A survey of University of Richmond Evening School students : their motives, progress after study and the extent of assistance by employers in educational programs

The aim of this thesis is to suvey a representative group of Evening School students and business firms to gather qualitative data concerning the Evening School and present these data in a quantitative manner. Research was conducted by questionnaire in order to collect original source data. Replies to questionnaires have been analyzed. Tabulations of data are included throughout the text. A summary follows analyses of replies

Scheduling Coast Guard District Cutters

Interfaces, 26, March - April 1996, pp. 59-72Center for Infrastructure Defense (CID) Paper.United States Coast Guard (USCG) districts schedule cutters 180 feet or less in length to weekly statuses (statuses is USCGjargon for assignments) from which they primarily respond to calls for search and rescue, law enforcement, and pollution control. The First Coast Guard District, based in Boston, has one of the largest scheduling problems: Each of 16 cutters is as- signed weekly to one of six statuses to ensure patrol coverage, enforce equitable distribution of patrols, and honor restrictions on consecutive cutter statuses. When we state this quarterly scheduling problem as an elastic mixed-integer linear program, we obtain face-valid schedules—superior to manually prepared schedules for all measures of effectiveness considered—within a few minutes on a personal computer. Initial acceptance of the model was hampered by disruptive schedule revisions that re- sulted from minor changes in input. Modifications to preserve run-to-run persistence of solutions have brought success

Recent Decisions

Comments on recent decisions by Robert E. Veverka, John W. Dell, James A. Wysocki, Theodore A. Fitzgerald, Robert W. Cox, Philip B. Byrne, Thomas R. Joyce, and Cornelius Collins

Bibliometric analysis of academic journal recommendations and requirements for surgical and anesthesiologic adverse events reporting.

BACKGROUND Standards for reporting surgical adverse events vary widely within the scientific literature. Failure to adequately capture adverse events hinders efforts to measure the safety of healthcare delivery and improve the quality of care. The aim of the present study is to assess the prevalence and typology of perioperative adverse event reporting guidelines among surgery and anesthesiology journals. MATERIALS AND METHODS In November 2021, three independent reviewers queried journal lists from the SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) portal (www.scimagojr.com), a bibliometric indicator database for surgery and anesthesiology academic journals. Journal characteristics were summarized using SCImago, a bibliometric indicator database extracted from Scopus journal data. Quartile 1 (Q1) was considered the top quartile and Q4 bottom quartile based on the journal impact factor. Journal author guidelines were collected to determine whether adverse event reporting recommendations were included and, if so, the preferred reporting procedures. RESULTS Of 1,409 journals queried, 655 (46.5%) recommended surgical adverse event reporting. Journals most likely to recommend adverse event reporting were: 1) by category surgery (59.1%), urology (53.3%), and anesthesia (52.3%); 2) in top SJR quartiles (i.e. more influential); 3) by region, based in Western Europe (49.8%), North America (49.3%), and the Middle East (48.3%). CONCLUSIONS Surgery and anesthesiology journals do not consistently require or provide recommendations on perioperative adverse event reporting. Journal guidelines regarding adverse event reporting should be standardized and are needed to improve the quality of surgical adverse event reporting with the ultimate goal of improving patient morbidity and mortality

Red blood cell mannoses as phagocytic ligands mediating both sickle cell anaemia and malaria resistance

Acknowledgements We are grateful for the assistance provided by both the Microscopy and Histology Core Facility, and the Iain Fraser Cytometry Centre, at the University of Aberdeen. We thank Ann Wheeler and Matt Pearson from Edinburgh Super-Resolution Imaging Consortium for technical support with 3D SIM microscopy. We also thank Janet A. Willment and Bernard Kerscher, supervised by G.D.B., for providing the Fc fusion proteins, Jeanette A. Wagener, supervised by Neil A.R.G. Gow, for providing high purity chitin, Jan Westland for obtaining blood samples and Paul Crocker for useful discussions. Principal funding for this project was provided by Wellcome Trust grant 094847 (R.N.B., L.P.E., M.A.V.). In addition, support was provided by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council grants BBF0083091 (A.D. and S.M.H.) and BBK0161641 (A.D. and S.M.H.), Wellcome Trust grant 082098 (A.D.), Wellcome Trust grants 97377, 102705 (G.D.B.), and funding for the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology at the University of Aberdeen MR/N006364/1 (G.D.B.).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

TOLKIN – Tree of Life Knowledge and Information Network: Filling a Gap for Collaborative Research in Biological Systematics

The development of biological informatics infrastructure capable of supporting growing data management and analysis environments is an increasing need within the systematics biology community. Although significant progress has been made in recent years on developing new algorithms and tools for analyzing and visualizing large phylogenetic data and trees, implementation of these resources is often carried out by bioinformatics experts, using one-off scripts. Therefore, a gap exists in providing data management support for a large set of non-technical users. The TOLKIN project (Tree of Life Knowledge and Information Network) addresses this need by supporting capabilities to manage, integrate, and provide public access to molecular, morphological, and biocollections data and research outcomes through a collaborative, web application. This data management framework allows aggregation and import of sequences, underlying documentation about their source, including vouchers, tissues, and DNA extraction. It combines features of LIMS and workflow environments by supporting management at the level of individual observations, sequences, and specimens, as well as assembly and versioning of data sets used in phylogenetic inference. As a web application, the system provides multi-user support that obviates current practices of sharing data sets as files or spreadsheets via email

European Respiratory Society guidelines for the diagnosis of primary ciliary dyskinesia

The diagnosis of primary ciliary dyskinesia is often confirmed with standard, albeit complex and expensive, tests. In many cases, however, the diagnosis remains difficult despite the array of sophisticated diagnostic tests. There is no "gold standard" reference test. Hence, a Task Force supported by the European Respiratory Society has developed this guideline to provide evidence-based recommendations on diagnostic testing, especially in light of new developments in such tests, and the need for robust diagnoses of patients who might enter randomised controlled trials of treatments. The guideline is based on pre-defined questions relevant for clinical care, a systematic review of the literature, and assessment of the evidence using the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation) approach. It focuses on clinical presentation, nasal nitric oxide, analysis of ciliary beat frequency and pattern by high-speed video-microscopy analysis, transmission electron microscopy, genotyping and immunofluorescence. It then used a modified Delphi survey to develop an algorithm for the use of diagnostic tests to definitively confirm and exclude the diagnosis of primary ciliary dyskinesia; and to provide advice when the diagnosis was not conclusive. Finally, this guideline proposes a set of quality criteria for future research on the validity of diagnostic methods for primary ciliary dyskinesia

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected