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The study of whole microbial communities through RNA-seq, or metatranscriptomics, offers a unique view of the relative levels of activity for different genes across a large number of species simultaneously. To make sense of these sequencing data, it is necessary to be able to assign both taxonomic and functional identities to each sequenced read. High-quality identifications are important not only for community profiling, but to also ensure that functional assignments of sequence reads are correctly attributed to their source taxa. Such assignments allow biochemical pathways to be appropriately allocated to discrete species, enabling the capture of cross-species interactions. Typically read annotation is performed by a single alignment-based search tool such as BLAST. However, due to the vast extent of bacterial diversity, these approaches tend to be highly error prone, particularly for taxonomic assignments. Here we introduce a novel program for generating taxonomic assignments, called Gist, which integrates information from a number of machine learning methods and the Burrows-Wheeler Aligner. Uniquely Gist establishes the most appropriate weightings of methods for individual genomes, facilitating high classification accuracy on next-generation sequencing reads. We validate our approach using a synthetic metatranscriptome generator based on Flux Simulator, termed Genepuddle. Further, unlike previous taxonomic classifiers, we demonstrate the capacity of composition-based techniques to accurately inform on taxonomic origin without resorting to longer scanning windows that mimic alignment-based methods. Gist is made freely available under the terms of the GNU General Public License at compsysbio.org/gist.

An internship, or a period of work experience, is widely acknowledged as a way into employment (BIS, 2012). Employers favour those students and graduates who have gained work experience to those who have not (Gault, Leach and Duey, 2010). In the UK, the issue of internships has become highly controversial leading to a plethora of newspaper reports in recent years exposing injustices in internships, including unpaid labour, specifically within the more ‘glamorous’ fields of marketing, public relations and advertising (e.g. Jones, 2014). Marketing, public relations and advertising are part of the cultural industries (Hesmondhalgh, 2013). Practitioners within these three fields operate as ‘promotional intermediaries’, working on behalf of commercial interests to sell not only commodities but to shape ‘values, norms and beliefs about society, markets and human relations’ (Davis, 2013, p. 29). Within the UK approximately 500,000 personnel are employed in the marketing, public relations and advertising professional fields (ONS, 2015). This working paper draws on existing literature in the cultural industries, the sociology of work, and relevant studies in three professional fields (marketing, public relations and advertising) in order to problematise internships as unpaid labour. In deciding on this topic, we respond to an agenda which calls for critical studies of exclusionary practices, particularly in the field of public relations (Edwards, 2014). From the review of existing literature, we pose research questions for empirical exploration. In 2010, the IPPR called for a fair wage for interns (Lawton and Potter, 2010), subsequently supported by the Wilson Review (BIS, 2012), and an employer’s good practice code, recognising that a fair wage is not only one of equality and social justice for all workers, but also who has access to internships (TUC, 2013). As Hesmondhalgh (2010, p. 279) notes, ‘Young people from wealthy families are much more likely to be able to afford sustained periods without pay’. Hesmondhalgh (2010) and Percival and Hesmondhalgh (2014) have examined the particular phenomenon of unpaid work within the cultural industries, demonstrating that the debate is more complex than calls for a fair wage, even though such calls are fundamental to social mobility. Critiques of free labour draw attention to the social processes that underpin not only employer-led exploitation, but the supporting processes that involve the workers themselves (non-consciously) maintaining the status quo. Such processes include ‘self-exploitation’ arising from the blurred boundaries of work and play, and ‘self-commodification’ and individualised labour, whereby success and failure are perceived as individual responsibilities to promote oneself (Hesmondhalgh, 2010). Siebert and Wilson (2013, p. 718) further problematise the notion of ‘exploitation’ in their study of unpaid work in the creative industries arguing that students’ and graduates’ acceptance of unpaid work as ‘the way things are’ suggests that workers do not ‘perceive what is happening to them as exploitation’. The concept of ‘internalised flexibility’, used to describe a generational attitude among young people towards employment conditions may also provide an explanation as to why young workers’, including students and graduates, do not challenge the status quo (Bradley and Devadason, 2008). The preliminary review above raises important questions for marketing, public relations and advertising which are unexplored within the professional fields themselves, and yet, as indicated, the responses of young people who have interned within these fields could be particularly intriguing, given their aspirations and roles in promoting the values that underpin current economic and social ideologies.

