border smoothing method that allows for the formation of a continuous map built with regional models. The method is implemented and available to the public through the open source R package remap. Improvements in model accuracy are demonstrated using a national scale and a state scale dataset

Booklet: Jacksonville in Flames: Florida\u27s Metropolis in Sack-Cloth and Ashes

Booklet with images by Joseph A. Ingram showing the damage from the Great Fire, Jacksonville, Florida in 1901. The booklet also includes a list of public buildings and private citizens’ buildings destroyed by the fire. Local advertisements included. It also lists the officers of the Jacksonville Relief Fund and the Ladies’ Auxiliary Relief Association. M#116 PALM

A universal primer for isolation of fragments of a gene encoding phytoene desaturase for use in virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) studies

We have been using Virus-Induced Gene Silencing (VIGS) to test the function of genes that are candidates for involvement in floral senescence. Although VIGS is a powerful tool for assaying the effects of gene silencing in plants, relatively few taxa have been studied using this approach, and most that have are in the Solanaceae. We typically use silencing of phytoene desaturase (PDS) in preliminary tests of the feasibility of using VIGS. Silencing this gene, whose product is involved in carotene biosynthesis, results in a characteristic photobleaching phenotype in the leaves. We have found that efficient silencing requires the use of fragments that are more than 90% homologous to the target gene. To simplify testing the effectiveness of VIGS in a range of species, we designed a set of universal primers to a region of the PDS gene that is highly conserved among species, and that therefore allows an investigator to isolate a fragment of the homologous PDS gene from the species of interest. We report the sequences of these primers and the results of VIGS experiments in horticultural species from the Asteraceae, Leguminosae, Balsaminaceae and Solanaceae

Sport medicine and sport science practitioners' experiences of organizational change

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Despite the emergence of and widespread uptake of a growing range of medical and scientific professions in elite sport, such environs present a volatile professional domain characterized by change and unprecedentedly high turnover of personnel. This study explored sport medicine and science practitioners' experiences of organizational change using a longitudinal design over a 2-year period. Specifically, data were collected in three temporally defined phases via 49 semi-structured interviews with 20 sport medics and scientists employed by three organizations competing in the top tiers of English football and cricket. The findings indicated that change occurred over four distinct stages; anticipation and uncertainty, upheaval and realization, integration and experimentation, normalization and learning. Moreover, these data highlight salient emotional, behavioral, and attitudinal experiences of medics and scientists, the existence of poor employment practices, and direct and indirect implications for on-field performance following organizational change. The findings are discussed in line with advances to extant change theory and applied implications for prospective sport medics and scientists, sport organizations, and professional bodies responsible for the training and development of neophyte practitioners

Some thoughts on pseudoprimes

We consider several problems about pseudoprimes. First, we look at the issue of their distribution in residue classes. There is a literature on this topic in the case that the residue class is coprime to the modulus. Here we provide some robust statistics in both these cases and the general case. In particular we tabulate all even pseudoprimes to $10^{16}$. Second, we prove a recent conjecture of Ordowski: the set of integers $n$ which are a pseudoprime to some base which is a proper divisor of $n$ has an asymptotic density

Exploratory Analysis of Highly Heterogeneous Document Collections

We present an effective multifaceted system for exploratory analysis of highly heterogeneous document collections. Our system is based on intelligently tagging individual documents in a purely automated fashion and exploiting these tags in a powerful faceted browsing framework. Tagging strategies employed include both unsupervised and supervised approaches based on machine learning and natural language processing. As one of our key tagging strategies, we introduce the KERA algorithm (Keyword Extraction for Reports and Articles). KERA extracts topic-representative terms from individual documents in a purely unsupervised fashion and is revealed to be significantly more effective than state-of-the-art methods. Finally, we evaluate our system in its ability to help users locate documents pertaining to military critical technologies buried deep in a large heterogeneous sea of information.Comment: 9 pages; KDD 2013: 19th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Minin

TimeSets for uncertainty visualisation

TimeSets consist of a timeline showing sequence of events displayed across a visualisation, while makings sense of sets relation among events in the timeline [NXWW15]. This study looked into extending TimeSets to accommodate Visualisation of trust and uncertainty as parts of its variables for events displayed across the timeline. The aim of the challenge is to build tools in the context of big data analytics that can be used to aid military operations through intelligence analytics and decision-making

Equity in health care financing: The case of Malaysia

Background: Equitable financing is a key objective of health care systems. Its importance is evidenced in policy documents, policy statements, the work of health economists and policy analysts. The conventional categorisations of finance sources for health care are taxation, social health insurance, private health insurance and out-of-pocket payments. There are nonetheless increasing variations in the finance sources used to fund health care. An understanding of the equity implications would help policy makers in achieving equitable financing. Objective: The primary purpose of this paper was to comprehensively assess the equity of health care financing in Malaysia, which represents a new country context for the quantitative techniques used. The paper evaluated each of the five financing sources (direct taxes, indirect taxes, contributions to Employee Provident Fund and Social Security Organization, private insurance and out-of-pocket payments) independently, and subsequently by combined the financing sources to evaluate the whole financing system. Methods: Cross-sectional analyses were performed on the Household Expenditure Survey Malaysia 1998/99, using Stata statistical software package. In order to assess inequality, progressivity of each finance sources and the whole financing system was measured by Kakwani's progressivity index. Results: Results showed that Malaysia's predominantly tax-financed system was slightly progressive with a Kakwani's progressivity index of 0.186. The net progressive effect was produced by four progressive finance sources (in the decreasing order of direct taxes, private insurance premiums, out-of-pocket payments, contributions to EPF and SOCSO) and a regressive finance source (indirect taxes). Conclusion: Malaysia's two tier health system, of a heavily subsidised public sector and a user charged private sector, has produced a progressive health financing system. The case of Malaysia exemplifies that policy makers can gain an in depth understanding of the equity impact, in order to help shape health financing strategies for the nation

Strengthening the Baillie-PSW primality test

The Baillie-PSW primality test combines Fermat and Lucas probable prime tests. It reports that a number is either composite or probably prime. No odd composite integer has been reported to pass this combination of primality tests if the parameters are chosen in an appropriate way. Here, we describe a significant strengthening of this test that comes at almost no additional computational cost. This is achieved by including in the test what we call Lucas-V pseudoprimes, of which there are only five less than $10^{15}$.Comment: 25 page