A Multi-institutional Model for Advancing Open Access Journals and Reclaiming Control of the Scholarly Record

The open access journal Communications in Information Literacy (CIL) began publication in 2007. After ten years of continuous growth, CIL migrated from Online Journals Systems (OJS) and a commercial web host to Portland State’s Digital Commons (bepress) publishing platform, PDXScholar. The presenters provide brief overviews of CIL and PDXScholar, and they detail the challenges and ultimate successes of this multi-institutional model for advancing open access journals and reclaiming control of the scholarly record. They highlight the content migration process from OJS to PDXScholar, post-migration actions to correct metadata, the introduction of functioning DOIs, and coordinating with both free web and commercial indexers to ensure proper access to the newly moved journal. The presenters also discuss the practicalities and the policy implications of this move, particularly in light of Elsevier’s acquisition of bepress. Finally, the presenters advance their partnership as an exemplar of transformational publishing and as a viable, sustainable model for scholars in other fields to emulate

Tritium monitor calibration at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Tritium in air is monitored at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) with air breathing instruments based on ionization chambers. Stack emissions are continuously monitored from sample tubes which each connect to a Tritium bubble which differentially collects HTO and HT. A set of glass vials of glycol capture the HTO. The HT is oxidized with a palladium catalyst and the resultant HTO is captured in a second set of vials of glycol. The glycol is counted with a liquid scintillation counter. All calibrations are performed with tritium containing gas. The Radiation Instrumentation and Calibration (RIC) Team has constructed and maintains two closed loop gas handling systems based on femto TECH model U24 tritium ion chamber monitors: a fixed system housed in a fume hood and a portable system mounted on two two wheeled hand trucks. The U24 monitors are calibrated against tritium in nitrogen gas standards. They are used as standard transfer instruments to calibrate other ion chamber monitors with tritium in nitrogen, diluted with air. The gas handling systems include a circulation pump which permits a closed circulation loop to be established among the U24 monitor and typically two to four other monitors of a given model during calibration. Fixed and portable monitors can be calibrated. The stack bubblers are calibrated in the field by: blending a known concentration of tritium in air within the known volume of the two portable carts, coupled into a common loop; releasing that gas mixture into a ventilation intake to the stack; collecting oxidized tritium in the bubbler; counting the glycol; and using the stack and bubbler flow rates, computing the bubbler`s efficiency. Gas calibration has become a convenient and quality tool in maintaining the tritium monitors at LANL

Measuring academic research impact: creating a citation profile using the conceptual framework for implementation fidelity as a case study

The “citation score” remains the most commonly-used measure of academic impact, but is also viewed as practically and conceptually limited. The aim of this case study was to test the feasibility of creating a “citation profile” for a single, frequently-cited methods paper, the author’s own publication on the conceptual framework for implementation fidelity. This was a proof-of-concept study that involved an analysis of the citations of a single publication. This analysis involved identifying all citing publications and recording, not only how many times the key paper was cited within each citing publication, but also within which sections of that publication (e.g. Background, Methods, Results etc.). Level of impact could be categorised as high, moderate or low. The key paper had been cited more than 400 times and had a high impact in 25 % of publications based on citation frequency within publications, i.e. the key paper was cited three or more times; and a low impact in 58 % of citing publications, i.e. the key paper was cited just once. There were 41 “high impact” publications based on location of the citations, of which 35 (85 %) were also categorised as high impact by frequency. These results suggest that it is both possible and straightforward to categorise the level of impact of a key paper based on its “citation profile”, i.e., the frequency with which the paper is cited within citing publications, thus adding depth and value to the citation metric

Comparative-Effectiveness of Oral Beta-Lactams and Fluoroquinolones for Stepdown Therapy in Patients With Enterobacterales Bloodstream Infections: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Background: This study compares treatment failure for patients who received oral beta-lactams (BLs) and fluoroquinolones (FQs) for stepdown treatment of Enterobacterales bloodstream infections (BSIs). Methods: We conducted a single-center, retrospective, age- and sex-matched, cohort study, at a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital in South Texas. Eligible patients were at least 18 years of age with a monomicrobial BSI treated with a single oral BL or FQ antibiotic. Treatment failure was defined as recurrence or all-cause mortality within 90 days of documented BSI. Bivariate (chi-square, Fisher\u27s Exact, and Wilcoxon Rank Sum) and multivariate (logistic regression) statistical tests were used to compare groups. Results: A total of 130 patients were included in this study, with 65 patients per group. Groups were well balanced with respect to exact age, sex assigned at birth, Caucasian race, source control, intensive care unit admission, and Charlson Comorbidity Index. Importantly, 60% of patients in the BL group had cultures that were resistant to FQs and 71% were prescribed cefpodoxime. Patients in the BL group had higher median (interquartile range [IQR]) Pitt bacteremia scores than those in the FQ group: 2 (1-4) vs. 1 (1-2), p=0.04. Patients in the BL group also had a higher median (IQR) duration of intravenous (IV) antibiotics than those in the FQ group: 5 (3-7) vs. 4 (3-5), p=0.02. Treatment failure was statistically comparable for patients in the BL and FQ groups: 15% vs. 12%, p=0.61. This finding was consistent in a multivariate logistic regression model with group (BL vs. FQ) as the independent variable, treatment failure as the dependent variable, and Pitt bacteremia score and duration of IV antibiotics as covariates (OR: 0.76, 95% CI: 0.27-2.18). One patient in the FQ group experienced Clostridioides difficile infection. Conclusion: This study suggests that BLs may be as effective as FQs for oral stepdown treatment of Enterobacterales BSI without the potential associated risks. Furthermore, in the setting of FQ-resistant Enterobacterales BSI secondary to urinary source, third generation oral cephalosporins (i.e., cefpodoxime) may be reasonable alternatives

