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This article examines a highly localized example of marginalized renters in an aging, low- to moderate-density suburban neighborhood facing displacement because of high-density redevelopment in a t...

We examine the incipient gentrification of a low-income corridor that follows the alignment of the SkyTrain rapid transit route through Vancouver and its suburbs. The corridor contains concentrations of aging, private, low-rise apartments built through welfare state programs 40–50 years ago that have become the affordable homes of poorer residents, including recent refugees and immigrants. Focus groups in suburban Burnaby confirm that these neighbourhoods are highly valued by residents, because they are close to family services and SkyTrain stations. But transit proximity is also bringing transformation through a regional sustainability policy of transit-oriented development (TOD), permitting the construction of high-density condominium towers around stations. In Burnaby redevelopment is being accelerated by the upzoning policy of the NDP-led municipal council, removing planning protection from the apartments. The council argues that in light of cost downloading by senior government there is no alternative to such gentrification. Comparable affordable housing stock from the welfare state era is under threat across Canada as subsidies expire and the fabric ages; with local variations this Burnaby story is a national story. The paper contributes to critical assessment of TOD and state-aided gentrification, demonstrating how environmental aspirations can exclude social justice from the policy register. L'amenagement centre sur le transport en commun et la gentrification de l'axe defavorise aux abords du SkyTrain de la region metropolitaine de Vancouver Cet article porte sur la gentrification recente dans l'axe de faible revenu le long de la ligne du reseau de transport express SkyTrain qui traverse Vancouver et sa peripherie. L'axe concentre des edifices anciens, prives, de faible hauteur et realises grâce a des programmes crees il y a 40 ou 50 ans par l'etat providence. Ces edifices fournissent aujourd'hui des logements abordables pour les residents demunis, y compris les nouveaux refugies et immigrants. Des groupes de discussion tenus dans la ville de banlieue de Burnaby indiquent que ces quartiers sont tres apprecies par les residents, etant donne leur proximite aux services offerts aux familles ainsi qu'aux gares du SkyTrain. Cette proximite au transport en commun a engendre une politique regionale visant l'amenagement durable centre sur le transport en commun et aboutit a des changements qui autorisent la construction d'immeubles en copropriete de haute densite autour des gares. A Burnaby, le reamenagement a ete soutenu par une politique de revalorisation du zonage cautionnee par le conseil municipal dirige par le NPD, faisant ainsi disparaitre les mesures de protection s'appliquant aux appartements. Le conseil fait valoir que considerant le fait que les autorites superieures du gouvernement leur ont refile la facture, la gentrification est la seule option possible. Aux quatre coins du Canada, d'autres parcs de logements abordables datant de l'epoque de l'etat providence sont egalement menaces par le retrait des subventions et le vieillissement du parc immobilier. Bien qu'il existe quelques particularites locales propres a Burnaby, cette histoire a pris une ampleur nationale. Cet article ajoute aux evaluations critiques portant sur la gentrification appuyee par l'amenagement centre sur les transports en commun et par le gouvernement. Il met en evidence comment les demarches favorables a l'environnement peuvent exclure la justice sociale de l'agenda politique.

Background With the exponential increase in genomic sequence data there is a need to develop automated approaches to deducing the biological functions of novel sequences with high accuracy. Our aim is to demonstrate how accuracy benchmarking can be used in a decision-making process evaluating competing designs of biological function predictors. We utilise the Gene Ontology, GO, a directed acyclic graph of functional terms, to annotate sequences with functional information describing their biological context. Initially we examine the effect on accuracy scores of increasing the allowed distance between predicted and a test set of curator assigned terms. Next we evaluate several annotator methods using accuracy benchmarking. Given an unannotated sequence we use the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool, BLAST, to find similar sequences that have already been assigned GO terms by curators. A number of methods were developed that utilise terms associated with the best five matching sequences. These methods were compared against a benchmark method of simply using terms associated with the best BLAST-matched sequence (best BLAST approach). Results The precision and recall of estimates increases rapidly as the amount of distance permitted between a predicted term and a correct term assignment increases. Accuracy benchmarking allows a comparison of annotation methods. A covering graph approach performs poorly, except where the term assignment rate is high. A term distance concordance approach has a similar accuracy to the best BLAST approach, demonstrating lower precision but higher recall. However, a discriminant function method has higher precision and recall than the best BLAST approach and other methods shown here. Conclusion Allowing term predictions to be counted correct if closely related to a correct term decreases the reliability of the accuracy score. As such we recommend using accuracy measures that require exact matching of predicted terms with curator assigned terms. Furthermore, we conclude that competing designs of BLAST-based GO term annotators can be effectively compared using an accuracy benchmarking approach. The most accurate annotation method was developed using data mining techniques. As such we recommend that designers of term annotators utilise accuracy benchmarking and data mining to ensure newly developed annotators are of high quality.

The relative effectiveness of off-line and web-based promotional activities in increasing the use of health information web sites by target audiences were compared. Visitor sessions were classified according to their method of arrival at the site (referral) as external web site, search engine, or "no referrer" (i.e., visitor arriving at the site by inputting URL or using bookmarks). The number of Australian visitor sessions correlated with no referrer referrals but not web site or search-engine referrals. Results showed that the targeted consumer group is more likely to access the web site as a result of off-line promotional activities. The properties of target audiences likely to influence the effectiveness of off-line versus on-line promotional strategies include the size of the Internet using population of the target audience, their proficiency in the use of the Internet, and the increase in effectiveness of off-line promotional activities when applied to locally defined target audiences.

Summary: GOSLING is a web-based protein function annotator that uses a decision tree-derived rule set to quickly predict Gene Ontology terms for a protein. A score is assigned to each term prediction that is indicative of the accuracy of the prediction. Due to its speed and accuracy GOSLING is ideally suited for high-throughput annotation tasks. Availability: https://www.sapac.edu.au/gosling Contact: craig@cs.adelaide.edu.au

Background Annotations that describe the function of sequences are enormously important to researchers during laboratory investigations and when making computational inferences. However, there has been little investigation into the data quality of sequence function annotations. Here we have developed a new method of estimating the error rate of curated sequence annotations, and applied this to the Gene Ontology (GO) sequence database (GOSeqLite). This method involved artificially adding errors to sequence annotations at known rates, and used regression to model the impact on the precision of annotations based on BLAST matched sequences. Results We estimated the error rate of curated GO sequence annotations in the GOSeqLite database (March 2006) at between 28% and 30%. Annotations made without use of sequence similarity based methods (non-ISS) had an estimated error rate of between 13% and 18%. Annotations made with the use of sequence similarity methodology (ISS) had an estimated error rate of 49%. Conclusion While the overall error rate is reasonably low, it would be prudent to treat all ISS annotations with caution. Electronic annotators that use ISS annotations as the basis of predictions are likely to have higher false prediction rates, and for this reason designers of these systems should consider avoiding ISS annotations where possible. Electronic annotators that use ISS annotations to make predictions should be viewed sceptically. We recommend that curators thoroughly review ISS annotations before accepting them as valid. Overall, users of curated sequence annotations from the GO database should feel assured that they are using a comparatively high quality source of information.