The Impact of the Interim Leadership Experience on Library Middle Managers

Serving in an interim leadership role can be a great way to gain experience, but can also be stressful, negative, or traumatic for interim library leaders at the middle management level. In this exploratory mixed-methods study, researchers conducted a national survey and semistructured interviews of interim middle managers from public and academic libraries to explore the personal and professional impact of their interim role and recommend ways to improve the interim experience. The study revealed effects on individual well-being such as increased stress, but also increased confidence and positive career outcomes, particularly for librarians with a prior interest in leadership

Characterization of mRNA Polyadenylation in the Apicomplexa

Messenger RNA polyadenylation is a universal aspect of gene expression in eukaryotes. In well-established model organisms, this process is mediated by a conserved complex of 15–20 subunits. To better understand this process in apicomplexans, a group of unicellular parasites that causes serious disease in humans and livestock, a computational and high throughput sequencing study of the polyadenylation complex and poly(A) sites in several species was conducted. BLAST-based searches for orthologs of the human polyadenylation complex yielded clear matches to only two—poly(A) polymerase and CPSF73—of the 19 proteins used as queries in this analysis. As the human subunits that recognize the AAUAAA polyadenylation signal (PAS) were not immediately obvious, a computational analysis of sequences adjacent to experimentally-determined apicomplexan poly(A) sites was conducted. The results of this study showed that there exists in apicomplexans an A-rich region that corresponds in position to the AAUAAA PAS. The set of experimentally-determined sites in one species, Sarcocystis neurona, was further analyzed to evaluate the extent and significance of alternative poly(A) site choice in this organism. The results showed that almost 80% of S. neurona genes possess more than one poly(A) site, and that more than 780 sites showed differential usage in the two developmental stages–extracellular merozoites and intracellular schizonts–studied. These sites affected more than 450 genes, and included a disproportionate number of genes that encode membrane transporters and ribosomal proteins. Taken together, these results reveal that apicomplexan species seem to possess a poly(A) signal analogous to AAUAAA even though genes that may encode obvious counterparts of the AAUAAA-recognizing proteins are absent in these organisms. They also indicate that, as is the case in other eukaryotes, alternative polyadenylation is a widespread phenomenon in S. neurona that has the potential to impact growth and development

Noise Impacts from Professional Dog Grooming Forced-Air Dryers

This study was designed to measure the sound output of four commonly used brands of forced-air dryers used by dog groomers in the United States. Many dog groomers have questions about the effect of this exposure on their hearing, as well as on the hearing of the dogs that are being groomed. Readings taken from each dryer at 1 meter (the likely distance of the dryer from the groomer and the dog) showed average levels ranging from 105.5 to 108.3 dB SPL or 94.8 to 108.0 dBA. Using the 90 dBA criterion required by the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration, dog groomers/bathers are at risk if exposure to the lowest intensity dryer (94.8 dBA) exceeds 4 hours per day. If the more stringent 85 dBA criterion and 3 dB tradeoff is applied, less than one hour of exposure is permissible in an 8 hour day. Cautions are recommended for any persons exposed to noise from forced-air dryers

Band anticrossing in GaNxSb1–x

Fourier transform infrared absorption measurements are presented from the dilute nitride semiconductor GaNSb with nitrogen incorporations between 0.2% and 1.0%. The divergence of transitions from the valence band to E– and E+ can be seen with increasing nitrogen incorporation, consistent with theoretical predictions. The GaNSb band structure has been modeled using a five-band k·p Hamiltonian and a band anticrossing fitting has been obtained using a nitrogen level of 0.78 eV above the valence band maximum and a coupling parameter of 2.6 eV

Band gap reduction in GaNSb alloys due to the anion mismatch

The structural and optoelectronic properties in GaNxSb1–x alloys (0<=x<0.02) grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on both GaSb substrates and AlSb buffer layers on GaAs substrates are investigated. High-resolution x-ray diffraction (XRD) and reciprocal space mapping indicate that the GaNxSb1–x epilayers are of high crystalline quality and the alloy composition is found to be independent of substrate, for identical growth conditions. The band gap of the GaNSb alloys is found to decrease with increasing nitrogen content from absorption spectroscopy. Strain-induced band-gap shifts, Moss-Burstein effects, and band renormalization were ruled out by XRD and Hall measurements. The band-gap reduction is solely due to the substitution of dilute amounts of highly electronegative nitrogen for antimony, and is greater than observed in GaNAs with the same N content

