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Meeting Lhamo
Get PDFThis story describes a snapshot of a Tibetan nomadic woman who later became a construction worker after moving to a settlement town. It highlights some of the challenges her family faces as they move away from herding life and embrace a new way of life. 
“Do Not Even Think about Giving Me Less Chang”: Notes on Fermented and Distilled Beverages in Tibetan Societies
Get PDFIn the Himalayas every household has a still. Fermented and distilled beverages are integral to community rituals and gatherings, and play a central role in economies of labor exchange and systems of local taxation that go back centuries. In this paper we outline the history of these practices across Tibetan cultural areas to contextualize our ethnographic work learning the process of brewing and distilling from a local matriarch in Nubri, Nepal. While pointing out some of the ways alcohol consumption has been contested in Tibetan culture, we examine its use as a social lubricant and its function in maintaining socioeconomic relationships, as well as breaking down the process of distillation itself. The first part of this paper provides a cursory overview of chang in historical perspective. The next parts are dedicated to production, gender, and sociality before turning to the role of alcohol in Nubri’s ritual life. The overall objective is to highlight the role alcoholic beverages occupy in some, but certainly not all, Tibetan societies
See one, do one, teach one: Teaching Open Research Skills for Data-Driven Innovation in Health and Social Care
Get PDFAs the Data-Driven Innovation Talent Team, we teach data and research skills to undergraduate, postgraduate and continuous professional development students in the health and social care sector. We emphasised integrity and reproducibility at every step of the student journey. We want our students to be champions of Open Research in their workplaces.
See one: We model Open Research and Open Scholarship, showing students how we use these principles, and how open resources can help with their learning. Our teaching team are all enthusiastic R or Python users, we share teaching materials via GitHub and publish some of them as Open Educational Resources (e.g. http://www.codestorytelling.com/). We use open datasets for teaching and assessment (e.g. https://www.opendata.nhs.scot/dataset). We publish Open Access
Do one: We explicitly teach our students Open Research practices and we expect them to use these skills in their projects. We use GitHub to support student supervision. We encourage students to use open datasets for their projects. We teach our students to write clean and reproducible code in R, Python, SQL. We tell them about FAIR data principles and teach them to document their data and code. Our students conduct replication studies, pre-register their work, publish their data and code in open repositories.
Teach one: Communication is at the heart of Open Research. Our students use pair programming in most courses and they learn that what is obvious to them may not be obvious to another analyst - that is why documentation and comments are so important. Our students also prepare presentations and short written posts to tell each other about what they have learned about Open Research. They often work in pairs and larger groups to share their knowledge and experience, and to practise communication skills
Global Scientometrics challenges the DIKW pyramid
No full textSociety is moving towards Open Science. Open Science enhances reproducibility and transparency both of which are important features of research integrity. Scientometrics, the field which analyses scientific publications, has been criticised because of the use of traditional selective closed databases in its analyses. The present project wants to create a more comprehensive method to demonstrate the potential of Scientometrics to be able to visualise the contributions to research beyond subscribed databases in a more global, precise and complete way. Some studies have demonstrated there may be bias towards English-speaking countries in research analyses. Additionally, it seems that publications from some areas i.e. Humanities and Social Sciences research areas may be underestimated. The research community relies so much on publications included in the subscribed citation databases, they are the main sources of university rankings, research institutions, and the main source where researchers look for where to publish. This study aims to visualise publications beyond traditional and subscribed databases, Scopus and Web of Science. OpenAlex will be used as a complement to the analysis. OpenAlex is an index of hundreds of millions of interconnected entities across the global research system is a free and open source which uses data from Microsoft Academics Graph and Crossref. The database offers by far the most comprehensive coverage of the scientific literature than traditional databases. It also shows that offers a greater coverage of publications that are not in English. To calculate indicators, the study will use OpenCitations an independent not-for-profit infrastructure organisation for open scholarship dedicated to the publication of open bibliographic and citation data by the use of Semantic Web (Linked Data) technologies. It complies with the FAIR data principles that data should be findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable. The publication window will be 10 years from 2013 to 2022. The study will show the influence of COVID 19 in the publication sample. How would research outcomes be impacted by the utilisation of new open data sources? Do publications that are not part of subscribed citation databases have an impact? Are there publications that contribute to knowledge even though they are not part of mainstream databases? Would subscription databases be able to expand their publication coverage in order to become more inclusive? By creating a fairer system for analysing and evaluating research this will ultimately benefit society as a whole. This project would be aligned with the recent developments for responsible research assessment i.e. DORA, CoARA. The originality of this project is it will be the first one done by an experienced scientometrician and this project will be the first one has been done using open databases to assess country’s research productivity
The crossroads of Digital Research Facilitation and Open Research
No full textDigital Research Services cover all the data and computing services available to researchers at the University of Edinburgh throughout the research lifecycle. Research Facilitators help researchers navigate this complex landscape, and pick the best tools tailored to the researchers’ needs. Within this work, there are several crossroads with open research and opportunities to improve research culture.
