On statistical treatment of the results of parallel trails with special reference to fishery research

Parallel trials form a most important part of the technique of scientific experimentation. Such trials may be divided into two; categories. In the first the results are comparable measurements of one kind or another. In the second the data consist of records of the number of times a certain 'event' has occurred in the two sets of trials compared. Only trials of the second category are dealt with here. In this paper all the reliable methods of testing for significance the results of parallel trials of a certain type with special reference to fishery research are described fully. Some sections relate to exact, others to approximate tests. The only advantage in the use of the latter lies in the fact that they are often the more expeditious. Apart from this it is always preferable to use exact methods

The Toowoomba adult trauma triage tool

Since the introduction of the Australasian Triage Scale (ATS) there has been considerable variation in its application. Improved uniformity in the application of the ATS by triage nurses is required. A reproducible, reliable and valid method to classify the illness acuity of Emergency Department patients so that a triage category 3 by one nurse means the same as a triage category 3 by another, not only in the same ED but also in another institution would be of considerable value to emergency nurses. This has been the driving motivation behind developing the Toowoomba Adult Trauma Triage Tool (TATTT). It is hoped the TATTT will support emergency nurses working in this challenging area by promoting standardisation and decreasing subjectivity in the triage decision process

A comparison of forensic toolkits and mass market data recovery applications

Digital forensic application suites are large, expensive, complex software products, offering a range of functions to assist in the investigation of digital artifacts. Several authors have raised concerns as to the reliability of evidence derived from these products. This is of particular concern, given that many forensic suites are closed source and therefore can only be subject to black box evaluation. In addition, many of the individual functions integrated into forensic suites are available as commercial stand-alone products, typically at a much lower cost, or even free. This paper reports research which compared (rather than individually evaluated) the data recovery function of two forensic suites and three stand alone `non-forensic' commercial applications. The research demonstrates that, for this function at least, the commercial data recovery tools provide comparable performance to that of the forensic software suites. In addition, the research demonstrates that there is some variation in results presented by all of the data recovery tools

A temporal precedence based clustering method for gene expression microarray data

Background: Time-course microarray experiments can produce useful data which can help in understanding the underlying dynamics of the system. Clustering is an important stage in microarray data analysis where the data is grouped together according to certain characteristics. The majority of clustering techniques are based on distance or visual similarity measures which may not be suitable for clustering of temporal microarray data where the sequential nature of time is important. We present a Granger causality based technique to cluster temporal microarray gene expression data, which measures the interdependence between two time-series by statistically testing if one time-series can be used for forecasting the other time-series or not. Results: A gene-association matrix is constructed by testing temporal relationships between pairs of genes using the Granger causality test. The association matrix is further analyzed using a graph-theoretic technique to detect highly connected components representing interesting biological modules. We test our approach on synthesized datasets and real biological datasets obtained for Arabidopsis thaliana. We show the effectiveness of our approach by analyzing the results using the existing biological literature. We also report interesting structural properties of the association network commonly desired in any biological system. Conclusions: Our experiments on synthesized and real microarray datasets show that our approach produces encouraging results. The method is simple in implementation and is statistically traceable at each step. The method can produce sets of functionally related genes which can be further used for reverse-engineering of gene circuits

