26,976 research outputs found

    Non-Print Information Resources and The Preservation Approaches Recommendation in Tanzanian Academic Libraries

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     Background: Non-print information resources are increasingly becoming more important as vital learning materials in higher learning institutions. Academic libraries therefore, have to acquire, process, organize and preserve them for current and future use. Purpose: This paper aims to assess the factors affecting the non-print information resources and their recommended preservation approaches in academic libraries.  Method: The study adopted a convergent parallel mixed approach which collects and analyses data to produce integrated findings by using both qualitative and quantitative techniques in a single study. Data was collected by means of questionnaire and in-depth interview. Result: The study revealed that dust, loss of data on disc and hard disc, loss of data due to server failure, high heat, and excessive light, fading of disc surface, high humidity, fungus on disc surface, atmospheric pollutants and virus attack were factors affecting non-print information resources. It was also revealed that highly recommended preservation approaches were good cleanliness of library where information resources are kept, educating library users on how to handle and use information resources, migrating information resources from obsolete storage media to modern storage media, technology preservation and refreshing. Conclusion: The study concludes that library staff need to adopt recommended preservation approaches to safeguard the important information in academic libraries but also system librarians in academic libraries need to be employed to assist in trouble shooting issues.  Keywords: Non-Print Information Resources; Information Resources; Information Resources Preservation; Preservation Approaches; Academic Library   Abstrak  Latar Belakang: Sumber informasi non-cetak sekarang ini menjadi semakin penting sebagai bahan pembelajaran vital di perguruan tinggi. Oleh karena itu, perpustakaan akademik harus memperoleh, memproses, mengatur, dan melestarikannya untuk penggunaan saat ini dan masa depan. Tujuan: Makalah ini bertujuan untuk menilai faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi sumber informasi non-cetak dan pendekatan pelestarian yang direkomendasikan di perpustakaan akademik. Metode: Studi ini mengadopsi pendekatan campuran paralel konvergen yang mengumpulkan dan menganalisis data untuk menghasilkan temuan yang terintegrasi dengan menggunakan teknik kualitatif dan kuantitatif dalam satu studi. Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan kuesioner dan wawancara mendalam. Temuan: Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa debu, hilangnya data pada disk/hard disk, hilangnya data karena kegagalan server, panas yang tinggi, dan cahaya yang berlebihan, memudarnya permukaan disk, kelembaban tinggi, jamur pada permukaan disk, polutan atmosfer dan serangan virus adalah faktor yang mempengaruhi sumber informasi non-cetak. Diungkapkan juga bahwa pendekatan pelestarian yang sangat direkomendasikan adalah kebersihan perpustakaan tempat sumber informasi disimpan, mendidik pengguna perpustakaan tentang cara menangani dan menggunakan sumber informasi, migrasi sumber informasi dari media penyimpanan usang ke media penyimpanan modern, pelestarian teknologi dan penyegaran koleksi. Kesimpulan: Studi ini menyimpulkan bahwa staf perpustakaan perlu mengadopsi pendekatan pelestarian yang direkomendasikan untuk melindungi informasi penting di perpustakaan akademik, tetapi juga pustakawan di perpustakaan akademik perlu dioptimalkan untuk membantu memecahkan masalah yang ada.  Kata kunci: Sumber Informasi Non-Cetak; Sumber Daya Informasi; Pelestarian Sumber Daya Informasi; Pendekatan Pelestarian; Perpustakaan Akademik&nbsp

    Analyzing Tail Latency in Serverless Clouds with STeLLAR

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    The association between neurodegeneration and local complement activation in the thalamus to progressive multiple sclerosis outcome

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    The extent of grey matter demyelination and neurodegeneration in the progressive multiple sclerosis (PMS) brains at post‐mortem associates with more severe disease. Regional tissue atrophy, especially affecting the cortical and deep grey matter, including the thalamus, is prognostic for poor outcomes. Microglial and complement activation are important in the pathogenesis and contribute to damaging processes that underlie tissue atrophy in PMS. We investigated the extent of pathology and innate immune activation in the thalamus in comparison to cortical grey and white matter in blocks from 21 cases of PMS and 10 matched controls. Using a digital pathology workflow, we show that the thalamus is invariably affected by demyelination and had a far higher proportion of active inflammatory lesions than forebrain cortical tissue blocks from the same cases. Lesions were larger and more frequent in the medial nuclei near the ventricular margin, whilst neuronal loss was greatest in the lateral thalamic nuclei. The extent of thalamic neuron loss was not associated with thalamic demyelination but correlated with the burden of white matter pathology in other forebrain areas (Spearman r = 0.79, p < 0.0001). Only thalamic neuronal loss, and not that seen in other forebrain cortical areas, correlated with disease duration (Spearman r = −0.58, p = 0.009) and age of death (Spearman r = −0.47, p = 0.045). Immunoreactivity for the complement pattern recognition molecule C1q, and products of complement activation (C4d, Bb and C3b) were elevated in thalamic lesions with an active inflammatory pathology. Complement regulatory protein, C1 inhibitor, was unchanged in expression. We conclude that active inflammatory demyelination, neuronal loss and local complement synthesis and activation in the thalamus, are important to the pathological and clinical disease outcomes of PMS

