26419 research outputs found
Sort by
Exploring LIS Curriculum: Agency, Identity, Practices
No full textThe practices of LIS educators provide agency and identity for developing LIS professionals. It is essential that LIS programs interrogate their curricula to best prepare emerging LIS professionals. The Curriculum SIG will present three projects that explore practices and curriculum for LIS training.
Dr. Amanda Harrison, Dr. Rene Burress, Kelly Pryde, Dr. Cari Cusick, and Dr. Lauren Hays, will present “Teaching Accessibility in a Library and Information Science MLS program.” LIS students must develop knowledge, skills, and awareness to create inclusive, accessible libraries (American Library Association, 2018; IFLA Standing Committee of Libraries Serving Disadvantaged Persons, 2005; Jaeger et al., 2013). Despite recognizing this need, surveys show minimal increases in ALA-accredited programs incorporating accessibility topics into core courses (Gibson, 1977; Walling, 2000). This study examines 2024–2025 syllabi and faculty interviews to assess how accessibility is taught in one MLS program. Researchers analyzed the pedagogical tools, techniques, and mindsets used to teach practical approaches to accessibility in libraries. The data was also examined to identify gaps. Preliminary findings will be presented, and a future scope and sequence for LIS curriculum development will be suggested.
Dr. Fei Yu will present “Empowering Research Tracking, Evaluation, and Reporting in Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities: The Essential Role of Academic and Research Librarians.” This proposal highlights the challenges and information needs of research support staff and administrators in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (ASH) disciplines, emphasizing the critical role of librarians in addressing these needs through targeted services, tailored training, and interdisciplinary collaboration. We advocate for strategically developing LIS training programs to equip current and future librarians with essential skills, empowering them to effectively support research tracking, evaluation, and reporting processes, reinforcing their essential role within academic research institutions.
Dr. Elizabeth Burns will present “The ALA Core Competences of Librarianship: Stories of Successful Integration.” How do LIS programs use the updated version of the Core Competences of Librarianship? The 2022 Core Competences of Librarianship were approved by the ALA Council after a multi-year revision process. These competences describe the knowledge, skills and abilities of a professional librarian. Two years post adoption it is a valuable time to explore the implementation of the ALA Core Competences of Librarianship. LIS programs must consider this document when developing and aligning their program curricula. This session will briefly introduce the Core Competences and then move into a discussion about the ways these newly revised competences can be considered by LIS program faculty. Specifically, speakers will share tangible examples of aligning the Core Competences with their program goals and learning outcomes
Addressing Anti-Black Racism in Library and Information Science Curriculum
No full textThis paper explores the development of the graduate course Anti-Racism in Library and Information Science that was piloted at Western University in 2022 and 2023. The one-semester (13-week) course was designed with Black-led community organizations and students contributed to anti-racist information and memory work through experiential learning partnerships. The course used critical Library and Information Science (LIS) literature alongside Black Canadian scholarly perspectives that were grounded in anti-oppression and anti-racism frameworks. The course goals were for students to develop an understanding of how race and other structural inequities inform lived experiences and tools to support collaborative community-led projects. The LIS-tailored approach to anti-racist reflection and relationship-building can be applied more broadly to similarly question and resist problematic power structures and practices to create more consciously powerful and valuable relationships for students, librarianship, and communities
Front Matter: The State of the Region, Hampton Roads 2025
No full textCover, Front Matter, Table of Contents, Sponsors, and other materials for the 2025 The State of the Region Report authored by the Center for Economic Analysis and Policy at Old Dominion University
A Comparative Analysis of Preprocessing Filters for Deep Learning-Based Equipment Power Efficiency Classification and Prediction Models
No full textThe quality of input data is critical to the performance of time-series classification models, particularly in the domain for industrial sensor data where noise and anomalies are frequent. This study investigates how various filtering-based preprocessing techniques impact the accuracy and robustness of a Transformer model that predicts power efficiency states (Normal, Caution, Warning) from minute-level IIoT sensor data. We evaluated five techniques: a baseline, Simple Moving Average, Median filter, Hampel filter, and Kalman filter. For each technique, we conducted systematic experiments across time windows (360 and 720 min) that reflect real-world industrial inspection cycles, along with five prediction offsets (up to 2880 min). To ensure statistical robustness, we repeated each experiment 20 times with different random seeds. The results show that the Simple Moving Average filter, combined with a 360 min window and a short-term prediction offset, yielded the best overall performance and stability. While other techniques such as the Kalman and Median filters showed situational strengths, methods focused on outlier removal, like the Hampel filter, adversely affected performance. This study provides empirical evidence that a simple and efficient filtering strategy such as Simple Moving Average, can significantly and reliably enhance model performance for power efficiency prediction tasks
Deletion of CHOP in Beta Cell Protects Mice From Cardiovascular Complications in Type 2 Diabetes: Evidence from a Pre-Clinical Mouse Model
No full textIntroduction
Cardiovascular complications are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D), which is recognized as a major independent risk factor for coronary artery disease, stroke, peripheral vascular disease, and heart failure. The interrelationship between metabolic dysfunction and cardiovascular disease is complex and multifactorial, involving hyperglycemia, insulin resistance, inflammation, and oxidative stress. Evidence indicates that endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and induction of the unfolded protein response (UPR) contribute to metabolic dysregulation and vascular dysfunction. However, the specific role of beta cell-derived UPR mediators, particularly C/EBP homologous protein (CHOP), in coordinating this interorgan axis between the endocrine pancreas and the cardiovascular system remains poorly understood.
