MBA Student Library Collaboration: Progress and Pitfalls.

In 2008, four accounting students taking a graduate marketing class contacted the business and engineering librarians at the Binghamton University (BU) Libraries about collaborating on a market research project. We wholeheartedly agreed — at once recognizing the unique benefits of gaining patron feedback on library resources and services from the student perspective. The project was also an excellent opportunity to support the School of Management and business students with their graduate course work. With the Libraries serving as their marketing client, the accounting students created a library survey to provide a “better understanding of the typical user and his/her perceptions of the BU Libraries.” The survey measured student satisfaction with the physical environment, library resources, website and the Libraries overall. Both the librarians and students learned about some of the pitfalls of marketing surveys. We also discovered areas of progress for the Libraries. This poster session details the successful collaboration, the development of the survey, complications, occasionally surprising results, and the lessons we learned from the project

Change: Watch For The Right Time

Collection budgets are an essential tool for building collections yet the amounts of allocations can ebb and flow over the years. Modifying the budget structure is an intimidating, exhausting exercise with administrative and political ramifications that affect the workload of collections librarians as well as the workflows in acquisitions departments. External and internal forces such as impending budget cuts and serials reviews, a new library system, new department heads, newly minted librarians’ learning curves, and the creation or demolition of big deals seem like roadblocks to a budget revision process. They can also be seized as opportunities to look at new models. Libraries get by with the allocations provided in any given year, but would it be better for the collections if the approach to allocations was more flexible from the beginning, more of a proactive allocation instead of reactive? At Binghamton University Libraries, the hiring of a new Head of Collection Development and migrating to a new library system necessitated collaborative conversations concerning structures and roles for the two departments. This paper presents scenarios and recommendations for determining when and how to collaboratively evaluate a legacy budget structure, redefine allocations, and review staff roles

Introduction: Re-examining criminal process through the lens of integrity

Criminal proceedings, it is often now said, ought to be conducted with integrity. But what, exactly, does it mean for criminal process to have, or to lack, 'integrity'? Is integrity in this sense merely an aspirational normative ideal, with possibly diffuse influence on conceptions of professional responsibility? Or is it also a juridical concept with robust institutional purchase and enforceable practical consequences in criminal litigation? The 16 new essays contained in this collection, written by prominent legal scholars and criminologists from Australia, Hong Kong, the UK and the USA, engage systematically with - and seek to generate further debate about - the theoretical and practical significance of 'integrity' at all stages of the criminal process. Reflecting the flexibility and scope of a putative 'integrity principle', the essays range widely over many of the most hotly contested issues in contemporary criminal justice theory, policy and practice, including: the ethics of police investigations, charging practice and discretionary enforcement; prosecutorial independence, policy and operational decision-making; plea bargaining; the perils of witness coaching and accomplice testimony; expert evidence; doctrines of admissibility and abuse of process; lay participation in criminal adjudication; the role of remorse in criminal trials; the ethics of appellate judgment writing; innocence projects; and state compensation for miscarriages of justice

Training and Embedding Cybersecurity Guardians in Older Communities

Older adults can struggle to access relevant community expertise when faced with new situations. One such situation is the number of cyberattacks they may face when interacting online. This paper reports on an initiative which recruited, trained, and supported older adults to become community cybersecurity educators (CyberGuardians), tasked with promoting cybersecurity best practice within their communities to prevent older adults falling victim to opportunistic cyberattacks. This initiative utilised an embedded peer-to-peer information dissemination strategy, rather than expert-to-citizen, facilitating the inclusion of individuals who would ordinarily be unlikely to seek cybersecurity information and thus may be vulnerable to cyberattacks. We report on ways the CyberGuardians used informal methods to create more aware communities, served as role models for behaviour change and indirectly improved their personal wellbeing. We discuss considerations for supporting CyberGuardians, including implications for sustainability and for replicating this model in other digital contexts, e.g., recognising misinformation or improving mental health

Making sense of social prescribing

This booklet provides advice and guidance on all things social prescribing

A role of SCN9A in human epilepsies, as a cause of febrile seizures and as a potential modifier of Dravet syndrome

