Fair, Affordable and Open Access to Knowledge: The Caul Collection and Reporting of APC Information Project

Article processing charges (APCs) are fundamental to the business models of many Hybrid and Gold open access (OA) journals. The need to quantify the volume of APC payments paid on behalf of institutional researchers has therefore never been greater. New publishing models will have profound implications for future institutional budgets, and libraries urgently require better information about potential costs and savings. In 2018, the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) commissioned a project to examine the financial impact of APC payments on universities in Australia and New Zealand. The project aims to develop a methodology for the estimation of APC payments based on data from sources such as Scopus, Web of Science and Unpaywall. In order to test this methodology, the Working Group began a pilot project in February 2019. As part of this pilot, data on publications produced by researchers at six local universities in 2017 were collated and analysed. This paper will explain the rationale behind the project methodology. It will present the preliminary findings of the pilot, and flag some of the lessons learnt to date. In addition, the paper will identify future changes. It will be of interest to any librarian concerned with the potential impact of changing publishing models on institutional budgets

Hospital-onset clostridium difficile infection rates in persons with cancer or Hematopoietic stem cell transplant: A C3IC network report

A multicenter survey of 11 cancer centers was performed to determine the rate of hospital-onset Clostridium difficile infection (HO-CDI) and surveillance practices. Pooled rates of HO-CDI in patients with cancer were twice the rates reported for all US patients (15.8 vs 7.4 per 10,000 patient-days). Rates were elevated regardless of diagnostic test used

Scoring of senescence signalling in multiple human tumour gene expression datasets, identification of a correlation between senescence score and drug toxicity in the NCI60 panel and a pro-inflammatory signature correlating with survival advantage in peritoneal mesothelioma

Background: Cellular senescence is a major barrier to tumour progression, though its role in pathogenesis of cancer and other diseases is poorly understood in vivo. Improved understanding of the degree to which latent senescence signalling persists in tumours might identify intervention strategies to provoke "accelerated senescence" responses as a therapeutic outcome. Senescence involves convergence of multiple pathways and requires ongoing dynamic signalling throughout its establishment and maintenance. Recent discovery of several new markers allows for an expression profiling approach to study specific senescence phenotypes in relevant tissue samples. We adopted a "senescence scoring" methodology based on expression profiles of multiple senescence markers to examine the degree to which signals of damage-associated or secretory senescence persist in various human tumours. Results: We first show that scoring captures differential induction of damage or inflammatory pathways in a series of public datasets involving radiotherapy of colon adenocarcinoma, chemotherapy of breast cancer cells, replicative senescence of mesenchymal stem cells, and progression of melanoma. We extended these results to investigate correlations between senescence score and growth inhibition in response to similar to 1500 compounds in the NCI60 panel. Scoring of our own mesenchymal tumour dataset highlighted differential expression of secretory signalling pathways between distinct subgroups of MPNST, liposarcomas and peritoneal mesothelioma. Furthermore, a proinflammatory signature yielded by hierarchical clustering of secretory markers showed prognostic significance in mesothelioma. Conclusions: We find that "senescence scoring" accurately reports senescence signalling in a variety of situations where senescence would be expected to occur and highlights differential expression of damage associated and secretory senescence pathways in a context-dependent manner

Relevant microclimate for determining the development rate of malaria mosquitoes and possible implications of climate change

Background The relationship between mosquito development and temperature is one of the keys to understanding the current and future dynamics and distribution of vector-borne diseases such as malaria. Many process-based models use mean air temperature to estimate larval development times, and hence adult vector densities and/or malaria risk. Methods Water temperatures in three different-sized water pools, as well as the adjacent air temperature in lowland and highland sites in western Kenya were monitored. Both air and water temperatures were fed into a widely-applied temperature-dependent development model for Anopheles gambiae immatures, and subsequently their impact on predicted vector abundance was assessed. Results Mean water temperature in typical mosquito breeding sites was 4-6°C higher than the mean temperature of the adjacent air, resulting in larval development rates, and hence population growth rates, that are much higher than predicted based on air temperature. On the other hand, due to the non-linearities in the relationship between temperature and larval development rate, together with a marginal buffering in the increase in water temperature compared with air temperature, the relative increases in larval development rates predicted due to climate change are substantially less. Conclusions Existing models will tend to underestimate mosquito population growth under current conditions, and may overestimate relative increases in population growth under future climate change. These results highlight the need for better integration of biological and environmental information at the scale relevant to mosquito biology

