A national priority: LIS faculty and students as library advocates

Library advocacy is a long-standing tradition at UNCG’s Department of Library and Information Science. The LIS faculty take leadership roles in advocacy and legislation both at state and national levels and make it a point to engage students in their efforts as part their students’ learning experience while earning the MLIS. Over the years, practicum and independent research studies have been offered and student interns have served for years as the backbone of advocacy efforts for the state under the supervision of faculty including overseeing the North Carolina Library Advocacy’s website (nclibraryadvocacy.org) and social media, helping coordinate state and legislative days, and helping schedule visits with members of Congress. ALA’s Committee on Library Advocacy discovered this educational partnership and has identified student advocacy internships in LIS programs as a high priority win-win advocacy activity for 2020-2021. What better way to learn about advocacy in your master’s program then to actually do advocacy as an internship experience? What better way to add young, strong advocates to speak on behalf of libraries then by having them earn credit as part of their degree? Student Perspectives What did you learn in terms of the current state of advocacy for libraries during our internship? Synergistic thought Organizational support is essential. Synergistic thinking among library associations partnered with a more collaborative approach are critically important and often lacking in North Carolina’s advocacy efforts according to former North Carolina Advocacy and Legislation Committee interns. Organizations within the state who operate as independent entities, as opposed to elements in a wider scheme, hinder the growth and success of the whole. Discrepancy in the support that library associations receive is evident. Helping library associations recognize the importance of library advocacy critical as is aligning advocacy goals with the agenda of each organization. Dawn Haney, former committee intern observed “There should be a regular system of “check ins” with leaders of the organizations about convergence points of interest, for example, increasing the funding of libraries within North Carolina. It should be formal and regular - once quarterly at least - to discuss progress toward shared goals.” Haney feels that formal division of labor toward a collaborative goal would be helpful within NC’s advocacy organizations. Convincing library organizations to take on the task of advocating for libraries is essential and should not be taken for granted. Lack of communication and unity. Continuity is a challenge and an area for future development. Creating a sense of overall community and a shared vision would have an enormous impact on the efficacy of library advocacy in North Carolina. What best practices proved to be most beneficial to our efforts? Developing a network Finding library supporters to advocate for you should be the most important goal for any advocacy organization. Librarians consider their work to be essential and can often speak eloquently on this subject. This is a relevant aspect of advocacy but in some instances the importance of libraries is best illustrated by those who have personally benefited from the existence of a library. Advocate to every level of the hierarchy, some of which can only be done at a highly localized level leading to the need for a large network of advocates. When formulating advocacy goals every aspect of the hierarchy that you wish to advocate to should be considered. Decisions are made on every level. A legislator may become more amenable to the idea of increased library funding after a successful library visit but this change of mindset is somewhat irrelevant if, in fact, the city council makes all funding decisions. Former intern Martha McGehee cites the importance of developing a large network of advocates, “involve as many people as possible. Increased participation increases investment as well as awareness. A large team willing to advocate for a library also illustrates support for the library in question. Each advocate brings a unique and valuable perspective to the effort. Our Panel The panel will include Dr. Anthony Chow, Associate Professor at UNCG’s Department of Library and Information Science who is also Co-Chair of Advocacy and Legislation with the North Carolina Library Association (NCLA) and a member of ALA’s Committee on Library Advocacy; Martha McGehee and Ashley Conte, former student advocacy interns; Megan Cusick, ALA’s Assistant Director, State Advocacy; and Justin de la Cruz, Chair, ALA’s Committee on Library Advocacy (COLA). Our panel addresses the conference theme of “Crafting a Resilient Future: Leadership, Education, & Inspiration” by bringing together LIS faculty, students, alumni, and ALA advocacy staff to discuss how we can work closer together and provide a win-win-win scenario where students support statewide and national advocacy efforts, LIS faculty can leverage the current need to advocate for libraries as an experiential learning opportunity, and students learn first hand how to advocate for themselves and libraries

