• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.786-801
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• 2003

This paper examines a spatial pattern and processes of academic achievement in deprived area, considering relationship between academic achievement and social deprivation as social context. It links academic achievement data with neighborhood data from the 2001 UK Census(by ward) in South East England and uses multiple regression modeling to estimate the contribution of social deprivation to academic achievement of primary schools. The findings suggest that there is a significant positive relationship between deprivation in the local residential environment and academic achievement in primary schools. It also argues that more deprived area in South East England would tend to promote greater inequality of academic achievement in the spatial aspects, relating to Key Stage 2 score.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Near Infrared Spectroscopy Conference
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.1154-1154
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• 2001

Near infra-red (NIR) spectroscopy has been used for the non-invasive assessment of intact fruit for eating quality attributes such as total soluble solids (TSS) content. However, little information is available in the literature with respect to the robustness of such calibration models validated against independent populations (however, see Peiris et al. 1998 and Guthrie et al. 1998). Many studies report ‘prediction’ statistics in which the calibration and prediction sets are subsets of the same population (e. g. a three year calibration validated against a set from the same population, Peiris et al. 1998; calibration and validation subsets of the same initial population, Guthrie and Walsh 1997 and McGlone and Kawano 1998). In this study, a calibration was developed across 84 melon fruit (R$^2$= 0.86$^{\circ}$Brix, SECV = 0.38$^{\circ}$Brix), which predicted well on fruit excluded from the calibration set but taken from the same population (n = 24, SEP = 0.38$^{\circ}$Brix with 0.1$^{\circ}$Brix bias), relative to an independent group (same variety and farm but different harvest date) (n = 24, SEP= 0.66$^{\circ}$ Brix with 0.1$^{\circ}$Brix bias). Prediction on a different variety, different growing district and time was worse (n = 24, SEP = 1.2$^{\circ}$Brix with 0.9$^{\circ}$Brix bias). Using an ‘in-line’ unit based on a silicon diode array spectrometer, as described in Walsh et al. (2000), we collected spectra from fruit populations covering different varieties, growing districts and time. The calibration procedure was optimized in terms of spectral window, derivative function and scatter correction. Performance of a calibration across new populations of fruit (different varieties, growing districts and harvest date) is reported. Various calibration sample selection techniques (primarily based on Mahalanobis distances), were trialled to structure the calibration population to improve robustness of prediction on independent sets. Optimization of calibration population structure (using the ISI protocols of neighbourhood and global distances) resulted in the elimination of over 50% of the initial data set. The use of the ISI Local Calibration routine was also investigated.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Near Infrared Spectroscopy Conference
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.1121-1121
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• 2001

A previous study (Berzaghi et al., 2001) evaluated the performance of 3 calibration methods, modified partial least squares (MPLS), local PLS (LOCAL) and artificial neural networks (ANN) on the prediction of the chemical composition of forages, using a large NIR database. The study used forage samples (n=25,977) from Australia, Europe (Belgium, Germany, Italy and Sweden) and North America (Canada and U.S.A) with reference values for moisture, crude protein and neutral detergent fibre content. The spectra of the samples were collected using 10 different Foss NIR Systems instruments, only some of which had been standardized to one master instrument. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the behaviour of these different calibration methods when predicting the same samples measured on different instruments. Twenty-two sealed samples of different kind of forages were measured in duplicate on seven instruments (one master and six slaves). Three sets of near infrared spectra (1100 to 2500nm) were created. The first set consisted of the spectra in their original form (unstandardized); the second set was created using a single sample standardization (Clone1); the third was created using a multiple sample procedure (Clone6). WinISI software (Infrasoft International Inc., Port Mathilda, PA, USA) was used to perform both types of standardization, Clone1 is just a photometric offset between a “master” instrument and the “slave” instrument. Clone6 modifies both the X-axis through a wavelength adjustment and the Y-axis through a simple regression wavelength by wavelength. The Clone1 procedure used one sample spectrally close to the centre of the population. The six samples used in Clone 6 were selected to cover the range of spectral variation in the sample set. The remaining fifteen samples were used to evaluate the performances of the different models. The predicted values for dry matter, protein and neutral detergent fibre from the master Instrument were considered as “reference Y values” when computing the statistics RMSEP, SEPC, R, Bias, Slope, mean GH (global Mahalanobis distance) and mean NH (neighbourhood Mahalanobis distance) for the 6 slave instruments. From the results we conclude that i) all the calibration techniques gave satisfactory results after standardization. Without standardization the predicted data from the slaves would have required slope and bias correction to produce acceptable statistics. ii) Standardization reduced the errors for all calibration methods and parameters tested, reducing not only systematic biases but also random errors. iii) Standardization removed slope effects that were significantly different from 1.0 in most of the cases. iv) Clone1 and Clone6 gave similar results except for NDF where Clone6 gave better RMSEP values than Clone1. v) GH and NH were reduced by half even with very large data sets including unstandardized spectra.