Digital curation and the cloud

Digital curation involves a wide range of activities, many of which could benefit from cloud deployment to a greater or lesser extent. These range from infrequent, resource-intensive tasks which benefit from the ability to rapidly provision resources to day-to-day collaborative activities which can be facilitated by networked cloud services. Associated benefits are offset by risks such as loss of data or service level, legal and governance incompatibilities and transfer bottlenecks. There is considerable variability across both risks and benefits according to the service and deployment models being adopted and the context in which activities are performed. Some risks, such as legal liabilities, are mitigated by the use of alternative, e.g., private cloud models, but this is typically at the expense of benefits such as resource elasticity and economies of scale. Infrastructure as a Service model may provide a basis on which more specialised software services may be provided. There is considerable work to be done in helping institutions understand the cloud and its associated costs, risks and benefits, and how these compare to their current working methods, in order that the most beneficial uses of cloud technologies may be identified. Specific proposals, echoing recent work coordinated by EPSRC and JISC are the development of advisory, costing and brokering services to facilitate appropriate cloud deployments, the exploration of opportunities for certifying or accrediting cloud preservation providers, and the targeted publicity of outputs from pilot studies to the full range of stakeholders within the curation lifecycle, including data creators and owners, repositories, institutional IT support professionals and senior manager

Impact of birth weight and gender on early postnatal hypothalamic energy balance regulatory gene expression in the young lamb

Peer reviewedPreprin

Monitoring and optimising outcomes of survivors of critical illness

Recovery after critical illness can be protracted and challenging. Compromise of physical, psychological, cognitive and social function is experienced by some patients and may persist for a number of years. Measurement of recovery outcomes at regular time points throughout the critical illness and recovery pathway is necessary to identify problems and guide selection of interventions to prevent, minimise or overcome that compromise. Optimisation of factors that enhance recovery, such as sleep, nutrition and memories of intensive care, will also assist with promotion of recovery.Effective assessment of recovery requires integration of assessment of outcomes into routine clinical practice by all members of the interdisciplinary team. There must be agreement of appropriate measures and measurement timeframes alongside relevant education and training to ensure optimal assessment and use of the information gained. Assessment outcomes need to be communicated to interdisciplinary team members across the critical illness and recovery trajectory. Adequate resourcing for both the assessment activities and subsequent care is essential to improve patient outcomes after critical illness

Evaluation of enzyme immunoassays in the diagnosis of camel (Camelus dromedarius) trypanosomiasis:a preliminary investigation

Three enzyme immunoassays were used for the serodiagnosis of Trypanosoma evansi in camels in the Sudan in order to evaluate their ability to discriminate between infected and non-infected animals. Two assays were used for the detection of trypanosomal antibodies, one using specific anti-camel IgG conjugate and another using a non-specific Protein A conjugate. The third assay detected the presence of trypanosomal antigens using anti-T. evansi antibodies in a double antibody sandwich assay. Inspection of the frequency distribution of assay results suggested that the ELISA for circulating trypanosomal antibodies using specific antisera and the ELISA for circulating antigens can distinguish between non-infected camels and infected camels exhibiting patent infections or not. The ELISA using Protein A conjugate to bind non-specifically to camel immunoglobulin did not appear to discriminate between infected and non-infected animals

The Neon Abundance of Galactic Wolf-Rayet Stars

The fast, dense winds which characterize Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars obscure their underlying cores, and complicate the verification of evolving core and nucleosynthesis models. Core evolution can be probed by measuring abundances of wind-borne nuclear processed elements, partially overcoming this limitation. Using ground-based mid-infrared spectroscopy and the 12.81um [NeII] emission line measured in four Galactic WR stars, we estimate neon abundances and compare to long-standing predictions from evolved-core models. For the WC star WR121, this abundance is found to be >~11x the cosmic value, in good agreement with predictions. For the three less-evolved WN stars, little neon enhancement above cosmic values is measured, as expected. We discuss the impact of clumping in WR winds on this measurement, and the promise of using metal abundance ratios to eliminate sensitivity to wind density and ionization structure.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; 9 pages, 2 color figures, 4 table

High Resolution Millimeter-Wave Mapping of Linearly Polarized Dust Emission: Magnetic Field Structure in Orion

We present 1.3 and 3.3 mm polarization maps of Orion-KL obtained with the BIMA array at approximately 4 arcsec resolution. Thermal emission from magnetically aligned dust grains produces the polarization. Along the Orion ``ridge'' the polarization position angle varies smoothly from about 10 degrees to 40 degrees, in agreement with previous lower resolution maps. In a small region south of the Orion ``hot core,'' however, the position angle changes by 90 degrees. This abrupt change in polarization direction is not necessarily the signpost of a twisted magnetic field. Rather, in this localized region processes other than the usual Davis-Greenstein mechanism might align the dust grains with their long axes parallel with the field, orthogonal to their normal orientation.Comment: AAS preprint:14 pages, 2 figures (3mm.eps and 1mm.eps); requires aaspp4.sty To be published in Astrophysical Journal Letter

Undernutrition and stage of gestation influence fetal adipose tissue gene expression

Funded by the Scottish Government’s Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS), including the Strategic Partnership for Animal Science Excellence (SPASE) and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (HD045784). None of the authors had any financial or personal conflicts of interest.Peer reviewedPostprin

Lagrangian Framework for Systems Composed of High-Loss and Lossless Components

Using a Lagrangian mechanics approach, we construct a framework to study the dissipative properties of systems composed of two components one of which is highly lossy and the other is lossless. We have shown in our previous work that for such a composite system the modes split into two distinct classes, high-loss and low-loss, according to their dissipative behavior. A principal result of this paper is that for any such dissipative Lagrangian system, with losses accounted by a Rayleigh dissipative function, a rather universal phenomenon occurs, namely, selective overdamping: The high-loss modes are all overdamped, i.e., non-oscillatory, as are an equal number of low-loss modes, but the rest of the low-loss modes remain oscillatory each with an extremely high quality factor that actually increases as the loss of the lossy component increases. We prove this result using a new time dynamical characterization of overdamping in terms of a virial theorem for dissipative systems and the breaking of an equipartition of energy.Comment: 53 pages, 1 figure; Revision of our original manuscript to incorporate suggestions from refere