A visual exploration of melodic relationships within traditional music collections

The aim of this paper is to discuss a technique for visually exploring melodic relationships within traditional tune collections encoded in abc notation, a widely used text-based music representation system particularly popular for folk and traditional music. There are approximately ½ million melodies encoded in abc on the web and abcnotation.com provides a searchable index of the entire corpus with tools to view, download and listen to the scores. This paper stems from related work known as TuneGraph which uses a melodic similarity measure to derive a proximity graph representing relationships between tunes in the abc corpus, and which allows users of abcnotation.com to explore melodic similarity. As it stands TuneGraph only gives a localised view of the melodic relationships: this paper aims to look at exploring those relationships at a global (corpus-based) level via a prototype visualisation tool. Currently the tool is not interactive: in this paper the aim is to consider a proof-of-concept approach to explore where there is a useful visualisation possible; future work will look at user interactivity with the tool

JOSTLE: multilevel graph partitioning software: an overview

In this chapter we look at JOSTLE, the multilevel graph-partitioning software package, and highlight some of the key research issues that it addresses. We first outline the core algorithms and place it in the context of the multilevel refinement paradigm. We then look at issues relating to its use as a tool for parallel processing and, in particular, partitioning in parallel. Since its first release in 1995, JOSTLE has been used for many mesh-based parallel scientific computing applications and so we also outline some enhancements such as multiphase mesh-partitioning, heterogeneous mapping and partitioning to optimise subdomain shap

A tale of two KTPs – an academic perspective

September 2019 saw the end of one University of Greenwich Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), with Transforming Systems, a Greenwich-based SME, and the start of a new one with Argos, one of the UK’s leading online retailers and part of the Sainsbury’s group. This short article compares and contrasts the two projects

A comparison of time-series predictions for healthcare emergency department indicators and the impact of COVID-19

Across the world, healthcare systems are under stress and this has been hugely exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), usually in the form of time-series data, are used to help manage that stress. Making reliable predictions of these indicators, particularly for emergency departments (ED), can facilitate acute unit planning, enhance quality of care and optimise resources. This motivates models that can forecast relevant KPIs and this paper addresses that need by comparing the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) method, a purely statistical model, to Prophet, a decomposable forecasting model based on trend, seasonality and holidays variables, and to the General Regression Neural Network (GRNN), a machine learning model. The dataset analysed is formed of four hourly valued indicators from a UK hospital: Patients in Department; Number of Attendances; Unallocated Patients with a DTA (Decision to Admit); Medically Fit for Discharge. Typically, the data exhibit regular patterns and seasonal trends and can be impacted by external factors such as the weather or major incidents. The COVID pandemic is an extreme instance of the latter and the behaviour of sample data changed dramatically. The capacity to quickly adapt to these changes is crucial and is a factor that shows better results for GRNN in both accuracy and reliability

Data analytics to reduce stop-on-fail test in electronics manufacturing

The use of data driven techniques is popular in smart manufacturing. Machine learning, statistics or a combination of both have been used to improve processes in electronic manufacturing. This paper presents the application of classical techniques to reduce production cycle time by compacting a production test sequence. This set of tests is run on stop-on-fail scenario for quality assurance of an electronical device. Data generated in the production test-set on stop-on-fail scenario challenges the traditional application of the data driven techniques, because of the missing data characteristic. The developed computational procedures handle this application-specific data attribute. The novelty of this work is in the algorithm developed, which applies classical techniques in an iterative environment, as a strategy to analyse incomplete datasets. Results show that the method can reduce a production test set with parametric and non-parametric tests by building an accurate prognostic model. The results can reduce production cycle time and costs. The paper details and provides discussions on the advantages and limitations of the proposed algorithms

Initial validation of a novel method of presurgical language localization through functional connectivity (fcMRI)

OBJECTIVE: Neurosurgery is potentially curative in chronic epilepsy but can only be offered to patients if the surgical risk to language is known. Clinical functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is an ideal, noninvasive method for localizing language cortex yet remains to be validated for this purpose. We have recently presented a novel method for localizing language cortex. Here we present a preliminary evaluation of this method’s validity. We hypothesized language regions identified using this novel method would demonstrate stronger functional connectivity than randomly generated set of proximal networks. METHOD: fMRI data were collected from sixteen temporal lobe patients (12 left) being evaluated for epilepsy surgery at UCLA (mean age 38.9 [sd 11.4]; 6 female; per Wada 14 left language dominant, 1 right, 1 mixed). Language maps were generated using a recently standardized method relying on a conjunction of language tasks (e.g., visual object naming; auditory naming; reading) to identify known language regions (Broca’s area; inferior and superior Wernicke’s Areas; Angular gyrus; Basal Temporal Language Area; Exner’s Area; and Supplementary Speech Area). With activations defined as network nodes, mean network connectivity was compared via permutation tests with alternate (i) fully random and (ii) proximal random networks. Mean network connectivity was determined in independently-acquired motor fMRI datasets (9 foot, 16 hand, 14 tongue). FINDINGS: 77% (30/39) of clinician-derived language networks exhibited mean connectivity greater than fully random networks (p\u3c0.05). Similarly, 69% (27/39) of clinician-derived language networks exhibited mean connectivity greater than proximal random networks (p\u3c0.05). Further analysis of networks not passing the permutation test suggests that low connectivity of non-valid networks may be driven not by low connectivity across all nodes, but by individual nodes that may not actually possess membership within the network. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides preliminary validity for a novel, clinician-based approach to mapping language cortex pre-surgery. This complements our recent work showing this method is reliable, and supports a proposed study comparing fMRI language maps using this technique with the results of direct stimulation mapping