Selecting the Right Similarity‐Scoring Matrix

Selecting the Right Similarity-Scoring Matrix.

Protein sequence similarity searching programs like BLASTP, SSEARCH (UNIT 3.10), and FASTA use scoring matrices that are designed to identify distant evolutionary relationships (BLOSUM62 for BLAST, BLOSUM50 for SEARCH and FASTA). Different similarity scoring matrices are most effective at different evolutionary distances. "Deep" scoring matrices like BLOSUM62 and BLOSUM50 target alignments with...

Selecting the Right Algorithm

Computer scientists always strive to find better and faster algorithms for any computational problem. It is usually true that programmers and/or users come across a plethora of different algorithms when looking to solve a particular problem efficiently. Each one of these algorithms might offer different guarantees and properties, but it is unlikely that a single one of them is the best (fastest...

Selecting the right medical student

Medical student selection is an important but difficult task. Three recent papers by McManus et al. in BMC Medicine have re-examined the role of tests of attainment of learning (A' levels, GCSEs, SQA) and of aptitude (AH5, UKCAT), but on a much larger scale than previously attempted. They conclude that A' levels are still the best predictor of future success at medical school and beyond. Howeve...

Selecting the right medical adhesive tape

Selecting the Right Heuristic Algorithm : Runtime Performance

It is obvious that, given a problem instance, some heuris-tic algorithms can perform vastly better than others; however, in most cases the existing literature provides little guidance for choosing the best heuristic algorithm. This paper describes how runtime performance pre-dictors can be used to identify a good algorithm for a particular problem instance. The approach is demonstrated on two f...