Digital Scotland, the relevance of library research and the Glasgow Digital Library Project

The Glasgow Digital Library (GDL) Project has a significance over and above its primary aim of creating a joint digital library for the citizens of Glasgow. It is also both an important building block in the development of a planned and co-ordinated 'virtual Scotland' and a rich environment for research into issues relevant to that enterprise. Its creation comes at a time of political, social, economic and cultural change in Scotland, and may be seen, at least in part, as a response to a developing Scottish focus in these areas, a key element of which is a new socially inclusive and digitally driven educational vision and strategy based on the Scottish traditions of meritocratic education, sharing and common enterprise, and a fiercely independent approach. The initiative is based at the Centre for Digital Library Research at Strathclyde University alongside a range of other projects of relevance both to the development of a coherent virtual landscape in Scotland and to the GDL itself, a supportive environment which allows it to draw upon the research results and staff expertise of other relevant projects for use in its own development and enables its relationship to virtual Scotland to be both explored and developed more readily. Although its primary aim is the creation of content (based initially on electronic resources created by the institutions, on public domain information, and on joint purchases and digitisation initiatives) the project will also investigate relationships between regional and national collaborative collection management programmes with SCONE (Scottish Collections Network Extension project) and relationships between regional and national distributed union catalogues with CAIRNS (Co-operative Academic Information Retrieval Network for Scotland) and COSMIC (Confederation of Scottish Mini-Clumps). It will also have to tackle issues associated with the management of co-operation

Spectral Classification of Galaxies Along the Hubble Sequence

We develop a straightforward and quantitative two-step method for spectroscopically classifying galaxies from the low signal-to-noise (S/N) optical spectra typical of galaxy redshift surveys. First, using \chi^2-fitting of characteristic templates to the object spectrum, we determine the relative contributions of the old stellar component, the young stellar component, and various emission line spectra. Then, we classify the galaxy by comparing the relative strengths of the components with those of galaxies of known morphological type. In particular, we use the ratios of (1) the emission line to absorption line contribution, (2) the young to old stellar contribution, and (3) the oxygen to hydrogen emission line contribution. We calibrate and test the method using published morphological types for 32 galaxies from the long-slit spectroscopic survey of Kennicutt (1992) and for 304 galaxies from a fiber spectroscopic survey of nearby galaxy clusters. From an analysis of a sample of long-slit spectra of spiral galaxies in two galaxy clusters, we conclude that the majority of the galaxies observed in the fiber survey are sufficiently distant that their spectral classification is unaffected by aperture bias. Our spectral classification is consistent with the morphological classification to within one type (e.g. E to S0 or Sa to Sb) for \gtsim 80% of the galaxies. Disagreements between the spectral and morphological classifications of the remaining galaxies reflect a divergence in the correspondence between spectral and morphological types, rather than a problem with the data or method.Comment: 13 pages, uuencoded gzip'ed ps-file that includes 8 of 9 Figures, accepted for publication in A

Some Social Characteristics of CEGEP Graduates'

As part of the "Quiet Revolution" in Quebec in the 1960's, changes have occurred both in the educational structures and in the population undertaking post-secondary studies. A new post-secondary institution, the CEGEP, has been introduced. As a preliminary step in the study of accessibility to the CEGEP, the social class, ethnicity and sex of its graduates are related to their course of study at CEGEP and their subsequent work or educational activi- ties. There were no clear-cut patterns of ethnic or social class differences in choice of specialisation. Although field of specialisation remained strongly sex-linked, women constitu- ted a significant proportion of the graduates. Social classes continued to be distributed inequitably in the student population, although the disparities varied with ethnicity, being least in the case of those whose origins were neither English nor French. The pre-university programme, as intended, wax being treated as part of a cycle of post-secondary education, and suitable employment for graduates of the terminal, vocational programmes was not a problem

