Techniques for Providing Outstanding Customer Service

Providing exceptional customer service should be one of the primary goals for all academic libraries. However, with the day- to- day interruptions, librarians sometimes forget all about customer service. By developing a Customer Service Task Force, Penfield Library has been able to develop a number of projects in the past two years to greatly improve its reputation. Such methods as surveys and small and large focus groups were conducted to determine what projects needed to be addressed. Tips and tricks to providing quality customer service in a small college/university library are also presented

Snap2Diverse: Coordinating Information Visualizations and Virtual Environments

The field of Information Visualization is concerned with improving with how users perceive, understand, and interact with visual representations of data sets. Immersive Virtual Environments (VEs) excel at providing researchers and designers a greater comprehension of the spatial features and relations of their data, models, and scenes. This project addresses the intersection of these two fields where information is visualized in a virtual environment. Specifically we are interested in visualizing abstract information in relation to spatial information in the context of a virtual environment. We describe a set of design issues for this type of integrated visualization and demonstrate a coordinated, multiple-views system supporting 2D and 3D visualization tasks such as overview, navigation, details-on-demand, and brushing-and-linking selection. Software architecture issues are discussed with details of our implementation applied to the domain of chemical information and visualization. Lastly, we subject our system to an informal usability evaluation and identify usability issues with interaction and navigation that may guide future work in these situations

Quantification of the SF₆ lifetime based on mesospheric loss measured in the stratospheric polar vortex

Sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆) is a greenhouse gas with one of the highest radiative efficiencies in the atmosphere as well as an important indicator of transport time scales in the stratosphere. The current widely used estimate of the atmospheric lifetime of SF₆ is 3200 years. In this study we use in situ measurements in the 2000 Arctic polar vortex that sampled air with up to 50% SF₆ loss to calculate an SF₆ lifetime. Comparison of these measurements with output from the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) shows that WACCM transport into the vortex is accurate and that an important SF₆ loss mechanism, believed to be electron attachment, is missing in the model. Based on the measurements and estimates of the size of the vortex, we calculate an SF₆ lifetime of 850 years with an uncertainty range of 580–1400 years. The amount of SF₆ loss is shown to be consistent with that of HFC‐227ea, which has a lifetime of 670–780 years, adding independent support to our new SF₆ lifetime estimate. Based on the revised lifetime the global warming potential of SF₆ will decrease only slightly for short time horizons (<100 years) but will decrease substantially for time horizons longer than 2000 years. Also, the use of SF6 measurements as an indicator of transport time scales in the stratosphere clearly must account for potential influence from polar vortex air

A computational framework to emulate the human perspective in flow cytometric data analysis

Background: In recent years, intense research efforts have focused on developing methods for automated flow cytometric data analysis. However, while designing such applications, little or no attention has been paid to the human perspective that is absolutely central to the manual gating process of identifying and characterizing cell populations. In particular, the assumption of many common techniques that cell populations could be modeled reliably with pre-specified distributions may not hold true in real-life samples, which can have populations of arbitrary shapes and considerable inter-sample variation. &lt;p/&gt;Results: To address this, we developed a new framework flowScape for emulating certain key aspects of the human perspective in analyzing flow data, which we implemented in multiple steps. First, flowScape begins with creating a mathematically rigorous map of the high-dimensional flow data landscape based on dense and sparse regions defined by relative concentrations of events around modes. In the second step, these modal clusters are connected with a global hierarchical structure. This representation allows flowScape to perform ridgeline analysis for both traversing the landscape and isolating cell populations at different levels of resolution. Finally, we extended manual gating with a new capacity for constructing templates that can identify target populations in terms of their relative parameters, as opposed to the more commonly used absolute or physical parameters. This allows flowScape to apply such templates in batch mode for detecting the corresponding populations in a flexible, sample-specific manner. We also demonstrated different applications of our framework to flow data analysis and show its superiority over other analytical methods. &lt;p/&gt;Conclusions: The human perspective, built on top of intuition and experience, is a very important component of flow cytometric data analysis. By emulating some of its approaches and extending these with automation and rigor, flowScape provides a flexible and robust framework for computational cytomics

Attributes Enhanced Role-Based Access Control Model

Abstract. Attribute-based access control (ABAC) and role-based access control (RBAC) are currently the two most popular access con-trol models. Yet, they both have known limitations and offer features complimentary to each other. Due to this fact, integration of RBAC and ABAC has recently emerged as an important area of research. In this paper, we propose an access control model that combines the two mod-els in a novel way in order to unify their benefits. Our approach provides a fine-grained access control mechanism that not only takes contextual information into account while making the access control decisions but is also suitable for applications where access to resources is controlled by exploiting contents of the resources in the policy

Semantic closure demonstrated by the evolution of a universal constructor architecture in an artificial chemistry