A follow-up study of a large Utah family with significant linkage to chromosome 2q24 led us to identify a new febrile seizure (FS) gene, SCN9A encoding Na(v)1.7. In 21 affected members, we uncovered a potential mutation in a highly conserved amino acid, p.N641Y, in the large cytoplasmic loop between transmembrane domains I and II that was absent from 586 ethnically matched population control chromosomes. To establish a functional role for this mutation in seizure susceptibility, we introduced the orthologous mutation into the murine Scn9a ortholog using targeted homologous recombination. Compared to wild-type mice, homozygous Scn9a(N641Y/N641Y) knockin mice exhibit significantly reduced thresholds to electrically induced clonic and tonic-clonic seizures, and increased corneal kindling acquisition rates. Together, these data strongly support the SCN9A p.N641Y mutation as disease-causing in this family. To confirm the role of SCN9A in FS, we analyzed a collection of 92 unrelated FS patients and identified additional highly conserved Na(v)1.7 missense variants in 5% of the patients. After one of these children with FS later developed Dravet syndrome (severe myoclonic epilepsy of infancy), we sequenced the SCN1A gene, a gene known to be associated with Dravet syndrome, and identified a heterozygous frameshift mutation. Subsequent analysis of 109 Dravet syndrome patients yielded nine Na(v)1.7 missense variants (8% of the patients), all in highly conserved amino acids. Six of these Dravet syndrome patients with SCN9A missense variants also harbored either missense or splice site SCN1A mutations and three had no SCN1A mutations. This study provides evidence for a role of SCN9A in human epilepsies, both as a cause of FS and as a partner with SCN1A mutations

Integration of IRF6 and Jagged2 signalling is essential for controlling palatal adhesion and fusion competence

In mammals, adhesion and fusion of the palatal shelves are essential mechanisms during the development of the secondary palate; failure of these processes leads to the congenital anomaly, cleft palate. The mechanisms that prevent pathological adhesion between the oral and palatal epithelia while permitting adhesion and subsequent fusion of the palatal shelves via their medial edge epithelia remain obscure. In humans, mutations in the transcription factor interferon regulatory factor 6 (IRF6) underlie Van der Woude syndrome and popliteal pterygium syndrome. Recently, we have demonstrated that mice homozygous for a mutation in Irf6 exhibit abnormalities of epithelial differentiation that results in cleft palate as a consequence of adhesion between the palatal shelves and the tongue. In the current paper, we demonstrate that Irf6 is essential for oral epithelial differentiation and that IRF6 and the Notch ligand Jagged2 function in convergent molecular pathways during this process. We further demonstrate that IRF6 plays a key role in the formation and maintenance of the oral periderm, spatio-temporal regulation of which is essential for ensuring appropriate palatal adhesion

Designing a complex intervention for dementia case management in primary care

Background: Community-based support will become increasingly important for people with dementia, but currently services are fragmented and the quality of care is variable. Case management is a popular approach to care co-ordination, but evidence to date on its effectiveness in dementia has been equivocal. Case management interventions need to be designed to overcome obstacles to care co-ordination and maximise benefit. A successful case management methodology was adapted from the United States (US) version for use in English primary care, with a view to a definitive trial. Medical Research Council guidance on the development of complex interventions was implemented in the adaptation process, to capture the skill sets, person characteristics and learning needs of primary care based case managers. Methods: Co-design of the case manager role in a single NHS provider organisation, with external peer review by professionals and carers, in an iterative technology development process. Results: The generic skills and personal attributes were described for practice nurses taking up the case manager role in their workplaces, and for social workers seconded to general practice teams, together with a method of assessing their learning needs. A manual of information material for people with dementia and their family carers was also created using the US intervention as its source. Conclusions: Co-design produces rich products that have face validity and map onto the complexities of dementia and of health and care services. The feasibility of the case manager role, as described and defined by this process, needs evaluation in ‘real life’ settings

Mammalian Neurogenesis Requires Treacle-Plk1 for Precise Control of Spindle Orientation, Mitotic Progression, and Maintenance of Neural Progenitor Cells

The cerebral cortex is a specialized region of the brain that processes cognitive, motor, somatosensory, auditory, and visual functions. Its characteristic architecture and size is dependent upon the number of neurons generated during embryogenesis and has been postulated to be governed by symmetric versus asymmetric cell divisions, which mediate the balance between progenitor cell maintenance and neuron differentiation, respectively. The mechanistic importance of spindle orientation remains controversial, hence there is considerable interest in understanding how neural progenitor cell mitosis is controlled during neurogenesis. We discovered that Treacle, which is encoded by the Tcof1 gene, is a novel centrosome- and kinetochore-associated protein that is critical for spindle fidelity and mitotic progression. Tcof1/Treacle loss-of-function disrupts spindle orientation and cell cycle progression, which perturbs the maintenance, proliferation, and localization of neural progenitors during cortical neurogenesis. Consistent with this, Tcof1+/− mice exhibit reduced brain size as a consequence of defects in neural progenitor maintenance. We determined that Treacle elicits its effect via a direct interaction with Polo-like kinase1 (Plk1), and furthermore we discovered novel in vivo roles for Plk1 in governing mitotic progression and spindle orientation in the developing mammalian cortex. Increased asymmetric cell division, however, did not promote increased neuronal differentiation. Collectively our research has therefore identified Treacle and Plk1 as novel in vivo regulators of spindle fidelity, mitotic progression, and proliferation in the maintenance and localization of neural progenitor cells. Together, Treacle and Plk1 are critically required for proper cortical neurogenesis, which has important implications in the regulation of mammalian brain size and the pathogenesis of congenital neurodevelopmental disorders such as microcephaly