Wicca, witchcraft and the Goddess revival: An examination of the growth of Wicca in post-war America.

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WikiLiteracy

In January 2019 the University of Derby delivered its first module entirely dedicated to and structured around editing and writing articles for Wikipedia. The course focused on using Wikipedia as a means to improve students’ skills in writing for public consumption, in addition to enhancing their digital and collaborative skills. Students contributed to 118 articles across a range of topics, which were viewed over 11.2 million times, providing them with a public platform no university assignment could match, and introduced them to the challenges of interaction and engagement in a global editing community. Students’ confidence in their digital capabilities was assessed at the start and end of the module and showed a clear increase in confidence across all categories

So you didn't get your Hogwarts letter: engaging muggles in the library experience

The poster details the stages of the library's ongoing audio tour projects using the Aurasma augmented reality app.N/

Dissertation Deep Dive: Taking the Plunge to Support Graduate Students

This paper will explicate the process and lessons learned of creating a week-long research and writing graduate-student “Dissertation Deep Dive” (DDD) program, and how collaboration across university units was integral to its success. It will also walk the audience through the thought process and steps taken to achieve this week-long research- and writing-intensive program, as well as challenges, opportunities and lessons learned

WikiLiteracy: enhancing students' digital literacy with Wikipedia

In January 2019 the University of Derby delivered its first module entirely dedicated to and structured around editing and writing articles for Wikipedia. The course focused on using Wikipedia as a means to improve students’ skills in writing for public consumption, in addition to enhancing their digital and collaborative skills. Students contributed to 118 articles across a range of topics, which were viewed over 11.2 million times, providing them with a public platform no university assignment could match, and introduced them to the challenges of interaction and engagement in a global editing community. Students’ confidence in their digital capabilities was assessed at the start and end of the module and showed a clear increase in confidence across all categories.N/

Using Wikipedia to explore issues of systemic bias and symbolic annihilation in information sources

Wikipedia is one of the most high profile and heavily used sources of information used by students today. The English language version contains over 5.8 million articles, growing at a rate of some 500+ new articles every day . It receives roughly 15 billion page views per month, making it the fifth most used website in the world . It is one of the first places students to go to find information. However, Wikipedia itself is very far from a truly global source of information. As an information source, it betrays the biases of its contributors. The majority of Wikipedia editors are young, white, college-educated males, technically-inclined, living in majority-Christian, Western Hemisphere countries - a group that has been described as "a bunch of male geeks who are wealthy enough to afford a $2,000 laptop and a broadband connection" . Recent surveys have estimated that only 8.5% - 16% of Wikipedia users are female – even fewer are people of colour . As a result, Wikipedia coverage in many areas suffer from this lack of representation. Articles about notable women are under-represented ; coverage relating to Africa, Latin American and the Middle East is rated by Wikipedia itself as poor to mediocre , and those that do exist are often written from a European or North American perspective ; articles on ‘universal’ topics often fail to include examples from these regions – do people in Africa not eat lunch, for example? If the world increasingly uses a single information source, what happens when that information source is incomplete, biased or misleading, not because of any inaccuracies but because of issues of perspective, notability and bias? Absence can signify ‘symbolic annihilation’ – if people do not see faces like their own in the media and information they consume, the message that sends is that they are less important. Focusing on Wikipedia’s shortcomings in these areas provides an opportunity to explore wider issues of systemic bias and representation with students, using a resource they are all familiar with but few truly understand. It enhances students’ evaluation and critical analysis skills and provides a new perspective on how information is researched, created and consumed – all vital skills in today’s ‘post-truth’ era when scarcely a day goes by without some ‘fake news’ story raising headlines and students’ digital literacy is increasingly under scrutiny. Activities to teach systemic bias in Wikipedia can include: a representation hunt through traditional print media sources; a ‘wikihopping’ activity generating random articles and keeping a log of how many articles about men vs women, western country vs Africa, universal articles that omit certain countries or geographic regions; textual analysis of articles for perspective bias in language used, examples included or not, sources of referenced information used.N/

Defying easy categorization: Wikipedia as primary, secondary and tertiary resource

Wikipedia is the world’s largest information source, used daily by millions of individuals around the world – yet such is its uniqueness and dominance that rarely is the question asked: what exactly is Wikipedia? This article sets out to explore the different categories of source that Wikipedia could be defined as (primary, secondary or tertiary) alongside the varied ways in which Wikipedia is used, which defy easy categorization, exemplified by a broad-ranging literature review and focusing on the English language Wikipedia. It concludes that Wikipedia cannot easily be categorized in any information category but is defined instead by the ways it is used and interpreted by its users

