Archive 2.0: Imagining the Michigan State University Israelite Samaritan Scroll Collection

This project will work with Michigan State University units and the A.B. Samaritan Institute in Holon, Israel to create using the latest in Web 2.0 technologies an accessible, useable and living archive for the Israelite Samaritan community in Holon and Nabulus as well as biblical scholars. To facilitate this work we will digitize over the next several years three 15th century Israelite Samaritan Pentateuch scrolls, and provide a unique suite of tools to help facilitate collaboration: social networking, tagging, social bookmarking, zoomify view, and multilingual support. The aim is to bring together two distinct groups of users - textual scholars and members of the Israelite Samaritan community - both of whom have a significant stake in the cultural and scholarly value of the Samaritan Archive, via an online environment in which they can view and interpret the Samaritan texts, interact with members of their respective communities, and interact with one another

Understanding and Supporing Knowledge Work in Everyday Life

Our purpose in writing is two-fold: (1) to introduce this audience to the Writing in Digital Environments (WIDE) Research Center, and (2) to make an argument about the importance of understanding and supporting knowledge work for professional and technical communicators. We are particularly interested in what knowledge (writing) work looks like in multiple contexts—for instance, in civic organizations as well as in corporate organizations— because contemporary social and community contexts are dependent on high-quality knowledge work. This explains our interest in “everyday life.

Calculating Kohen's Kappa: A Measure of Inter-Rater Reliability for Qualitative Research Involving Nominal Coding

This is a gentle introduction to the Kappa Coefficient, a commonly used statistic for measuring reliability between two raters who are applying nominal codes or category labels to qualitative data. This was created for grad students in the Humanities and has been used in both course and workshop settings

Methane-derived authigenic carbonates from the northern Gulf of Mexico and their relation to gas hydrates

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2007. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geochemical Exploration 95 (2007): 1-15, doi:10.1016/j.gexplo.2007.05.011.Authigenic carbonates were sampled in piston cores collected from both the Tunica Mound and the Mississippi Canyon area on the continental slope of the northern Gulf of Mexico during a Marion Dufresne cruise in July 2002. The carbonates are present as hardgrounds, porous crusts, concretions or nodules and shell fragments with or without carbonate cements. Carbonates occurred at gas venting sites which are likely to overlie gas hydrates bearing sediments. Electron microprobe, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and thinsection investigations show that these carbonates are high-Mg calcite (6 - 21 mol % MgCO3), with significant presence of framboidal pyrite. All carbonates are depleted in 13C (δ13C = -61.9 to -31.5 ‰ PDB) indicating that the carbon is derived mainly from anaerobic methane oxidation (AMO). Age estimates based on 14C dating of shell fragments and on regional sedimentation rates indicate that these authigenic carbonates formed within the last 1,000 yr in the Mississippi Canyon and within 5,500 yr at the Tunica Mound. The oxygen isotopic composition of carbonates ranges from +3.4 to +5.9 ‰ PDB. Oxygen isotopic compositions and Mg2+ contents of carbonates, and present in-situ temperatures of bottom seawater/sediments, show that some of these carbonates, especially from a core associated with underlying massive gas hydrates precipitated in or near equilibrium with bottom-water. On the other hand, those carbonates more enriched in 18O are interpreted to have precipitated from 18O-rich fluids which are thought to have been derived from the dissociation of gas hydrates. The dissociation of gas hydrates in the northern Gulf of Mexico within the last 5,500 yr may be caused by nearby salt movement and related brines.Financial support for this work was provided by the Grant-in-Aid from the Ministry of Education and Science and the Research Grant from JAPEX

Carbon Sequestration in Synechococcus Sp.: From Molecular Machines to Hierarchical Modeling

The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced the first five grants for the Genomes to Life (GTL) Program. The goal of this program is to "achieve the most far-reaching of all biological goals: a fundamental, comprehensive, and systematic understanding of life." While more information about the program can be found at the GTL website (www.doegenomestolife.org), this paper provides an overview of one of the five GTL projects funded, "Carbon Sequestration in Synechococcus Sp.: From Molecular Machines to Hierarchical Modeling." This project is a combined experimental and computational effort emphasizing developing, prototyping, and applying new computational tools and methods to ellucidate the biochemical mechanisms of the carbon sequestration of Synechococcus Sp., an abundant marine cyanobacteria known to play an important role in the global carbon cycle. Understanding, predicting, and perhaps manipulating carbon fixation in the oceans has long been a major focus of biological oceanography and has more recently been of interest to a broader audience of scientists and policy makers. It is clear that the oceanic sinks and sources of CO2 are important terms in the global environmental response to anthropogenic atmospheric inputs of CO2 and that oceanic microorganisms play a key role in this response. However, the relationship between this global phenomenon and the biochemical mechanisms of carbon fixation in these microorganisms is poorly understood. The project includes five subprojects: an experimental investigation, three computational biology efforts, and a fifth which deals with addressing computational infrastructure challenges of relevance to this project and the Genomes to Life program as a whole. Our experimental effort is designed to provide biology and data to drive the computational efforts and includes significant investment in developing new experimental methods for uncovering protein partners, characterizing protein complexes, identifying new binding domains. We will also develop and apply new data measurement and statistical methods for analyzing microarray experiments. Our computational efforts include coupling molecular simulation methods with knowledge discovery from diverse biological data sets for high-throughput discovery and characterization of protein-protein complexes and developing a set of novel capabilities for inference of regulatory pathways in microbial genomes across multiple sources of information through the integration of computational and experimental technologies. These capabilities will be applied to Synechococcus regulatory pathways to characterize their interaction map and identify component proteins in these pathways. We will also investigate methods for combining experimental and computational results with visualization and natural language tools to accelerate discovery of regulatory pathways. Furthermore, given that the ultimate goal of this effort is to develop a systems-level of understanding of how the Synechococcus genome affects carbon fixation at the global scale, we will develop and apply a set of tools for capturing the carbon fixation behavior of complex of Synechococcus at different levels of resolution. Finally, because the explosion of data being produced by high-throughput experiments requires data analysis and models which are more computationally complex, more heterogeneous, and require coupling to ever increasing amounts of experimentally obtained data in varying formats, we have also established a companion computational infrastructure to support this effort as well as the Genomes to Life program as a whole.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63164/1/153623102321112746.pd

The lived experiences of experienced Vipassana Mahasi meditators: an interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Research into the effects and mechanisms of mindfulness training draws predominantly on quantitative research. There is a lack of understanding about the subjective experiences of experienced mindfulness meditators, which may provide additional insights into the effects, processes and context of mindfulness training. This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of a novel group of experienced mindfulness meditators who practise Vipassana Mahasi (VM) meditation. The study aimed to understand how experienced VM practitioners make sense of the effects of practice and what processes they ascribe to it. Participants attended semistructured interviews, and their responses were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results yielded overarching themes including (a) improvements in hedonic and eudaimonic well-being; (b) insights into self, others and perception of reality; (c) attaining equanimity; and (d) physical and interpersonal difficulties. Participants perceived VM as a ‘cleansing’ process whereby maladaptive responses were eliminated through mindfulness, other supportive mental qualities, decentering and nonattachment. The findings revealed a complex and dynamic set of interdependent outcomes and processes, which are reinforced by Buddhist teachings and ethical practices. This study highlights the need for additional interdisciplinary research into topics such as insight generation and supportive mental qualities cultivated during VM, novel states of well-being informed by Buddhist constructs and interpersonal difficulties related to long-term practice. Findings also suggest that incorporating Buddhist teachings and ethics into mindfulness-based interventions may enhance practitioner understanding and implementation of meditation techniques.N/