101 research outputs found
FUNCTIONAL BIOLOGICAL SPECTROSCOPY AND MULTIPHOTON IMAGING USING ENDOGENOUS OPTICAL CONTRAST
No full textRights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Downloaded 17-May-2016 16:44:2
Dataset: Two-dimensional wavefront characterization of adaptable corrective optics and Kirkpatrick–Baez mirror system using ptychography
No full textThe ptychography datasets and processed wavefront data in support of the publication "Two-dimensional wavefront characterization of adaptable corrective optics and Kirkpatrick–Baez mirror system using ptychography". File are in the HDF format and contain a number of datasets detailed below. If you require more information, please contact the corresponding author of the publication or [email protected]
Understanding Plain English summaries. A comparison of two approaches to improve the quality of Plain English summaries in research reports
No full textPlain English summary There is a need for the authors of research reports to be able to communicate their work clearly and effectively to readers who are not familiar with the research area. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), along with a number of other funding bodies and journals, require researchers to write short lay summaries, often termed plain English summaries (PESs), to make research accessible to the general public. Because many researchers write using technical, specialised language, particularly in scientific reports, writing PESs can be challenging. In this study we looked at how to improve the quality of PESs. We took PESs which had been submitted to the NIHR Journals Library and asked authors to rewrite them using new guidance. We also asked an independent medical writer to edit the summaries. We measured the quality of these three versions (original summary, rewritten summary and edited summary) in two ways. First, we asked a group of people who were not specialists in the subject area to read and rate how easy the summaries were to understand. Secondly, we used a well-known measure called the Flesch reading ease score to assess how easy the PESs were to read. We found that there was no difference in how easy people found the summaries to understand across the three versions. However, the PESs that were rewritten by the authors and that were edited by the independent medical writer were both easier to read than the originals. This shows that PESs can be improved and for organisations who feel that employing an independent writer to edit summaries, providing clear, practical guidance to authors may be a cost-effective alternative. Abstract Background Plain English summaries (PES) or lay summaries are often included as part of research reports and journal articles. These summaries are vital to ensure that research findings are accessible and available to non-specialist audiences, for example patients and members of the public. Writing a PES requires the adoption of a different style than is generally used in a traditional scientific report, and researchers can find this challenging. This study explored two possible ways to improve the quality of PESs in the NIHR Journals Library: 1) Providing enhanced guidance to authors and asking them to rewrite the PES and 2) Employing an independent medical writer to edit the PES. Methods We compared the three versions of the PES (original, author rewritten and independent writer edited) to assess 1) how easy they were to understand and 2) how easy they were to read. In order to establish how easy PESs were to understand, a group of 60 public reviewers read a set of summaries and rated them on a four point scale from “Did not understand” to “Understood all”. The Flesch reading ease score was used to measure how easy the summaries were to read. Results Results indicated no significant difference across the three versions of the PES in terms of ease of understanding. However, both the author rewritten and independent writer edited versions were significantly easier to read than the original. There was no significant difference in ease of reading between these two versions. Conclusion These findings suggest that employing independent medical writers to edit PESs and providing clear, practical guidance to authors are two ways in which the readability of PESs could be improved. Results have implications for journal editors and publishers seeking to enhance accessibility and availability of research findings
Are Ghana's roads paying their way? Assessing road use cost and user charges in Ghana
