Delay Assignment Optimization Strategies at Pre- Tactical and Tactical Levels

This paper compares different optimization strategies for the minimization of flight and passenger delays at two levels: pre-tactical, with on-ground delay at origin, and tactical, with airborne delay close to the destination airport. The optimization model is based on the ground holding problem and uses various cost functions. The scenario considered takes place in a busy European airport and includes realistic values of traffic. Uncertainty is introduced in the model for the passenger allocation, minimum time required for turnaround and tactical uncertainty. Performance of the various optimization processes is presented and compared to ratio by schedule results.

Leading as designing: how educational developers in leadership and management studies can use architectural design to facilitate student learning about delivering innovation

This paper describes a qualitative observational study of how a work based learning masters leadership development programme for middle managers in health and social care in the UK introduced students to key aspects of delivering innovation, through a formative assignment on contemporary architectural design. Action learning and activity theoretical approaches were used to enable students to explore common principles of leading the delivery of innovation. Between 2001 and 2013 a total of 89 students in 7 cohorts completed the assignment. Evaluation lent support for the view that the assignment provided a powerful learning experience for many. Several students found the creativity, determination and dedication of architects, designers and structural engineers inspirational in their ability to translate a creative idea into a completed artefact, deploy resources and negotiate complex demands of stakeholders. Others expressed varying levels of self-empowerment as regards their capacity for fostering an equivalent creativity in self and others. Theoretical approaches in addition to activity theory, including Engeström’s concepts of stabilisation knowledge and possibility knowledge, are discussed to explain these differing outcomes and to clarify the challenges and opportunities for educational developers seeking to utilise cross-disciplinary, creative approaches in curriculum design.

IMP: Imperial Metagenomics Pipeline for high-throughput sequence data

We have developed an in-house pipeline for the processing and analyses of sequence data generated during Illumina technology-based metagenomic studies of the human gut microbiota. Each component of the pipeline has been selected following comparative analysis of available tools; however, the modular nature of software facilitates replacement of any individual component with an alternative should a better tool become available in due course. The pipeline consists of quality analysis and trimming followed by taxonomic filtering of sequence data allowing reads associated with samples to be binned according to whether they represent human, prokaryotic (bacterial/archaeal), viral, parasite, fungal or plant DNA. Viral, parasite, fungal and plant DNA can be assigned to species level on a presence/absence basis, allowing – for example – identification of dietary intake of plant-based foodstuffs and their derivatives. Prokaryotic DNA is subject to taxonomic and functional analyses, with assignment to taxonomic hierarchies (kingdom, class, order, family, genus, species, strain/subspecies) and abundance determination. After de novo assembly of sequence reads, genes within samples are predicted and used to build a non-redundant catalogue of genes. From this catalogue, per-sample gene abundance can be determined after normalization of data based on gene length. Functional annotation of genes is achieved through mapping of gene clusters against KEGG proteins, and InterProScan. The pipeline is undergoing validation using the human faecal metagenomic data of Qin et al. (2014, Nature 513, 59–64). Outputs from the pipeline allow development of tools for the integration of metagenomic and metabolomic data, moving metagenomic studies beyond determination of gene richness and representation towards microbial-metabolite mapping. There is scope to improve the outputs from viral, parasite, fungal and plant DNA analyses, depending on the depth of sequencing associated with samples. The pipeline can easily be adapted for the analyses of environmental and non-human animal samples, and for use with data generated via non-Illumina sequencing platforms.