Senior Citizens and Digital Information Access: The Obstruction of Comforting Silence

This study investigates the possibility of undetected access obstructions preventing senior citizens from using digital information maintained by Alabama public libraries. Research methods include a literature review, a survey of Alabama public library administrators, and a textual analysis of online public library programming guides from four urban areas within the state. The survey gauges the perceptions, experiences, and actions of library administrators pertaining to digital library accessibility for senior citizens. The textual analysis component measures significant outreach efforts by public libraries targeting senior citizen patrons. Data collected suggest that Alabama public libraries lack unity and direction in their approach to digital technology training for elderly citizens, and this lack of effective outreach is contributing to a dysfunctional communicative relationship. This dysfunction is identified as a comforting silence, a communicative void in which inaction and indifference work covertly (and often unintentionally) to restrict digital accessibility for Alabama’s senior citizens

Smooth invariant densities for random switching on the torus

We consider a random dynamical system obtained by switching between the flows generated by two smooth vector fields on the 2d-torus, with the random switchings happening according to a Poisson process. Assuming that the driving vector fields are transversal to each other at all points of the torus and that each of them allows for a smooth invariant density and no periodic orbits, we prove that the switched system also has a smooth invariant density, for every switching rate. Our approach is based on an integration by parts formula inspired by techniques from Malliavin calculus.Comment: 19 page

Coherence of a room-temperature CW GaAs/GaAlAs injection laser

The temporal coherence of a stripe-geometry double-heterojunction GaAs/GaAlAs laser operating CW at room temperature was determined. A heterodyne detection scheme was used involving the mixing of the laser field with a frequency-shifted and time-delayed image of itself in an interferometer. Because the laser device oscillated in several longitudinal modes, the autocorrelation function of its output exhibited resonances for specific time delays. The rate at which the amplitude of these resonances decreased with increasing time delays provided a measure of an apparent coherence length associated with individual longitudinal modes. The coherence length, so defined, was found to increase linearly with drive current in excess of threshold. This observation is interpreted as evidence that the intrinsic linewidth of a longitudinal mode is inversely proportional to the coherent optical power in that mode. Apparent coherence lengths were a few centimeters for a few milliwatts of total optical power emitted per facet. For a perfectly balanced interferometer, a sharp heterodyne beat signal was also observed when the laser device was operated considerably below threshold, i.e., in the LED mode

Evaluation of the effectiveness of Eladi Keram for the treatment of acne vulgaris: a randomised controlled pilot study

Introduction: Acne is a multifactorial and common skin disease which can significantly affect the quality of life of sufferers. In this study, a topical herbal preparation traditionally used in Ayurvedic medicine was evaluated as a treatment for individuals with acne on their shoulders and backs. Methods: Study participants were randomly assigned either to treatment (Eladi Keram) or vehicle control (coconut oil) groups under double blind conditions and instructed on its daily home application. Standardised lesion counting and acne grading were conducted in accordance with US Food and Drug Administration guidelines and with reference to the Leeds Acne Grading Technique. Participants were assessed for severity of the condition at commencement and on day 28 of treatment. Results: The treatment group showed improvements of 42% (p < 0.005) on the Investigators Global Assessment scale, a 60% (p < 0.05) reduction in inflammatory lesions, a 59% (p < 0.05) reduction in non-inflammatory lesions, and a 59% (p < 0.005) reduction in combined lesion count. The control group showed no statistically significant changes for these criteria. Conclusion: This study is the first reported clinical evaluation of Eladi Keram as a treatment for acne and findings suggest that it could be effective in reducing inflammatory and non-inflammatory lesions, warranting further investigation by means of a larger scale clinical trial

Polysaccharide utilization loci and nutritional specialization in a dominant group of butyrate-producing human colonic Firmicutes

Acknowledgements The Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health (University of Aberdeen) receives financial support from the Scottish Government Rural and Environmental Sciences and Analytical Services (RESAS). POS is a PhD student supported by the Scottish Government (RESAS) and the Science Foundation Ireland, through a centre award to the APC Microbiome Institute, Cork, Ireland. Data Summary The high-quality draft genomes generated in this work were deposited at the European Nucleotide Archive under the following accession numbers: 1. Eubacterium rectale T1-815; CVRQ01000001–CVRQ0100 0090: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/PRJEB9320 2. Roseburia faecis M72/1; CVRR01000001–CVRR010001 01: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/PRJEB9321 3. Roseburia inulinivorans L1-83; CVRS01000001–CVRS0 100 0151: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/PRJEB9322Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Evaluation of PacBio sequencing for full-length bacterial 16S rRNA gene classification.

BACKGROUND: Currently, bacterial 16S rRNA gene analyses are based on sequencing of individual variable regions of the 16S rRNA gene (Kozich, et al Appl Environ Microbiol 79:5112-5120, 2013).This short read approach can introduce biases. Thus, full-length bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequencing is needed to reduced biases. A new alternative for full-length bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequencing is offered by PacBio single molecule, real-time (SMRT) technology. The aim of our study was to validate PacBio P6 sequencing chemistry using three approaches: 1) sequencing the full-length bacterial 16S rRNA gene from a single bacterial species Staphylococcus aureus to analyze error modes and to optimize the bioinformatics pipeline; 2) sequencing the full-length bacterial 16S rRNA gene from a pool of 50 different bacterial colonies from human stool samples to compare with full-length bacterial 16S rRNA capillary sequence; and 3) sequencing the full-length bacterial 16S rRNA genes from 11 vaginal microbiome samples and compare with in silico selected bacterial 16S rRNA V1V2 gene region and with bacterial 16S rRNA V1V2 gene regions sequenced using the Illumina MiSeq. RESULTS: Our optimized bioinformatics pipeline for PacBio sequence analysis was able to achieve an error rate of 0.007% on the Staphylococcus aureus full-length 16S rRNA gene. Capillary sequencing of the full-length bacterial 16S rRNA gene from the pool of 50 colonies from stool identified 40 bacterial species of which up to 80% could be identified by PacBio full-length bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Analysis of the human vaginal microbiome using the bacterial 16S rRNA V1V2 gene region on MiSeq generated 129 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) from which 70 species could be identified. For the PacBio, 36,000 sequences from over 58,000 raw reads could be assigned to a barcode, and the in silico selected bacterial 16S rRNA V1V2 gene region generated 154 OTUs grouped into 63 species, of which 62% were shared with the MiSeq dataset. The PacBio full-length bacterial 16S rRNA gene datasets generated 261 OTUs, which were grouped into 52 species, of which 54% were shared with the MiSeq dataset. Alpha diversity index reported a higher diversity in the MiSeq dataset. CONCLUSION: The PacBio sequencing error rate is now in the same range of the previously widely used Roche 454 sequencing platform and current MiSeq platform. Species-level microbiome analysis revealed some inconsistencies between the full-length bacterial 16S rRNA gene capillary sequencing and PacBio sequencing