First, our resources involve several tools to support open research, such as DataShare, OSF and GitLab. By facilitating access to these open research tools, Digital Research Services also promote best practices in research planning, data management, research integrity. For example, the recently developed interactive Resource Finder on our website enables users to build their personalised toolkit whilst encouraging better research planning and collaboration between researchers within University of Edinburgh and beyond.
Second, by advertising the potential outcomes of tool use rather than the tools themselves, Digital Research Services engage researchers that would otherwise not identify as potential tool users. For example, there is a growing number of case studies on the Digital Research Services website demonstrating how researchers use open research tools across disciplines and domains. Among those, one can find insights into learning Git and using OSF and researchers’ perspective on data sharing and archiving their research data.
What sort of activities help promote digital research tools, whilst also supporting a shift in research culture? Is it even possible to measure this culture change? The poster will attempt to answer these questions, as well as highlight upcoming challenges and future avenues for involvement for Digital Research Services. It will particularly examine the work of the Research Facilitation Team, who keep a catalogue of digital research tools, but organise a breadth of engagement, outreach and educational events alongside this
Risky Business: Freedom of Expression vs. Harmful Content in Ireland’s Online Safety and Media Regulation (OSMR) Act
Get PDFThis article applies a critical perspective to provisions of Ireland’s Online Safety and Media Regulation (OSMR) Act which may undermine the right to freedom of expression. This article narrows its focus to specific provisions of this legislation which may be used to restrict access to harmful—but potentially legal—online communications. Special focus is on potential application of these provisions to offensive political commentary and associated risks to the right to freedom of expression. This article begins by providing an overview of the legislative development and context preceding the OSMR Act. Focus is not only on the justifications for this legislation but also on analogous domestic legislative frameworks—specifically the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act—which has seen proposals for legally binding obligations for online media platforms to restrict access to harmful but legal online communications. Focus then shifts to the relevant provisions of Ireland’s OSMR Act surrounding harmful online communications under Part 11 of this legislation. Identifying how specific obligations may be used to restrict access to offensive political communications online, this article then maps standards surrounding the right to freedom of expression which are instructive in this context. Drawing exclusively from the analytical framework of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), key focus here is on relevant jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in case law wherein the Strasbourg Court has examined the right to disseminate polemic statements in political environments under the Article 10 ECHR framework. Focus is also given to relevant jurisprudence wherein the ECtHR has demonstrated reluctance to endorse restrictions on access to lawful online communications. Filtering these standards, this article concludes by assessing how the operationalisation of Ireland’s OSMR Act may require—or indirectly encourage—restrictions on access to legal communications in a manner that may contravene the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR. Accordingly, this article provides timely analytical insights regarding the extent to which current and future online safety measures under the OSMR Act’s framework are likely to ensure compatibility with the right to freedom of expression
Assessing overall oxidative metabolism of high-metabolic-rate abdominal organs in diet-induced obesity using compartmental modeling of [11C]acetate-PET
Get PDF[11C]Acetate PET imaging is a powerful tool for visualizing and studying metabolic processes in various tissues and organs, particularly in the context of heart disease and prostate cancer. The tracer can reflect tissue perfusion, oxidative metabolism, and fatty acid synthesis[1].
