Webometric analysis of departments of librarianship and information science: a follow-up study

This paper reports an analysis of the websites of UK departments of library and information science. Inlink counts of these websites revealed no statistically significant correlation with the quality of the research carried out by these departments, as quantified using departmental grades in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise and citations in Google Scholar to publications submitted for that Exercise. Reasons for this lack of correlation include: difficulties in disambiguating departmental websites from larger institutional structures; the relatively small amount of research-related material in departmental websites; and limitations in the ways that current Web search engines process linkages to URLs. It is concluded that departmental-level webometric analyses do not at present provide an appropriate technique for evaluating academic research quality, and, more generally, that standards are needed for the formatting of URLs if inlinks are to become firmly established as a tool for website analysis

A host transcriptional signature for presymptomatic detection of infection in humans exposed to influenza H1N1 or H3N2.

There is great potential for host-based gene expression analysis to impact the early diagnosis of infectious diseases. In particular, the influenza pandemic of 2009 highlighted the challenges and limitations of traditional pathogen-based testing for suspected upper respiratory viral infection. We inoculated human volunteers with either influenza A (A/Brisbane/59/2007 (H1N1) or A/Wisconsin/67/2005 (H3N2)), and assayed the peripheral blood transcriptome every 8 hours for 7 days. Of 41 inoculated volunteers, 18 (44%) developed symptomatic infection. Using unbiased sparse latent factor regression analysis, we generated a gene signature (or factor) for symptomatic influenza capable of detecting 94% of infected cases. This gene signature is detectable as early as 29 hours post-exposure and achieves maximal accuracy on average 43 hours (p = 0.003, H1N1) and 38 hours (p-value = 0.005, H3N2) before peak clinical symptoms. In order to test the relevance of these findings in naturally acquired disease, a composite influenza A signature built from these challenge studies was applied to Emergency Department patients where it discriminates between swine-origin influenza A/H1N1 (2009) infected and non-infected individuals with 92% accuracy. The host genomic response to Influenza infection is robust and may provide the means for detection before typical clinical symptoms are apparent

Organisational culture of further education colleges delivering higher education business programmes: developing a culture of ‘HEness’ – what next?

This paper draws on the views of lecturers working in and delivering college-based higher education (CBHE) in the UK. There have been numerous works on the culture of higher education in further education (HE in FE). However, as noted by some literati, the culture of further education (FE) is not easy to define, and does not readily lend itself to the incorporation of a higher education (HE) culture. This could be due to the large number of changes FE has had to adopt owing to various government policies. The study comprises 26 in-depth individual interviews conducted at various further education colleges throughout the Yorkshire and Humber region of the UK. Via the use of an interpretivist approach, common themes and word use were extracted from the narratives for analysis. The organisational culture of these further education colleges was relatively easy to define, the word ‘blame’ being one of the common themes. However, when identifying if the individual colleges had a HE culture; this proved more difficult

Anti-Müllerian hormone and letrozole levels in boys with constitutional delay of growth and puberty treated with letrozole or testosterone

STUDY QUESTION: Does treatment of constitutional delay of growth and puberty (CDGP) in boys with aromatase inhibitor letrozole (Lz) or conventional low-dose testosterone (T) have differing effects on developing seminiferous epithelium?SUMMARY ANSWER: Anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) declined similarly in both treatment groups, and the two Sertoli cell-derived markers (AMH and inhibin B (iB)) exhibited differing responses to changes in gonadotrophin milieu.WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: Boys with CDGP may benefit from puberty-inducing medication. Peroral Lz activates gonadotrophin secretion, whereas intramuscular low-dose T may transiently suppress gonadotrophins and iB.STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION: Sera of 28 boys with CDGP who participated in a randomised, controlled, open-label trial at four paediatric centres in Finland between August 2013 and January 2017 were analysed. The patients were randomly assigned to receive either Lz (2.5 mg/day) (n = 15) or T (I mg/kg/month) (n = 13) for 6 months.PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS: The 28 patients were at least 14 years of age, showed first signs of puberty, wanted medical attention for CDGP and were evaluated at 0, 3, 6 and 12 months of visits. AMH levels were measured with an electrochemiluminescence immunoassay and L2 levels with liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry.MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE: AMH levels decreased in both treatment groups during the 12-month follow-up (P LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION: The original trial was not blinded for practical reasons and included a limited number of participants.WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS: In early puberty, treatment-induced gonadotrophin stimulus was unable to counteract the androgen-mediated decrease in AMH, while changes in iB levels were associated with changes in gonadotrophin levels. AMH decreased similarly in both groups during the treatment, reassuring safety of developing seminiferous epithelium in both treatment approaches. Since a fixed dose of Li induced variable serum Lz levels with a desired puberty-promoting effect in all boys, more research is needed to aim at a minimal efficient dose per weight.</div

Tensor models, Kronecker coefficients and permutation centralizer algebras

SCOAP

Practical recipes for the model order reduction, dynamical simulation, and compressive sampling of large-scale open quantum systems

This article presents numerical recipes for simulating high-temperature and non-equilibrium quantum spin systems that are continuously measured and controlled. The notion of a spin system is broadly conceived, in order to encompass macroscopic test masses as the limiting case of large-j spins. The simulation technique has three stages: first the deliberate introduction of noise into the simulation, then the conversion of that noise into an equivalent continuous measurement and control process, and finally, projection of the trajectory onto a state-space manifold having reduced dimensionality and possessing a Kahler potential of multi-linear form. The resulting simulation formalism is used to construct a positive P-representation for the thermal density matrix. Single-spin detection by magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM) is simulated, and the data statistics are shown to be those of a random telegraph signal with additive white noise. Larger-scale spin-dust models are simulated, having no spatial symmetry and no spatial ordering; the high-fidelity projection of numerically computed quantum trajectories onto low-dimensionality Kahler state-space manifolds is demonstrated. The reconstruction of quantum trajectories from sparse random projections is demonstrated, the onset of Donoho-Stodden breakdown at the Candes-Tao sparsity limit is observed, a deterministic construction for sampling matrices is given, and methods for quantum state optimization by Dantzig selection are given.Comment: 104 pages, 13 figures, 2 table