The Abortion Act 1967 constructs women as patients seeking care, rather than as women choosing abortion, portraying them as vulnerable subjects in need of assistance to make a responsible decision. This article reviews recent proposed women-protective amendments to the Abortion Act focussing upon the proposed introduction of a requirement that women be offered independent counselling. It argues that the issue of abortion should be reframed as a matter of the protection of human dignity, rather than as a conflict between the woman’s right to autonomy and the life of the foetus and, drawing comparatively upon case law from Germany and the United States of America, considers the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court and the Bundesverfassungsgericht have constructed human dignity in the abortion context. Ultimately it is argued that reproductive exceptionalism must end and that by locating the regulation of abortion within a framework of respect for dignity, it is possible to prioritise choice so that the woman’s dignity, which necessarily includes respect for her autonomy and bodily integrity, is not subject to the whims of the medical profession. It is suggested that dignity operates as a lens through which the woman’s claim to autonomy and the interest in foetal life are best viewed, enabling the conflicting interests to be reconciled and simultaneously protecting foetal life and the woman’s autonomy and bodily integrity. The protection of human dignity does not require that these interests be given an equal degree of protection throughout pregnancy and thus it is argued that at least during the first trimester a lower level of protection is demanded in respect of the foetal life, whilst the woman’s right to autonomy and bodily integrity are given precedence. With increased gestation dignity will require that the balance is adjusted so that from viability the foetal life should be prioritised over the woman’s autonomy, albeit with exceptions for risks to her health and life.

The objective of this study is to clarify the theoretical problem and identify factors that could explain the level of continuance intention of e-shopping in context of Saudi Arabia. The study proposes a revised technology acceptance model that integrates expectation confirmation theory to measure age differences with regard to continuance online shopping intentions. Structural equation model confirms model fit. The research findings confirm that Perceived usefulness, enjoyment, and subjective norms are determinants of online shopping continuance. The structural weights are mostly equivalent between the young and old groups, but the regression path from subjective norms to perceived usefulness is not invariant, with that relationship being stronger for the younger respondents. This research moves beyond online shopping intentions and includes factors affecting online shopping continuance. The model explains 65% of the intention to continue shopping online. The research findings suggest that online strategies cannot ignore either the direct and indirect effects on continuance intentions.

This paper describes an alternative approach to knowledge based systems in engineering than traditional geometry or explicit knowledge focused systems. Past systems have supported product optimisation rather than creative solutions and provide little benefit to businesses for bespoke and low volume products or products which do not benefit from optimisation. The approach here addresses this by supporting the creativity of designers through codified tacit knowledge and encouraging knowledge reuse for bespoke product development, in particular for small to medium sized enterprises. The implementation and evaluation of the approach is described within a company producing bespoke fixtures and tooling in shorter than average lead times. The active support of knowledge management in the company is intended to add value to the business by further reducing the lead times of the designs and creating a positive impact to business processes. The evaluation demonstrates a viable alternative framework to the traditional management of knowledge in engineering, which could be implemented by other small to medium enterprises.

This report is one of a series of outputs from the National Evaluation of the Capacity Building Programme for local government in England (CBP), undertaken by a team of researchers at the Policy Research Institute (PRI) at Leeds Metropolitan University and the Cities Research Unit at the University of West of England. This report summarises the findings from all four key strands of the evaluation. Because of the difficulties associated with quantifying the capacity of local authorities, much less the sector, in relation to the dynamic roles and objectives that they pursue, the report focuses on what has worked, why and in what circumstances, rather than providing a definitive assessment of the extent of change of capacity building enabled by the CBP. The CBP was launched in 2003 as a joint Department for Communities and Local Government/Local Government Association (LGA) initiative to support capacity building and improvement activities within local authorities in England. The CBP has supported four main streams of improvement and capacity building activity in local authorities (see Section 1.2; p13).