Exercise training prevents skeletal muscle plasma membrane cholesterol accumulation, cortical actin filament loss, and insulin resistance in C57BL/6J mice fed a western‐style high‐fat diet

Insulin action and glucose disposal are enhanced by exercise, yet the mechanisms involved remain imperfectly understood. While the causes of skeletal muscle insulin resistance also remain poorly understood, new evidence suggest excess plasma membrane (PM) cholesterol may contribute by damaging the cortical filamentous actin (F‐actin) structure essential for GLUT4 glucose transporter redistribution to the PM upon insulin stimulation. Here, we investigated whether PM cholesterol toxicity was mitigated by exercise. Male C57BL/6J mice were placed on low‐fat (LF, 10% kCal) or high‐fat (HF, 45% kCal) diets for a total of 8 weeks. During the last 3 weeks of this LF/HF diet intervention, all mice were familiarized with a treadmill for 1 week and then either sham‐exercised (0 m/min, 10% grade, 50 min) or exercised (13.5 m/min, 10% grade, 50 min) daily for 2 weeks. HF‐feeding induced a significant gain in body mass by 3 weeks. Sham or chronic exercise did not affect food consumption, water intake, or body mass gain. Prior to sham and chronic exercise, “pre‐intervention” glucose tolerance tests were performed on all animals and demonstrated that HF‐fed mice were glucose intolerant. While sham exercise did not affect glucose tolerance in the LF or HF mice, exercised mice showed an improvement in glucose tolerance. Muscle from sham‐exercised HF‐fed mice showed a significant increase in PM cholesterol, loss of cortical F‐actin, and decrease in insulin‐stimulated glucose transport compared to sham‐exercised LF‐fed mice. These HF‐fed skeletal muscle membrane/cytoskeletal abnormalities and insulin resistance were improved in exercised mice. These data reveal a new therapeutic aspect of exercise being regulation of skeletal muscle PM cholesterol homeostasis. Further studies on this mechanism of insulin resistance and the benefits of exercise on its prevention are needed

Thorium Energy Futures

The potential for thorium as an alternative or supplement to uranium in fission power generation has long been recognised, and several reactors, of various types, have already operated using thorium-based fuels. Accelerator Driven Subcritical (ADS) systems have benefits and drawbacks when compared to conventional critical thorium reactors, for both solid and molten salt fuels. None of the four options – liquid or solid, with or without an accelerator – can yet be rated as better or worse than the other three, given today's knowledge. We outline the research that will be necessary to lead to an informed choice

An artificial neural network to discover hypervelocity stars: candidates in Gaia DR1/TGAS

The paucity of hypervelocity stars (HVSs) known to date has severely hampered their potential to investigate the stellar population of the Galactic Centre and the Galactic Potential. The first Gaia data release gives an opportunity to increase the current sample. The challenge is the disparity between the expected number of hypervelocity stars and that of bound background stars. We have applied a novel data mining algorithm based on machine learning techniques, an artificial neural network, to the Tycho-Gaia astrometric solution (TGAS) catalogue. With no pre-selection of data, we could exclude immediately $\sim 99 \%$ of the stars in the catalogue and find 80 candidates with more than $90\%$ predicted probability to be HVSs, based only on their position, proper motions, and parallax. We have cross-checked our findings with other spectroscopic surveys, determining radial velocities for 30 and spectroscopic distances for 5 candidates. In addition, follow-up observations have been carried out at the Isaac Newton Telescope for 22 stars, for which we obtained radial velocities and distance estimates. We discover 14 stars with a total velocity in the Galactic rest frame > 400 km/s, and 5 of these have a probability $>50\%$ of being unbound from the Milky Way. Tracing back their orbits in different Galactic potential models we find one possible unbound HVS with velocity $\sim$ 520 km/s, 5 bound HVSs, and, notably, 5 runaway stars with median velocity between 400 and 780 km/s. At the moment, uncertainties in the distance estimates and ages are too large to confirm the nature of our candidates by narrowing down their ejection location, and we wait for future Gaia releases to validate the quality of our sample. This test successfully demonstrates the feasibility of our new data mining routine.Comment: Published in MNRAS, 17 pages, 10 figure