Greene's Residue Criterion for the Breakup of Invariant Tori of Volume-Preserving Maps

Invariant tori play a fundamental role in the dynamics of symplectic and volume-preserving maps. Codimension-one tori are particularly important as they form barriers to transport. Such tori foliate the phase space of integrable, volume-preserving maps with one action and $d$ angles. For the area-preserving case, Greene's residue criterion is often used to predict the destruction of tori from the properties of nearby periodic orbits. Even though KAM theory applies to the three-dimensional case, the robustness of tori in such systems is still poorly understood. We study a three-dimensional, reversible, volume-preserving analogue of Chirikov's standard map with one action and two angles. We investigate the preservation and destruction of tori under perturbation by computing the "residue" of nearby periodic orbits. We find tori with Diophantine rotation vectors in the "spiral mean" cubic algebraic field. The residue is used to generate the critical function of the map and find a candidate for the most robust torus.Comment: laTeX, 40 pages, 26 figure

Protein interaction network of alternatively spliced isoforms from brain links genetic risk factors for autism

Increased risk for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is attributed to hundreds of genetic loci. The convergence of ASD variants have been investigated using various approaches, including protein interactions extracted from the published literature. However, these datasets are frequently incomplete, carry biases and are limited to interactions of a single splicing isoform, which may not be expressed in the disease-relevant tissue. Here we introduce a new interactome mapping approach by experimentally identifying interactions between brain-expressed alternatively spliced variants of ASD risk factors. The Autism Spliceform Interaction Network reveals that almost half of the detected interactions and about 30% of the newly identified interacting partners represent contribution from splicing variants, emphasizing the importance of isoform networks. Isoform interactions greatly contribute to establishing direct physical connections between proteins from the de novo autism CNVs. Our findings demonstrate the critical role of spliceform networks for translating genetic knowledge into a better understanding of human diseases

Dengue-2 Structural Proteins Associate with Human Proteins to Produce a Coagulation and Innate Immune Response Biased Interactome

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Dengue virus infection is a public health threat to hundreds of millions of individuals in the tropical regions of the globe. Although Dengue infection usually manifests itself in its mildest, though often debilitating clinical form, dengue fever, life-threatening complications commonly arise in the form of hemorrhagic shock and encephalitis. The etiological basis for the virus-induced pathology in general, and the different clinical manifestations in particular, are not well understood. We reasoned that a detailed knowledge of the global biological processes affected by virus entry into a cell might help shed new light on this long-standing problem.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A bacterial two-hybrid screen using DENV2 structural proteins as bait was performed, and the results were used to feed a manually curated, global dengue-human protein interaction network. Gene ontology and pathway enrichment, along with network topology and microarray meta-analysis, were used to generate hypothesis regarding dengue disease biology.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Combining bioinformatic tools with two-hybrid technology, we screened human cDNA libraries to catalogue proteins physically interacting with the DENV2 virus structural proteins, Env, cap and PrM. We identified 31 interacting human proteins representing distinct biological processes that are closely related to the major clinical diagnostic feature of dengue infection: haemostatic imbalance. In addition, we found dengue-binding human proteins involved with additional key aspects, previously described as fundamental for virus entry into cells and the innate immune response to infection. Construction of a DENV2-human global protein interaction network revealed interesting biological properties suggested by simple network topology analysis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our experimental strategy revealed that dengue structural proteins interact with human protein targets involved in the maintenance of blood coagulation and innate anti-viral response processes, and predicts that the interaction of dengue proteins with a proposed human protein interaction network produces a modified biological outcome that may be behind the hallmark pathologies of dengue infection.</p

Stable transmission of reversible modifications: maintenance of epigenetic information through the cell cycle

