Advancing Hyku

This talk is a report on the next stage of development of the Hyku repository platform. Hyku is rapidly developing as both an affordable turnkey alternative to proprietary platforms for small institutions such as bepress, and also as a high-quality cloud-based alternative for large institutions no longer interested in customizing and maintaining open source options. Initially implemented by Duraspace and Stanford University under an IMLS grant, the platform is now being adopted by a growing community and brought to a feature-complete state by four key organizations: CoSector, Notch8, the Texas Digital Library and Ubiquity. This talk will focus in on the work Ubiquity has been involved in, in particular in partnership with the British Library. The acquisition of Bepress in 2017 caused significant distress in the US higher education community (e.g. U. Penn’s Beprexit site). For Ubiquity, Hyku is an opportunity to provide a fully open source, no lock-in alternative to such platforms, which complements its customer charter guaranteeing open source, open access and unbundled products. It chose Hyku because it belongs to the strong Samvera developer community, and committed itself to returning all code to the core codebase. Working with the British Library, Ubiquity has now significantly improved Hyku to the point of market readiness, with support for a full range of content types including data and software, full integration with services such as DataCite, Crossref and ORCiD, full import-export based on open standards, and rich multi-tenancy functionality. Their Hyku instance now holds all British Library research data, of which a quick demo will be given. The goal of this has been to engage customers through trust, rather than lock-in. Customers can leave at any time, continuing to run the containers with their repositories, and in the knowledge that the platform has a large open source community behind it, not just the original service provider

Whose Heritage? Archaeology and Identity in India

This thesis investigates the role of World Heritage sites and archaeology in shaping identities and understandings of the past in India. In particular as the Indian past is increasingly contested, it is contended that archaeology has an important role to play in ensuring that the public are able to critically navigate the issues. The focus encompasses both the broader public and the local communities and draws on public archaeology and identity and subaltern theories in order to consider their perspectives. This begins with a survey of the complex diversity of Indian society and its multiple levels of identity, then charts the expansion of archaeology from indigenous roots through the colonial period to the post-independence era, with particular attention paid to the co-option of the discipline by nationalist and communal movements, and to the development of relevant heritage legislation. Employing a comparative case study methodology, 600 visitors and 60 local residents were interviewed at three World Heritage sites: The Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka and The Buddhist Monuments of Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, and Champaner-Pavagadh Archaeological Park in Gujarat. The study found that visitors do relate to World Heritage sites in regard to identity, with communal factors playing a clear role, while the sociohistorical background of local residents was a factor in how they related. The way in which visitors learned from the sites was found to correlate strongly with their respective religions, and to depend on the interpretive information provided, while the local communities were not well informed. Visitor appreciation of archaeology was most correlated with educational level and the visibility of excavations, while local communities saw little benefit and generally felt restricted by it. In almost all aspects of the study communal tensions at Champaner- Pavagadh were seen to significantly influence the results, underlining the potential social and political importance of archaeology

Adventures in data citation: sorghum genome data exemplifies the new gold standard

Scientific progress is driven by the availability of information, which makes it essential that data be broadly, easily and rapidly accessible to researchers in every field. In addition to being good scientific practice, provision of supporting data in a convenient way increases experimental transparency and improves research efficiency by reducing unnecessary duplication of experiments. There are, however, serious constraints that limit extensive data dissemination. One such constraint is that, despite providing a major foundation of data to the advantage of entire community, data producers rarely receive the credit they deserve for the substantial amount of time and effort they spend creating these resources. In this regard, a formal system that provides recognition for data producers would serve to incentivize them to share more of their data. The process of data citation, in which the data themselves are cited and referenced in journal articles as persistently identifiable bibliographic entities, is a potential way to properly acknowledge data output. The recent publication of several sorghum genomes in Genome Biology is a notable first example of good data citation practice in the field of genomics and demonstrates the practicalities and formatting required for doing so. It also illustrates how effective use of persistent identifiers can augment the submission of data to the current standard scientific repositories

Getting shot of elves: healing, witchcraft and fairies in the Scottish witchcraft trials

This paper re-examines the evidence of the Scottish witchcraft trials for beliefs associated by scholars with "elf-shot." Some supposed evidence for elf-shot is dismissed, but other material illuminates the interplay between illness, healing and fairy-lore in early modern Scotland, and the relationship of these beliefs to witchcraft itself

CD4(+)CD25(+)FOXP3(+) Regulatory T Cells Suppress Anti-Tumor Immune Responses in Patients with Colorectal Cancer

BACKGROUND: A wealth of evidence obtained using mouse models indicates that CD4(+)CD25(+)FOXP3(+) regulatory T cells (Treg) maintain peripheral tolerance to self-antigens and also inhibit anti-tumor immune responses. To date there is limited information about CD4(+) T cell responses in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC). We set out to measure T cell responses to a tumor-associated antigen and examine whether Treg impinge on those anti-tumor immune responses in CRC patients. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Treg were identified and characterized as CD4(+)CD25(+)FOXP3(+) using flow cytometry. An increased frequency of Treg was demonstrated in both peripheral blood and mesenteric lymph nodes of patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) compared with either healthy controls or patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Depletion of Treg from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of CRC patients unmasked CD4(+) T cell responses, as observed by IFNγ release, to the tumor associated antigen 5T4, whereas no effect was observed in a healthy age-matched control group. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Collectively, these data demonstrate that Treg capable of inhibiting tumor associated antigen-specific immune responses are enriched in patients with CRC. These results support a rationale for manipulating Treg to enhance cancer immunotherapy

A Climatic Stability Approach to Prioritizing Global Conservation Investments

Climate change is impacting species and ecosystems globally. Many existing templates to identify the most important areas to conserve terrestrial biodiversity at the global scale neglect the future impacts of climate change. Unstable climatic conditions are predicted to undermine conservation investments in the future. This paper presents an approach to developing a resource allocation algorithm for conservation investment that incorporates the ecological stability of ecoregions under climate change. We discover that allocating funds in this way changes the optimal schedule of global investments both spatially and temporally. This allocation reduces the biodiversity loss of terrestrial endemic species from protected areas due to climate change by 22% for the period of 2002–2052, when compared to allocations that do not consider climate change. To maximize the resilience of global biodiversity to climate change we recommend that funding be increased in ecoregions located in the tropics and/or mid-elevation habitats, where climatic conditions are predicted to remain relatively stable. Accounting for the ecological stability of ecoregions provides a realistic approach to incorporating climate change into global conservation planning, with potential to save more species from extinction in the long term