156 research outputs found

    Analysis of the opinions and use of open access repositories by researchers in different disciplines; with specific focus on the development of a new institutional repository at Leeds Metropolitan University

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    Institutional repositories, which have been in existence since 2002, are open, web-based archives of research publications produced by members of a particular institution. Many UK Universities are now hosting or developing institutional repositories, believing that they will enhance the scholarly communication at the University and they will help to promote the institution. For IRs to become an accepted method of sharing information, a significant amount of work must be deposited in them, however to date researchers have shown little interest in depositing work in IRs. It has been suggested that differences between disciplines in terms of culture, funding, means of research and means of sharing information may account for the difference in uptake to IRs. I carried out an analysis of all the UK University IRs, and found that while there is a bias towards science/technology and medical research in the IRs compared with arts and humanities research, this corresponded to the bias in publishing output in these disciplines. Other studies have highlighted barriers that researchers perceive to placing their research in IRs. Leeds Metropolitan University is currently developing an IR and I undertook a questionnaire survey and follow-up interviews with Leeds Met research staff to compare their attitudes and behaviours towards depositing their work in IRs. I found that awareness of open access amongst research staff is quite high, with 66% having some knowledge of open access. Also, many researchers appear to understand the benefits offered by this alternative to traditional journal publishing. Concerns raised amongst the research staff included many of the same concerns as published in previous studies. I found little difference between disciplines and length-of-service of the researchers (although my survey numbers were low). The IR development team at Leeds Met should endeavour to address these concerns in order to achieve successful uptake of the new IR at the University. The success of the Leeds Met IR also depends to some extent on the self-archiving policies of publishers with which Leeds Met researchers have published their work. These self-archiving policies are not clear for many publishers, who may be re-considering their policies due to recent changes and may see the development of IRs as a threat to their business

    ‘The art of salvation is but the art of memory’ : soul-agency, remembrance and expression in Donne and Shakespeare

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    This thesis examines how the dislocation of old beliefs in post-Reformation England affected perceptions of the soul in the work of Donne and Shakespeare. The introduction, using Augustinian discourses on the tri-partite soul, explores how the soul is imagined in post-Reformation England. Current debates on interiority, the climate of anxiety that surrounds religious upheaval, historical readings of the composition of the soul and the problems of its actual representation on the page and stage are discussed. The patterning of Augustine‟s tri-partite model of Reason, Will and Memory is examined, and the regenerative power of concordant Memory that can bind together a harmonic trinity is offered as a solution to the fractured soul. The first part of the thesis concentrates on writings that represent Donne‟s anxieties over the fate of the soul as he contemplates conversion from Catholicism to the new religious order. Chapter One is an enquiry into his unpublished works from 1601 to 1611 and examines the idea of the wandering soul, from The Progresse of the Soule, to the Divine Poems and finally to the redeemed soul seen in the form of Elizabeth Drury in the Anniversaries. In this chapter, I argue that Donne is searching for an alternative Marian aesthetic as he leaves behind his Catholic past, a new image of divine intercession for the Protestant world that might offer him comfort and a route to salvation. Chapter Two explores his very public sermons after he enters the ministry until his death. Here, a pattern of redemption is argued through the salvic properties of the living Word of the sermon that is relayed through the performative power of the preacher. The preacher‟s working space and the power of the Word to viscerally transform the congregation are central here to the soul‟s salvation. The second part examines how Shakespeare explores the „journey‟ of the soul through a selection of his plays, but where the limits of genre impose restrictions on Shakespeare‟s development of an image of redemption. Chapter Three examines the wandering soul in The Merchant of Venice and Othello. Through the trope of marriage, the fate of the souls of Jessica and Othello are explored as they find themselves marginalized in an inhospitable Venice, while their pasts have been forgotten in the attempt to convert to Christianity. Chapter Four explores the use of the female character as an image of Memory that can generate hope, reading Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Cordelia in King Lear as “soul agents”, whose beneficence can bring about redemptive change. However, the thesis argues that the genre of tragedy examined here limits the soul agent. Chapter Five argues for an alternative genre that opens up the possibilities for the successful portrayal of the soul agent. In the romance plays, the representation of the soul can be seen working successfully to a redemptive conclusion. Romance dramas foreground their slippages in plot and take us into dreamscapes at the centre of which is an essential female influence. Marina in Pericles, Perdita in The Winter‟s Tale, Innogen in Cymbeline and Ariel/Miranda in The Tempest provide a link with Donne‟s presentation of the soul as female in the Anniversaries. Both Donne and Shakespeare suggest the idea of the female in literature as a redemptive figure, away from earlier discourses on the soul that finds itself at the mercy of epistemological wrangling. Donne and Shakespeare re-instate that sacredness and place it within art as an image of Memory, a vital component of Augustine‟s tri-partite soul, but also as an active and vibrant image of possibilit

