This project was responsible for developing the Virtual Manuscript Room Collaborative Research Environment (VMR CRE), which offers a facility for the critical editing workflow from raw data collection, through processing, to publication, within an open and online collaborative framework for the Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung (INTF) and their global partners while editing the Editio Critica Maior (ECM)-- the paramount critical edition of the Greek New Testament which analyses over 5600 Greek witnesses and includes a comprehensive apparatus of chosen manuscripts, weighted by quotations and early translations. Additionally, this project produced the first digital edition of the ECM. This case study, transitioning the workflow at the INTF to an online collaborative research environment, seeks to convey successful methods and lessons learned through describing a professional software engineer’s foray into the world of academic digital humanities. It compares development roles and practices in the software industry with the academic environment and offers insights to how this software engineer found a software team therein, suggests how a fledgling online community can successfully achieve critical mass, provides an outsider’s perspective on what a digital critical scholarly edition might be, and hopes to offer useful software, datasets, and a thriving online community for manuscript researchers.

Machine-assisted formal proofs are becoming commonplace in certain fields of mathematics and theoretical computer science. New formal systems and variations on old ones are constantly invented. The meta-theory of such systems, i.e. proofs about the system as opposed to proofs within the system, are mostly done informally with a pen and paper. Yet the meta-theory of deductive systems is an area which would obviously benefit from machine support for formal proof. Is the software currently available sufficiently powerful yet easy enough to use to make machine assistance for formal meta-theory a viable proposition? This thesis presents work done by the author on formalizing proof theory from [DP97a] in various formal systems: SEQUEL [Tar93, Tar97], Isabelle [Pau94] and Coq [BB+96]. SEQUEL and Isabelle were found to be difficult to use for this type of work. In particular, the lack of automated production of induction principles in SEQUEL and Isabelle undermined confidence in the resulting formal proofs. Coq was found to be suitable for the formalisation methodology first chosen: the use of nameless dummy variables (de Bruijn indices) as pioneered in [dB72]. A second approach (inspired by the work of McKinna and Pollack [vBJMR94, MP97]) formalising named variables was also the subject of some initial work, and a comparison of these two approaches is presented. The formalisation was restricted to the implicational fragment of propositional logic. The informal theory has been extended to cover full propositional logic by Dyckhoff and Pinto, and extension of the formalisation using de Bruijn indices would appear to present few difficulties. An overview of other work in this area, in terms of both the tools and formalisation methods, is also presented. The theory formalised differs from other such work in that other formalisations have involved only one calculus. [DP97a] involves the relationships between three different calculi. There is consequently a much greater requirement for equality reasoning in the formalisation. It is concluded that a formalisation of any significance is still difficult, particularly one involving multiple calculi. No tools currently exist that allow for the easy representation of even quite simple systems in a way that fits human intuitions while still allowing for automatic derivation of induction principles. New work on integrating higher order abstract syntax and induction may be the way forward, although such work is still in the early stages.

Nature and scope of work: This work presents details of the method and results of an investigation of the role and influence of international reservations systems within the UK hotel industry. The research comprised three questionnaire surveys of the use of computer reservations systems and distribution services by UK hotels. These are analysed and to produce an indication of general use of systems and the contribution which these currently make to hotel groups and consortia. The work also included a study of developments in access methods and changes in buyer behaviour as observed by representatives of computer reservation and distribution system, travel agency, hotel representation and intermediary companies. The impact of information technology developments on the travel agency industry, distribution systems operators and intermediaries is considered. The work then indicates the potential implications of these developments for the strategic planning and operational management of hotels in light of prevailing attitudes to technology, preferred sales methods and buyer behaviour. A computer based information and selection facility is developed. This provides a means of identifying the functions required of a distribution system in order to achieve specific business aims. It identifies the channels which meet the requirements while also providing details of the implications associated with use of each. Contribution to knowledge: This research provides the first published account of the current and potential influence of information technology on the way in which the UK hotel sector deals with its market and on the structure of the industry itself. The work results from a comprehensive study of the role of a significant emerging technology within an important sector of the tourism, travel and leisure industry. It is seen as being complete in its own right but also forms a starting point for longitudinal research since no previous work of this nature or scale has been undertaken in the area of interest. The guide developed as part of this work also lends itself to extensive future development as both the technology with which it is concerned and the technology upon which it is based continue to mature. The results of primary research indicate that there is scope for potential change in hotel sector sales and marketing practices as new methods of conducting business are adopted by hospitality industry service providers, agencies and the buying public. The work also suggests that global distribution systems are not the most suitable channel for all hotels but that alternatives must be considered in the context of the particular requirements of each hotel business. The use of formal research methods provides those involved in this sector with an objective assessment of the implications of widespread adoption of computer based reservation and distribution systems for individual businesses and for the industry as a whole. This addresses a requirement which was identified by the author and contributors in the course of the research. The subject area is complicated by the number of available channels through which businesses may distribute and receive information. This complexity is acknowledged throughout the work generates a distribution channel evaluation guide based on the research findings. The purpose of this device is to direct readers through the process of selecting the most appropriate channel to meet their specific business aims. The guide is based on results from the various stages of primary research which indicated the aspects of distribution system use about which hoteliers were unclear and also provided material about possible strategic uses and the operational implications experienced by users. This information was used to develop a staged method of identifying the type of system which would meet specific requirements and to indicate the implications associated with the use of a particular type of distribution system. This decision process is described and is then presented in the form of a hypertext document. The current version provides an elementary guide which can be used to assist qualitative evaluation in a complex subject area and indicates how this technology can be applied in its most basic form. Planned future work aims to develop the scope and function of the static reference document to produce a means of access to product provider information and to create a forum through which users can communicate with each other through e-mail. System suppliers can provide links to their own product information pages which can be accessed by users seeking information and advice. These developments will result in a guide which is interactive and can be kept up to date by system suppliers. This extension of the guide's role should enable it to provide material to be used in the decision support process by users wishing to conduct quantitative evaluation or comparison of distribution systems. This stage of development would require the use of a facility such as the World Wide Web (WWVV) to enable users and suppliers to communicate with each other. The WWW offers ready support for hypertext, the use of which is considered to be important for this application because of its ease of use for inexperienced computer users, the wide availability of the WWW and the suitability of an on-line system as means of publishing material which is subject to continual change. However, it is considered likely that a static version of the guide could be made available for users who do wish to avoid the cost and complication of obtaining access to the WWW. Although the use of hypertext is becoming more common, it is believed that this is the first use of this technology as a means of publishing research in this field.

No description available.

RNA viruses are a major cause of disease that in the last fifteen years counted for frequent outbreaks, infecting both humans and animals. Examples of emerging or ri-emerging viral pathogens are the Foot-and- Mouth disease virus (FMDV) for animals, Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), Coxsackie virus B3 (CVB3) and Respiratory Syncytial virus (RSV) for humans, all responsible for infections associated with mild to severe complications. Although both vaccines and small-molecule compounds are at different stages of development, no selective antiviral drugs have been approved so far, therefore for all four these viruses improved treatment strategies are required. Promising targets are the viral non-structural proteins, which are commonly evaluated for the identification of new antivirals. Starting from the study of different viral proteins, several computer-aided techniques were applied, aiming to identify hit molecules first, and secondly to synthesise new series of potential antiviral compounds. The available crystal structures of some of the proteins that play a role in viral replication were used for structure- and ligand-based virtual screenings of commercially available compounds against CVB3, FMDV and RSV. New families of potential anti-CHIKV compounds were rationally designed and synthesized, in order to establish a structureactivity relationship study on a lead structure previously found in our group. Finally, a de-novo drug design approach was performed to find a suitable scaffold for the synthesis of a series of zinc-ejecting compounds against RSV. Inhibition of virus replication was evaluated for all the new compounds, of which different showed antiviral potential.

Initial work on mapping CFD codes onto parallel systems focused upon software which employed structured meshes. Increasingly, many large scale CFD codes are being based upon unstructured meshes. One of the key problems when implementing such large scale unstructured problems on a distributed memory machine is the question of how to partition the underlying computational domain efficiently. It is important that all processors are kept busy for as large a proportion of the time as possible and that the amount, level and frequency of communication should be kept to a minimum. Proposed techniques for solving the mapping problem have separated out the solution into two distinct phases. The first phase is to partition the computational domain into cohesive sub-regions. The second phase consists of embedding these sub-regions onto the processors. However, it has been shown that performing these two operations in isolation can lead to poor mappings and much less optimal communication time. In this thesis we develop a technique which simultaneously takes account of the processor topology whilst identifying the cohesive sub-regions. Our approach is based on an unstructured mesh decomposition method that was originally developed by Sadayappan et al [SER90] for a hypercube. This technique forms a basis for a method which enables a decomposition to an arbitrary number of processors on a specified processor network topology. Whilst partitioning the mesh, the optimisation method takes into account the processor topology by minimising the total interprocessor communication. The problem with this technique is that it is not suitable for dealing with very large meshes since the calculations often require prodigious amounts of computing processing power.

This thesis addresses the needs of people who find reminiscence helpful in focusing on the development of a computerised reminiscence support system, which facilitates the access to and retrieval of stored memories used as the basis for positive interactions between elderly and young, and also between people with cognitive impairment and members of their family or caregivers. To model users’ background knowledge, this research defines a light weight useroriented ontology and its building principles. The ontology is flexible, and has simplified knowledge structure populated with semantically homogeneous ontology concepts. The user-oriented ontology is different from generic ontology models, as it does not rely on knowledge experts. Its structure enables users to browse, edit and create new entries on their own. To solve the semantic gap problem in personal information retrieval, this thesis proposes a semantic ontology-based feature matching method. It involves natural language processing and semantic feature extraction/selection using the user-oriented ontology. It comprises four stages: (i) user-oriented ontology building, (ii) semantic feature extraction for building vectors representing information objects, (iii) semantic feature selection using the user-oriented ontology, and (iv) measuring the similarity between the information objects. To facilitate personal information management and dynamic generation of content, the system uses ontologies and advanced algorithms for semantic feature matching. An algorithm named Onto-SVD is also proposed, which uses the user-oriented ontology to automatically detect the semantic relations within the stored memories. It combines semantic feature selection with matrix factorisation and k-means clustering to achieve topic identification based on semantic relations. The thesis further proposes an ontology-based personalised retrieval mechanism for the system. It aims to assist people to recall, browse and re-discover events from their lives by considering their profiles and background knowledge, and providing them v with customised retrieval results. Furthermore, a user profile space model is defined, and its construction method is also described. The model combines multiple useroriented ontologies and has a self-organised structure based on relevance feedback. The identification of person’s search intentions in this mechanism is on the conceptual level and involves the person’s background knowledge. Based on the identified search intentions, knowledge spanning trees are automatically generated from the ontologies or user profile spaces. The knowledge spanning trees are used to expand and reform queries, which enhance the queries’ semantic representations by applying domain knowledge. The crowdsourcing-based system evaluation measures users’ satisfaction on the generated content of Sem-LSB. It compares the advantage and disadvantage of three types of content presentations (i.e. unstructured, LSB-based and semantic/knowledgebased). Based on users’ feedback, the semantic/knowledge-based presentation is considered to have higher overall satisfaction and stronger reminiscing support effects than the others.

The work of this thesis seeks to further the use of computation in musical analysis. To a lesser extent it is hoped that it will provide some little evidence of a new angle on creating analytic elements through inference, and cast light onto some areas where analysis may be used anew. Parsers for musical information are small in number, none have been implemented in functional languages, nor using monadic combination techniques. Few analytic systems are capable of, or even consider it necessary to, represent semantic ambiguity, and this is even more true of parsing systems. The work herein presented provides a system of unique monadic parsers built on combination that are capable of delivering several different types and depths of results. Many computational-analytic systems are based on theories of similarity. The work presented here provides for analytic structures to be created through inference i.e. in the absence of known structures. This is believed to be the first instance of this type of structure generation in the field of music.

Hip fracture is the most common reason for an elderly person to be admitted to an acute orthopaedic ward. The main aim of this research is to provide a statistical evaluation of a hip fracture database, and then to use Operational Research (OR) techniques, using the statistical output, to model activities associated with the care of hip fracture patients. OR techniques employed in this thesis include simulation and queuing theory. This research focuses on hip fracture admissions to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, with a primary aim of ascertaining whether the time between admission and surgical intervention has any impact upon patient outcome. Outcome is considered in terms of mortality, hospital length of stay and discharge destination. Statistical analyses are performed, via regression and CART analysis, to investigate length of stay and mortality variables. The results from these statistical tests are compiled, compared and investigated in more depth. Additionally, a principal component analysis is performed to investigate whether it would be feasible to reduce the dimensionality of the dataset, and subsequently principal component regression methodology is used to complement the output. Simulation is used to model activities in both the hip fracture ward and the trauma theatre. These models incorporate output from the statistical analysis and encompass complexities within the patient group and theatre process. The models are then used to test a number of ‘what-if’ type scenarios, including the future anticipated increase in demand. Finally, results from queuing theory are applied to the trauma theatre in order to determine a desired daily theatre allocation for these patients. Specifically, the M | G | 1 queuing system and results from queues with vacations are utilised. The thesis concludes with some discussion of how this research could be further expanded. In particular, two areas are considered; risk scoring systems and the Fenton-Wilkinson approximation.

A software system has been developed that monitors and interprets temporally changing (internal) building environments and generates related knowledge that can assist in facility management (FM) decision making. The use of the multi agent paradigm renders a system that delivers demonstrable rationality and is robust within the dynamic environment that it operates. Agent behaviour directed at working toward goals is rendered intelligent with semantic web technologies. The capture of semantics though formal expression to model the environment, adds a richness that the agents exploit to intelligently determine behaviours to satisfy goals that are flexible and adaptable. The agent goals are to generate knowledge about building space usage as well as environmental conditions by elaborating and combining near real time sensor data and information from conventional building models. Additionally further inferences are facilitated including those about wasted resources such as unnecessary lighting and heating for example. In contrast, current FM tools, lacking automatic synchronisation with the domain and rich semantic modelling, are limited to the simpler querying of manually maintained models.