We present a novel stringmol-based artificial chemistry system modelled on the universal constructor architecture (UCA) first explored by von Neumann. In a UCA, machines interact with an abstract description of themselves to replicate by copying the abstract description and constructing the machines that the abstract description encodes. DNA-based replication follows this architecture, with DNA being the abstract description, the polymerase being the copier, and the ribosome being the principal machine in expressing what is encoded on the DNA. This architecture is semantically closed as the machine that defines what the abstract description means is itself encoded on that abstract description. We present a series of experiments with the stringmol UCA that show the evolution of the meaning of genomic material, allowing the concept of semantic closure and transitions between semantically closed states to be elucidated in the light of concrete examples. We present results where, for the first time in an in silico system, simultaneous evolution of the genomic material, copier and constructor of a UCA, giving rise to viable offspring

BRAND PRICE POSITIONING STRATEGY AND SALES TURNOVER OF FOOD AND BEVERAGE MANUFACTURING COMPANIES IN RIVERS STATE NIGERIA

The study investigated the relationship between brand price positioning strategy and sales turnover of food and beverage manufacturing firms in the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) sector in Rivers State, Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive research design. Data were drawn through questionnaires from 66 small-scale operators, 40 medium-scale operators making a total of 106 food and beverage manufacturing Entrepreneurs in the SMEs sector in Rivers State, and 384 customers of the said firms. The data collection instrument was validated by experts drawn from Entrepreneurship, Marketing, and Statistics and thereafter subjected to a reliability test using the Cronbach Alpha test which gave an average coefficient value of 0.764. A combination of descriptive and inferential statistical tools was employed to analyze the data with the aid of SPSS (version 21.0). The descriptive tools employed were tables, frequencies, percentages, mean, and standard deviation while Pearson Product Moment correlation analysis constituted the inferential tools employed for data analysis. The study findings revealed that brand price positioning strategy was critical in determining the outcome of sales turnover. It was found to have significant predictive capabilities on sales turnover. In conclusion, brand price positioning strategies had a significant statistical influence on sales turnover by food and beverage manufacturing&nbsp; SMEs in Rivers State. Precisely, 37.5%, changes in sales turnover were significantly predicted by brand price. Therefore, this study advocated the adoption of a brand price positioning strategy that will enhance the affordability of their products in the marketplace

Logistic Management in Pandemic: An Empirical Study of Iron and Steel Sector in India

Since 2019, Covid -19 pandemic has changed our style of living, our businesses. Most of the countries in the world are facing problems to main their economy during this pandemics period. When government of India was announced first phase of lock down, every business operation were paused and no one have an idea to run it during this situations. After relaxation of lock down businesses started with new and innovative matter. This paper focused on supply chain business and their management during the pandemic period by taken into condensation of their association with iron and steel sector in India. For this paper, empirical study of performance selected iron and steel companies have been done on the basis of their logistic management. Data of SAIL, TATA STEEL, JSW are taken into account for analysis purpose. The result of the study is expected to help for the companies for future development

Education Program for Nurses Working in an Immigration Detention Facility

Nursing response to medical emergencies has been an ongoing issue in immigration detention centers. Lack of teamwork and poor communication with medical and security staff have resulted in detainees sustaining injuries during medical emergencies. This project was developed to persuade Immigration and Customs Enforcement Health Service Corps (IHSC) leaders to consider piloting the TeamSTEPPS emergency response curriculum for nurses working in the immigration detention center. Tuckman and Jensen\u27s model of group development will provide guidance to IHSC leaders in understanding the transformational stages of forming a successful team. TeamSTEPPS will address gaps in emergency health care competency by improving collaboration, communication, and detainee outcomes. Evaluation questionnaires will be offered after each training module and several months after the conclusion of the program. Questionnaires will be distributed, analyzed, and interpreted by IHSC leadership or their designee. Implementation of the Team STEPPS curriculum may result in increased staff morale, decreased staff turnover, and improved detainee outcomes

Quantitative principles of cis-translational control by general mRNA sequence features in eukaryotes.

BackgroundGeneral translational cis-elements are present in the mRNAs of all genes and affect the recruitment, assembly, and progress of preinitiation complexes and the ribosome under many physiological states. These elements include mRNA folding, upstream open reading frames, specific nucleotides flanking the initiating AUG codon, protein coding sequence length, and codon usage. The quantitative contributions of these sequence features and how and why they coordinate to control translation rates are not well understood.ResultsHere, we show that these sequence features specify 42-81% of the variance in translation rates in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Arabidopsis thaliana, Mus musculus, and Homo sapiens. We establish that control by RNA secondary structure is chiefly mediated by highly folded 25-60 nucleotide segments within mRNA 5' regions, that changes in tri-nucleotide frequencies between highly and poorly translated 5' regions are correlated between all species, and that control by distinct biochemical processes is extensively correlated as is regulation by a single process acting in different parts of the same mRNA.ConclusionsOur work shows that general features control a much larger fraction of the variance in translation rates than previously realized. We provide a more detailed and accurate understanding of the aspects of RNA structure that directs translation in diverse eukaryotes. In addition, we note that the strongly correlated regulation between and within cis-control features will cause more even densities of translational complexes along each mRNA and therefore more efficient use of the translation machinery by the cell