Maximizing Equitable Reach and Accessibility of ETDs

This poster addresses accessibility issues of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) in digital libraries (DLs). ETDs are available primarily as PDF files, which present barriers to equitable access, especially for users with visual impairments, cognitive or learning disabilities, or for anyone needing more efficient and effective ways of finding relevant information within these long documents. We propose using AI techniques, including natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, and text analysis, to convert PDFs into machine-readable HTML documents with semantic tags and structure, extracting figures and tables, and generating summaries and keywords. Our goal is to increase the accessibility of ETDs and to make this important scholarship available to a wider audience

Opening Books and the National Corpus of Graduate Research

Virginia Tech University Libraries, in collaboration with Virginia Tech Department of Computer Science and Old Dominion University Department of Computer Science, request $505,214 in grant funding for a 3-year project, the goal of which is to bring computational access to book-length documents, demonstrating that with Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). The project is motivated by the following library and community needs. (1) Despite huge volumes of book-length documents in digital libraries, there is a lack of models offering effective and efficient computational access to these long documents. (2) Nationwide open access services for ETDs generally function at the metadata level. Much important knowledge and scientific data lie hidden in ETDs, and we need better tools to mine the content and facilitate the identification, discovery, and reuse of these important components. (3) A wide range of audiences can potentially benefit from this research, including but not limited to Librarians, Students, Authors, Educators, Researchers, and other interested readers. We will answer the following key research questions: (1) How can we effectively identify and extract key parts (chapters, sections, tables, figures, citations), in both born digital and page image formats? (2) How can we develop effective automatic classication as well as chapter summarization techniques? (3) How can our ETD digital library most effectively serve stakeholders? In response to these questions, we plan to first compile an ETD corpus consisting of at least 50,000 documents from multiple institutional repositories. We will make the corpus inclusive and diverse, covering a range of degrees (master’s and doctoral), years, graduate programs (STEM and non-STEM), and authors (from HBCUs and non-HBCUs). Testing first with this sample, we will investigate three major research areas (RAs), outlined below. RA 1: Document analysis and extraction, in which we experiment with machine/deep learning models for effective ETD segmentation and subsequent information extraction. Anticipated results of this research include new software tools that can be used and adapted by libraries for automatic extraction of structural metadata and document components (chapters, sections, figures, tables, citations, bibliographies) from ETDs - applied to both page image and born digital documents. RA 2: Adding value, in which we investigate techniques and build machine/deep learning models to automatically summarize and classify ETD chapters. Anticipated results of this research include software implementations of a chapter-level text summarizer that generates paragraph-length summaries of ETD chapters, and a multi-label classifier that assigns subject categories to ETD chapters. Our aim is to develop software that can be adapted or replicated by libraries to add value to their existing ETD services. RA 3: User services, in which we study users to identify and understand their information needs and information seeking behaviors, so that we may establish corresponding requirements for user interface and service components most useful for interacting with ETD content. Basing our design decisions on empirical evidence obtained from user analysis, we will construct a prototype system to demonstrate how these components can improve the user experience with ETD collections, and ultimately increase the capacity of libraries to provide access to ETDs and other long-form document content. Our project brings to bear cutting-edge computer science and machine/deep learning technologies to advance discovery, use, and potential for reuse of the knowledge hidden in the text of books and book-length documents. In addition, by focusing on libraries\u27 ETD collections (where legal restrictions from book publishers generally are not applicable), our research will open this rich corpus of graduate research and scholarship, leverage ETDs to advance further research and education, and allow libraries to achieve greater impact

P4_4 The Lunar Recession

This article investigates the Moon's recession from the Earth. The semi-major axis at which the Moon will become tidally locked with the Earth is calculated, and is found to be 558,000 km. It was found that the period of the Earth-Moon system would be about 48 current days long at this time. Using the Moon's current rate of recession, it was estimated that this process would happen in about 4.6 Gyr

Exploring the benefits of volunteering in nature on mental health and wellbeing in the context of mental health related sick leave: A literature review for Lincolnshire Police

