717 research outputs found
On the structure of subsets of an orderable group with some small doubling properties
The aim of this paper is to present a complete description of the structure
of subsets S of an orderable group G satisfying |S^2| = 3|S|-2 and is
non-abelian
Making sense: talking data management with researchers
Incremental is one of eight projects in the JISC Managing Research Data programme funded to identify institutional requirements for digital research data management and pilot relevant infrastructure. Our findings concur with those of other Managing Research Data projects, as well as with several previous studies. We found that many researchers: (i) organise their data in an ad hoc fashion, posing difficulties with retrieval and re-use; (ii) store their data on all kinds of media without always considering security and back-up; (iii) are positive about data sharing in principle though reluctant in practice; (iv) believe back-up is equivalent to preservation.
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The key difference between our approach and that of other Managing Research Data projects is the type of infrastructure we are piloting. While the majority of these projects focus on developing technical solutions, we are focusing on the need for ‘soft’ infrastructure, such as one-to-one tailored support, training, and easy-to-find, concise guidance that breaks down some of the barriers information professionals have unintentionally built with their use of specialist terminology.
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We are employing a bottom-up approach as we feel that to support the step-by-step development of sound research data management practices, you must first understand researchers’ needs and perspectives. Over the life of the project, Incremental staff will act as mediators, assisting researchers and local support staff to understand the data management requirements within which they are expect to work, and will determine how these can be addressed within research workflows and the existing technical infrastructure.
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Our primary goal is to build data management capacity within the Universities of Cambridge and Glasgow by raising awareness of basic principles so everyone can manage their data to a certain extent. We will ensure our lessons can be picked up and used by other institutions. Our affiliation with the Digital Curation Centre and Digital Preservation Coalition will assist in this and all outputs will be released under a Creative Commons licence.
The key difference between our approach and that of other MRD projects is the type of ‘infrastructure’ we are piloting. While the majority of these projects focus on developing technical solutions, we are focusing on the need for ‘soft’ infrastructure, such as one-to-one tailored support, training, and easy-to-find, concise guidance that breaks down some of the barriers information professionals have unintentionally built with their use of specialist terminology.
We are employing a bottom-up approach as we feel that to support the step-by-step development of sound research data management practices, you must first understand researchers’ needs and perspectives. Over the life of the project, Incremental staff will act as mediators, assisting researchers and local support staff to understand the data management requirements within which they are expect to work, and will determine how these can be addressed within research workflows and the existing technical infrastructure.
Our primary goal is to build data management capacity within the Universities of Cambridge and Glasgow by raising awareness of basic principles so everyone can manage their data to a certain extent. We’re achieving this by:
- re-positioning existing guidance so researchers can locate the advice they need;
- connecting researchers with one-to-one advice, support and partnering;
- offering practical training and a seminar series to address key data management topics.
We will ensure our lessons can be picked up and used by other institutions. Our affiliation with the Digital Curation Centre and Digital Preservation Coalition will assist in this and all outputs will be released under a Creative Commons licence
Incremental scoping study and implementation plan
This report is one of the first deliverables from the Incremental project, which seeks to investigate
and improve the research data management infrastructure at the universities of Glasgow and
Cambridge and to learn lessons and develop resources of value to other institutions. Coming at the
end of the project’s scoping study, this report identifies the key themes and issues that emerged
and proposes a set of activities to address those needs.
As its name suggests, Incremental deliberately adopts a stepped, pragmatic approach to supporting
research data management. It recognises that solutions will vary across different departmental and
institutional contexts; and that top-down, policy-driven or centralised solutions are unlikely to prove
as effective as practical support delivered in a clear and timely manner where the benefits can be
clearly understood and will justify any effort or resources required. The findings of the scoping
study have confirmed the value of this approach and the main recommendations of this report are
concerned with the development and delivery of suitable resources.
Although some differences were observed between disciplines, these seemed to be as much a
feature of different organisational cultures as the nature of the research being undertaken. Our
study found that there were many common issues across the groups and that the responses to
these issues need not be highly technical or expensive to implement. What is required is that these
resources employ jargon-free language and use examples of relevance to researchers and that
they can be accessed easily at the point of need. There are resources already available
(institutionally and externally) that can address researchers’ data management needs but these are
not being fully exploited. So in many cases Incremental will be enabling efficient and contextualised
access, or tailoring resources to specific environments, rather than developing resources from
scratch.
