SOCIAL MEDIA LITERACY SKILLS OF POST GRADUATE STUDENTS AND M.PHIL SCHOLARS OF ARTS AND SCIENCE COLLEGES AFFILIATED TO MOTHER TERESA WOMEN’S UNIVERSITY, KODAIKANAL : A DISCIPLINE BASED EVALUATIVE STUDY USING THE INDIGENOUS MODEL

The present study aimed at evaluating the information literacy skills and social media literacy skills of the post graduate students and M.Phil scholars of Arts and Science Colleges affiliated to Mother Teresa Women’s University, Kodaikanal. Out of 10 such colleges, 8 colleges were randomly selected. Questionnaires were used to collect data from the randomly drawn sample of Post graduate students and M.Phil scholars. In toto, 940 duly filled-in questionnaires were considered for the study. RPG’s 10 pillar model was used to evaluate the skills. The model was indigenously developed one by the researcher. The science students are better skilled than non-science students in many of their basic skills in respect social media. The science students are better skilled than non-science students in all these skills to create groups in social media tools. The science students are better skilled than non-science students in seven skills and the non-science students are better skilled than science students in the remaining seven skills in respect of creation of contents in social media tools. The science students are better skilled than non-science students in four skills required to undertake content management tasks as an administrator. Non-science students are better skilled than science students in the remaining four skills. The science students are better skilled than non-science students in three skills required to be cautious in social media tools. Non-science students are better skilled than science students in the remaining two skills. More than half of the respondents are highly capable to use social media tools to communicate and interact with friends and to learn online, to share notes with their classmates. One third of the respondents are moderately capable of using social media tools to learn online, for leisure and personal socialization, to undertake professional activities, to carry out academic activities, for private messaging and updating photos, for collaborative and peer to peer learning, for promoting their reading and writing skills and for creating an e-portfolio for future employment. The college libraries may join hands with other departments and conduct some kind of orientation or user awareness programme for the students and scholars on the various modules of social media literacy. This may enable the students to become an active user, careful user, beneficial user and comfortable user in required social media tools

MAPPING OF THE RESEARCH OUTPUT ON ‘WIRELESS COMMUNICATION (2010 - 2018)’: A WEB OF SCIENCE BASED SCIENTOMETRIC EVALUATION

The present study aimed at examining the quantitative and qualitative aspects of literature output on Wireless Communication as available and indexed in Web of Science database covering a nine year period i.e from 2010 to 2018. A total of 8482 records were downloaded from Web of Science core collection database. The downloaded records, in txt format, were exported to Bibexcel software for analyzing the data for certain quantitative and qualitative indicators. MS Excel programme was used to do all the necessary calculations and preparation of cross tables with Pivot Table options. The findings were presented under the major heads as basic metrics, author metrics, quality metrics, institution and publisher metrics, future metrics and geo metrics. The findings reveal that there is a gradual growth of publications on WLC during the study period. An exponential growth pattern was found. The Relative Growth Rate shows a decreasing trend and the Doubling time shows an increasing trend. Rather than single authored publications, multi-authored publications are more in numbers. The authors preferred to work in very small / small teams. The Degree of collaboration kept on growing throughout the study period. The researchers in WLC preferred to publish their research findings in the form of Journal articles. English is the preferred language of publications among the WLC researchers. China and USA lead the world in WLC research followed by India in the third place. Intra-county collaboration was found to be more in numbers than inter-country collaboration in WLC research output. The journals publishing research papers in WLC research do not fall in Bradford’s law of scattering. The time series analysis shows that the growth of WLC research output will be in better prospects in the years to come

THE MODUS OPERANDI OF CREATING AN ONLINE DIRECTORY OF LIS PROFESSIONALS OF TAMILNADU, INDIA : A LIVE WEB PROJECT IN WORDPRESS DOMAIN