Reward-Related Dorsal Striatal Activity Differences between Former and Current Cocaine Dependent Individuals during an Interactive Competitive Game

Cocaine addiction is characterized by impulsivity, impaired social relationships, and abnormal mesocorticolimbic reward processing, but their interrelationships relative to stages of cocaine addiction are unclear. We assessed blood-oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) signal in ventral and dorsal striatum during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in current (CCD; n = 30) and former (FCD; n = 28) cocaine dependent subjects as well as healthy control (HC; n = 31) subjects while playing an interactive competitive Domino game involving risk-taking and reward/punishment processing. Out-of-scanner impulsivity-related measures were also collected. Although both FCD and CCD subjects scored significantly higher on impulsivity-related measures than did HC subjects, only FCD subjects had differences in striatal activation, specifically showing hypoactivation during their response to gains versus losses in right dorsal caudate, a brain region linked to habituation, cocaine craving and addiction maintenance. Right caudate activity in FCD subjects also correlated negatively with impulsivity-related measures of self-reported compulsivity and sensitivity to reward. These findings suggest that remitted cocaine dependence is associated with striatal dysfunction during social reward processing in a manner linked to compulsivity and reward sensitivity measures. Future research should investigate the extent to which such differences might reflect underlying vulnerabilities linked to cocaine-using propensities (e.g., relapses)

Global maps of soil temperature

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we provide global maps of soil temperature and bioclimatic variables at a 1-km² resolution for 0–5 and 5–15 cm soil depth. These maps were created by calculating the difference (i.e., offset) between in-situ soil temperature measurements, based on time series from over 1200 1-km² pixels (summarized from 8500 unique temperature sensors) across all the world’s major terrestrial biomes, and coarse-grained air temperature estimates from ERA5-Land (an atmospheric reanalysis by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). We show that mean annual soil temperature differs markedly from the corresponding gridded air temperature, by up to 10°C (mean = 3.0 ± 2.1°C), with substantial variation across biomes and seasons. Over the year, soils in cold and/or dry biomes are substantially warmer (+3.6 ± 2.3°C) than gridded air temperature, whereas soils in warm and humid environments are on average slightly cooler (-0.7 ± 2.3°C). The observed substantial and biome-specific offsets emphasize that the projected impacts of climate and climate change on near-surface biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are inaccurately assessed when air rather than soil temperature is used, especially in cold environments. The global soil-related bioclimatic variables provided here are an important step forward for any application in ecology and related disciplines. Nevertheless, we highlight the need to fill remaining geographic gaps by collecting more in-situ measurements of microclimate conditions to further enhance the spatiotemporal resolution of global soil temperature products for ecological applications

Parents as Advocates for the Psychosocial Survival of Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer

Many young people with cancer have a parent or parents who care for them during their hospitalisation and treatment, and remain an important part of their lives after the ‘crisis’ has passed and young people have moved into survivorship. This qualitative study explored the impact of cancer diagnosis, treatment and survival during adolescence and young adulthood on the practice and experiences of parenting. We conducted focus groups with a total of 22 parents of young people diagnosed with various cancers between the ages of 11 and 19 years old. The results indicated that parents advocated for their offspring in different ways at different points of the cancer journey. Parents used their parental knowledge of their offspring to secure a medical diagnosis and treatment, developed medical knowledge to advocate for appropriate treatment within the medical system, and then used parental and medical knowledge to advocate for their offspring’s successful psychosocial survival. In this final point in the journey, parents entered social worlds from which they would normally be absent and some went to great lengths to ensure their offspring were not socially disadvantaged

Modeling working memory: An interference model of complex span

This article introduces a new computational model for the complex-span task, the most popular task for studying working memory. SOB-CS is a two-layer neural network that associates distributed item representations with distributed, overlapping position markers. Memory capacity limits are explained by interference from a superposition of associations. Concurrent processing interferes with memory through involuntary encoding of distractors. Free time in-between distractors is used to remove irrelevant representations, thereby reducing interference. The model accounts for benchmark findings in four areas: (1) effects of processing pace, processing difficulty, and number of processing steps; (2) effects of serial position and error patterns; (3) effects of different kinds of item-distractor similarity; and (4) correlations between span tasks. The model makes several new predictions in these areas, which were confirmed experimentally

Global maps of soil temperature.

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we provide global maps of soil temperature and bioclimatic variables at a 1-km2 resolution for 0-5 and 5-15 cm soil depth. These maps were created by calculating the difference (i.e. offset) between in situ soil temperature measurements, based on time series from over 1200 1-km2 pixels (summarized from 8519 unique temperature sensors) across all the world's major terrestrial biomes, and coarse-grained air temperature estimates from ERA5-Land (an atmospheric reanalysis by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). We show that mean annual soil temperature differs markedly from the corresponding gridded air temperature, by up to 10°C (mean = 3.0 ± 2.1°C), with substantial variation across biomes and seasons. Over the year, soils in cold and/or dry biomes are substantially warmer (+3.6 ± 2.3°C) than gridded air temperature, whereas soils in warm and humid environments are on average slightly cooler (-0.7 ± 2.3°C). The observed substantial and biome-specific offsets emphasize that the projected impacts of climate and climate change on near-surface biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are inaccurately assessed when air rather than soil temperature is used, especially in cold environments. The global soil-related bioclimatic variables provided here are an important step forward for any application in ecology and related disciplines. Nevertheless, we highlight the need to fill remaining geographic gaps by collecting more in situ measurements of microclimate conditions to further enhance the spatiotemporal resolution of global soil temperature products for ecological applications