While Incremental will concentrate on developing, repurposing and leveraging practical resources to
support researchers in their management of data, it recognises that this will be best achieved within
a supportive institutional context (both in terms of policy and provision). The need for institutional
support is especially evident when long-term preservation and data sharing are considered – these
activities are clearly more effective and sustainable if addressed at more aggregated levels (e.g.
repositories) rather than left to individual researchers or groups. So in addition to its work in
developing resources, the Incremental project will seek to inform the development of a more
comprehensive data management infrastructure at each institution. In Cambridge, this will be
connected with the library’s CUPID project (Cambridge University Preservation Development) and
at Glasgow in conjunction with the Digital Preservation Advisory Board
Large Sample Bounds on the Survivor Average Causal Effect in the Presence of a Binary Covariate with Conditionally Ignorable Treatment Assignment
A common problem when conducting an experiment or observational study for the purpose of causal inference is “censoring by death,” in which an event occurring during the experiment causes the desired outcome value – such as quality of life (QOL) – not to be defined for some subjects. One approach to this is to estimate the Survivor Average Causal Effect (SACE), which is the difference in the mean QOL between the treated and control arms, considering only those individuals who would have had well-defined QOL regardless of whether they received the treatment of interest, where the treatment is imposed by the researcher in an experiment or by the subject in the case of an observational study. Zhang and Rubin [5] (Estimation of causal effects via principal stratification when some outcomes are truncated by “death”. J Educ Behav Stat 2003;28:353–68) have proposed a methodology to calculate large sample bounds – bounds on the SACE that assume that the exact QOL distribution for each arm is known or that the finite sample size can be ignored – in the case of a randomized experiment. We examine a modification of these bounds in the case where a binary covariate describing each of the subjects is available and assignment to the treatment or control group is ignorable conditional on the covariate. Using a dataset involving an employment training program, we find that the use of the covariate does not substantially change the bounds in this case, although it does weaken the assumptions about the sample and thus make the bounds more widely applicable. However, simulations show that the use of a binary covariate can in some cases dramatically narrow the bounds. Extensions and generalizations to more complicated variants of this situation are discussed, although the amount of computation increases very quickly as the number of covariates and the number of possible values of each covariate increase
Quantum effects in the radial thermal expansion of bundles of single-walled carbon nanotubes doped with 4He
The radial thermal expansion (ar) of bundles of single-walled carbon
nanotubes saturated with 4He impurities to the molar concentration 9.4% has
been investigated in the interval 2.5-9.5 K using the dilatometric method. In
the interval 2.1-3.7 K (ar) is negative and is several times higher than the
negative (ar) for pure nanotube bundles. This most likely points to 4He atom
tunneling between different positions in the nanotube bundle system. The excess
expansion was reduced with decreasing 4He concentration.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, will be published in Fiz.Nizk Temp. #7, 201
The Lagrange and Markov spectra from the dynamical point of view
This text grew out of my lecture notes for a 4-hours minicourse delivered on
October 17 \& 19, 2016 during the research school "Applications of Ergodic
Theory in Number Theory" -- an activity related to the Jean-Molet Chair project
of Mariusz Lema\'nczyk and S\'ebastien Ferenczi -- realized at CIRM, Marseille,
France. The subject of this text is the same of my minicourse, namely, the
structure of the so-called Lagrange and Markov spectra (with an special
emphasis on a recent theorem of C. G. Moreira).Comment: 27 pages, 6 figures. Survey articl
Lattice distortion in hcp rare gas solids
The lattice distortion parameter has been
calculated as a function of molar volume for the hcp phases of He, Ar, Kr and
Xe. Results from both semi-empirical potentials and density functional theory
are presented. Our study shows that is negative for helium in the
entire pressure range. For Ar, Kr and Xe, however, changes sign from
negative to positive as the pressure increases, growing rapidly in magnitude at
higher pressures.Comment: Submitted to Low. Temp. Phys., 14 pages, 5 figure
Poisson's ratio in cryocrystals under pressure
We present results of lattice dynamics calculations of Poisson's ratio (PR)
for solid hydrogen and rare gas solids (He, Ne, Ar, Kr and Xe) under pressure.
Using two complementary approaches - the semi-empirical many-body calculations
and the first-principle density-functional theory calculations we found three
different types of pressure dependencies of PR. While for solid helium PR
monotonically decreases with rising pressure, for Ar, Kr, and Xe it
monotonically increases with pressure. For solid hydrogen and Ne the pressure
dependencies of PR are non-monotonic displaying rather deep minimums. The role
of the intermolecular potentials in this diversity of patterns is discussed.Comment: Fizika Nizkikh Temperatur 41, 571 (2015
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