    Readers’ attitudes to self-archiving in the UK

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    The online self-archiving by authors of their scholarly articles has been proposed as an alternative to author-pays open access publication, but has the potential to undermine journal publisher income if the ready availability of self-archived articles leads to a drop in subscriptions. This study investigated the awareness of self-archiving and use of self-archived articles in a survey of a mainly academic population including both authors and non-authors, and looks at their attitudes to self-archived papers and whether they view them as an authoritative alternative to subscription access. In total, 70% of respondents had heard of self-archiving, though only 15% knew a lot about it, and 71% had used self-archived papers. These proportions are higher than in previous studies, suggesting that awareness has grown. Most self-archived papers used came from websites rather than repositories, particularly among those whose awareness of self-archiving was low. Use of self-archived articles was greater amongst those who had published more papers and also depended strongly on subject field – use and awareness were both particularly low in the field of medicine. People who were more aware of self-archiving were less likely to view the publisher’s official version as the only authoritative version and more likely not to care about the online location of articles. Moreover, authors who had self-archived tended to archive the publisher’s official version regardless of whether they were permitted to. These results suggest that the awareness of self-archiving is currently mostly limited to academic authors and is unlikely to grow beyond this in the short term. However, in the long term, the combination of high rates of self-archiving of the publisher’s official version, coupled with the devaluation of the journal as the authoritative source of material together with increased convenience of access to self-archived material, could result in fewer people accessing articles through subscription-based methods

    Making Meaning Out of Canonical Texts in Freshman English

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    abstract: This study examines ninth graders’ negotiation of meaning with one canonical work, Romeo and Juliet. The study’s sample was 88% Latino at a Title I high school. The study adopts a sociocultural view of literacy and learning. I employed ethnographic methods (participant observation, data collection, interviews, and focus groups) to investigate the teacher’s instructional approaches and the literacy practices used while teaching the canonical work. With a focus on students’ interpretations, I examined what they said and wrote about Romeo and Juliet. One finding was that the teacher employed instructional approaches that facilitated literacy practices that allowed students to draw on their cultural backgrounds, personal lived experiences, and values as they engaged with Romeo and Juliet. As instructional approaches and literacy practices became routine, students formed a community of learners. Because the teacher allowed students to discuss their ideas before, during, and after reading, students were provided with multiple perspectives to think about as they read and negotiated meaning. A second finding was that students drew on their personal lived experiences, backgrounds, and values as they made sense and negotiated the meaning of Romeo and Juliet’s plot and characters. Although the text’s meaning was not always obvious to students, in their work they showed their growing awareness that multiple interpretations were welcomed and important in the teacher’s classroom. Through the unit, students came to recognize that their own and their peers’ understandings, negotiations, and interpretations of the canonical work were informed by a variety of complex factors. Students came to find relevance in the text’s themes and characters to their experiences as adolescents. The study’s findings point to the importance of allowing students to draw from their cultural backgrounds and experiences as they negotiate meaning with texts, specifically canonical ones, and to welcome and encourage multiple meanings in the English classroom.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Curriculum and Instruction 201

    Ethics of Open Access to Biomedical Research: Just a Special Case of Ethics of Open Access to Research