Male Sprague Dawley rats on standard (SD n=6) and after 8-10 weeks on a high-fat diet (HFD n=6) were studied for [11C]acetate turnover. Longitudinal utilization of the tracer in the abdomen was recorded using Siemens Inveon µ-PET/CT. Under isoflurane anesthesia, rats underwent 60 min dynamic [11C]acetate-PET scans and additionally on the next week venous blood sampling for [11C]CO2-metabolite analysis (7-time points; SD n=3; HFD n=3) accordingly[2]. Delineation of kidneys, myocardium and liver; SUV calculations; 1-tissue compartmental modeling with blood-to-plasma ratio and [11C]CO2-metabolite correction were performed in PMOD3.8; clearance rate was calculated in Carimas2.1.
Semi-quantification methods demonstrated contrasting outcomes between the groups. Increased renal (right p=0.04, left p=0.03) and myocardial (p=0.01) uptake (Fig.A) was observed in the HFD group, while clearance rates in kidneys (right p=0.01, left p=0.04) and liver (p=0.03) were decreased (Fig.B). Blood sampling for [11C]CO2-metabolite analysis revealed differing profiles between the groups, with a maximum peak at 30 min in SD and two peaks at 5 and 40 min in HFD animals (Fig.C). Deeper analysis using 1-tissue compartmental modeling shed light on the hepatic uptake and showed a difference in the volume of distribution (Vt), which was significantly decreased in the HFD group (p<0.001) (Fig.D).
The study indicates [11C]acetate accumulation in metabolically active organs: kidneys, heart, and liver. Compartmental modeling demonstrated the necessity of metabolite correction for quantitative analysis. Previously, Sprague Dawley rats on HFD were studied for fatty acid uptake and decline of VLDL synthesis[3] that can correlate with the variation of Vt in the liver and confirm pathological changes in organ functioning.
Please click on the \u27PDF\u27 for the full abstract
Tracing proliferating potential of lung tumours by [11C]Nicotinamide
Get PDFMany tumours rely on aerobic glycolysis, known as the Warburg effect, to satisfy energy needs and sustain rapid proliferation [1]. High demands of glucose in tumours can be measured by [18F[fluorodeoxyglucose, [18F]FDG, positron emission tomography (PET). Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) is a coenzyme involved in redox reactions in many metabolic pathways, including glycolysis. To maintain the high rates of glycolysis and proliferation, tumours need increased NAD+ levels and use nicotinamide for the upregulated NAD+ salvage pathway that is the main source of NAD+ in proliferative cancer cells [2]. Herein, we show an improved synthesis method of [11C]Nicotinamide, [11C]NAM, and studied the uptake of [11C]NAM and [18F]FDG to measure proliferating capacity in a lung cancer model.
[Carboxyl-11C]nicotinamide was synthesized by a one-pot radiolabeling method [3] on the SYNTHRA synthesizer (Synthra GmbH, Germany) (see Figure 1A). We used a KrasG12D/+ genetically engineered mouse model of lung cancer and evaluated the uptake of [11C]nicotinamide and [18F]FDG with dual-tracer sequential imaging protocol (see Figure 1B) using a NanoScan PET/MRI scanner (Mediso Medical Imaging Systems, Hungary).
We obtained [carboxyl-11C]nicotinamide in a radiochemical yield of 15 ± 5 %, volumic activity of 50 ± 10 MBq/ml, and radiochemical purity was > 99 %. We optimized the imaging protocol and found the uptake of [11C]nicotinamide co-localized with the uptake of [18F]FDG in the KrasG12D/+ model of lung cancer as shown in Figure 1C suggesting the higher NAM uptake was associated with high NAD+ production in highly proliferating tumours.
We demonstrated that metabolic PET/MRI imaging with [11C]NAM can complement [18F]FDG PET and be useful for probing proliferative potential in lung cancer. This method could be translated and applied in clinical practice to enable visualization of NAD+ metabolism in lung tumours and targeted therapeutically.
Please click on the \u27PDF\u27 for the full abstract
To Break the Fourth Wall: A Comparative Approach to Scottish Ministers, Petitioners
Get PDFThe decision of the Secretary of state for Scotland to use a section 35 order to \u27veto\u27 the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill was met with controversy. In some quarters, it was considered a necessary means of prevening the Scottish Parliament from interfering with UK-wide equality law. In others, it was branded as an unacceptable intrustion on the devolved law-making competences of the Scottish Parliament. This article will examine the situation across the pond and invoke the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the United States in order to conclude that there is nothing unusual, or even sinister about the use of section 35 in this instance.