Scholarly publishing depends on peer reviewers

The peer-review crisis is posing a risk to the scholarly peer-reviewed journal system. Journals have to ask many potential peer reviewers to obtain a minimum acceptable number of peers accepting reviewing a manuscript. Several solutions have been suggested to overcome this shortage. From reimbursing for the job, to eliminating pre-publication reviews, one cannot predict which is more dangerous for the future of scholarly publishing. And, why not acknowledging their contribution to the final version of the article published? PubMed created two categories of contributors: authors [AU] and collaborators [IR]. Why not a third category for the peer-reviewer?Scopu

An Evaluation of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Perceived Social Distancing Policies in Relation to Planning, Selecting, and Preparing Healthy Meals: An Observational Study in 38 Countries Worldwide

Objectives: To examine changes in planning, selecting, and preparing healthy foods in relation to personal factors (time, money, stress) and social distancing policies during the COVID-19 crisis. Methods: Using cross-sectional online surveys collected in 38 countries worldwide in April-June 2020 (N = 37,207, Mage 36.7 SD 14.8, 77% women), we compared changes in food literacy behaviors to changes in personal factors and social distancing policies, using hierarchical multiple regression analyses controlling for sociodemographic variables. Results: Increases in planning (4.7 SD 1.3, 4.9 SD 1.3), selecting (3.6 SD 1.7, 3.7 SD 1.7), and preparing (4.6 SD 1.2, 4.7 SD 1.3) healthy foods were found for women and men, and positively related to perceived time availability and stay-at-home policies. Psychological distress was a barrier for women, and an enabler for men. Financial stress was a barrier and enabler depending on various sociodemographic variables (all p < 0.01). Conclusion: Stay-at-home policies and feelings of having more time during COVID-19 seem to have improved food literacy. Stress and other social distancing policies relate to food literacy in more complex ways, highlighting the necessity of a health equity lens. Copyright 2021 De Backer, Teunissen, Cuykx, Decorte, Pabian, Gerritsen, Matthys, Al Sabbah, Van Royen and the Corona Cooking Survey Study Group.This research was funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (G047518N) and Flanders Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HBC.2018.0397). These funding sources had no role in the design of the study, the analysis and interpretation of the data or the writing of, nor the decision to publish the manuscript.Scopu

Studies of nanomechanical properties of pulsed laser deposited NbN films on Si using nanoindentation

2011 MRS Fall Meeting --28 November 2011 through 2 December 2011 -- Boston, MA --Nanomechanical and structural properties of pulsed laser deposited niobium nitride thin films were investigated using X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, and nanoindentation. NbN film reveals cubic ?-NbN structure with the corresponding diffraction peaks from the (111), (200), and (220) planes. The NbN thin films depict highly granular structure, with a wide range of grain sizes that range from 15-40 nm with an average surface roughness of 6 nm. The average modulus of the film is 420±60 GPa, whereas for the substrate the average modulus is 180 GPa, which is considered higher than the average modulus for Si reported in the literature due to pile-up. The hardness of the film increases from an average of 12 GPa for deep indents (Si substrate) measured using XP CSM and load control (LC) modes to an average of 25 GPa measured using the DCM II head in CSM and LC modules. The average hardness of the Si substrate is 12 GPa. © 2012 Materials Research Society.DOE DE-FG02-97ER45625 National Science FoundationThis work was partially supported by U.S. DOE DE-FG02-97ER45625 and by the National Science Foundation Grant Nos. DMR-9988669 and MRI-0821180. The authors would like to thank Dr. D. Gu for preparing the TEM samples

Investigation of the crystal structure on the nanomechanical properties of pulsed laser deposited NBN thin films

141st Annual Meeting and Exhibition, TMS 2012 --11 March 2012 through 15 March 2012 -- Orlando, FL --The nanomechanical properties of NbN/Nb deposited by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) were investigated as a function of the film/substrate crystal structure. In addition to the ß-Nb 2N phase, the X-ray diffraction shows peaks correspond to ?-NbN cubic and ?'-NbN hexagonal phases. Several samples were tested of varied crystal structure between dominant cubic to dominant hexagonal. X-ray diffraction analysis, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy were employed to characterize their phases, microstructure, and surface morphology. Nanoindentation was used to investigate the nanomechanical properties of the films. A Nanoindenter XP equipped with a DCM II head was used in conjunction with the continuous stiffness method (CSM) in depth and load control modes to evaluate the hardness and modulus of the NbN thin films as a function of the crystal structure. The results show that there are clear effects of the crystal structure on the elastic modulus and hardness of the PLD-grown NbN films

Nanoindentation study of niobium nitride thin films on niobium fabricated by reactive pulsed laser deposition

