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Implementing a Health Literacy Initiative During COVID-19
No full textUMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery is exploring how best to use its resources to respond to the current public health crisis. In this poster, we present our newly formed health literacy working group. The working group’s mission is to improve the health of library employees and patrons by making health information easy to understand and use.
Learn about the initiatives implemented by the working group: creating a charter, co-sponsoring a health literacy article discussion, publishing an online semesterly newsletter and implementing a health literacy lecture series. We also discuss our reasons for creating an in-house working group rather than depending on campus resources, our experiences after the first semester of this working group being active, and our plans for the future
Designing a Holistic Research Appointment Service: Utilizing an Online Feedback Form to Create Best Practices for Research Appointments
No full textResearch appointments between librarians and students serve the space between in-class instruction and traditional reference interactions. Subject librarians at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) examined their library’s research appointment service from the perspectives of the patron and the librarian in order to improve the quality of experience for both participants. The project included creating and deploying a patron feedback form, developing shared best practices, and having ongoing guided discussions within the department about these private interactions. This poster explains the process, timeline, and tools used to conduct the project. It provides the feedback form questions and describes how the form was implemented into the scheduling process. The finalized best practices, now used for training, preparation, and reflection, are included. Next steps for the project are discussed
Who trusts?: ethnicity, integration, and attitudes toward elected officials in urban Nigeria
No full textComparative Political Studies, Volume 53, Issue 10-11, 1 September 2020, Pages 1738-1766.In the developing world, politicians often use public office to redistribute resources to their core constituencies. This form of clientelistic exchange motivates ethnic voting in Africa and may also shape broader attitudes toward the state. But does clientelism retain its power as cross-ethnic contact increases, or might new forms of political linkage emerge? This article uses public opinion data from urban Nigeria to investigate how social position affects trust in elected local officials. The article finds that local ethnic minorities are less trusting of local officials, but this trust deficit does not diminish as cross-ethnic contact rises. For members of locally dominant ethnic groups, however, greater cross-ethnic contact and lessened ethnic attachment dampen expressed trust in local elected officials. The article argues that ethnic clientelism is resilient in urban contexts but that scholarship must take a more nuanced approach to assessing membership in clientelistic coalitions
Literature on applied machine learning in metagenomic classification: a scoping review
No full textBiology, Volume 9, Issue 12, December 2020, Article number 453, Pages 1-25.Applied machine learning in bioinformatics is growing as computer science slowly invades all research spheres. With the arrival of modern next-generation DNA sequencing algorithms, metagenomics is becoming an increasingly interesting research field as it finds countless practical applications exploiting the vast amounts of generated data. This study aims to scope the scientific literature in the field of metagenomic classification in the time interval 2008–2019 and provide an evolutionary timeline of data processing and machine learning in this field. This study follows the scoping review methodology and PRISMA guidelines to identify and process the available literature. Natural Language Processing (NLP) is deployed to ensure efficient and exhaustive search of the literary corpus of three large digital libraries: IEEE, PubMed, and Springer. The search is based on keywords and properties looked up using the digital libraries’ search engines. The scoping review results reveal an increasing number of research papers related to metagenomic classification over the past decade. The research is mainly focused on metagenomic classifiers, identifying scope specific metrics for model evaluation, data set sanitization, and dimensionality reduction. Out of all of these subproblems, data preprocessing is the least researched with considerable potential for improvement
Walking the walk: does perceptual congruence between managers and employees promote employee job satisfaction?
No full textReview of Public Personnel Administration, 1–31.Public managers and employees should be on the same page for successful performance. Managers’ self-evaluations of their own management, however, often do not match employees’ evaluations. Despite the consistent findings of a discrepancy between managers’ and employees’ perceptions of management, little research has examined how this perceptual incongruence affects employee job satisfaction. The present study addresses this question using parallel surveys from both managers and employees in the context of public education. The findings suggest managers overestimate their management effectiveness in general. As the perceptual gap between managers and employees increases, employees are less likely to be satisfied with their organization and their profession. We also find that this relationship is nonlinear, and the negative effects of incongruence could be accelerated when employees have considerable consensus about management. This study highlights the role of perceptual congruence in creating a better work environment and promoting job satisfaction for public employees
Connecting web event forecasting with anomaly detection: a case study on enterprise web applications using self-supervised neural networks
No full textLecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, LNICST, Volume 335, 2020, Pages 481-502. 16th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, SecureComm 2020; Washington; United States; 21 October 2020 through 23 October 2020; Code 253099.Recently web applications have been widely used in enterprises to assist employees in providing effective and efficient business processes. Forecasting upcoming web events in enterprise web applications can be beneficial in many ways, such as efficient caching and recommendation. In this paper, we present a web event forecasting approach, DeepEvent, in enterprise web applications for better anomaly detection. DeepEvent includes three key features: web-specific neural networks to take into account the characteristics of sequential web events, self-supervised learning techniques to overcome the scarcity of labeled data, and sequence embedding techniques to integrate contextual events and capture dependencies among web events. We evaluate DeepEvent on web events collected from six real-world enterprise web applications. Our experimental results demonstrate that DeepEvent is effective in forecasting sequential web events and detecting web based anomalies. DeepEvent provides a context-based system for researchers and practitioners to better forecast web events with situational awareness
