Libraries and the University Research Enterprise: An International Perspective

Research Information Management (RIM) is the aggregation, curation, and utilization of information about research. It is emerging as a part of scholarly communications practice in many university libraries and is a service that is typically provided in collaboration with a university’s research enterprise. RIM may interoperate with and support research repositories, researcher profiles, awards management workflows, internal reports, and external assessment. Universities have diverse goals for implementing RIM, and case studies from the US and Australia will be demonstrated in this talk.Research university libraries are increasingly involved in RIM activities because of the expertise and value that library professionals provide to manage information relating to publications, data, persistent identifiers and so forth. Library expertise adds value in terms of connecting research information across a wide range of library-managed information sources and systems which can assist and enhance assessment activities, grant management, strategic collaborations, teaching and research planning, commercialisation and other activities.Librarians provide knowledge and expertise which are essential for connecting up relevant applications, information and metadata within RIM systems. They provide knowledge and expertise to visualise, interpret, collect and highlight relationships between data elements in order to demonstrate and define impact and reach of institutional research collaborations and outputs. In this presentation we will share how the libraries at La Trobe and Syracuse Universities are partnering with other campus stakeholders to achieve these outcomes.This presentation is an outcome of collaborative research by librarians practicing on three continents through the OCLC Research Library Partnership, and is part of a growing body of RIM research to support libraries, researchers, and institutions

Vortex methods for separated flows

The numerical solution of the Euler or Navier-Stokes equations by Lagrangian vortex methods is discussed. The mathematical background is presented in an elementary fashion and includes the relationship with traditional point-vortex studies, the convergence to smooth solutions of the Euler equations, and the essential differences between two- and three-dimensional cases. The difficulties in extending the method to viscous or compressible flows are explained. The overlap with the excellent review articles available is kept to a minimum and more emphasis is placed on the area of expertise, namely two-dimensional flows around bluff bodies. When solid walls are present, complete mathematical models are not available and a more heuristic attitude must be adopted. The imposition of inviscid and viscous boundary conditions without conformal mappings or image vortices and the creation of vorticity along solid walls are examined in detail. Methods for boundary-layer treatment and the question of the Kutta condition are discussed. Practical aspects and tips helpful in creating a method that really works are explained. The topics include the robustness of the method and the assessment of accuracy, vortex-core profiles, timemarching schemes, numerical dissipation, and efficient programming. Calculations of flows past streamlined or bluff bodies are used as examples when appropriate

SATR-DL: Improving Surgical Skill Assessment and Task Recognition in Robot-assisted Surgery with Deep Neural Networks

Purpose: This paper focuses on an automated analysis of surgical motion profiles for objective skill assessment and task recognition in robot-assisted surgery. Existing techniques heavily rely on conventional statistic measures or shallow modelings based on hand-engineered features and gesture segmentation. Such developments require significant expert knowledge, are prone to errors, and are less efficient in online adaptive training systems. Methods: In this work, we present an efficient analytic framework with a parallel deep learning architecture, SATR-DL, to assess trainee expertise and recognize surgical training activity. Through an end-to-end learning technique, abstract information of spatial representations and temporal dynamics is jointly obtained directly from raw motion sequences. Results: By leveraging a shared high-level representation learning, the resulting model is successful in the recognition of trainee skills and surgical tasks, suturing, needle-passing, and knot-tying. Meanwhile, we explore the use of ensemble in classification at the trial level, where the SATR-DL outperforms state-of-the-art performance by achieving accuracies of 0.960 and 1.000 in skill assessment and task recognition, respectively. Conclusion: This study highlights the potential of SATR-DL to provide improvements for an efficient data-driven assessment in intelligent robotic surgery

The Effect of Security Education and Expertise on Security Assessments: the Case of Software Vulnerabilities

In spite of the growing importance of software security and the industry demand for more cyber security expertise in the workforce, the effect of security education and experience on the ability to assess complex software security problems has only been recently investigated. As proxy for the full range of software security skills, we considered the problem of assessing the severity of software vulnerabilities by means of a structured analysis methodology widely used in industry (i.e. the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (\CVSS) v3), and designed a study to compare how accurately individuals with background in information technology but different professional experience and education in cyber security are able to assess the severity of software vulnerabilities. Our results provide some structural insights into the complex relationship between education or experience of assessors and the quality of their assessments. In particular we find that individual characteristics matter more than professional experience or formal education; apparently it is the \emph{combination} of skills that one owns (including the actual knowledge of the system under study), rather than the specialization or the years of experience, to influence more the assessment quality. Similarly, we find that the overall advantage given by professional expertise significantly depends on the composition of the individual security skills as well as on the available information.Comment: Presented at the Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS 2018), Innsbruck, Austria, June 201

