Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2021

The Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey has tracked the changing research, teaching, and publishing practices of faculty members within higher education triennially since early digital transformation at the turn of the century. This project has aimed to provide actionable findings to help colleges and universities, among other relevant stakeholders such as academic libraries, learned societies, and scholarly publishers, make evidence-based decisions for their planning and strategy. Against the backdrop of the global pandemic and its numerous impacts to many different facets of higher education, this eighth cycle of the survey once again queried faculty nationally on topics such as scholarly discovery and access, data management, research dissemination, and the value of the library. We also added new questions on key areas of interest, including equitable and holistic teaching practices, instructional support, perspectives on scholarly outputs and open access models, as well as on faculty capacity and evaluation. Our key findings below highlight the most notable results from the 2021 US Faculty Survey. ▪Faculty are according less importance to a journal’s impact factor whendeciding where to publish their scholarly research. Despite this decrease, faculty members continue to emphasize the importance of characteristics that have historically beenmost highly valued that help contribute towards favorable scholarly incentives, such as ajournal’s content area and high readership. ▪While faculty members continue to view the library’s most important function to be that of buyer of scholarly resources, they consider the library’s role inproviding direct support to students as essential. This includes the library’s provision of access to technology and informal learning spaces. Faculty members continue to endorse the role of the library primarily as a buyer of scholarly resources needed for their research and teaching and generally as a primary support for student learning. ▪Faculty members continue to be interested in an open access publication modeland see their library as key in financially supporting open access infrastructure. Faculty members want the library’s involvement in financially supporting an open access system and are specifically open to their college or university library investing in open journal platforms and infrastructure to do so. ▪Very few faculty members believe there are adequate processes in place to protect against research fraud, and there is widespread support for additionalefforts to ensure research integrity. While the majority of respondents do not believe that fraud is growing, they are not sanguine. There is strong support for dataset deposit,disclosure of funding sources, and registering research questions prior to analysis. ▪The disruptions of recent years have yielded a substantial increase in the use and creation of open educational resources (OER), textbooks, course modules,and video lectures. Despite increased creation and usage of OER, faculty are less interested in creating and using them for their courses as incentives for integrating OER into instructional approaches have not changed since 2018. ▪In the aggregate, the importance of the monograph has declined. The print monograph is decreasing in importance across all disciplines. Among humanists, a growingshare compared with 2018 indicated that electronic monographs are important for theirteaching and research. ▪Notwithstanding the disruptions of recent years, faculty members report thatattending conferences and workshops remains the most important way theykeep up to date with their current field. With conferences transferring to digitaloptions during the global pandemic, they remain just as relevant to keep up with scholarlyinformation

Analyzing audit trails in the Aeolus

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-73).This thesis presents the design and implementation of an analysis system for audit trails generated by Aeolus, a distributed security platform based on information flow control. Previous work focused on collecting these audit trails in the form of event logs. This thesis presents a model for representing these events and a system for analyzing them. In addition to allowing users to issue SQL queries over the audit log, this analysis system provides mechanisms for active monitoring of events. This thesis introduces a new model for event monitoring called watchers. These watchers receive updates about events from a watcher manager. This manager allows watchers to specify filters and rules for dynamically modifying those filters. My results show that this analysis system can efficiently process large event logs and manage large sets of queries.by Aaron Blankstein.M.Eng

A systematic review of internet-based worksite wellness approaches for cardiovascular disease risk management: outcomes, challenges & opportunities.

ContextThe internet is gaining popularity as a means of delivering employee-based cardiovascular (CV) wellness interventions though little is known about the cardiovascular health outcomes of these programs. In this review, we examined the effectiveness of internet-based employee cardiovascular wellness and prevention programs.Evidence acquisitionWe conducted a systematic review by searching PubMed, Web of Science and Cochrane library for all published studies on internet-based programs aimed at improving CV health among employees up to November 2012. We grouped the outcomes according to the American Heart Association (AHA) indicators of cardiovascular wellbeing--weight, BP, lipids, smoking, physical activity, diet, and blood glucose.Evidence synthesisA total of 18 randomized trials and 11 follow-up studies met our inclusion/exclusion criteria. Follow-up duration ranged from 6-24 months. There were significant differences in intervention types and number of components in each intervention. Modest improvements were observed in more than half of the studies with weight related outcomes while no improvement was seen in virtually all the studies with physical activity outcome. In general, internet-based programs were more successful if the interventions also included some physical contact and environmental modification, and if they were targeted at specific disease entities such as hypertension. Only a few of the studies were conducted in persons at-risk for CVD, none in blue-collar workers or low-income earners.ConclusionInternet based programs hold promise for improving the cardiovascular wellness among employees however much work is required to fully understand its utility and long term impact especially in special/at-risk populations

