Data policy and availability supporting global change research, development, and decision-making: An information perspective

An explosion of information has created a crisis for today's information age. It has to be determined how to use the best available information sources, tools, and technology. To do this it is necessary to have leadership at the interagency level to promote a coherent information policy. It is also important to find ways to educate the users of information regarding the tools available to them. Advances in technology resulted in efforts to shift from Disciplinary and Mission-oriented Systems to Decision Support Systems and Personalized Information Systems. One such effort is being made by the Interagency Working Group on Data Management for Global Change (IAWGDMGC). Five federal agencies - the Department of Commerce (DOC), Department of Energy (DOE), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Library of Medicine (NLM), and Department of Defense (DOD) - have an on-going cooperative information management group, CENDI (Commerce, Energy, NASA, NLM, and Defense Information), that is meeting the challenge of coordinating and integrating their information management systems. Although it is beginning to be technically feasible to have a system with text, bibliographic, and numeric data online for the user to manipulate at the user's own workstation, it will require national recognition that the resource investment in such a system is worthwhile, in order to promote its full development. It also requires close cooperation between the producers and users of the information - that is, the research and policy community, and the information community. National resources need to be mobilized in a coordinated manner to move people into the next generation of information support systems

Unification: An international aerospace information opportunity

Science and technology projects are becoming more and more international and interdisciplinary. Other parts of the world, notably Europe, are increasingly powerful players in the aerospace industry. This change has led to the development of various aerospace information initiatives in other countries. With scarce resources in all areas of government and industry, the NASA STI Program is reviewing its current acquisition and exchange practices and policies to factor in the changing requirements and new opportunities within the international community. Current NASA goals and activities are reviewed with a new view toward developing a scenario for establishing an international aerospace database, maintaining compatibility among national aerospace information systems, eliminating duplication of effort, and sharing resources through international cooperation wherever possible

Conservation and concealment in SpeciesBanking.com, USA: an analysis of neoliberal performance in the species offsetting industry

Market-based strategies are promoted as neoliberal governance solutions to environmental problems, from local to global scales. Tradable mitigation schemes are proliferating. These include species banking, which enables payments for the purchase of species credits awarded to conserved areas to offset development impacts on protected species elsewhere. An analysis of species banks in the USA through a survey of data from the website www.SpeciesBanking.com (established as a ‘clearing house’ for species banking information) was complemented by questionnaire material from USA bank managers. The number of USA species banks has increased rapidly, bank area ownership and management is consolidated in a small number of organizations, and public information on species credit price is limited. In interrogating the case material, the roles of specific economic policies associated with neoliberalism are considered, focusing on the extension of privatization, de- and re-regulation and marketization into the arena of environmental conservation, and commodification processes as manifested in species banking. Problematic ecological and distributive ‘concealments’ in species banking include the ‘development-led’ nature of conservation banking, tendencies towards net biodiversity loss, and an emphasis on supporting conservation-related wealth accumulation by larger landowners and investors

Electronic Collection Management and Electronic Information Services

This post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of the article submitted to IUPUI Scholar Works as part of the OASIS Project. Article reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Permission granted through posted policies on copyright owner’s website or through direct contact with copyright owner.As the life cycle of information products has become increasingly digital from “cradle to grave”, the nature of electronic information management has dramatically changed. These changes have brought new strategies and methods as well as new issues and challenges. At the bottom line the services are increasingly delivered to a desktop from distributed publishers or information providers. Information organizations act either as primary information providers or as brokers between the user and the primary service provider. This paper covers developments in the factors and strategies affecting collection management and access. It discusses major trends in electronic user services including electronic information delivery, information discovery and electronic reference. Finally, it addresses the challenges in user and personnel education in response to this electronic environment and an increasingly information literate user population

Do Situational Differences Exist Between the Fatal Shooting of Armed versus Unarmed Persons by Law Enforcement Officers?

In recent years, significant attention has been drawn to incidents of law enforcement’s use of force, especially when lethal. The lethal shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson police in August of 2014 brought new members and new energy to the Black Lives Matter movement, and the death of unarmed Eric Garner in July of the same year emphasized the occurrence of lethal use of force on unarmed suspects. In 2015, The Guardian and The Washington Post began recording cases of officer-involved shootings after a national realization that no consistent record was being kept by the U.S. government. Up until the present, research has been largely laboratory based and focused on person-specific variables. Situational variables have the potential to open a previously untapped understanding of these situations, hopefully with which positive change can be advanced. Focusing on the 963 cases of officer-involved shootings in 2016, data were gathered for time of incident, numbers of officer and non-officers present, and warrant status of the deceased. Utilizing this data and that of The Washington Post’s database, the present study compared cases of officer-involved lethal shootings of armed and unarmed individuals. The present study found that armed deceased were older than those unarmed and more likely to have a warrant, and these armed cases generally involved a higher number of officers and non-officers present at the time of shooting. The compelling implications of these conclusions and their potential for reducing the number of officer involved lethal shootings, armed or unarmed, are discussed