The Role of Viral Systems in Nutrient Cycling

The Te Arawa/Rotorua lakes located in the central North Island of New Zealand have significant cultural, historic, social and economic value. Anthropogenic changes in land use have led to a decline in water quality in some lakes. A number of lakes have accelerated eutrophication with recurring cyanobacterial blooms and periods of bottom-water anoxia. Whilst there has been extensive research undertaken on phytoplankton dynamics in freshwater lakes there is little information on the abundance and activity of viral-like particles (VLPs) and bacteria. VLPs are the most abundant biological entities in aquatic environments and play an important role in carbon and nutrient cycling, reproducing either by cell lysis or replication in the host cell. Bacterial community structure is thought to be closely linked to the viral community and bacterial taxa have a key role in biochemical cycling in freshwater systems. Two Te Arawa/Rotorua monomictic lakes differing in their trophic status; oligotrophic Lake Tikitapu and eutrophic Lake Okaro, were sampled over a 12-month period at the surface (epilimnion) and bottom (hypolimnion) and through a discrete layer of the thermocline during stratification. The thermocline is a region where there may be steep clines in physiochemical parameters (e.g., dissolved oxygen) which may strongly affect the distribution of, and environmental factors that influence, prokaryotes, protozoa and viruses. Physiochemical variables, nutrients, microbiological and molecular analyses were undertaken on samples in order to compare and contrast changes occurring within and between the two lakes. Both lakes were strongly stratified for c. 8 months from September 2009 to June 2010 as indicated by Schmidt stability values > 1, which contributed to well-lit but nutrient-limited surface waters for phytoplankton productivity. With increasing duration of stratification a deep chlorophyll maximum formed in both lakes with Chlorophyta and Euglenophyta the dominant phytoplankton. Viral-like particle abundance in both lakes exceeded bacterial abundance by a factor of c. 100, with maximum VLP and bacterial abundances in both lakes c. 10⁸ cells mL-¹ and 10⁶ cells mL-¹, respectively. Bacterial abundance in both lakes was similar in the epilimnion and hypolimnion during stratification with the exception of a peak (2 x 10⁷ cells mL-¹) in the epilimnion of Lake Okaro in February 2010 (and in the hypolimnion (9.74 x 10⁶ cells mL-¹) in March 2010 of in Lake Tikitapu. Viral-like particle abundance was variable but the epilimnion and hypolimnion tracked in both lakes between August 2009 and January 2010 after which Lake Okaro epilimnion and hypolimnion remained steady with Lake Tikitapu hypolimnion showing considerably higher VLP abundance than the epilimnion before tracking together in June 2010. The abundance of the following bacterial functional genes was monitored through the study; nifH (encoding the nitrogenase reductase protein), dsrA (encoding the sulphate reductase protein), mcrA (encoding the methyl coenzyme M reductase protein), amoA (encoding the ammonium oxidising protein and nosZ (encoding for the nitrous oxide reductase protein). The occurrence of the nifH gene correlated with increased abundance of cyanobacteria capable of fixing nitrogen in the epilimnion of both lakes while the dsrA gene was more abundant in Lake Okaro, likely due to higher organic matter concentrations and greater duration and spatial extent of reducing conditions in that lake. Abundance of mcrA was expected to be high in the anoxic waters of the nutrient rich sediment of Lake Okaro but there was very low abundance. The amoA genes were detected when concentrations of ammonium were elevated in the bottom waters of both lakes. Both lakes showed the presence nosZ genes with high abundance occurring in Lake Okaro in December 2009 through all levels and also in December 2009 in Lake Tikitapu in the epilimnion and hypolimnion. With denitrification reliant on the availability of nitrate (NO3-N) and dissolved organic carbon levels and performed by obligate and facultative anaerobes, conditions need to be precise for the process to occur

Characteristics and likelihood of ongoing homelessness among unsheltered veterans

INTRODUCTION: Unsheltered homelessness is an important phenomenon yet difficult to study due to lack of data. The Veterans Health Administration administers a universal homelessness screener, which identifies housing status for Veterans screening positive for homelessness. METHODS: This study compared unsheltered and sheltered Veterans, assessed differences in rates of ongoing homelessness, and estimated a mixed-effect logistic regression model to examine the relationship between housing status and ongoing homelessness. RESULTS: Eleven percent of Veterans who screened positive for homelessness were unsheltered; 40% of those who rescreened were homeless six months later, compared with less than 20% of sheltered Veterans. Unsheltered Veterans were 2.7 times as likely to experience ongoing homelessness. DISCUSSION: Unsheltered Veterans differ from their sheltered counterparts-they are older, more likely to be male, less likely to have income-and may be good candidates for an intensive housing intervention. Future research will assess clinical characteristics and services utilization among this population