Measuring workforce segregation: religious composition of private-sector employees at individual sites in Northern Ireland

In this paper I examine the scope of publicly available information on the religious composition of employees in private-sector companies in Northern Ireland. I highlight the unavailability of certain types of monitoring data and the impact of data aggregation at company as opposed to site level. Both oversights lead to underestimates of the extent of workplace segregation in Northern Ireland. The ability to provide more-coherent data on workplace segregation, by religion, in Northern Ireland is crucial in terms of advancing equality and other social-justice agendas. I argue that a more-accurate monitoring of religious composition of workplaces is part of an overall need to develop a spatial approach in which the importance of ethnically territorialised spaces in the reproduction of ethnosectarian disputation is understood.

Patient selection for oncology phase I trials: a multi-institutional study of prognostic factors.

PURPOSE The appropriate selection of patients for early clinical trials presents a major challenge. Previous analyses focusing on this problem were limited by small size and by interpractice heterogeneity. This study aims to define prognostic factors to guide risk-benefit assessments by using a large patient database from multiple phase I trials. PATIENTS AND METHODS Data were collected from 2,182 eligible patients treated in phase I trials between 2005 and 2007 in 14 European institutions. We derived and validated independent prognostic factors for 90-day mortality by using multivariate logistic regression analysis. Results The 90-day mortality was 16.5% with a drug-related death rate of 0.4%. Trial discontinuation within 3 weeks occurred in 14% of patients primarily because of disease progression. Eight different prognostic variables for 90-day mortality were validated: performance status (PS), albumin, lactate dehydrogenase, alkaline phosphatase, number of metastatic sites, clinical tumor growth rate, lymphocytes, and WBC. Two different models of prognostic scores for 90-day mortality were generated by using these factors, including or excluding PS; both achieved specificities of more than 85% and sensitivities of approximately 50% when using a score cutoff of 5 or higher. These models were not superior to the previously published Royal Marsden Hospital score in their ability to predict 90-day mortality. CONCLUSION Patient selection using any of these prognostic scores will reduce non-drug-related 90-day mortality among patients enrolled in phase I trials by 50%. However, this can be achieved only by an overall reduction in recruitment to phase I studies of 20%, more than half of whom would in fact have survived beyond 90 days.

Impact of Metric Selection on Wireless DeAuthentication DoS Attack Performance

DeAuthentication Denial of Service attacks in Public Access WiFi operate by exploiting the lack of authentication of management frames in the 802.11 protocol. Detection of these attacks rely almost exclusively on the selection of appropriate thresholds. In this work the authors demonstrate that there are additional, previously unconsidered, metrics which also influence DoS detection performance. A method of systematically tuning these metrics to optimal values is proposed which ensures that parameter choices are repeatable and verifiable.

Selection and characterisation of geological materials for use as geopolymer precursors

Geopolymer binders are generally formed by reacting powdered aluminosilicate precursors with alkali silicate activators. Most research to date has concentrated on using either pulverised fuel ash or high purity dehydroxylated kaolin (metakaolin) in association with ground granulated blast furnace slag as the main precursor material. However, recently, attention has turned to alternative calcined clays that are abundant throughout the globe and have lower kaolinite contents than commercially available metakaolins. Due to the lack of clear and simple screening protocols enabling assessment of such geological resources for use as precursors in geopolymer systems, the present paper presents results from experimental work that was carried out to develop a functional binder using materials containing kaolinite taken from the Interbasaltic Formation of Northern Ireland. The influence of mineralogy has been examined, and a screening process, using three Interbasaltic materials as examples, that will assist in the rapid selection of suitable geopolymeric precursors from such materials is outlined.