Building a Bridge to Next Generation DH Services in Libraries with a Campus Needs Assessment

This poster reports on a needs assessment for digital humanities library services undertaken at large research university in order to provide a basis for transition to a next phase of Digital Humanities (DH) support at a library supporting a growing amount of DH work on campus. It reports key findings and how the library services will evolve to meet needs identified on campus. The full report on which this presentation is based is available at http://hdl.handle.net/2142/100081Ope

Fostering collaborative research for rare genetic disease: The example of Niemann-Pick type C disease

Rare disease represents one of the most significant issues facing the medical community and health care providers worldwide, yet the majority of these disorders never emerge from their obscurity, drawing little attention from the medical community or the pharmaceutical industry. The challenge therefore is how best to mobilize rare disease stakeholders to enhance basic, translational and clinical research to advance understanding of pathogenesis and accelerate therapy development. Here we describe a rare, fatal brain disorder known as Niemann-Pick type C (NPC) and an innovative research collaborative known as Support of Accelerated Research for NPC (SOAR-NPC) which illustrates one pathway through which knowledge of a rare disease and its possible treatments are being successfully advanced. Use of the “SOAR” mechanism, we believe, offers a blueprint for similar advancement for many other rare disorders

How European Union Membership Can Undermine the Rule of Law in Emerging Democracies

The European Union views the spread of economic prosperity and rule of law to countries emerging from dictatorship as among its primary goals when considering countries as candidates for membership. Existing literature often suggests that EU membership confers significant benefits on the accession countries, and these countries are willing to undergo costly and difficult reforms to reap these benefits. Through strict membership conditions, member states force accession countries to commit to democracy. Drawing on theoretical work in the fields of law, politics, and economics, this article reassesses the conventional wisdom. It argues that, under certain conditions, the reforms required of would-be members could have the perverse effect of undermining the establishment of legitimate law in transitional democracies. Using an agent-based model, the article elucidates a theory in which placing laws on the books around which no societal consensus exists can create perverse incentives for citizens and government officials and may lead to an erosion of the rule of law

Ion stopping in dense plasma target for high energy density physics

The basic physics of nonrelativistic and electromagnetic ion stopping in hot and ionized plasma targets is thoroughly updated. Corresponding projectile-target interactions involve enhanced projectile ionization and coupling with target free electrons leading to significantly larger energy losses in hot targets when contrasted to their cold homologues. Standard stoppping formalism is framed around the most economical extrapolation of high velocity stopping in cold matter. Further elaborations pay attention to target electron coupling and nonlinearities due to enhanced projectile charge state, as well. Scaling rules are then used to optimize the enhanced stopping of MeV/amu ions in plasmas with electron linear densities nel ~ 10 18 -10 20 cm -2 . The synchronous firing of dense and strongly ionized plasmas with the time structure of bunched and energetic multicharged ion beam then allow to probe, for the first time, the long searched enhanced plasma stopping and projectile charge at target exit. Laser ablated plasmas (SPQR1) and dense linear plasma columns (SPQR2) show up as targets of choice in providing accurate and on line measurements of plasma parameters. Corresponding stopping results are of a central significance in asserting the validity of intense ion beam scenarios for driving thermonuclear pellets. Other applications of note feature thorium induced fission, novel ion sources and specific material processing through low energy ion beams. Last but not least, the given ion beam-plasma target interaction physics is likely to pave a way to the production and diagnostics of warm dense matter (WDM)

Psychiatric disorder and personality factors associated with suicide in older people: a descriptive and case-control study

OBJECTIVE: To determine the rates of psychiatric disorder and personality variables in a sample of older people who had committed suicide and to compare the rates in a subgroup of this sample with those in a control group of people who died from natural causes. DESIGN: Descriptive psychological autopsy study, including interviews with informants, of psychiatric and personality factors in 100 suicides in older people. Case-control study using subgroup of 54 cases and matched control group. SETTING: Four counties and one large urban area in central England, UK. SUBJECTS: Individuals 60 years old and over at the time of death who had died between 1 January 1995 and 1 May 1998, and whose deaths had received a coroner's verdict of suicide (or an open or accidental verdict, where the circumstances of death indicated probable suicide). The control group was an age-and sex-matched sample of people dying through natural causes in the same time period. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: ICD-10 psychiatric disorder, personality disorder and trait accentuation. MAIN RESULTS: Seventy-seven per cent of the suicide sample had a psychiatric disorder at the time of death, most often depression (63%). Personality disorder or personality trait accentuation was present in 44%, with anankastic or anxious traits the most frequent. Depression, personality disorder, and personality trait accentuation emerged as predictors of suicide in the case-control analysis. CONCLUSION: Personality factors, as well as depression, are important risk factors for suicide in older people

LSST Science Book, Version 2.0

A survey that can cover the sky in optical bands over wide fields to faint magnitudes with a fast cadence will enable many of the exciting science opportunities of the next decade. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will have an effective aperture of 6.7 meters and an imaging camera with field of view of 9.6 deg^2, and will be devoted to a ten-year imaging survey over 20,000 deg^2 south of +15 deg. Each pointing will be imaged 2000 times with fifteen second exposures in six broad bands from 0.35 to 1.1 microns, to a total point-source depth of r~27.5. The LSST Science Book describes the basic parameters of the LSST hardware, software, and observing plans. The book discusses educational and outreach opportunities, then goes on to describe a broad range of science that LSST will revolutionize: mapping the inner and outer Solar System, stellar populations in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, the structure of the Milky Way disk and halo and other objects in the Local Volume, transient and variable objects both at low and high redshift, and the properties of normal and active galaxies at low and high redshift. It then turns to far-field cosmological topics, exploring properties of supernovae to z~1, strong and weak lensing, the large-scale distribution of galaxies and baryon oscillations, and how these different probes may be combined to constrain cosmological models and the physics of dark energy.Comment: 596 pages. Also available at full resolution at http://www.lsst.org/lsst/sciboo