Role Profiles of HRD Practitioners in the Netherlands

This study of HRD practitioners and experts in the Netherlands was executed in 1993 and based on an earlier US role profile study. Two types of profiles were identified for eleven different roles that an HRD practitioner might perform within her or his job. Both profiles consist of core outputs of the different roles and the core competencies required for achievement of the outputs. Comparisons were drawn between current and future profiles and between the results of the expert study and the outcomes of the US study. The American role profiles appeared to be largely valid for the Dutch context

Stages of change profiles of offenders : exploring offenders' motivation to work on their offending problems : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Clinical Psychology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Research has highlighted the importance of the stages of change (SoC) model (Prochaska, DiClemente, & Norcross, 1992) in assessing offenders’ motivation to work on their offending problems and as a guiding framework for selecting interventions. This thesis investigated the stages of change profiles in a group of general male offenders (N = 481) before and after a Short Motivational Programme (SMP), which is a combination of motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioural material. For the first aim, distinct homogenous stage profiles that reflected the stages of change were generated by subjecting offenders’ responses on the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale (URICA; McConnaughy, DiClemente, Prochaska, & Velicer, 1989; McConnaughy, Prochaska, & Velicer, 1983) to hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis. At pre-SMP, the Ambivalent, Non-Reflective Action, Precontemplation, Preparticipation and Participation profiles were generated. At post-SMP, the same profiles were generated with the exception of the Non-Reflective Action profile. These stage profiles were consistent with profiles elicited in previous studies, and mapped well onto the SoC model. The majority of offenders were in the precontemplation stage (represented by the Ambivalent, Non-Reflective Action and Precontemplation profiles), whereas a smaller proportion were in the preparation (represented by the Preparticipation profile) and action stages (represented by the Participation profile). For the second aim, stage profiles obtained at pre- and post-SMP were then used to investigate stage movement following the SMP, by constructing a stage-transition matrix. There was evidence for offenders with different stage profiles showing different responses to the SMP, whereby a comparatively larger proportion of offenders with the Non-Reflective Action, Preparticipation and Participation profiles appeared to continue working on their offending problems or progressed to a more highly-motivated stage, compared to offenders with the Ambivalent and Precontemplation profiles. These findings indicated that there is a need for a more flexible approach to motivational interviewing to more effectively facilitate offenders’ motivation to work on their offending problems. Men with the Ambivalent and Precontemplation profiles may require further help to resolve their ambivalence towards changing, before cognitive behavioural content is introduced. For the third aim, stage profiles at pre- and post-SMP, and stage movements were examined as predictors of recidivism in three separate logistic regression analyses, controlling for salient demographic and risk variables. Men with profiles representing the precontemplation stage were less likely to reoffend compared to men with the Preparticipation profile. This study also found that men who remained in the precontemplation stage were less likely to reoffend than those who remained in the preparation and action stages. These results suggested that men with the Preparticipation profile (which represents the preparation stage) may still be experiencing some ambivalence towards changing their behaviour, thus, impacting on their readiness to change their offending behaviour. It also raised the question on whether men with the Participation profile (which represents the action stage) may be more externally motivated to change their behaviour resulting in less lasting change upon the completion of their sentences. These findings contributed to a more in-depth understanding of offenders’ stages of change, and demonstrated that these stages have important clinical implications in guiding assessment of offenders’ motivation to work on their offending problems, and tailoring rehabilitation programmes to increase treatment responsivity and improve outcomes

CGIAR Excellence in Breeding Platform - Plan of Work and Budget 2020

At the end of 2019, all CGIAR centers had submitted improvement plans based on an EiB template and in close collaboration with EiB staff while – in a parallel process with breeding programs, funders and private sector representatives – a vision for breeding program modernization was developed and presented to CGIAR breeding leadership at the EiB Annual Meeting. This vision represents an evolution of EiB in the context of the Crops to End Hunger Initiative (CtEH) beyond the initial scope of providing tools, services and expert advice, and serves as a guide for Center leadership to drive changes with EiB support. In addition, EiB has taken the role of managing and disbursing funding, made available by Funders via CtEH to modernize breeding and enable CGIAR breeding programs to implement the vision provided by EiB