Modelling local government budgetary choices under expenditure limitation

The analysis of the expenditure decisions of English local authorities has assumed great importance as central government has sought to exercise increasing control over the activities of local government. In particular, in a variety of contexts, central government has sought to estimate from empirical observation what a local authority ‘ought’ to spend. Unfortunately, such an undertaking is becoming increasingly complex, as the influence of previous government policy itself assumes greater importance in local authority expenditure decisions. For example, central government grant allocations to local authorities are based on a simple statistical analysis of previous spending patterns. These grant allocations will to some extent influence current spending. The expenditure responses in turn are likely to affect future grant allocations, and so the cycle continues. Such circularity formed an important component of criticisms of current local government finance arrangements by the Audit Commission (1993) and the House of Commons Select Committee on the Environment (1994). This paper seeks to underline the difficulties by demonstrating the statistical methods that are required to model spendingpatterns amongst non-metropolitan districts satisfactorily. The structure of the paper is as follows.

A Novel Chronic Disease Policy Model

We develop a simulation tool to support policy-decisions about healthcare for chronic diseases in defined populations. Incident disease-cases are generated in-silico from an age-sex characterised general population using standard epidemiological approaches. A novel disease-treatment model then simulates continuous life courses for each patient using discrete event simulation. Ideally, the discrete event simulation model would be inferred from complete longitudinal healthcare data via a likelihood or Bayesian approach. Such data is seldom available for relevant populations, therefore an innovative approach to evidence synthesis is required. We propose a novel entropy-based approach to fit survival densities. This method provides a fully flexible way to incorporate the available information, which can be derived from arbitrary sources. Discrete event simulation then takes place on the fitted model using a competing hazards framework. The output is then used to help evaluate the potential impacts of policy options for a given population.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figures, 11 table

The availability of open data and new trends in data visualisation will transform how we understand our cities.

Due to the increasing availability of large urban datasets, it is now becoming easier to produce online visualisations that capture and help interpret the complex spatial dynamics of cities. Duncan A. Smith argues that as further open datasets are made available, a much wider range of interests and user groups are set to be represented and explored. These urban cartography projects allow users to ask questions about how city areas have changed and are likely to change in the future

Globular Clusters in the Sombrero Galaxy (NGC 4594)

The Sombrero galaxy, NGC 4594, contains the most numerous globular cluster system of any nearby spiral. It is an ideal candidate in which to study the globular clusters and contrast them with those in Local Group spirals. Here we present B and I imaging from the CTIO Schmidt telescope which gives a field-of-view of 31' x 31'. Using DAOPHOT we have detected over 400 globular clusters and derived their magnitudes, B--I colors and photometric metallicities. We have attempted to separate our sample into disk and bulge/halo globular cluster populations, based on location in the galaxy. There is some evidence that the disk population is more metal--rich than the bulge/halo globular clusters, however contamination, dust reddening and small number statistics makes this result very tentative. We find that the median metallicity of the bulge/halo globular clusters is [Fe/H] = -0.8. This metallicity is consistent with previous estimates based on smaller samples. It is also similar to the metallicity predicted by the globular cluster metallicity -- galaxy luminosity relation. As with our Galaxy, there is no radial metallicity gradient in the halo globular clusters. This suggests that the spheriodal component of NGC 4594 did not form by a dissipational process.Comment: 7 pages, Latex. To be published in the Astronomical Journal. Full paper available at http://www.ucolick.org/~forbes/home.htm

Lutz Rathenow: Verirrte Steine oder Wenn Alles Wieder Mal Ganz Anders Kommt

s.l.: Merlin, s.d

E. Arndt, et al.: Probleme der Literaturintrepretation. Zur Dialektik der Inhalt-Form-Beziehungen bei der Analyse und Interpretation literarischer Werke

from the series: Annaliese Löffler, ed. Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft in Einzeldarstellungen. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1981. 221 p

The Role and Fate of Branch Site-U2 snRNA Interaction During Pre-mRNA Splicing

Many details of the conformational dynamics underlying transitions during premRNA splicing, particularly during the catalytic phase, remain unclear despite our deep knowledge of spliceosome composition. The complex assembly phase that precedes catalysis, and the involvement of several motifs in multiple interactions along the splicing pathway, exacerbate the difficulty of accessing splicing catalysis experimentally. snRNAs likely form some or all of the spliceosomal active site. We attempted to establish an snRNA-only splicing system as a means to bypass assembly and recapitulate splicing catalysis. Our approach, however, yielded a 2’-3’ bondforming ribozyme activity in a linker region in our fused snRNA construct; this highlights the uncertainty inherent in minimised systems and, by contrast, the strength of experimental approaches based on complete spliceosomes. We describe the in vivo analysis of the interaction between the intron branch site (BS) and its cognate region of U2 snRNA; the absolute requirement for this basepairing interaction during spliceosome assembly has previously impeded the investigation of its role and fate during splicing catalysis. By substituting the entire duplex, we produced nonessential second-copy spliceosomes in which assembly and catalysis each partially limit the splicing reaction. Using such spliceosomes, we established unconfirmed details of branch site-U2 interaction, including a requirement for this duplex in bulging the branch nucleophile for first step splicing catalysis, and similar spatial organisation of key components of the spliceosome and group II self-splicing introns. Our second-copy spliceosomes should represent a system that can be extended to include other spliceosomal components, allowing the in vivo investigation of normally lethal, and even dominant lethal, alleles. In another line of experiments, we used RT-PCR to identify the products of reactions in which multiple sites in the BS-binding region of U2 were used in trans as 5’ splice sites during the splicing of a reporter gene. Characterisation of trans-splicing products revealed previously unknown dynamics in BS-U2 pairing, suggesting that this interaction may be disrupted between early assembly and first step catalysis, and again before the second step of the reaction. Our results also indicate a surprising degree of flexibility in the active site of the normally stringent S. cerevisiae spliceosome

Gerd Labroisse, ed.: Zur Literatur und Literaturwissenschaft der DDR

In: Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik. Band 7. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1978. 300 p