The present study is an online endeavour by the researchers to create a web directory to give a brief account of library and information science professionals working in different institutions in Tamilnadu. The researchers have chosen Wordpress – an open source blogging software and domain – to create an online directory of LIS professionals because of its simplicity and powerful features. The researchers who have a good understanding of Wordpress blogs, collected data about 50 LIS professionals working in universities and arts and science colleges of about 10 districts. They have created the online directory with the URL www.tnlisdirectory.wordpress.com. First of all they chose theme for the blog and decided upon its layout. Then, they customized the blog with various options like site title, tagline, font style, font colour, background colour and custom header. After customization, widgets required for the blog were added. Home page was designed as a static page. The data for about 25 LIS professionals – both teaching and practicing – of higher educational institutions of Tamilnadu are uploaded in the form of posts. Links were created for about 15 LIS professionals. Interesting quotes on Librarians were also included. Six galleries to showcase the photos of about 100 LIS professionals were created to add a colourful look of the blog. Text widget and image widget were used to give ‘about information’ and ‘motivating pictures’. Search option is provided in the blog to enable the online users to search for LIS professionals. A video about the life of Dr.S.R.Ranganathan is placed in the footer sidebar along with the archives option and calendar option. The feedback received from 15 diverse LIS professionals on the design, layout and content of the blog was quite welcoming, motivating and positive. This endeavour was a different, fruitful, online learning experience for the researchers

THE MODUS OPERANDI OF CREATING AN ONLINE DIRECTORY OF LIS PROFESSIONALS OF TAMILNADU, INDIA : A LIVE WEB PROJECT IN WORDPRESS DOMAIN

The present study is an online endeavour by the researchers to create a web directory to give a brief account of library and information science professionals working in different institutions in Tamilnadu. The researchers have chosen Wordpress – an open source blogging software and domain – to create an online directory of LIS professionals because of its simplicity and powerful features. The researchers who have a good understanding of Wordpress blogs, collected data about 50 LIS professionals working in universities and arts and science colleges of about 10 districts. They have created the online directory with the URL www.tnlisdirectory.wordpress.com. First of all they chose theme for the blog and decided upon its layout. Then, they customized the blog with various options like site title, tagline, font style, font colour, background colour and custom header. After customization, widgets required for the blog were added. Home page was designed as a static page. The data for about 25 LIS professionals – both teaching and practicing – of higher educational institutions of Tamilnadu are uploaded in the form of posts. Links were created for about 15 LIS professionals. Interesting quotes on Librarians were also included. Six galleries to showcase the photos of about 100 LIS professionals were created to add a colourful look of the blog. Text widget and image widget were used to give ‘about information’ and ‘motivating pictures’. Search option is provided in the blog to enable the online users to search for LIS professionals. A video about the life of Dr.S.R.Ranganathan is placed in the footer sidebar along with the archives option and calendar option. The feedback received from 15 diverse LIS professionals on the design, layout and content of the blog was quite welcoming, motivating and positive. This endeavour was a different, fruitful, online learning experience for the researchers

USE OF LEGAL INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVICES BY THE UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS OF GOVERNMENT LAW COLLEGE, COIMBATORE, TAMILNADU STATE, INDIA : A STUDY

The present study is undertaken to investigate the use of legal information sources and services by the undergraduate students of Government Law College, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu State, India. It is a descriptive research study which employed questionnaires to collect data from 200 students who are pursing III, IV and V year of undergraduate law courses. The findings of the study reveal that : A majority of 83 students need human rights information and 78 students need academic information. A majority of 62 (93.94%) students know and use textbooks, 50 (75.76%) know and use law books and 49 (74.24%) know and make use of Bye-Laws. Updates of court rules (33, 41.25%) and Statutes (25, 30.12%) are the sources which are not known to most number of IV year students. A majority of them are aware of Internet and legal databases and they make use of such resources. The website of Supreme Court of India is widely known and used among them. A majority of them browse internet, read books/journals, ask faculty members and use mass media to access legal information. Reading books / journals, cyber café, trial and error method and instruction from library staff are the methods used by most of the students to learn to use legal information resources. More than 80% of them know and use JUDIS. Inadequate number of journals, non-availability of latest journals, difficulty in finding relevant information and erratic power supply are the major problems faced by the male students in accessing library resources. A majority of the students want the library to conduct demos of online legal sources by external experts, expect the library to provide more electronic resources and online legal databases and want the library to provide index to law reports and more current legal materials

