Pain Research Forum: application of scientific social media frameworks in neuroscience

Background: Social media has the potential to accelerate the pace of biomedical research through online collaboration, discussions, and faster sharing of information. Focused web-based scientific social collaboratories such as the Alzheimer Research Forum have been successful in engaging scientists in open discussions of the latest research and identifying gaps in knowledge. However, until recently, tools to rapidly create such communities and provide high-bandwidth information exchange between collaboratories in related fields did not exist. Methods: We have addressed this need by constructing a reusable framework to build online biomedical communities, based on Drupal, an open-source content management system. The framework incorporates elements of Semantic Web technology combined with social media. Here we present, as an exemplar of a web community built on our framework, the Pain Research Forum (PRF) (http://painresearchforum.org). PRF is a community of chronic pain researchers, established with the goal of fostering collaboration and communication among pain researchers. Results: Launched in 2011, PRF has over 1300 registered members with permission to submit content. It currently hosts over 150 topical news articles on research; more than 30 active or archived forum discussions and journal club features; a webinar series; an editor-curated weekly updated listing of relevant papers; and several other resources for the pain research community. All content is licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons license; the software is freely available. The framework was reused to develop other sites, notably the Multiple Sclerosis Discovery Forum (http://msdiscovery.org) and StemBook (http://stembook.org). Discussion: Web-based collaboratories are a crucial integrative tool supporting rapid information transmission and translation in several important research areas. In this article, we discuss the success factors, lessons learned, and ongoing challenges in using PRF as a driving force to develop tools for online collaboration in neuroscience. We also indicate ways these tools can be applied to other areas and uses

Social support moderates the relationship between stressors and task performance through self-efficacy

This study examined the relationship between social support and objective task performance in a field setting. A sample of 197 participants, mean age 23.13 years (SD 3.56) completed measures of stressors, social support, and self-efficacy prior to performance. Moderated hierarchical regression analysis revealed significant(p < .05) main effects for stressors (R2 = .12) and social support (ΔR2 = .14) in relation to performance, in the hypothesized directions. A significant interaction (ΔR2 = .06) suggested that social support moderated (buffered) the relationship between stressors and task performance. Moderated mediation analysis demonstrated that social support was associated with increases in self-efficacy, and self-efficacy was associated with enhanced performance, but that this effect was only salient at moderate to high levels of stressors

Lupine and zig-zag lines: queer affects in Alain Guiraudie’s L’inconnu du lac and Rester vertical

In this article I investigate how a theory of becomings-animal operates in a number of contemporary queer French films by director Alain Guiraudie (L’inconnu du lac (2013) and Rester vertical (2016)). In particular I explore how a becomings-animal’s association with a Deleuzian theory of affect enhances our understanding of queer intimacy. The aim of this article is to reposition queer intimacy as an ontology outside – outside synthetic and vertical lines of filiation and kinship and inside the disjunctive lines of the outside (what is irregular, random, rural, cosmic). Drawing at first on intimacy as an ontological non-relationality (Bersani 2008; 2009) and on the idea of separation as an ontological necessity of queer intimacy (John Paul Ricco 2017), I want to rethink queer intimacy as exposure outwards – an intimacy to and towards. Within this exteriorization of intimacy, my methodology will rely on the affective power of a Deleuzian theory of lines

Three-dimensional velocity structure of the northern Hikurangi margin, Raukumara, New Zealand: Implications for the growth of continental crust by subduction erosion and tectonic underplating

Traveltimes between shots from nine marine seismic reflection lines and nine onshore recorders were used to construct a 3-D P wave velocity model of the northern Hikurangi subduction margin, New Zealand. From north to south between Raukumara Basin and Raukumara Peninsula, the Moho of the overriding plate increases in depth from 17 to similar to 35 km. Low seismic P wave velocities of 3.5-5.0 km/s are localized within a similar to 10 km thick prism in the lower crust of the overriding plate immediately updip of the intersection between the subduction thrust and Moho and beneath the topographic crest of East Cape Ridge and the Raukumara Range. Southward, this region of low seismic velocities and surface uplift increases in distance from the trench as the thickness of the crust in the overriding plate increases. We interpret this low-velocity volume to be underplated sedimentary rocks and crustal materials that were tectonically eroded by subduction beneath the trench slope. The buoyancy and low strength of these subducted materials are proposed to assist the escape from a subduction channel near the base of the crust and drive local rock uplift. In the middle crust, our observations of very low velocity suggest high fluid-filled porosities of 12%-18%, and the implied buoyancy anomaly may enhance underplating. At greater depths the process is driven by the contrast between upper crustal quartz-feldspar mineralogy and the denser diabase or olivine-rich lithologies of the lower crust and mantle. We estimate a rate of lower crustal underplating at the northern Hikurangi margin of 20 +/- 7 km(3) Ma(-1) km(-1) since 22 Ma. We suggest that underplating provides an efficient means of accreting subducted sediment and tectonically eroded material to the lower crust and that the flux of forearc crustal rocks into the mantle at subduction zones may be systematically overestimated

Normal faulting sequence in the Pumqu-Xainza Rift constrained by InSAR and teleseismic body-wave seismology

Normal faulting earthquakes play an important role in the deformation of continents, and pose significant seismic hazard, yet important questions remain about their mechanics. We use InSAR and body-wave seismology to compute dislocation models and centroid moment solutions for four normal-faulting earthquakes (Mw 5.7–6.2) that occurred in the Pumqu-Xainza Rift (PXR), southern Tibet, a region where low-angle normal faulting has previously been inferred. We also use the fault locations and slip to investigate the correlation between earthquakes and surface topography, and to calculate stress interactions between the earthquakes. The InSAR and body-wave models give consistent focal mechanisms except for the magnitude of the 1996 event, which may be overestimated due to postseismic deformation in the long-interval interferograms. We calculate the static stress changes due to coseismic slip and find that the 1993 event was too distant to cause triggering of the later events, but that the 1998 event pair occurred in regions of increased Coulomb stress resulting from the 1996 event. All the fault planes found here dip at 40–60°, reinforcing the absence in observations for low-angle normal faulting earthquakes (dip < 30°) whose focal planes can be determined unambiguously. The fault planes of the 1993 and 1996 events are not associated with any obvious surface geomorphology, suggesting that sometimes it is unreliable to resolve the focal plane ambiguity by geomorphology, even for Mw 6.2 events. Furthermore, these events occurred outside the center of the rift, indicating that the active faulting is more distributed and over a length-scale at least 25–50 km east-west in extent, rather than confined to the 20 km width seen in the current mapped faulting and topography. These results suggest that seismic hazard in other extensional zones worldwide might also be more broadly distributed than suggested by geomorphology