Bring out Your Dead: Digging up Print Reference Issues to Recommend What Is Next for a Collection

With the rise of online resources and discovery systems, the question of whether print reference is dead yet has been raised. In response to collection changes, VCU librarians assessed usage and issues in Cabell Library’s print reference collection—revealing trends, challenges, and leading to proposed collection designs

Characterization of blood drawn rapidly for use in blood volume expansion studies: An animal model for simulated weightlessness

It was demonstrated that up to 8ml of blood can be drawn from donar rats without significantly increasing volume and stress sensitive hormones, and thus can be used for volume expansion studies. Infusion of whole blood allows more physiological changes that can be seen with volume expansion by saline or other ionic solutions. The infusion of whole blood to induce hypervolemia may provide an improved model to study the fluid balance and control mechanisms operative in weightlessness. Blood samples were drawn as quickly as possible from femoral artery catheters chronically implanted in Sprague Dawley rats and analyzed for hematocrit, plasma sodium, potassium, osmolality, corticosterone, epinepherine, norepinephrine, and vasopressin. The levels were found to be comparable to those of normal rats

A Photoenzymatic NADH regeneration system

A photoenzymatic NADH regeneration system was established. The combination of deazariboflavin as a photocatalyst with putidaredoxin reductase enabled the selective reduction of NAD+ into the enzyme‐active 1,4‐NADH to promote an alcohol dehydrogenase catalysed stereospecific reduction reaction. The catalytic turnover of all the reaction components was demonstrated. Factors influencing the efficiency of the overall system were identified

Fiber-Optic Imaging Probe Developed for Space Used to Detect Diabetes Through the Eye

Approximately 16 million Americans have diabetes mellitus, which can severely impair eyesight by causing cataracts, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma. Cataracts are 1.6 times more common in people with diabetes than in those without diabetes, and cataract extraction is the only surgical treatment. In many cases, diabetes-related ocular pathologies go undiagnosed until visual function is compromised. This ongoing pilot project seeks to study the progression of diabetes in a unique animal model by monitoring changes in the lens with a safe, sensitive, dynamic light-scattering probe. Dynamic light scattering (DLS), has the potential to diagnose cataracts at the molecular level. Recently, a new DLS fiber-optic probe was developed at the NASA Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field for noncontact, accurate, and extremely sensitive particle-sizing measurements in fluid dispersions and suspensions (ref. 1). This compact, portable, and rugged probe is free of optical alignment, offers point-and-shoot operation for various online field applications and challenging environments, and yet is extremely flexible in regards to sample container sizes, materials, and shapes. No external vibration isolation and no index matching are required. It can measure particles as small as 1 nm and as large as few micrometers in a wide concentration range from very dilute (waterlike) dispersions to very turbid (milklike) suspensions. It is safe and fast to use, since it only requires very low laser power (10 nW to 3 mW) with very short data acquisition times (2 to 10 sec)

Western Christianity and the origins of antiblackness, eurocentrism, and white supremacist ideology.

This qualitative study investigates the cult(ural) and intellectual history of Western Christianity to address a significant gap in the literature pertaining to the origins of whiteness/antiblackness in the West and its subsequent socialization worldwide. Western Christianity’s seminal role in the social construction of the whiteness/antiblackness dichotomy has been undertheorized, neglected, and ignored. This study finds early Christian theologians categorically imposed conceptual metaphors about Blackness on African people that depicted them as the exemplars of evil to teach Christian doctrine about sin and salvation. It connects these original antiblack discourses directly to the theo-political arguments Western European Christians used centuries later to justify African hereditary enslavement, western colonialism, and the ethos and polity of white supremacy. It contends this identical rhetoric currently facilitates the relegation and confinement of African Americans post-emancipation to a permanent racial underclass that constitutes an afterlife of slavery in its perpetuation of colonial-era structures of exploitation and oppression. It concludes by finding whiteness/antiblackness, i.e., white supremacy, is a form of religion, the belief system of a cult based on White Christian animus to symbolic blackness that literally is directed at real Africans and their descendants worldwide. In closing, it recommends re-envisioning the global “Black” struggle as a struggle for re-existence It thus calls for Africana peoples to reject Western Christianity’s symbolic blackness and re-imagine Africana identities with a self-awareness and social consciousness able to defeat the gravitational pull of the massive “white” hole of White Christian Supremacy and the negative valence of whiteness/antiblackness it manifests and maintains

Investigating and improving medical education and library resources at the Tamale Teaching Hospital in Northern Ghana : a case report part 2.

In part one of this case report, published in the Spring Issue of Kentucky Libraries (Volume 76, Number 2), I described my journey to Tamale, Ghana to provide a series of training workshops at the Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH), Nursing Training School (NTS), and the University of Development Studies (UDS), and to conduct a needs assessment to gather information to develop a series of grant proposals to assist the local health sciences libraries with improving their collections. Part two of this report briefly describes the consultations that took place and the planning and project outcomes to-date

The myth of freedom of information.

The article discusses the myths surrounding the founding of the U.S. and the freedoms of information supposedly conferred by its founders in the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Particular focus is given to the efforts of libraries in defending the public\u27s right to know and their attempts to inform and instruct the public on the significance of openness in government. The misuse of a quote by former U.S. President James Madison about freedom of information is explored

Dismantling the master\u27s house : deconstructing the roots of antiblack racism and the construction of the other in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

This critical inquiry into the social constructions of black and white identities analyzes the roles of the three western monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) in the cognitive and sociohistorical developments of racial slavery and antiblack racism. Specifically, it investigates the sociohistorical consequences of the inherent dualisms of the western monotheisms and how those dualisms are expressed in the production of social theories and systems that rely on believer/non-believer oppositions and binaries defined by a Manichaean view of the universe and a teleological conception of history that fosters and sustains an eternal holy war against infidels. What emerges from this analysis in the end is a reconnection of Islam with Judeo-Christianity, resulting in the (re)formulation of a Judeo-Christian-Islamic complex as a specific instrumentality in the formation of white and black identities and the creation and preservation of white supremacy

From citation management to knowledge management : developing and implementing innovative endnote training and support services on the health sciences campus.

In addition to providing basic and intermediate Endnote instruction and training, clinical librarians at the Kornhauser Health Sciences Library (KHSL) now offer faculty, physicians, researchers, and students individualized training and technical support via EndNote Housecalls, assistance in the creation of specialized research libraries, library and bibliographic consultation and organization, and the delivery of patron-requested literature search results in customized EndNote Libraries via email. This paper will focus on the design and implementation of KHSL\u27s EndNote citation management software training program, and its subsequent transformation into a service to address the knowledge management needs of our constituents

Investigating and improving medical education and library resources at the Tamale Teaching Hospital in Northern Ghana : a case report.

This article discusses a service-learning trip I took in the summer of 2011 to conduct a series of consultations and workshops for librarians, administrators, faculty, and students at Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH) and the University of Development Studies (UDS) in Northern Ghana. The visit was organized in support of a series of programs and collaborations that have been ongoing for several years between the University of Louisville (U of L) School of Public Health and Information Science (SPHIS) and TTH and UDS. The goal of the visit was twofold: to provide a series of training workshops to improve the research, database, and digital skills of clinicians, faculty, and students; and to conduct a needs assessment and gather data to develop grant proposals to acquire financial support for education, training, and information needs of the teaching hospital and schools of nursing and medicine