The Intelligent Systems Group’s mission is to carry out leading edge long-term research on intelligent systems technology. We concentrate on mobile and context-aware systems, data mining methods and secure programming. Our aim is to increase systematically our methodological understanding and to develop components for an intelligent environment that gives versatile services to its inhabitants.

This paper discusses the methodological requirements for valid inferences from school effectiveness research studies. The requirements include long term longitudinal data and proper statistical modelling of hierarchical data structures. The paper outlines the appropriate multilevel statistical models and shows how these can model the complexities of school, class and student level data.

PURPOSE Maintaining physical activity and dietary improvements achieved during an intervention is important for the long-term health outcomes of breast cancer survivors. This review aimed to determine: (a) the proportion of physical activity and/or dietary intervention trials in breast cancer survivors that assessed post-intervention maintenance of outcomes, (b) the proportion of trials that ac...

BACKGROUND Hydrotherapy is frequently indicated for the rehabilitation of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA); nevertheless, there has been inadequate appraisal of its effectiveness. The potential benefits of hydrotherapy for patients with RA are to improve and/or maintain functional ability and quality of life. OBJECTIVES The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the effectivenes...

Although theories of personality emphasize the integrative, enduring, and dynamic nature of personality, the current modal research design in personality ignores the dimension of time. We consider a variety of recent methods of longitudinal data analysis to examine both short-term and long-term development and change in personality, including mean-level analyses both across and within individua...

Executive Summary The aim of this study is to provide external advice and recommendations to the Shadow Committee on Climate Change (SCCC) on the methodological approaches that could be used to propose UK interim carbon budgets for the period 2008-2022. These interim budgets are bounded by existing Government commitments, most notably the 26-32% reduction in CO 2 emissions by 2020 (on 1990 leve...

BACKGROUND Gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (GEP-NET) are often slow-growing and patients may live for years with metastasised disease. Hence, along with increasing overall and progression-free survival, treatments aim at preserving patients' well-being and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). However, studies on systematic HRQoL assessment in patients with GEP-NET are scarce. T...