Cardiosphere-derived cells suppress allogeneic lymphocytes by production of PGE2 acting via the EP4 receptor

derived cells (CDCs) are a cardiac progenitor cell population, which have been shown to possess cardiac regenerative properties and can improve heart function in a variety of cardiac diseases. Studies in large animal models have predominantly focussed on using autologous cells for safety, however allogeneic cell banks would allow for a practical, cost-effective and efficient use in a clinical setting. The aim of this work was to determine the immunomodulatory status of these cells using CDCs and lymphocytes from 5 dogs. CDCs expressed MHC I but not MHC II molecules and in mixed lymphocyte reactions demonstrated a lack of lymphocyte proliferation in response to MHC-mismatched CDCs. Furthermore, MHC-mismatched CDCs suppressed lymphocyte proliferation and activation in response to Concanavalin A. Transwell experiments demonstrated that this was predominantly due to direct cell-cell contact in addition to soluble mediators whereby CDCs produced high levels of PGE2 under inflammatory conditions. This led to down-regulation of CD25 expression on lymphocytes via the EP4 receptor. Blocking prostaglandin synthesis restored both, proliferation and activation (measured via CD25 expression) of stimulated lymphocytes. We demonstrated for the first time in a large animal model that CDCs inhibit proliferation in allo-reactive lymphocytes and have potent immunosuppressive activity mediated via PGE2

Genome-wide analyses for personality traits identify six genomic loci and show correlations with psychiatric disorders

Personality is influenced by genetic and environmental factors1 and associated with mental health. However, the underlying genetic determinants are largely unknown. We identified six genetic loci, including five novel loci2,3, significantly associated with personality traits in a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (N = 123,132–260,861). Of these genomewide significant loci, extraversion was associated with variants in WSCD2 and near PCDH15, and neuroticism with variants on chromosome 8p23.1 and in L3MBTL2. We performed a principal component analysis to extract major dimensions underlying genetic variations among five personality traits and six psychiatric disorders (N = 5,422–18,759). The first genetic dimension separated personality traits and psychiatric disorders, except that neuroticism and openness to experience were clustered with the disorders. High genetic correlations were found between extraversion and attention-deficit– hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and between openness and schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The second genetic dimension was closely aligned with extraversion–introversion and grouped neuroticism with internalizing psychopathology (e.g., depression or anxiety)

Computational Integration of Homolog and Pathway Gene Module Expression Reveals General Stemness Signatures

The stemness hypothesis states that all stem cells use common mechanisms to regulate self-renewal and multi-lineage potential. However, gene expression meta-analyses at the single gene level have failed to identify a significant number of genes selectively expressed by a broad range of stem cell types. We hypothesized that stemness may be regulated by modules of homologs. While the expression of any single gene within a module may vary from one stem cell type to the next, it is possible that the expression of the module as a whole is required so that the expression of different, yet functionally-synonymous, homologs is needed in different stem cells. Thus, we developed a computational method to test for stem cell-specific gene expression patterns from a comprehensive collection of 49 murine datasets covering 12 different stem cell types. We identified 40 individual genes and 224 stemness modules with reproducible and specific up-regulation across multiple stem cell types. The stemness modules included families regulating chromatin remodeling, DNA repair, and Wnt signaling. Strikingly, the majority of modules represent evolutionarily related homologs. Moreover, a score based on the discovered modules could accurately distinguish stem cell-like populations from other cell types in both normal and cancer tissues. This scoring system revealed that both mouse and human metastatic populations exhibit higher stemness indices than non-metastatic populations, providing further evidence for a stem cell-driven component underlying the transformation to metastatic disease

Comparison of multiplex meta analysis techniques for understanding the acute rejection of solid organ transplants

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Combining the results of studies using highly parallelized measurements of gene expression such as microarrays and RNAseq offer unique challenges in meta analysis. Motivated by a need for a deeper understanding of organ transplant rejection, we combine the data from five separate studies to compare acute rejection versus stability after solid organ transplantation, and use this data to examine approaches to multiplex meta analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We demonstrate that a commonly used parametric effect size estimate approach and a commonly used non-parametric method give very different results in prioritizing genes. The parametric method providing a meta effect estimate was superior at ranking genes based on our gold-standard of identifying immune response genes in the transplant rejection datasets.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Different methods of multiplex analysis can give substantially different results. The method which is best for any given application will likely depend on the particular domain, and it remains for future work to see if any one method is consistently better at identifying important biological signal across gene expression experiments.</p