Even though every cell in a multicellular organism contains the same genes, the differing spatiotemporal expression of these genes determines the eventual phenotype of a cell. This means that each cell type contains a specific epigenetic program that needs to be replicated through cell divisions, along with the genome, in order to maintain cell identity. The stable inheritance of these programs throughout the cell cycle relies on several epigenetic mechanisms. In this review, DNA methylation and histone methylation by specific histone lysine methyltransferases (KMT) and the Polycomb/Trithorax proteins are considered as the primary mediators of epigenetic inheritance. In addition, non-coding RNAs and nuclear organization are implicated in the stable transfer of epigenetic information. Although most epigenetic modifications are reversible in nature, they can be stably maintained by self-recruitment of modifying protein complexes or maintenance of these complexes or structures through the cell cycle

Valid and reliable instruments for arm-hand assessment at ICF activity level in persons with hemiplegia: a systematic review

Contains fulltext : 110141.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)BACKGROUND: Loss of arm-hand performance due to a hemiparesis as a result of stroke or cerebral palsy (CP), leads to large problems in daily life of these patients. Assessment of arm-hand performance is important in both clinical practice and research. To gain more insight in e.g. effectiveness of common therapies for different patient populations with similar clinical characteristics, consensus regarding the choice and use of outcome measures is paramount. To guide this choice, an overview of available instruments is necessary. The aim of this systematic review is to identify, evaluate and categorize instruments, reported to be valid and reliable, assessing arm-hand performance at the ICF activity level in patients with stroke or cerebral palsy. METHODS: A systematic literature search was performed to identify articles containing instruments assessing arm-hand skilled performance in patients with stroke or cerebral palsy. Instruments were identified and divided into the categories capacity, perceived performance and actual performance. A second search was performed to obtain information on their content and psychometrics. RESULTS: Regarding capacity, perceived performance and actual performance, 18, 9 and 3 instruments were included respectively. Only 3 of all included instruments were used and tested in both patient populations. The content of the instruments differed widely regarding the ICF levels measured, assessment of the amount of use versus the quality of use, the inclusion of unimanual and/or bimanual tasks and the inclusion of basic and/or extended tasks. CONCLUSIONS: Although many instruments assess capacity and perceived performance, a dearth exists of instruments assessing actual performance. In addition, instruments appropriate for more than one patient population are sparse. For actual performance, new instruments have to be developed, with specific focus on the usability in different patient populations and the assessment of quality of use as well as amount of use. Also, consensus about the choice and use of instruments within and across populations is needed

SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity are associated with genetic variants affecting gene expression in a variety of tissues

Variability in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity between individuals is partly due to genetic factors. Here, we identify 4 genomic loci with suggestive associations for SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and 19 for COVID-19 disease severity. Four of these 23 loci likely have an ethnicity-specific component. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) signals in 11 loci colocalize with expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) associated with the expression of 20 genes in 62 tissues/cell types (range: 1:43 tissues/gene), including lung, brain, heart, muscle, and skin as well as the digestive system and immune system. We perform genetic fine mapping to compute 99% credible SNP sets, which identify 10 GWAS loci that have eight or fewer SNPs in the credible set, including three loci with one single likely causal SNP. Our study suggests that the diverse symptoms and disease severity of COVID-19 observed between individuals is associated with variants across the genome, affecting gene expression levels in a wide variety of tissue types

SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity are associated with genetic variants affecting gene expression in a variety of tissues

Variability in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity between individuals is partly due to genetic factors. Here, we identify 4 genomic loci with suggestive associations for SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and 19 for COVID-19 disease severity. Four of these 23 loci likely have an ethnicity-specific component. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) signals in 11 loci colocalize with expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) associated with the expression of 20 genes in 62 tissues/cell types (range: 1:43 tissues/gene), including lung, brain, heart, muscle, and skin as well as the digestive system and immune system. We perform genetic fine mapping to compute 99% credible SNP sets, which identify 10 GWAS loci that have eight or fewer SNPs in the credible set, including three loci with one single likely causal SNP. Our study suggests that the diverse symptoms and disease severity of COVID-19 observed between individuals is associated with variants across the genome, affecting gene expression levels in a wide variety of tissue types