Selected Information Management Resources for Implementing New Knowledge Environments: An Annotated Bibliography

This annotated bibliography reviews scholarly work in the area of building and analyzing digital document collections with the aim of establishing a baseline of knowledge for work in the field of digital humanities. The bibliography is organized around three main topics: data stores, text corpora, and analytical facilitators. Each of these is then further divided into sub-topics to provide a broad snapshot of modern information management techniques for building and analyzing digital documents collections

The Impact of Mood on Adjustment from Self-Generated Anchors

Although they are typically thought to be separate, emotion and reason are closely linked. Affective feelings are thought to determine which cognitive processing styles are in place at a given time. Happy moods were previously thought to lead to fast, automatic, unconscious, global, and superficial processing styles, whereas sad moods lead to slow, deliberative, conscious, local, and analytic processing styles. More recent research shows that this link is relatively flexible, so that moods may signal the value of currently accessible processing styles, or any accessible thoughts. These findings have important implications for susceptibility to cognitive biases, such as certain types of anchoring effects. In the proposed project, happy and sad moods will be induced using either music or stories. Stop rules will be used to manipulate whether mood signals performance– in this case, adjustment away from self-generated anchoring effects – or task enjoyment. Happy moods should lead to decreased adjustment compared to sad moods in the former case, and increased adjustment in the latter

Revolutionary Reading, Evolutionary Toolmaking: (Re)development of Scholarly Reading and Annotation Tools in Response to an Ever Changing Scholarly Climate

As the online scholarly landscape changes, so too must the tools used to traverse it.  The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Reading Tools provides readers a bridge from online scholarly content to a host of contextual information, to a number of discipline-specific search engines and databases, and to other tools. A lot has changed since it was originally released, such as the rise of Google Scholar as the de facto starting point for many novice (and not-so novice) researchers; the blurring line between desktop and web applications; and the increased professional use of social networking tools and websites. Recently, the University of Victoria's Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL), in cooperation with the PKP, undertook a study to determine the role and value of the existing Reading Tools, particularly in the context of Humanities Computing. The ETCL has also developed a prototype Professional Reading Environment which has been the basis for substantial analysis. Rick Kopak and Chia-Ning Chiang at the University of British Columbia (UBC) have undertaken a broad survey of the online annotation landscape, and have written a proposal for developing an annotation system for PKP software. This paper discusses how, using this research as a base and in cooperation with UBC and the PKP, the ETCL has begun a large-scale redevelopment of the PKP Reading Tools, extending the current toolset to include new social networking and research tools, as well as a robust personal annotation system, making social annotation possible between small groups and the public

‘The Apex of Hipster XML GeekDOM’

If the notion of the methodological commons is as centrally located as we believe it to be in any visualization accurately depicting the intellectual structure of the digital humanities and digital literary studies (McCarty 2005, 119), then so, too, must be the community itself whose members provide that which populates the commons. As an interdiscipline, humanities computing has always well-understood its methodologies; indeed, the digital humanities (of which digital literary studies is a part), more generally, have made a virtue of the way in which they render explicit and tangible the theoretical models that govern the representative and analytical endeavour of their fields via computational application.  So, too, have those in the field understood and documented its formal structures and institutional manifestations, a chief example being the Text Encoding Initiative itself.  Less explicitly rendered and less formally documented–though intuited by its chief practitioners and builders–is the exact nature of the community itself, its depth and breadth, its own centre and, perhaps more important in a field whose embrace of interdisciplinarity is far from self-serving, its periphery and those aspects of which promise to become central. This article presents work carried out in conjunction with the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium, a foundation of many digital literary studies projects, work that seeks to document the full nature of its community, from the institutional and research project groups that comprise the formal consortium at centre to those who appear on the other side of the easily-permeable periphery that separates it from the centre, largely individual practitioners in areas hitherto not closely identified with the digital humanities but clearly sharing methods and tools, thus suggesting their place in the same communities of practice, as they are members of the same methodological commons.  This methodological approach is drawn from marketing and organizational behavior, manifest in social networking, in the study of viral marketing campaigns conducted in online environments.  The method for this work was centred around a viral marketing experiment designed to showcase the TEI and novel ways that it can be used to encode different kinds of text.  At the heart of the experiment was a Bob Dylan song and its associated video which incorporated text; encoded text was overlaid and the video was posted to YouTube and a blog with links to the TEI website with analysis of traffic patterns carried out

Reversal of Fragile X Phenotypes by Manipulation of AβPP/Aβ Levels in Fmr1KO Mice

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the most common form of inherited intellectual disability and the leading known genetic cause of autism. Fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP), which is absent or expressed at substantially reduced levels in FXS, binds to and controls the postsynaptic translation of amyloid β-protein precursor (AβPP) mRNA. Cleavage of AβPP can produce β-amyloid (Aβ), a 39–43 amino acid peptide mis-expressed in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Down syndrome (DS). Aβ is over-expressed in the brain of Fmr1KO mice, suggesting a pathogenic role in FXS. To determine if genetic reduction of AβPP/Aβ rescues characteristic FXS phenotypes, we assessed audiogenic seizures (AGS), anxiety, the ratio of mature versus immature dendritic spines and metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR)-mediated long-term depression (LTD) in Fmr1KO mice after removal of one App allele. All of these phenotypes were partially or completely reverted to normal. Plasma Aβ1–42 was significantly reduced in full-mutation FXS males compared to age-matched controls while cortical and hippocampal levels were somewhat increased, suggesting that Aβ is sequestered in the brain. Evolving therapies directed at reducing Aβ in AD may be applicable to FXS and Aβ may serve as a plasma-based biomarker to facilitate disease diagnosis or assess therapeutic efficacy