Executive summary: Overview of questions posed for the review What is the evidence for nature exposure benefiting health? This can be found in the introduction Key benefits: attention restoration, stress reduction, encouraging physical activity and social facilitation. Are there any examples of projects utilising nature-based volunteering for mental health benefits? This can be found in the findings No studies directly investigating the use of nature-based volunteering as a return-to�work strategy for mental health related staff sickness were found. How is the impact of nature-based interventions on mental health measured? This can be found in the findings Most studies did not include outcome measures, and interviews were the main method of data collection. Most did not include pre and post measures. Outcome measures used: ● Wellbeing ○ General Well-Being Scale (GWBS) ○ Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) ● Depression and anxiety ○ The Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS21) What is the evidence of different activities eliciting different effects? This can be found in the findings Not enough reporting details in the studies to compare the effects of different activities. Is there evidence that outdoor activities are more beneficial than indoor activities? This can be found throughout the review Some evidence for improved stress reduction in an outdoor setting. Not enough evidence to compare indoor vs outdoor volunteering. What are the potential risk factors of nature-based therapeutic interventions? This can be found in the conclusion No significant risk factors were identified. What are the barriers to engagement in nature based therapeutic interventions? This can be found in the introduction Structural and attitudinal barriers exist to engaging in intervention

Individual and Structural Environmental Influences on Utilization of IRON and Folic Acid Supplementation Among Pregnant Women in Harare, Zimbabwe

Micronutrient deficiencies are prevalent among Zimbabweans with serious health and social implications. Due to alack of a national micronutrient food fortification policy, the Zimbabwe Ministry of Health and Child Careestablished a policy for the prevention of maternal micronutrient deficiencies, which centres on pregnant womenreceiving daily iron and folic acid (IFA) at theirfirst antenatal care visit and throughout pregnancy. Despite theseefforts, utilization of IFA supplementation in pregnancy in Zimbabwe is low. This study aimed to understand theexperiences and knowledge of IFA supplementation among pregnant women and healthcare workers in Harare,Zimbabwe, and the influence of health-service and social environments on utilization. Semi-structured in-depthinterviews were conducted in Shona and English, with pregnant women (n= 24) and healthcare workers (n=14)providing direct antenatal care services to pregnant women in two high-density community clinics. Data wereanalysed thematically using NVivo 10. Influences on utilization were at the individual and structural environmentallevels. Reasons for low utilization of IFA supplementation included forgetting to take IFA, side effects, misconcep-tions about IFA, limited access to nutrition information, delayed entry or non-uptake of antenatal care and socialnorms of pregnant women for IFA supplementation. Utilization was enhanced by knowledge of risks and benefitsof supplementation, fear of negative health complications with non-utilization, family support and healthcareworker recommendation for supplementation. Studyfindings can inform approaches to strengthen micronutrientsupplementation utilization to improve the micronutrient status of pregnant women to decrease maternal mortalityand improve overall maternal and child health in Zimbabwe

Senescent vs. non-senescent cells in the human annulus in vivo: Cell harvest with laser capture microdissection and gene expression studies with microarray analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Senescent cells are well-recognized in the aging/degenerating human disc. Senescent cells are viable, cannot divide, remain metabolically active and accumulate within the disc over time. Molecular analysis of senescent cells in tissue offers a special challenge since there are no cell surface markers for senescence which would let one use fluorescence-activated cell sorting as a method for separating out senescent cells.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We employed a novel laser capture microdissection (LCM) design to selectively harvest senescent and non-senescent annulus cells in paraffin-embedded tissue, and compared their gene expression with microarray analysis. LCM was used to separately harvest senescent and non-senescent cells from 11 human annulus specimens.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Microarray analysis revealed significant differences in expression levels in senescent cells vs non-senescent cells: 292 genes were upregulated, and 321 downregulated. Genes with established relationships to senescence were found to be significantly upregulated in senescent cells vs. non-senescent cells: p38 (MPAK14), RB-Associated KRAB zinc finger, Discoidin, CUB and LCCL domain, growth arrest and DNA-damage inducible beta, p28ING5, sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor 2 and somatostatin receptor 3; cyclin-dependent kinase 8 showed significant downregulation in senescent cells. Nitric oxidase synthase 1, and heat shock 70 kDa protein 6, both of which were significantly down-regulated in senescent cells, also showed significant changes. Additional genes related to cytokines, cell proliferation, and other processes were also identified.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our LCM-microarray analyses identified a set of genes associated with senescence which were significantly upregulated in senescent vs non-senescent cells in the human annulus. These genes include p38 MAP kinase, discoidin, inhibitor of growth family member 5, and growth arrest and DNA-damage-inducible beta. Other genes, including genes associated with cell proliferation, extracellular matrix formation, cell signaling and other cell functions also showed significant modulation in senescent vs non-senescent cells. The aging/degenerating disc undergoes a well-recognized loss of cells; understanding senescent cells is important since their presence further reduces the disc's ability to generate new cells to replace those lost to necrosis or apoptosis.</p