    Unraveling the effect of sex on human genetic architecture

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    Sex is arguably the most important differentiating characteristic in most mammalian species, separating populations into different groups, with varying behaviors, morphologies, and physiologies based on their complement of sex chromosomes, amongst other factors. In humans, despite males and females sharing nearly identical genomes, there are differences between the sexes in complex traits and in the risk of a wide array of diseases. Sex provides the genome with a distinct hormonal milieu, differential gene expression, and environmental pressures arising from gender societal roles. This thus poses the possibility of observing gene by sex (GxS) interactions between the sexes that may contribute to some of the phenotypic differences observed. In recent years, there has been growing evidence of GxS, with common genetic variation presenting different effects on males and females. These studies have however been limited in regards to the number of traits studied and/or statistical power. Understanding sex differences in genetic architecture is of great importance as this could lead to improved understanding of potential differences in underlying biological pathways and disease etiology between the sexes and in turn help inform personalised treatments and precision medicine. In this thesis we provide insights into both the scope and mechanism of GxS across the genome of circa 450,000 individuals of European ancestry and 530 complex traits in the UK Biobank. We found small yet widespread differences in genetic architecture across traits through the calculation of sex-specific heritability, genetic correlations, and sex-stratified genome-wide association studies (GWAS). We further investigated whether sex-agnostic (non-stratified) efforts could potentially be missing information of interest, including sex-specific trait-relevant loci and increased phenotype prediction accuracies. Finally, we studied the potential functional role of sex differences in genetic architecture through sex biased expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) and gene-level analyses. Overall, this study marks a broad examination of the genetics of sex differences. Our findings parallel previous reports, suggesting the presence of sexual genetic heterogeneity across complex traits of generally modest magnitude. Furthermore, our results suggest the need to consider sex-stratified analyses in future studies in order to shed light into possible sex-specific molecular mechanisms

    The impact of intellectual disability and sport expertise on cognitive and executive functions.

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    Our aim was to identify the suitability of three assessment tools (i.e., Flanker test, Updating Word Span, and Color Trails Test) for future inclusion in the classification process of elite Paralympic athletes with intellectual disability and to assess the strength of the relation between Executive function (EF) and intelligence. Cognitive and EF assessments were performed on 59 participants, divided into four groups according to their cognitive level (with versus without intellectual disability) and sport expertise (athlete versus novice). Inhibition and working memory update skills were implicated in people with intellectual disability. For set-shifting, a more nuanced picture was observed. Strong associations between EF and intelligence was found in people with intellectual disability. Working memory updating and set-shifting are relevant EF skills to assess in the context of elite sport; however, culture-free alternatives for the Updating Word Span test are needed, and alternatives to the Color Trails Test, less reliant on literacy skills are required

    Predicting potential wildfire severity across Southern Europe with global data sources

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    .The large environmental and socioeconomic impacts of wildfires in Southern Europe require the development of efficient generalizable tools for fire danger analysis and proactive environmental management. With this premise, we aimed to study the influence of different environmental variables on burn severity, as well as to develop accurate and generalizable models to predict burn severity. To address these objectives, we selected 23 wildfires (131,490 ha) across Southern Europe. Using satellite imagery and geospatial data available at the planetary scale, we spatialized burn severity as well as 20 pre-burn environmental variables, which were grouped into climatic, topographic, fuel load-type, fuel load-moisture and fuel continuity predictors. We sampled all variables and divided the data into three independent datasets: a training dataset, used to perform univariant regression models, random forest (RF) models by groups of variables, and RF models including all predictors (full and parsimonious models); a second dataset to analyze interpolation capacity within the training wildfires; and a third dataset to study extrapolation capacity to independent wildfires. Results showed that all environmental variables determined burn severity, which increased towards the mildest climatic conditions, sloping terrain, high fuel loads, and coniferous vegetation. In general, the highest predictive and generalization capacities were found for fuel load proxies obtained though multispectral imagery, both in the individual analysis and by groups of variables. The full and parsimonious models outperformed all, the individual models, models by groups, and formerly developed predictive models of burn severity, as they were able to explain up to 95%, 59% and 25% of variance when applied to the training, interpolation and extrapolation datasets respectively. Our study is a benchmark for progress in the prediction of fire danger, provides operational tools for the identification of areas at risk, and sets the basis for the design of pre-burn management actions.S
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