Learning to be Human Together

This project is made possible with funding by the Government of Ontario and through eCampusOntario’s support of the Virtual Learning Strategy.I. Come On InII. The Modules (1-4)III. OutroIV. Some Things We Picked Up & Take EverythingThis resource explores what humanizing teaching and learning means: to acknowledge that our relationships are foundational to the work that we do. It means to make learning inclusive with connection, access, and meaning-making at its core. When you have something to say that you hope can empower people and encourage inclusion you yell it from the rooftops and in as many formats as possible. To that end, you will find the materials of this project in a number of formats — to meet you where you are and how YOU choose to interact with it. This is just the beginning of what we hope will be a deeply humanized experience. This material is not a book, nor a guide, nor a checklist–it’s an engagement with complex issues, with social entanglements, and with ways of doing (and not doing) things. This work also foregrounds the importance of twelve core super themes, such as trust, vulnerability, re-framing failure, and friction. These super themes are not discrete units or siloed entities, rather they are multi-layered ideas that intersect and weave together across the humanizing learning spectrum. Module 1: Unlearning & Unsettling. How do we know what we know and what is our educational value system? To move forward, we must interrogate our teaching and learning practices - the work of unlearning and unsettling. This module explores how the process is more important than the outcome, and highlights the importance of moving slowly, giving ourselves time to think, process, and reflect. Module 2: Students as Agents of the own Diverse Destiny. This module explores the importance and role of vulnerability and failure in humanizing learning. It emphasizes that we are all learning and explores how, since education is relational, power is especially present. Module 3: Co-Creating Inclusive Communities. This module acknowledges that diversity is our greatest asset, with inclusion being our most important challenge. It explores community guidelines, participation standards, ethics, social justice, co-design and co-creation, and highlights how these concepts can fundamentally challenge and disrupt power. Module 4: Sustaining Change. This module acknowledges that change is hard. How can we sustain change, complexity, and care in a system that was not designed for what our society demands of it? How do we foreground care and frame it as a reciprocal process? This module explores this apparent friction and highlights steps we can take to make this work both foundational and sustainable. This resource also includes an exploration of the co-design experience - the process of creating and nurturing a community that collectively did this work. Coming out the other side of this work are a group of people who came together to share our love for learning and our passion for education. We hope you find something here that changes even one small aspect of how you move through the world

Can an evidence-based guideline reminder card improve asthma management in the emergency department?

SummaryObjectiveAsthma is the most common chronic disease in children. Previous studies described significant variations in acute asthma management in children. This study was conducted to examine whether asthma management in the pediatric emergency department (ED) was improved through the use of an evidence-based acute asthma care guideline reminder card.MethodsThe Pediatric Acute Asthma Management Guideline (PAMG) was introduced to the ED of a pediatric tertiary care hospital in Ontario, Canada. Medical charts of 278 retrospective ED visits (January–December 2002) and 154 prospective visits (July 2003–June 2004) were reviewed to assess changes in acute asthma management such as medication treatment, asthma education, and discharge planning. Logistic and linear regressions were used to determine the effect of PAMG on asthma management in the ED. The propensity score method was used to adjust for confounding.ResultsDuring the implementation of PAMG, patients who visited the ED were more likely to receive oral corticosteroids (Adjusted Odds Ratio [AOR] = 2.26, 95% CI: 1.63–3.14, p < 0.0001) and oxygen saturation reassessment before ED discharge (AOR = 2.02, 95% CI: 1.45–2.82, p < 0.0001). They also received 0.23 (95% CI: 0.03–0.44, p = 0.0283) more doses of bronchodilator in the first hour of ED stay. Improvements in asthma education and discharge planning were noted, but the changes were not statistically significant.ConclusionsAfter the implementation of an evidence-based guideline reminder card, medication treatment for acute asthma in the ED was significantly improved; however, asthma education and discharge planning remained unchanged. Future efforts on promoting guideline-based practice in the ED should focus on these components

GDI as an alternative guiding interaction style for occasional users.

Política de acceso abierto tomada de: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/policies/book-policiesIt is usually taken for granted that Direct Manipulation is the best interaction style for inexperienced or non-expert users; moreover, this style of interaction is generally considered the best for almost every situation and user. The recent shifts in technology that we all are currently experiencing have given rise to a great deal of new kinds of users performing specific tasks in a variety of scenarios. In this paper, we focus on users who access a system occasionally, infrequently, or in an unplanned way; i.e., users who do not want or cannot afford a learning curve. We show that for them, Direct Manipulation is not always the most suitable style of interaction. We assess the advantages of guiding this kind of users, in particular through the guided interaction frame- work known as Goal Driven Interaction. GDI can be viewed as a superset of wizards providing support far beyond a few steps through dialogs. Indeed, GDI is an interaction style with characteristics of its own. We report a complete user test that backs up previous hypotheses. The analysis of empirical data proves that GDI is more time-efficient than DM, requiring fewer moderator assistances for the users. Post-test questionnaires confirmed that participants had a strong preference for GDI

A communal catalogue reveals Earth’s multiscale microbial diversity

Our growing awareness of the microbial world’s importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about microbial life on Earth. Here we present a meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project. Coordinated protocols and new analytical methods, particularly the use of exact sequences instead of clustered operational taxonomic units, enable bacterial and archaeal ribosomal RNA gene sequences to be followed across multiple studies and allow us to explore patterns of diversity at an unprecedented scale. The result is both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth’s microbial diversity