No full textThe author studied how much road damage contributes to road use costs in Ghana and how the marginal social costs should be recovered. This required understanding the road deterioration process better and analyzing the implications for vehicle operating costs and road user charges. The most important thing learned is that studies of road-user costs are feasible in reputedly data-poor countries. The author found that to bridge the gap between road-user costs and charges, the annual fee for heavy trucks should be raised tenfold. Fuel taxes alone are not adequate to distinguish fully the large difference in road damage costs incurred by heavy trucks and private cars. The taxing instrument most deficient in Ghana is the annual licensing fee. Not only should licensing fees for heavy trucks be ten times higher than they are now, but exemptions from the licensing fee should be canceled and registration rules strictly enforced. Even then, charges on heavy vehicles will not cover costs unless current legal limits of axle loading are obeyed. A more efficient means of reducing the damaging effects of heavy vehicles lies in structuring the annual fees to reflect how much more damaging two-axle heavy vehicles are than multiaxle vehicles. The issue of redistribution of costs and fees is of secondary importance in Ghana because of low fuel consumption, low level of fuel taxes, and the fact that expenditures on fuels are proportionately the same for the poor and the nonpoor.Roads&Highways,Airports and Air Services,Transport and Environment,Urban Transport,Public Sector Economics&Finance
Iowa History and Culture : A Bibliography of Materials Published Between 1952 and 1986, 1989
No full textThis bibliography was compiled by two reference librarians, Patricia Dawson and David Hudson with the goal of making it easier of tracking down material on Iowa history and culture. This supplements the Iowa History Reference Guide published in 1952 by William Petersen
Recall this Book 30: Nir Eyal on (the Deontology of) "Challenge Testing" a Covid Vaccine
No full textOn April 27, David D. Kirkpatrick reported in the N. Y. Times that Oxford's Jenner Center is close to starting human trials on a potential Covid-19 vaccine. According to Kirkpatrick, "ethics rules, as a general principle, forbid seeking to infect human test participants with a serious disease. That means the only way to prove that a vaccine works is to inoculate people in a place where the virus spreading naturally around them." It ain't necessarily so, says Nir Eyal, Henry Rutgers Professor of Ethics and Director of Center for Population-Level Bioethics, Rutgers University. Eyal is lead author (along with Harvard's Marc Lipsitch and Peter Smith) of a striking March article in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, Human Challenge Studies to Accelerate Coronavirus Vaccine Licensure. A recent interview with Nir in Nature has a more revealing title: "Should scientists infect healthy people with the coronavirus to test vaccines?" So, John sat down with Nir to discuss the idea of deliberately exposing healthy young volunteers to corona virus in order to accelerate the efficacy phase of vaccine testing. Prior to this pandemic, many felt challenge testing with a deadly disease was beyond the ethical pale. Eyal et. al propose that despite its checkered history (think coerced deadly medical procedures), there is an interesting philosophical case to be made in its favor
Clearfelling versus selective logging in uneven-aged Eucalypt forest
No full textUneven-aged eucalypt forests used for pulpwood extraction are generally clearfelled. This method is not necessary to induce regeneration. Clearfelling may be less expensive in the short term, but will result in a medium-term loss of sawlog, may be unsuited to extreme sites, may not be a more productive system than selection, and is likely to have more severe edaphic, aesthetic and biotic impact than selection. There may be a greater potential loss of productivity to wild fire with clearfelling than with selective systems. -from Author
Fatty acid desaturase 1 knockout mice are lean with improved glycemic control and decreased development of atheromatous plaque
No full textDavid R Powell, Jason P Gay, Melinda Smith, Nathaniel Wilganowski, Angela Harris, Autumn Holland, Maricela Reyes, Laura Kirkham, Laura L Kirkpatrick, Brian Zambrowicz, Gwenn Hansen, Kenneth A Platt, Isaac van Sligtenhorst, Zhi-Ming Ding, Urvi Desai Metabolism Research, Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, Inc., The Woodlands, TX, USA Abstract: Delta-5 desaturase (D5D) and delta-6 desaturase (D6D), encoded by fatty acid desaturase 1 (FADS1) and FADS2 genes, respectively, are enzymes in the synthetic pathways for w3, w6, and w9 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). Although PUFAs appear to be involved in mammalian metabolic pathways, the physiologic effect of isolated D5D deficiency on these pathways is unclear. After generating >4,650 knockouts (KOs) of independent mouse genes and analyzing them in our high-throughput phenotypic screen, we found that Fads1 KO mice were among the leanest of 3,651 chow-fed KO lines analyzed for body composition and were among the most glucose tolerant of 2,489 