Methods
To determine the role of beta cell CHOP in mediating the link between T2D and cardiovascular complications, we specifically deleted CHOP in beta cells. Thus, male and female β-cellflox/flox and β-cell-specific CHOP knockout (β-cellCHOP−/−) mice were fed a high-fat diet (HFD) or a control diet for four months. Metabolic, cardiovascular, and inflammatory parameters were assessed, including body weight, exercise capacity as measured by running distance, organ weights (heart, lung, pancreas, and kidney), glucose tolerance test (GTT), vascular endothelial function, cardiac fibrosis, and the expression of ER stress and inflammatory signaling markers.
Results
β-cellflox/flox mice fed HFD for four months develop hallmark features of T2D, including obesity, glucose intolerance, impaired exercise capacity, cardiac fibrosis, vascular endothelial dysfunction, and increased organ weights. In contrast, β-cellCHOP−/− mice are protected from these complications, demonstrating preserved glucose tolerance, endothelial function, reduced cardiac fibrosis, enhanced exercise performance, and blunted activation of ER stress and inflammatory pathways.
Conclusion
This study elucidates CHOP in pancreatic beta cells as a key mechanism linking T2D to cardiovascular complications. Deleting CHOP in beta cells reduces metabolic and cardiovascular issues, underscoring the role of beta cell stress in the connection between T2D and cardiovascular disease. These findings suggest that CHOP may be a potential target for preventing T2D-related cardiovascular complications
Quantifying Trapped Magnetic Vortex Losses In Niobium Resonators at mK Temperatures
No full textTrapped magnetic vortices in niobium introduce microwave losses that degrade the performance of superconducting resonators. While such losses have been extensively studied above 1 K, we report here their direct quantification in the millikelvin and low-photon regime relevant to quantum devices. Using a high-quality factor 3D niobium cavity cooled through its superconducting transition in controlled magnetic fields, we isolate vortex-induced losses and find the resistive component of the sensitivity to trapped flux S to be approximately 2 n Ω/mG at 10 mK and 6 GHz. The decay rate is initially dominated by two-level system (TLS) losses from the native niobium pentoxide, with vortex-induced degradation of T₁ occurring above Btrap ∼ 50 mG. In the absence of the oxide, even 10 mG of trapped flux limits performance, Q₀ ∼ 10¹⁰, or T₁ ∼ 350 ms, underscoring the need for stringent magnetic shielding. The resistive sensitivity, S, decreases with temperature and remains largely field-independent, whereas the reactive component, S′, exhibits a maximum near 0.8 K. These behaviors are well modeled within the Coffey-Clem framework in the zero-creep limit, under the assumption that vortex pinning is enhanced by thermally activated processes. Our results suggest that niobium-based transmon qubits can tolerate vortex-induced dissipation at trapped field levels up to several hundred mG, but achieving long coherence times still requires careful magnetic shielding to suppress lower-field losses from other mechanisms
Can LLMs Beat Humans on Discerning Human-Written and LLM-Generated Science News
No full textScience news is increasingly important in connecting scientists and the public by sharing discoveries and innovations. With the rise of large language models (LLMs), there is potential to automate science news creation, but concerns exist about the quality of LLM-generated news versus human-written news. This paper explores whether LLMs can outperform humans in distinguishing between human-written and LLM-generated news. Inspired by the Chain-of-Thought prompting method, we designed a simple yet effective variant called Guided Few-shot (GFS), which encodes the characteristics of news of two types with examples. Our experiments indicated that GFS with just a single example effectively boosted the performance of all LLMs and made open-weight LLMs achieve or exceed the performance of humans and commercial LLMs. The code and data are available in our repository at https://github.com/lamps-lab/sanews
Longitudinal Assessment of Fetal Myocardial Performance Index in Normal Pregnancy Using Spectral Tissue Doppler
No full textObjective
Although spectral tissue Doppler imaging is recognized as the optimal method for assessing the fetal myocardial performance index (MPI), longitudinal reference ranges for fetal MPI measured using spectral tissue Doppler have not been established. Our objective was to use spectral tissue Doppler data to establish gestational-age-specific reference ranges from 12–33 weeks for left and right ventricular fetal MPI. Methods