A central line care maintenance bundle for the prevention of central line–associated bloodstream infection in non–intensive care unit settings

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a central line care maintenance bundle to reduce central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) in non-ICU settings. DESIGN: Before-after trial with 12 month follow-up period. SETTING: 1250-bed teaching hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Patients with central lines on eight general medicine wards. Four wards received the intervention and four served as controls. INTERVENTION: A multifaceted catheter care maintenance bundle consisting of educational programs for nurses, update of hospital policies, visual aids, a competency assessment, process monitoring, regular progress reports, and consolidation of supplies necessary for catheter maintenance. RESULTS: Data were collected for 25,542 catheter-days including 43 CLABSI (rate = 1.68 per 1,000 CL-days) and 4,012 catheter dressing observations. Following the intervention, a 2.5% monthly decrease in the CLABSI incidence density was observed on intervention floors, but this was not statistically significant (95% confidence interval (CI); −5.3 – 0.4). On control floors, there was a smaller, but marginally significant decrease in CLABSI incidence during the study (change in monthly rate = −1.1%; 95% CI, −2.1 - −0.1). Implementation of the bundle was associated with improvement in catheter dressing compliance on intervention wards (78.8% compliance pre-intervention vs. 87.9% during intervention/follow-up; p<0.001) but improvement was also observed on control wards (84.9% compliance pre-intervention vs. 90.9% during intervention/follow-up; P = .001). CONCLUSIONS: A multi-faceted program to improve catheter care was associated with improvement in catheter dressing care, but no change in CLABSI rates. Additional study is needed to determine strategies to prevent CLABSI in non-ICU patients

Expression of Pseudomonas aeruginosa CupD Fimbrial Genes Is Antagonistically Controlled by RcsB and the EAL-Containing PvrR Response Regulators

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a gram-negative pathogenic bacterium with a high adaptive potential that allows proliferation in a broad range of hosts or niches. It is also the causative agent of both acute and chronic biofilm-related infections in humans. Three cup gene clusters (cupA-C), involved in the assembly of cell surface fimbriae, have been shown to be involved in biofilm formation by the P. aeruginosa strains PAO1 or PAK. In PA14 isolates, a fourth cluster, named cupD, was identified within a pathogenicity island, PAPI-I, and may contribute to the higher virulence of this strain. Expression of the cupA genes is controlled by the HNS-like protein MvaT, whereas the cupB and cupC genes are under the control of the RocS1A1R two-component system. In this study, we show that cupD gene expression is positively controlled by the response regulator RcsB. As a consequence, CupD fimbriae are assembled on the cell surface, which results in a number of phenotypes such as a small colony morphotype, increased biofilm formation and decreased motility. These behaviors are compatible with the sessile bacterial lifestyle. The balance between planktonic and sessile lifestyles is known to be linked to the intracellular levels of c-di-GMP with high levels favoring biofilm formation. We showed that the EAL domain-containing PvrR response regulator counteracts the activity of RcsB on cupD gene expression. The action of PvrR is likely to involve c-di-GMP degradation through phosphodiesterase activity, confirming the key role of this second messenger in the balance between bacterial lifestyles. The regulatory network between RcsB and PvrR remains to be elucidated, but it stands as a potential model system to study how the equilibrium between the two lifestyles could be influenced by therapeutic agents that favor the planktonic lifestyle. This would render the pathogen accessible for the immune system or conventional antibiotic treatment

Could parental rules play a role in the association between short sleep and obesity in young children?

Short sleep duration is associated with obesity in young children. This study develops the hypothesis that parental rules play a role in this association. Participants were 3-year-old children and their parents, recruited at nursery schools in socioeconomically deprived and non-deprived areas of a North-East England town. Parents were interviewed to assess their use of sleep, television-viewing and dietary rules, and given diaries to document their child's sleep for 4 days/5 nights. Children were measured for height, weight, waist circumference and triceps and subscapular skinfold thicknesses. One-hundred and eight families participated (84 with complete sleep data and 96 with complete body composition data). Parental rules were significantly associated together, were associated with longer night-time sleep and were more prevalent in the non-deprived-area compared with the deprived-area group. Television-viewing and dietary rules were associated with leaner body composition. Parental rules may in part confound the association between night-time sleep duration and obesity in young children, as rules cluster together across behavioural domains and are associated with both sleep duration and body composition. This hypothesis should be tested rigorously in large representative samples