Nanomechanical and structural properties of NbN x films deposited on single crystal Nb using pulsed laser deposition for different substrate temperature were previously investigated as a function of film/substrate crystal structure (Mamun et al. (2012) [30]). In this study we focus on the effect of laser fluences and background nitrogen pressure on the nanomechanical and structural properties of NbN x films. The crystal structure and surface morphology of the thin films were tested by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy. Using nanoindentation, the investigation of the nanomechanical properties revealed that the hardness of the NbN x films was directly influenced by the laser fluence for low background nitrogen pressure, whereas the nanomechanical hardness showed no apparent correlation with laser fluence at high background nitrogen pressure. The NbN x film hardness measured at 30% film thickness increased from 14.0 ± 1.3 to 18.9 ± 2.4 GPa when the laser fluence was increased from 15 to 25 J/cm 2 at 10.7 Pa N 2 pressure. X-ray diffraction showed NbN x films with peaks that correspond to ?-NbN cubic and ß-Nb 2 N hexagonal phases in addition to the ?'-NbN hexagonal phase. Increasing the laser fluence resulted in NbN x films with larger grain sizes. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.National Science Foundation: 1228228, 0821180This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation grant nos. 0821180 and 1228228 . A.H. F. and M. A.M. were supported by Jefferson Lab scholarships

Investigation of the crystal structure on the nanomechanical properties of pulsed laser deposited niobium nitride thin films

NbN thin films grown on Nb using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) were investigated for film crystal structures. The nanomechanical properties of NbN on Nb were examined as a function of the film/substrate crystal structure. X-ray diffraction (XRD) reveals peaks that correspond to ?-NbN cubic and ß-Nb 2N hexagonal phases in addition to ?'-NbN phase. Samples of various crystal structures were tested for phase characterization, microstructure, and surface morphology using XRD analysis, scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy. The nanomechanical properties were investigated using nanoindentation. The results indicate that there are clear effects of the crystal structure on the hardness of the PLD-grown NbN x films. © 2012 Materials Research Society

Application of an indirect MilA ELISA for the detection of Mycoplasma bovis antibodies in bovine milk

The objective of this study was to detect Mycoplasma bovis specific antibodies using a recently reported MilA ELISA with the aim to detect M. bovis antibodies in milk. An indirect ELISA, based on a recombinant fragment of the Mycoplasma immunogenic lipase A (MilA) protein, was conducted on 291 milk samples for the detection of M. bovis antibodies. Samples were also tested with conventional Mycoplasma culture and M. bovis PCR. Samples were collected from individual cows from 2 commercial dairy herds in South Australia. Of 291 samples tested, 68 (23.4%) were detected positive for M. bovis antibodies, 150 (51.5%) were positive for M. bovis in PCR and 166 (57.0%) in bacterial culture. These results indicate that MilA indirect ELISA can be utilized for the detection of M. bovis antibodies in milk

Nanomechanical properties of NbN films prepared by pulsed laser deposition using nanoindendation

Structural and mechanical properties of niobium nitride thin films deposited by pulsed laser deposition were investigated using X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, and nanoindentation. Niobium nitride was deposited on Si(1 0 0) by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) of Nb in nitrogen background. A Nanoindenter XP equipped with a dynamic contact module (DCM II) head was used in conjunction with the continuous stiffness method (CSM) in depth and load control modes to measure the hardness and modulus of the NbN thin films. NbN film reveals simple cubic ?-NbN structure with the corresponding reflections of (1 1 1), (2 0 0), and (2 2 0) planes. Highly textured NbN film shows a strong (1 1 1) preferred orientation. The NbN thin films depict polycrystalline structure, with a wide range of grain sizes that range from 15 to 40 nm with an average surface roughness of 6 nm. The average modulus of the film is 420 ± 60 GPa, whereas for the substrate the average modulus is 180 GPa, which is considered higher than the average modulus for Si reported in the literature due to pile-up. The hardness of the film increases monotonically from an average of 12 GPa for deep indents (Si substrate) measured using XP CSM and load control (LC) modes to an average of 25 GPa measured using the DCM II head in CSM and LC modules. The average hardness of the Si substrate is 12 GPa. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.National Science Foundation DOE DE-FG02-97ER45625We would like to thank Dr. Robert Pike of the College of William and Mary for giving us access to XRD. This work was partially supported by U.S. DOE DE-FG02-97ER45625 and by the National Science Foundation grant nos. DMR-9988669 and MRI-0821180

Structural, electronic, and mechanical properties of niobium nitride prepared by thermal diffusion in nitrogen

Niobium nitride (NbNx) was prepared by heating Nb sample in a nitrogen atmosphere (133 Pa) at a temperature of 900 C. The structural, electronic, nanomechanical and surface properties of the deposited layers have been determined as a function of processing time. The results suggested that the niobium nitride was crystalline in the single phase of hexagonal ß-Nb 2N and the nitrogen-to-niobium ratio was found to be in the range of 0.67 ± 0.03 to 0.74 ± 0.03. Longer processing times resulted in layers with higher nitrogen-to-niobium ratios. The mean grain size of these nitrides was about 18 nm. The valence band photoemission and calculated density of state spectra characterized by two peaks were associated with N 2p-Nb 4d hybridization. X-ray photoemission spectra of Nb 3p and 3d core levels revealed a strong interaction with nitrogen along with binding energy shift. As the processing time was increased, the film growth continued with consistent improvement in hardness and modulus© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.National Science Foundation Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Council for Higher EducationOne of the authors (Y.U.) thanks the Cukurova University, the Council of Higher Education of Turkey, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) for their support. H.E.A. acknowledges support by the National Science Foundation Grant Nos. DMR-9988669 and MRI-0821180 . A.H.F. was supported by a Jefferson Lab fellowship

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical science. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press