This was a prospective longitudinal study of women aged 18–35 years, with a body mass index below 30 kg/m² and a singleton pregnancy conceived spontaneously. Fetal MPI measurements were obtained in the first, second and third trimesters and MPI was determined using spectral tissue Doppler imaging. A generalized additive model for location, scale and shape (GAMLSS) was used to explore the relationship between fetal MPI and gestational age. Model fit was assessed by checking the normality of estimated Z-scores across the fitted range and independency from gestational age. Results
Median fetal MPI was determined for the right and left ventricles at 12–13 weeks, 20–21 weeks and 32–33 weeks\u27 gestation in 90 fetuses. Using multilevel regression modeling, weekly reference ranges for each gestational age were created to provide a continuous characterization of normal fetal MPI assessed using spectral tissue Doppler throughout pregnancy. Percentile reference ranges (5th, 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th and 95th) for right and left ventricular fetal MPI were generated from these models, capturing normal variability across gestation. Conclusion
We have established gestational-age-specific reference ranges for left and right ventricular fetal MPI using spectral tissue Doppler imaging, thus providing clinicians with an important tool for the early detection of fetal cardiac dysfunction in high-risk pregnancies
A Multilevel Framework for the Promotion of Maternal Mental Health and Well-Being During the Perinatal Period
No full textBackground: Depression and anxiety are prevalent in the perinatal period and may contribute to adverse maternal and child health outcomes. A focus on multilevel protective factors may be effective in promoting well-being and increasing quality of life (QOL) in the perinatal period while simultaneously reducing or preventing depression and anxiety symptoms. We tested a conceptual model that posits specific personal, social, and community factors affecting depression, anxiety, and QOL among pregnant and postpartum individuals.
Methods: Four hundred and thirty-eight pregnant or postpartum individuals completed a 121-item cross-sectional survey composed of validated tools that assessed multilevel protective factors, health behaviors, and mental health outcomes. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was constructed to evaluate a 3-part conceptual model against measured indicators of well-being. A structural equation model (SEM) was then fit to test the pattern of associations between our latent structure and three end points: depression, anxiety, and QOL.
Results: The CFA fit the data well (comparative fit index [CFI] = 0.907, Tucker-Lewis index [TLI] = 0.876, root-mean-square error of approximation [RMSEA] = 0.092) supporting the proposed conceptual approach to measuring well-being. The SEM fit well (CFI = 0.964, TLI = 0.941, RMSEA = 0.059), and all three end points were predicted in the hypothesized direction. Social factors predicted reduced anxiety symptomatology, personal and community resources predicted reduced depressive symptomatology, and social resources predicted increased QOL. In addition, we found that collective community resources were associated with social and personal resources, and social resources directly affected personal resources, showing the benefit of multiple levels.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that both the collection of and interplay between certain personal, social, and community-level resources may prevent and protect against depression and anxiety and promote QOL. Our conceptual model provides a framework to inform future interventions and clinical practice to better assess and promote maternal well-being during the perinatal period
Percutaneous Closure of a Left Ventricular Pseudoaneurysm Using a Post-Infarct VSD Device Guided by Intracardiac Echocardiography
No full textLeft ventricular pseudoaneurysm (LVPA) is a rare, life-threatening complication that may arise after cardiac surgery, myocardial infarctions, or infective endocarditis. We present a case of a 55-year-old woman with complex surgical history and prior infective endocarditis who developed an incidental LVPA. Due to lack of surgical repair options, a percutaneous approach was pursued using a post-infarct ventricular septal defect device (PIVSD) under guidance of fluoroscopy and intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) guidance with successful exclusion of LVPA. This case highlights the utility of multimodal imaging in the percutaneous management of complex left ventricular lesions