Forecasting call frequency at a financial services call centre

A forecasting model is developed for the number of daily applications for loans at a financial services telephone call centre. The purpose of the forecasts and the associated prediction intervals is to provide effective staffing policies within the call centre. The model building process is constrained by the availability of only 2 years and 7 months of data. The distinctive feature of the data is that demand is driven in the main by advertising. The analysis given focuses on applications stimulated by press advertising. Unlike previous analyses of broadly similar data, where ARIMA models were used, a model with a dynamic level, multiplicative calendar effects and a multiplicative advertising response is developed and shown to be effective.     

Fast 3D shape screening of large chemical databases through alignment-recycling

Background  

Large chemical databases require fast, efficient, and simple ways of looking for similar structures. Although such tasks are now fairly well resolved for graph-based similarity queries, they remain an issue for 3D approaches, particularly for those based on 3D shape overlays. Inspired by a recent technique developed to compare molecular shapes, we designed a hybrid methodology, alignment-recycling, that enables efficient retrieval and alignment of structures with similar 3D shapes.     

Homolytic reactions of polyfluoroaromatic compounds V. The reaction of pentafluorophenyl radicals with fluorobenzene

The arylation of fluorobenzene with pentafluorophenyl radicals obtained by the reaction of the corresponding aniline with pentyl nitrite is described. The reaction involves attact at the 2t?-,3t?-and 4t?-positions. The composition of the mixture and the nature of its components were determined by ¹⁹F NMR spectroscopy and were confirmed by gas-liquid chromatography.