A manually annotated Actinidia chinensis var. chinensis (kiwifruit) genome highlights the challenges associated with draft genomes and gene prediction in plants

Most published genome sequences are drafts, and most are dominated by computational gene prediction. Draft genomes typically incorporate considerable sequence data that are not assigned to chromosomes, and predicted genes without quality confidence measures. The current Actinidia chinensis (kiwifruit) 'Hongyang' draft genome has 164\ua0Mb of sequences unassigned to pseudo-chromosomes, and omissions have been identified in the gene models

Mammal responses to global changes in human activity vary by trophic group and landscape

Wildlife must adapt to human presence to survive in the Anthropocene, so it is critical to understand species responses to humans in different contexts. We used camera trapping as a lens to view mammal responses to changes in human activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 163 species sampled in 102 projects around the world, changes in the amount and timing of animal activity varied widely. Under higher human activity, mammals were less active in undeveloped areas but unexpectedly more active in developed areas while exhibiting greater nocturnality. Carnivores were most sensitive, showing the strongest decreases in activity and greatest increases in nocturnality. Wildlife managers must consider how habituation and uneven sensitivity across species may cause fundamental differences in human–wildlife interactions along gradients of human influence.Peer reviewe

Les droits disciplinaires des fonctions publiques : « unification », « harmonisation » ou « distanciation ». A propos de la loi du 26 avril 2016 relative à la déontologie et aux droits et obligations des fonctionnaires

The production of tt‾ , W+bb‾ and W+cc‾ is studied in the forward region of proton–proton collisions collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV by the LHCb experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.98±0.02 fb−1 . The W bosons are reconstructed in the decays W→ℓν , where ℓ denotes muon or electron, while the b and c quarks are reconstructed as jets. All measured cross-sections are in agreement with next-to-leading-order Standard Model predictions.The production of $t\overline{t}$, $W+b\overline{b}$ and $W+c\overline{c}$ is studied in the forward region of proton-proton collisions collected at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV by the LHCb experiment, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.98 $\pm$ 0.02 \mbox{fb}^{-1}. The $W$ bosons are reconstructed in the decays $W\rightarrow\ell\nu$, where $\ell$ denotes muon or electron, while the $b$ and $c$ quarks are reconstructed as jets. All measured cross-sections are in agreement with next-to-leading-order Standard Model predictions

Multidifferential study of identified charged hadron distributions in ZZ-tagged jets in proton-proton collisions at s=\sqrt{s}=13 TeV

Jet fragmentation functions are measured for the first time in proton-proton collisions for charged pions, kaons, and protons within jets recoiling against a $Z$ boson. The charged-hadron distributions are studied longitudinally and transversely to the jet direction for jets with transverse momentum 20 $< p_{\textrm{T}} < 100$ GeV and in the pseudorapidity range $2.5 < \eta < 4$. The data sample was collected with the LHCb experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.64 fb$^{-1}$. Triple differential distributions as a function of the hadron longitudinal momentum fraction, hadron transverse momentum, and jet transverse momentum are also measured for the first time. This helps constrain transverse-momentum-dependent fragmentation functions. Differences in the shapes and magnitudes of the measured distributions for the different hadron species provide insights into the hadronization process for jets predominantly initiated by light quarks.Comment: All figures and tables, along with machine-readable versions and any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-013.html (LHCb public pages