high-fat-diet-fed KO lines analyzed by oral glucose tolerance test. In confirmatory studies, chow- or high-fat-diet-fed Fads1 KO mice were leaner than wild-type (WT) littermates; when data from multiple cohorts of adult mice were combined, body fat was 38% and 31% lower in Fads1 male and female KO mice, respectively. Fads1 KO mice also had lower glucose and insulin excursions during oral glucose tolerance tests along with lower fasting glucose, insulin, triglyceride, and total cholesterol levels. In additional studies using a vascular injury model, Fads1 KO mice had significantly decreased femoral artery intima/media ratios consistent with a decreased inflammatory response in their arterial wall. Based on this result, we bred Fads1 KO and WT mice onto an ApoE KO background and fed them a Western diet for 14 weeks; in this atherogenic environment, aortic trees of Fads1 KO mice had 40% less atheromatous plaque compared to WT littermates. Importantly, PUFA levels measured in brain and liver phospholipid fractions of Fads1 KO mice were consistent with decreased D5D activity and normal D6D activity. The beneficial metabolic phenotype demonstrated in Fads1 KO mice suggests that selective D5D inhibitors may be useful in the treatment of human obesity, diabetes, and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Keywords: delta-5 desaturase, delta-6 desaturase, obesity, diabetes, atherosclerosi
Improving the American Juror
No full textabstract: The jury is a perfect example of American democracy in action. People convicted of crimes are put before a randomly-selected jury of their peers. This jury consists of people with a variety of backgrounds and experiences without any sort of specialized training. Ideally, this jury is representative of the population and does not have any biases towards the victim or the defendant. They view all evidence, hear all facts, and ultimately decide on a verdict. However, this system does not always create accurate outcomes. Often times and for a number of reasons, jurors are distracted in the courtroom. This can lead to incorrect verdicts, meaning that either guilty people walk free or innocent people are incarcerated. This paper will explore the idea of the distracted juror and ways to minimize these distractions so that the most accurate decision can be made during a trial. It will first examine the statistics behind jury inaccuracies as well as how other countries conduct their jury trials. It will then briefly explore grand juries and their differences between trial juries. This paper will analyze data from a survey conducted at the beginning of the project. It will then provide analyses of some possible reforms. This paper will conclude with how this research could be pursued further, why it should be pursued further, and how jury trials could look in the future
Privatization and foreign investment in the developing world, 1988-92
No full textForeign direct investment in the developing world has grown rapidly in recent years, making it one of the most important sources of financing to developing countries. The author presents a database on about 1,100 global privatization transactions from 1988 through 1992. Between 1988 and 1992, developing country governments earned almost US$62 billion in revenues from the sale of state-owned assets. About a third of those revenues came from foreign sources. Privatization in Latin America represents about 66 percent of privatization in the developing world. Privatization in Europe, including Eastern Europe, accounts for 17 percent, and privatization in East Asia, 13 percent. The heaviest foreign participation is in Eastern Europe, primarily for lack of domestic financing. Foreign investors'general participation in privatization programs was strong, providing developing countries with substantial amounts offoreign exchange. The relative size of the privatization program and the degree of openness to foreigners are important determinants of foreign direct investment. Each dollar in privatization revenue generates an additional 35 cents in new foreign direct investment inflows, and a 1 percent increase in foreign participation adds another 50 cents. In addition to the direct inflow of funds through the sale of assets, many developing countries also increasingly attracted foreign investment outside of their privatization programs. Privatization of infrastructure and the financial sector especially seem to have sent important signals to foreign investors, indicating an improved economic environment and possibly the eventual elimination of bottlenecks. Improved expectations about the profitability of investment projects render these countries more attractive to foreign investors.Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Environmental Economics&Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research
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