Automatic Metadata Extraction Incorporating Visual Features from Scanned Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) contain domain knowledge that can be used for many digital library tasks, such as analyzing citation networks and predicting research trends. Automatic metadata extraction is important to build scalable digital library search engines. Most existing methods are designed for born-digital documents, so they often fail to extract metadata from scanned documents such as for ETDs. Traditional sequence tagging methods mainly rely on text-based features. In this paper, we propose a conditional random field (CRF) model that combines text-based and visual features. To verify the robustness of our model, we extended an existing corpus and created a new ground truth corpus consisting of 500 ETD cover pages with human validated metadata. Our experiments show that CRF with visual features outperformed both a heuristic and a CRF model with only text-based features. The proposed model achieved 81.3%-96% F1 measure on seven metadata fields. The data and source code are publicly available on Google Drive (https://tinyurl.com/y8kxzwrp) and a GitHub repository (https://github.com/lamps-lab/ETDMiner/tree/master/etd_crf), respectively.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Accepted by JCDL '21 as a short pape

Advanced composites structural concepts and materials technologies for primary aircraft structures. Structural response and failure analysis: ISPAN modules users manual

The ISPAN Program (Interactive Stiffened Panel Analysis) is an interactive design tool that is intended to provide a means of performing simple and self contained preliminary analysis of aircraft primary structures made of composite materials. The program combines a series of modules with the finite element code DIAL as its backbone. Four ISPAN Modules were developed and are documented. These include: (1) flat stiffened panel; (2) curved stiffened panel; (3) flat tubular panel; and (4) curved geodesic panel. Users are instructed to input geometric and material properties, load information and types of analysis (linear, bifurcation buckling, or post-buckling) interactively. The program utilizing this information will generate finite element mesh and perform analysis. The output in the form of summary tables of stress or margins of safety, contour plots of loads or stress, and deflected shape plots may be generalized and used to evaluate specific design

ISPAN (Interactive Stiffened Panel Analysis): A tool for quick concept evaluation and design trade studies

Interactive Stiffened Panel Analysis (ISPAN) modules, written in FORTRAN, were developed to provide an easy to use tool for creating finite element models of composite material stiffened panels. The modules allow the user to interactively construct, solve and post-process finite element models of four general types of structural panel configurations using only the panel dimensions and properties as input data. Linear, buckling and post-buckling solution capability is provided. This interactive input allows rapid model generation and solution by non finite element users. The results of a parametric study of a blade stiffened panel are presented to demonstrate the usefulness of the ISPAN modules. Also, a non-linear analysis of a test panel was conducted and the results compared to measured data and previous correlation analysis

Fundamental scaling relationships revealed in the optical light curves of tidal disruption events

We present fundamental scaling relationships between properties of the optical/UV light curves of tidal disruption events (TDEs) and the mass of the black hole that disrupted the star. We have uncovered these relations from the late-time emission of TDEs. Using a sample of 63 optically-selected TDEs, the latest catalog to date, we observed flattening of the early-time emission into a near-constant late-time plateau for at least two-thirds of our sources. Compared to other properties of the TDE lightcurves (e.g., peak luminosity or decay rate) the plateau luminosity shows the tightest correlation with the total mass of host galaxy ($p$-value of $2 \times 10^{-6}$, with a residual scatter of 0.3 dex). Physically this plateau stems from the presence of an accretion flow. We demonstrate theoretically and numerically that the amplitude of this plateau emission is strongly correlated with black hole mass. By simulating a large population of TDEs, we determine a plateau luminosity-black hole mass scaling relationship well described by $\log_{10} \left(M_{\bullet}/M_{\odot} \right) = 1.50 \log_{10} \left( L_{\rm plat}/10^{43} {\rm erg \, s^{-1}} \right) + 9.0$. The observed plateau luminosities of TDEs and black hole masses in our large sample are in excellent agreement with this simulation. Using the black hole mass predicted from the observed TDE plateau luminosity, we reproduce the well-known scaling relations between black hole mass and galaxy velocity dispersion. The large black hole masses of 10 of the TDEs in our sample allow us to provide constraints on their black hole spins, favouring rapidly rotating black holes. We add 49 (34) black hole masses to the galaxy mass (velocity dispersion) scaling relationships, updating and extending these correlations into the low black hole mass regime.Comment: 24 pages + appendices, 20 figures. Submitted to MNRAS, comments welcom