Plasma equol concentration is not associated with breast cancer and fibrocystic breast conditions among women in Shanghai, China

Equol (a bacterial metabolite of the soy isoflavone daidzein) is produced by 30% to 50% of humans and may be associated with health outcomes. We hypothesized that plasma equol would be inversely associated with risks of fibrocystic breast conditions (FBC) and breast cancer (BC). Plasma from women in a breast self-examination trial in Shanghai with BC (n = 269) or FBC (n = 443), and age-matched controls (n = 1027) was analyzed for isoflavones. Equol was grouped into categories (= 45 nmol/L) and, among women with daidzein >= 20 nmol/L, the log(10) equol:daidzein ratio was grouped into tertiles. Where available, non-cancerous tissue (NCT) adjacent to the carcinomas from women with BC were classified as non-proliferative or proliferative (n = 130 and 172, respectively). The lesions from women with FBC were similarly classified (n = 99 and 92, respectively). Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated across equol categories and tertiles of log(10) equol:daidzein ratio. Equol categories were not associated with FBC or BC >.05). For log(10) equol:daidzein, compared to controls there were positive associations in the mid tertile for proliferative FBC (OR 2.06, 95% CI 1.08-3.93), BC with proliferative NCT (OR 2.95, 95% CI 1.37-6.35), and all BC regardless of histology (OR 2.37, 95% CI 1.43-3.95). However, trends in ORs with increasing plasma equol values or equol:daidzein ratios were not observed (P >.05). The results of this study do not provide evidence that equol plays a role in the etiology of these breast conditions. However, further work is needed to confirm or refute this conclusion. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Ideas and Perspectives: A Strategic Assessment of Methane and Nitrous Oxide Measurements In the Marine Environment

In the current era of rapid climate change, accurate characterization of climate-relevant gas dynamics-namely production, consumption, and net emissions-is required for all biomes, especially those ecosystems most susceptible to the impact of change. Marine environments include regions that act as net sources or sinks for numerous climateactive trace gases including methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). The temporal and spatial distributions of CH4 and N2O are controlled by the interaction of complex biogeochemical and physical processes. To evaluate and quantify how these mechanisms affect marine CH4 and N2O cycling requires a combination of traditional scientific disciplines including oceanography, microbiology, and numerical modeling. Fundamental to these efforts is ensuring that the datasets produced by independent scientists are comparable and interoperable. Equally critical is transparent communication within the research community about the technical improvements required to increase our collective understanding of marine CH4 and N2O. A workshop sponsored by Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) was organized to enhance dialogue and collaborations pertaining to marine CH4 and N2O. Here, we summarize the outcomes from the workshop to describe the challenges and opportunities for near-future CH4 and N2O research in the marine environment

Cumulative disadvantage, employment–marriage, and health inequalities among American and British mothers

This paper illuminates processes of cumulative disadvantage and the generation of health inequalities among mothers. It asks whether adverse circumstances early in the life course cumulate as health-harming biographical patterns across the prime working and family caregiving years. It also explores whether broader institutional contexts may moderate the cumulative effects of micro-level processes. An analysis of data from the British National Child Development Study and the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth reveals several expected social inequalities in health. In addition, the study uncovers new evidence of cumulative disadvantage: Adversities in early life selected women into long-term employment and marriage biographies that then intensified existing health disparities in mid-life. The analysis also shows that this accumulation of disadvantage was more prominent in the US than in Britain

Chemical intervention in plant sugar signalling increases yield and resilience

The pressing global issue of food insecurity due to population growth, diminishing land and variable climate can only be addressed in agriculture by improving both maximum crop yield potential and resilience. Genetic modification is one potential solution, but has yet to achieve worldwide acceptance, particularly for crops such as wheat. Trehalose-6-phosphate (T6P), a central sugar signal in plants, regulates sucrose use and allocation, underpinning crop growth and development. Here we show that application of a chemical intervention strategy directly modulates T6P levels in planta. Plant-permeable analogues of T6P were designed and constructed based on a ‘signalling-precursor’ concept for permeability, ready uptake and sunlight-triggered release of T6P in planta. We show that chemical intervention in a potent sugar signal increases grain yield, whereas application to vegetative tissue improves recovery and resurrection from drought. This technology offers a means to combine increases in yield with crop stress resilience. Given the generality of the T6P pathway in plants and other small-molecule signals in biology, these studies suggest that suitable synthetic exogenous small-molecule signal precursors can be used to directly enhance plant performance and perhaps other organism function

Effective Demand in the Recent Evolution of the US Economy

We present strong empirical evidence favoring the role of effective demand in the US economy, in the spirit of Keynes and Kalecki. Our inference comes from a statistically well-specified VAR model constructed on a quarterly basis from 1980 to 2008. US output is our variable of interest, and it depends (in our specification) on (1) the wage share, (2) OECD GDP, (3) taxes on corporate income, (4) other budget revenues, (5) credit, and the (6) interest rate. The first variable was included in order to know whether the economy under study is wage led or profit led. The second represents demand from abroad. The third and fourth make up total government expenditure and our arguments regarding these are based on Kalecki's analysis of fiscal policy. The last two variables are analyzed in the context of Keynes's monetary economics. Our results indicate that expansionary monetary, fiscal, and income policies favor higher aggregate demand in the United States