When Will They Ever Get it Right? A Gay Analysis of R. v. Butler

In February, 1992, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in the case of R. v. Butler. This ruling upheld the obscenity provisions in s. 163 of the Criminal Code, and in so doing, the court attempted to clarify some of the existing confusion surrounding their interpretation. The court ruled that a work\u27s sexual explicitness alone is insufficient to bring it within the definition of obscenity in s. 163(8). In order to qualify as obscene, the impugned materials must combine sex with violence, degradation, or dehumanization. The rationale for prohibiting such materials was that there is a reasonable apprehension that their availability harms society generally, and women\u27s pursuit of equality in particular. Ironically, on April 30, 1992, the first obscenity charges after the Butler decision were laid against Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto for selling a lesbian magazine called Bad Attitude, a magazine made by women for women about women\u27s sexuality. Further, on July 15, 1992, the first application of the interpretation of s. 163(8) set out in Butler, came in the unreported case of Glad Day Bookshop Inc. and Jearald Moldenhauer v. Deputy Minister of National Revenue for Customs and Excise. In this decision, Justice Hayes ruled that twelve sexually explicit gay magazines, comics, and books being detained by Canada Customs were obscene. One magazine was considered to be obscene because it contained extensive and excessive descriptions of the acts and professed pleasures and the appreciation of the physical activity, and another was obscene because it described sexual activity that does not arise from any ongoing human relationship. The foregoing discussion contains the essence of what is a serious shortcoming of the current obscenity provisions of the Criminal Code and their subsequent interpretation in R. v. Butler. Specifically, while s. 163(8) was interpreted in a manner aimed ostensibly at protecting women from the harmful impact of degrading sexual images, there is no recognition or evaluation of its potential impact on gay and lesbian culture. As is often the case in mainstream law, this perspective is simply invisible. This case comment shows how a gay perspective would impact on each stage of the Supreme Court\u27s Charter analysis in Butler. After a synopsis of the Butler decision, an analysis of the short-comings of the court\u27s approach to the substantive elements in the decision, (i.e., the freedom of expression and equality guarantees) is undertaken, followed by a critique of the s. 1 analysis

A comparative study of Jewish and Christian responses to the Holocaust.

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D91807 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Impact of environmental inputs on reverse-engineering approach to network structures

Background: Uncovering complex network structures from a biological system is one of the main topic in system biology. The network structures can be inferred by the dynamical Bayesian network or Granger causality, but neither techniques have seriously taken into account the impact of environmental inputs. Results: With considerations of natural rhythmic dynamics of biological data, we propose a system biology approach to reveal the impact of environmental inputs on network structures. We first represent the environmental inputs by a harmonic oscillator and combine them with Granger causality to identify environmental inputs and then uncover the causal network structures. We also generalize it to multiple harmonic oscillators to represent various exogenous influences. This system approach is extensively tested with toy models and successfully applied to a real biological network of microarray data of the flowering genes of the model plant Arabidopsis Thaliana. The aim is to identify those genes that are directly affected by the presence of the sunlight and uncover the interactive network structures associating with flowering metabolism. Conclusion: We demonstrate that environmental inputs are crucial for correctly inferring network structures. Harmonic causal method is proved to be a powerful technique to detect environment inputs and uncover network structures, especially when the biological data exhibit periodic oscillations

On the geology of the New Zealand Alps

The New Zealand Alps form a narrow range of mountains dividing the plains of Canterbury from those of Westland, and attain in Mount Cook an elevation of 12,349 feet. The principal snow fields and glaciers occur in the central portion between the sources of the River Rakaia and those of the Waitaki; but small glaciers are found as far north as the head of the Waimakariri, near the West Coast Road, and as far south as Lake Wakatipu and Milford Sound. The largest glacier is the Tasman. Nearly the whole of the Alps are composed of much disturbed sedimentary rocks, principally sandstones, mud stones, and greywackes. The main anticlinal, or true tectonic axis, runs in a south-westerly direction from Tasman's Bay to Otago, where it curves round to the south-east, and reaches the sea near Dunedin. Four different rock systems take part in building up these mountains. The first is the MANAPOURI SYSTEM. The next rock system is of cretaceous, probably upper cretaceous, age, and is known as the WAIPARA SYSTEM. Two notable differences occur between the mountain regions of New Zealand and Switzerland. The first is that mountains, with sharp serrated summits, which are the exception in Switzerland, are the rule in New Zealand. The second is that waterfalls are rare in New Zealand in comparison with Switzerland, although the mountains of New Zealand are quite as rough and as rugged as the Alps of Europe. The New Zealand Alps are far older than those of Switzerland