This report presents the findings of the evaluation of the Capacity Building pilots. The evaluation of the pilots is part of the on-going evaluation of the Capacity Building Programme and has been undertaken in the early scoping phase of the main evaluation in order to capture key learning points and insights into the programme. It is intended that the ongoing evaluation of the Capacity Building Programme will be formative and assist in the development of the programme over time. In what follows the background to the pilots programme is discussed, highlighting the kinds of capacity building activities the pilots are engaged with and the link between the Capacity Building Programme and the CPA. The report outlines the structure and purpose of the pilots programme and the nature and characteristics of the different pilots that were undertaken. The seven case studies are then discussed in more detail in the main body of 1 Introduction | 5 the report. These are drawn together in key themes and findings which can be used to strengthen future project development.

This report summarises emerging findings from initial scoping analysis and case study fieldwork with authorities that have received Direct Support from the Capacity Building Programme (CBP) for local government. The report is one of a series of outputs from the national evaluation of the CBP, being undertaken by a team of researchers at the Policy Research Institute (PRI) at Leeds Metropolitan University and the Cities Research Unit at the University of West of England.

This report is one of a series of outputs from the national evaluation of the Capacity Building Programme for local government in England (CBP), being undertaken by a team of researchers at the Policy Research Institute (PRI) at Leeds Metropolitan University and the Cities Research Unit at the University of West of England. This report summarises the findings from the second phase of fieldwork with regional and sub-regional Improvement Partnerships, established to facilitate capacity building and improvement activity in local authorities. The research underpinning this report was undertaken in seven case study Improvement Partnerships (see Section 2) in October and November 2006 and follows a similar – baseline – exercise undertaken during the same period during 2005. It thus both draws on the earlier research (see Section 3) and identifies evidence of progress and impact (see Section 10) since the baseline phase.

The study of decision-making by public officials in administrative settings has been a mainstay of law and society scholarship for decades. The methodological challenges posed by this research agenda are well understood: how can socio-legal researchers get inside the heads of legal decision-makers in order to understand the uses of official discretion? This article describes an ethnographic technique the authors developed to help them penetrate the decision-making practices of criminal justice social workers in writing pre-sentence reports for the courts. This technique, called shadow writing, involved a particular form of participant observation whereby the researcher mimicked the process of report writing in parallel with the social workers. By comparing these shadow reports with the real reports in a training-like setting, the social workers revealed in detail the subtleties of their communicative strategies embedded in particular reports and their sensibilities about report writing more generally

This report presents the findings of a qualitative study of the operation and impact of the Multiple Provider Employment Zone (MPEZ) initiatives that have operated in four cities (London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow) since 20041. The study builds on earlier work by Cambridge Policy Consultants (Hirst et al. 2006), which concentrated on issues related to the early establishment of the MPEZ initiative and the initial experiences of Providers, Jobcentre Plus districts and customers. The Phase 2 research took place approximately one year on from the Phase 1 study and focused on tracking developments in the operation of MPEZ as the initiative became more established. The study involved interviews with EZ Providers (managers and Advisers), Jobcentre Plus representatives (managers and Advisers) and customers (young people (aged 18-24) claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), who would otherwise have returned to New Deal for Young People (NDYP)2, lone parents receiving Income Support and early entrants – see section 1.6 for full details). In order to gain a wider perspective, researchers also spoke to representatives of organisations that have employed MPEZ participants and a number of stakeholder organisations with a broad interest in local labour market policies and programmes in the MPEZ areas. In total, the research involved interviews or group discussions with over 300 individuals, providing a range and depth of qualitative information that allows a detailed picture to be established of the way that MPEZs developed between mid- 2005 and mid-2006, including the experiences of employers and the labour market destinations of MPEZ participants. A central issue addressed in the research and in this report is the ‘multiple’ element of the initiative and the value that is added through the existence of more than one Provider in each MPEZ area. Questions of allocation, choice, specialisation, competition and innovation are considered from the perspectives of Providers, Jobcentre Plus, customers, employers and stakeholders and the final sections present some conclusions and issues for consideration in relation to these topics.