Influence of Image Acquisition on Radiation Dose and Image Quality: Full versus Narrow Phase Window Acquisition Using 320 MDCT

Purpose. To compare radiation dose and image quality using predefined narrow phase window versus complete phase window with dose modulation during R-R using 320-row MDCTA. Methods:. 114 patients underwent coronary CTA study using 320-row MDCT scanner. 87 patients with mean age (61 + 13 years), mean BMI (29 + 6), and mean heart rate (HR) (58 + 7 bpm) were imaged at predefined 66–80% R-R interval and then reconstructed at 75% while 27 patients with mean age (63 + 16 years), mean BMI (28 + 5), and mean HR (57 + 7 bpm) were scanned throughout the complete R-R interval with tube current modulation. The effective dose (ED) was calculated from dose length product (DLP) and conversion k (0.014 mSv/mGy/cm). Image quality was assessed using a three-point ordinal scale (1 = excellent, 2 = good, and 3 = nondiagnostic). Results:. Both groups were statistically similar to each other with reference of HR (P = 0.59), BMI (P = 0.17), and tube current mAs (P = 0.68). The median radiation dose was significantly higher in those scanned with complete R-R phase window versus narrow phase window (P < 0.0001). Independently of patient and scan parameters, increased phase window was associated with higher radiation dose (P < 0.001). Image quality was better among those scanned with narrow phase window versus complete phase window (P < 0.0001). Conclusion:. Our study supports that good HR control and predefined narrow window acquisition result in lower radiation dose without compromising diagnostic image quality for coronary disease evaluation

All-cause and cause-specific mortality in individuals with zero and minimal coronary artery calcium: A long-term, competing risk analysis in the Coronary Artery Calcium Consortium.

Background and aimsThe long-term associations between zero, minimal coronary artery calcium (CAC) and cause-specific mortality are currently unknown, particularly after accounting for competing risks with other causes of death.MethodsWe evaluated 66,363 individuals from the CAC Consortium (mean age 54 years, 33% women), a multi-center, retrospective cohort study of asymptomatic individuals undergoing CAC scoring for clinical risk assessment. Baseline evaluations occurred between 1991 and 2010.ResultsOver a mean of 12 years of follow-up, individuals with CAC = 0 (45% prevalence, mean age 45 years) had stable low rates of coronary heart disease (CHD) death, cardiovascular disease (CVD) death (ranging 0.32 to 0.43 per 1000 person-years), and all-cause death (1.38-1.62 per 1000 person-years). Cancer was the predominant cause of death in this group, yet rates were also very low (0.47-0.79 per 1000 person-years). Compared to CAC = 0, individuals with CAC 1-10 had an increased multivariable-adjusted risk of CVD death only under age 40. Individuals with CAC&gt;10 had multivariable-adjusted increased risks of CHD death, CVD death and all-cause death at all ages, and a higher proportion of CVD deaths.ConclusionsCAC = 0 is a frequent finding among individuals undergoing CAC scanning for risk assessment and is associated with low rates of all-cause death at 12 years of follow-up. Our results support the emerging consensus that CAC = 0 represents a unique population with favorable all-cause prognosis who may be considered for more flexible treatment goals in primary prevention. Detection of any CAC in young adults could be used to trigger aggressive preventive interventions

Self-oriented perfectionism and socially prescribed perfectionism: Differential relationships with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and test anxiety

Previous studies suggest that self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism show differential relationships with intrinsic–extrinsic motivation and test anxiety, but the findings are ambiguous. Moreover, they ignored that test anxiety is multidimensional. Consequently, the present study re-investigated the relationships in 104 university students examining how the two forms of perfectionism are related to intrinsic–extrinsic motivation and multidimensional test anxiety (worry, emotionality, interference, lack of confidence, and total anxiety). Regarding motivation, self-oriented perfectionism showed positive correlations with intrinsic reasons for studying, and socially prescribed perfectionism positive correlations with extrinsic reasons. Regarding test anxiety, only socially prescribed perfectionism showed positive correlations with total anxiety. Moreover, socially prescribed perfectionism showed positive correlations with interference and lack of confidence, whereas self-oriented perfectionism showed positive correlations with worry, but negative correlations with interference and lack of confidence. The findings confirm that socially prescribed perfectionism is a maladaptive form of perfectionism associated with extrinsic motivation for studying and higher anxiety in exams. Self-oriented perfectionism, however, is an ambivalent form associated with intrinsic motivation for studying and with both higher and lower anxiety (higher worry, lower interference, lower lack of confidence) in exams