The Infectious Disease Ontology in the Age of COVID-19

The Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) is a suite of interoperable ontology modules that aims to provide coverage of all aspects of the infectious disease domain, including biomedical research, clinical care, and public health. IDO Core is designed to be a disease and pathogen neutral ontology, covering just those types of entities and relations that are relevant to infectious diseases generally. IDO Core is then extended by a collection of ontology modules focusing on specific diseases and pathogens. In this paper we present applications of IDO Core within various areas of infectious disease research, together with an overview of all IDO extension ontologies and the methodology on the basis of which they are built. We also survey recent developments involving IDO, including the creation of IDO Virus; the Coronaviruses Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO); and an extension of CIDO focused on COVID-19 (IDO-CovID-19).We also discuss how these ontologies might assist in information-driven efforts to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, to accelerate data discovery in the early stages of future pandemics, and to promote reproducibility of infectious disease research

PKS 1004+13: A High-Inclination, Highly-Absorbed Radio-Loud QSO -- The First Radio-Loud BAL QSO at Low Redshift?

The existence of BAL outflows in only radio-quiet QSOs was thought to be an important clue to mass ejection and the radio-loud - radio-quiet dichotomy. Recently a few radio-loud BAL QSOs have been discovered at high redshift. We present evidence that PKS 1004+13 is a radio-loud BAL QSO. It would be the first known at low-redshift (z = 0.24), and one of the most radio luminous. For PKS 1004+13, there appear to be broad absorption troughs of O VI, N V, Si IV, and C IV, indicating high-ionization outflows up to about 10,000 km/s. There are also two strong, broad (~500 km/s), high-ionization, associated absorption systems that show partial covering of the continuum source. The strong UV absorption we have detected suggests that the extreme soft-X-ray weakness of PKS 1004+13 is primarily the result of absorption. The large radio-lobe dominance indicates BAL and associated gas at high inclinations to the central engine axis, perhaps in a line-of-sight that passes through an accretion disk wind.Comment: To appear in Ap.J. Letters, 1999 (June or July); 4 pages, 5 figure

Information Systems Research Education in Australia: Continuing the Past or Gearing up for the Future

As the information systems discipline grows, so do the number of programs offering graduate research degrees (GRD). In Australasia these include one year post-graduate (honors) programs with research components, masters by research degrees, and doctorate degree programs. Graduate students entering their first research program are faced with a quantum leap in expectations and required skills. The burden is significant: they need to find a referent discipline, select a research method and paradigm, defend the research relevance, and fulfil the requirements of adding to a body of knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to inform discussion on the issue of graduate research skills. We identify the critical research skills needed and present two pragmatic models for teaching them. This provides a basis for a shared knowledge and discourse based on lessons learnt

Advertising and Promotion Leverage on Arts Sponsorship Effectiveness

Using an experimental approach, the returns achieved by three sponsors of the 1998 Adelaide Festival of the Arts are examined. Using a before-and-after design with a control group, a mail survey measured the change in attitudes to, and awareness of, three particular sponsors and their sponsorship efforts, by members of the audience who attended one of these sponsored events, and corresponding results for a non-attending control group. Results showed conclusively that sponsorship effectiveness is directly related to the degree to which the sponsors are willing to leverage their investment with additional advertising and promotional activities and expenditure.Quester, Pascale G. and Thompson, Beverle

Information Requirements for Customer Relationship Management: A Case Study in a New Zealand Bank

Customer Relationship Management is gaining importance as a business strategy. It seeks to select, cultivate and manage the most profitable customer relationships with a view to increasing long-term profitability, through understanding customers\u27 needs. This requires organisations to understand the information requirements of CRM implementation. Most published work to date focuses on management information requirements. Little published research has examined front-end sales agents\u27 information needs and yet they are arguably the most important group of users, with direct interaction with customers. This paper seeks to close the knowledge gap by surveying a group of branch and call centre sales agents within a bank to identify their information needs

A Services Science Major in a Bachelor of Science (IT) Program: The Case of UAE University

This paper presents a proposed design for a new undergraduate major in services science within a bachelor of science in information technology program. Potential students in the major will be Emerati nationals with strong verbal skills but sometimes weak writing, math and problem solving skills. Math and problem solving skill are essential in the new services dominated environment, so it is important that these skills be developed in students if the nation is to continue to lead the region in IT service provisioning. The curriculum proposes three new courses and inclusion of four existing course from related majors

Using video feedback to improve early father-infant interaction: a pilot study.

Preventive interventions with parents of infants have tended to focus on mothers. Recent research focused on fathers suggests that their involvement in interventions might enhance effectiveness. One effective approach with mothers is the brief, home-based Video-feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting (VIPP). This paper is a report of a pilot study of VIPP with fathers to assess its feasibility. Five fathers were recruited from an existing longitudinal study of parents. The primary outcome was acceptability, assessed using a semi-structured questionnaire after completion of the intervention. All fathers completed all sessions of the intervention. Fathers rated the intervention as having had a significant impact on their understanding of their child's thoughts and feelings, and as having improved their communication and relationship with their baby. Fathers' feedback was generally positive. The flexibility to conduct sessions at home (or at fathers' places of work) and the flexible timing of sessions were identified as fundamental to successful delivery. The results of this pilot study are encouraging, as VIPP with fathers was feasible. In light of the modest sample size, and the use of a non-clinical sample, the intervention must be evaluated with larger, clinical samples to evaluate its efficacy with fathers