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    The ethical case for Open Access (OA) (free online access) to research findings is especially salient when it is public health that is being compromised by needless access restrictions. But the ethical imperative for OA is far more general: It applies to all scientific and scholarly research findings published in peer-reviewed journals. And peer-to-peer access is far more important than direct public access. Most research is funded to be conducted and published, by researchers, in order to be taken up, used, and built upon in further research and applications, again by researchers, for the benefit of the public that funded it -- not in order to generate revenue for the peer-reviewed journal publishing industry (nor even because there is a burning public desire to read [much of] it). Hence OA needs to be mandated for all research

    Light Intensity and High Intensity Interval Training Improve Cardiometabolic Health in Rats

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    Physical activity has the potential to reduce cardiometabolic risk factors but evaluation of different intensities of physical activity and the mechanisms behind their health effects still need to be fully established. This study examined the effects of sedentary behaviour, light-intensity training, and high-intensity interval training on biometric indices, glucose and lipid metabolism, inflammatory and oxidative stress markers, vascular and cardiac function in adult rats. Rats (12 week-old) were randomly assigned to one of four groups: control (CTL, no exercise), sedentary (SED, no exercise and housed in small cages to reduce activity), light-intensity trained (LIT, four 30 min exercise bouts/day at 8 m/min separated by 2-hr rest period, 5 days/wk) and high-intensity interval trained (HIIT, four 2.5 min work bouts/day at 50 m/min separated by 3-min rest period, 5days/wk). After 12 weeks of intervention, SED had greater visceral fat accumulation (pThe accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author

    Conference Institutional archives for research: experiences and projects in Open Access Istituto Superiore di Sanità Rome, 30 November - 1 December 2006

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    The Congress was organised into four sessions: 1) Open Access (OA) and authors: support from the international community; 2) OA in Italy: knowledge and tools to write and search; 3) institutional policies for OA; 4) opportunities and services to develop OA. It was aimed at achieving the following objectives: a) make authors of biomedical publications aware of the benefits of depositing research material in digital open archives and publishing in OA peer-reviewed journals; b) outline the impact of the OA publishing model on the assessment of research output; c) enhance the adoption of policies encouraging the OA paradigm; d) promote cooperation between research institutions in Italy and abroad to share resources and experiences on institutional repositories. A useful introductory bibliography on the OA publishing model in the biomedical field is included in the Appendix

    Multicenter, randomized study to optimize bowel for colon capsule endoscopy

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    AIM To assess the cleansing efficacy and safety of a new Colon capsule endoscopy (CCE) bowel preparation regimen. METHODS This was a multicenter, prospective, randomized, controlled study comparing two CCE regimens. Subjects were asymptomatic and average risk for colorectal cancer. The second generation CCE system (PillCam® COLON 2; Medtronic, Yoqneam, Israel) was utilized. Preparation regimens differed in the 1st and 2nd boosts with the Study regimen using oral sulfate solution (89 mL) with diatrizoate meglumine and diatrizoate sodium solution (“diatrizoate solution”) (boost 1 = 60 mL, boost 2 = 30 mL) and the Control regimen oral sulfate solution (89 mL) alone. The primary outcome was overall and segmental colon cleansing. Secondary outcomes included safety, polyp detection, colonic transit, CCE completion and capsule excretion = 12 h. RESULTS Both regimens had similar cleansing efficacy for the whole colon (Adequate: Study = 75.9%, Control = 77.3%; P = 0.88) and individual segments. In the Study group, CCE completion was superior (Study = 90.9%, Control = 76.9%; P = 0.048) and colonic transit was more often \u3c 40 min (Study = 21.8%, Control = 4%; P = 0.0073). More Study regimen subjects experienced adverse events (Study = 19.4%, Control = 3.4%; P = 0.0061), and this difference did not appear related to diatrizoate solution. Adverse events were primarily gastrointestinal in nature and no serious adverse events related either to the bowel preparation regimen or the capsule were observed. There was a trend toward higher polyp detection with the Study regimen, but this did not achieve statistical significance for any size category. Mean transit time through the entire gastrointestinal tract, from ingestion to excretion, was shorter with the Study regimen while mean colonic transit times were similar for both study groups. CONCLUSION A CCE bowel preparation regimen using oral sulfate solution and diatrizoate solution as a boost agent is effective, safe, and achieved superior CCE completion. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved
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