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) subtypes, co-occurring psychiatric symptoms and sexual risk behaviors among adolescents receiving substance abuse treatment
No full textSubstance Use and Misuse, Volume 55, Issue 1, 1 January 2020, Pages 119-132.Background: Adolescents entering substance abuse treatment report clustered psychiatric symptoms and sexual risk behaviors representing differential levels of impairment and risk for maladaptive health outcomes. Objectives: To examine the prevalence of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) subtypes among adolescents receiving outpatient substance abuse treatment; To document group differences in (a) past-year psychiatric symptom scores and (b) sexual risk behaviors by ADHD subtype and gender. Methods: Self-report data were collected via structured interviews from 394 adolescents (280 males, M = 16.33 years, SD = 1.15 years), enrolled in an HIV/STI risk reduction intervention for adolescents receiving outpatient substance abuse treatment. ADHD diagnostic subtypes and other past-year psychiatric symptoms were assessed using the Brief Michigan Version of the Composite Internal Diagnostic Interview (UM-CIDI). Adolescents provided self-report data on sexual risk behaviors. Results: Multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVAs) documented that Inattentive and Hyperactive-Impulsive ADHD subtypes were significantly associated with higher scores for all past-year psychiatric symptoms. The combined ADHD subtype was significantly associated with higher scores for all psychiatric symptoms except affective disorder. Girls reported significantly higher mean symptoms than boys for alcohol abuse and dependence, anxiety, and affective disorder symptoms. Sexual risk behavior scores were not associated with ADHD status, but girls reported consistently higher scores for multiple risk behavior outcomes. Several psychiatric disorder symptoms were significant covariates of multiple sexual risk behaviors. Conclusion/Importance: Brief screenings for ADHD, other psychiatric disorders and sexual risk behaviors can provide data for tailoring substance abuse services to improve adolescent health outcomes for high-risk subgroups
The solar wind from a stellar perspective: how do low-resolution data impact the determination of wind properties
No full textAstronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 635, 1 March 2020, Article number 1937107.Context. Due to the effects that they can have on the atmospheres of exoplanets, stellar winds have recently received significant attention in the literature. Alfvén-wave-driven 3D magnetohydrodynamic models, which are increasingly used to predict stellar wind properties, contain unconstrained parameters and rely on low-resolution stellar magnetograms. Aims. In this paper, we explore the effects of the input Alfvén wave energy flux and the surface magnetogram on the wind properties predicted by the Alfvén Wave Solar Model (AWSoM) model for both the solar and stellar winds. Methods. We lowered the resolution of two solar magnetograms during solar cycle maximum and minimum using spherical harmonic decomposition. The Alfvén wave energy was altered based on non-thermal velocities determined from a far ultraviolet spectrum of the solar twin 18 Sco. Additionally, low-resolution magnetograms of three solar analogues, 18 Sco, HD 76151, and HN Peg, were obtained using Zeeman Doppler imaging and used as a proxy for the solar magnetogram. Finally, the simulated wind properties were compared to Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) observations. Results. AWSoM simulations using well constrained input parameters taken from solar observations can reproduce the observed solar wind mass loss and angular momentum loss rates. The simulated wind velocity, proton density, and ram pressure differ from ACE observations by a factor of approximately two. The resolution of the magnetogram has a small impact on the wind properties and only during cycle maximum. However, variation in Alfvén wave energy influences the wind properties irrespective of the solar cycle activity level. Furthermore, solar wind simulations carried out using the low-resolution magnetogram of the three stars instead of the solar magnetogram could lead to an order of a magnitude difference in the simulated solar wind properties. Conclusions. The choice in Alfvén energy has a stronger influence on the wind output compared to the magnetogram resolution. The influence could be even stronger for stars whose input boundary conditions are not as well constrained as those of the Sun. Unsurprisingly, replacing the solar magnetogram with a stellar magnetogram could lead to completely inaccurate solar wind properties, and should be avoided in solar and stellar wind simulations. Further observational and theoretical work is needed to fully understand the complexity of solar and stellar winds
Some Early Writings of Bernard Lonergan and the Order of the Universe as a Final Cause in Aquinas
No full textBernard Lonergan, though best known for his development of the “generalized empirical method,” wrote prolifically on many subjects. He also left behind a large quantity of unpublished notes, some of which remained undeveloped. In these notes, and in two published articles, Lonergan presents his interpretation of the thought of Thomas Aquinas on the relationships between individual finite natures and the order of the universe to which they belong. Lonergan’s interpretation includes the use of apparently novel terms such as the “destinies” of creatures, and apparently novel notions regarding God’s knowledge of creation, finality, and the order of the universe. Despite the apparently novel use of these terms and notions, Lonergan presents his thought as an explication and interpretation of Aquinas. The author of this dissertation embarks upon a twofold task: first, to explicate Lonergan’s thought on the notions of “nature” and “destiny,” “vertical finality,” and the order of the universe as a “progressive synthesis”; second, to set Lonergan’s thought in the context of Aquinas’s thought on the order of the universe, the relation of the parts of the universe to the order of the whole, and God’s knowledge of creatures in order to judge whether or not Lonergan’s notions are in fact consistent with Aquinas’s thought.
In the first chapter, the author explicates Lonergan’s notions of “nature” and “destiny,” and his understanding of finality, including “vertical finality.” He explains how Lonergan understands the content of “finite natures” to be determined by their “destinies,” which are achieved by means of “vertical finality,” through which a creature on a lower tier of being can achieve an end incommensurate with its own limitations. In the second and third chapters, the author explicates Aquinas’s thought on the nature of good, the notion of common goods, and the order of the universe. In the fourth chapter, the author revisits and expands his explication of Lonergan’s notions, including his notion of the order of the universe as a “dynamic synthesis.” Drawing upon the portions of Aquinas’s thought described in chapters two and three, the author concludes that Lonergan’s overall understanding is “not inconsistent” with Aquinas’s thought, but Lonergan’s understanding of how God knows real and possible finite natures is inconsistent with Aquinas’s thought.MetaphysicsAquinas, Destiny, Lonergan, Nature, universe, vertical finalityPhilosophyDegree Awarded: Ph.D. Philosophy. The Catholic University of Americ