Agreement Elements for Outsourcing Transfer of Born Digital Content

This report suggests the elements that should be considered when constructing an outsourcing agreement (or memorandum of understanding) for transferring born digital content from a physical medium, while encouraging adherence to both archival principles and technical requirements

The Effect of Music Familiarity on Students’ Reading Comprehension Performance

The current study examined 85 university students’ performance in a reading comprehension task under three conditions: silence, familiar, or unfamiliar music. The results indicated that the students in the familiar music condition performed significantly worse than those in the silent conditions, as well as those in the unfamiliar music condition

Shock volume: Patient-specific cumulative hypoperfusion predicts organ dysfunction in a prospective cohort of multiply injured patients

BACKGROUND: Multiply injured patients are at risk of developing hemorrhagic shock and organ dysfunction. We determined how cumulative hypoperfusion predicted organ dysfunction by integrating serial Shock Index measurements. METHODS: In this study, we calculated shock volume (SHVL) which is a patient-specific index that quantifies cumulative hypoperfusion by integrating abnormally elevated Shock Index (heart rate/systolic blood pressure ≥ 0.9) values acutely after injury. Shock volume was calculated at three hours (3 hr), six hours (6 hr), and twenty-four hours (24 hr) after injury. Organ dysfunction was quantified using Marshall Organ Dysfunction Scores averaged from days 2 through 5 after injury (aMODSD2–D5). Logistic regression was used to determine correspondence of 3hrSHVL, 6hrSHVL, and 24hrSHVL to organ dysfunction. We compared correspondence of SHVL to organ dysfunction with traditional indices of shock including the initial base deficit (BD) and the lowest pH measurement made in the first 24 hr after injury (minimum pH). RESULTS: SHVL at all three time intervals demonstrated higher correspondence to organ dysfunction (R2 = 0.48 to 0.52) compared to initial BD (R2 = 0.32) and minimum pH (R2 = 0.32). Additionally, we compared predictive capabilities of SHVL, initial BD and minimum pH to identify patients at risk of developing high-magnitude organ dysfunction by constructing receiver operator characteristic curves. SHVL at six hours and 24 hours had higher area under the curve compared to initial BD and minimum pH. CONCLUSION: SHVL is a non-invasive metric that can predict anticipated organ dysfunction and identify patients at risk for high-magnitude organ dysfunction after injury. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Prognostic study, level III

Efficient Congestion Minimisation by Successive Load Shifting in Multilayer Wireless Networks

Congestion in wireless networks is one of the major causes of system inefficiency, and with router load being the main contributor to overall network traffic flow, congestion is very dependent on the level of router load and how it can be effectively managed. This paper presents a novel low-complexity Successive Load Shifting (SLS) technique for intelligently shifting router load between network routers by predicting the probability of congestion occurrences in the network and exploiting the topology to reassign load to minimise congestion. Crucially, SLS does not compromise the data rate in avoiding congestion and is able to be seamlessly embedded into existing protocols with only a small increase incurred in system overheads. The performance of SLS has been extensively tested and critically evaluated using the widely adopted TCP and UDP protocols, with results confirming both significant throughput gains and superior packet loss performance

RNA binding protein Caprin-2 is a pivotal regulator of the central osmotic defense response

In response to an osmotic challenge, the synthesis of the antidiuretic hormone arginine vasopressin (AVP) increases in the hypothalamus, and this is accompanied by extension of the 3′ poly(A) tail of the AVP mRNA, and the up-regulation of the expression of RNA binding protein Caprin-2. Here we show that Caprin-2 binds to AVP mRNAs, and that lentiviral mediated shRNA knockdown of Caprin-2 in the osmotically stimulated hypothalamus shortens the AVP mRNA poly(A) tail at the same time as reducing transcript abundance. In a recapitulated in vitro system, we confirm that Caprin-2 over-expression enhances AVP mRNA abundance and poly(A) tail length. Importantly, we show that Caprin-2 knockdown in the hypothalamus decreases urine output and fluid intake, and increases urine osmolality, urine sodium concentration, and plasma AVP levels. Thus Caprin-2 controls physiological mechanisms that are essential for the body's response to osmotic stress. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.09656.00

Modifying Hofstee standard setting for assessments that vary in difficulty, and to determine boundaries for different levels of achievement.

BACKGROUND: Fixed mark grade boundaries for non-linear assessment scales fail to account for variations in assessment difficulty. Where assessment difficulty varies more than ability of successive cohorts or the quality of the teaching, anchoring grade boundaries to median cohort performance should provide an effective method for setting standards. METHODS: This study investigated the use of a modified Hofstee (MH) method for setting unsatisfactory/satisfactory and satisfactory/excellent grade boundaries for multiple choice question-style assessments, adjusted using the cohort median to obviate the effect of subjective judgements and provision of grade quotas. RESULTS: Outcomes for the MH method were compared with formula scoring/correction for guessing (FS/CFG) for 11 assessments, indicating that there were no significant differences between MH and FS/CFG in either the effective unsatisfactory/satisfactory grade boundary or the proportion of unsatisfactory graded candidates (p > 0.05). However the boundary for excellent performance was significantly higher for MH (p < 0.01), and the proportion of candidates returned as excellent was significantly lower (p < 0.01). MH also generated performance profiles and pass marks that were not significantly different from those given by the Ebel method of criterion-referenced standard setting. CONCLUSIONS: This supports MH as an objective model for calculating variable grade boundaries, adjusted for test difficulty. Furthermore, it easily creates boundaries for unsatisfactory/satisfactory and satisfactory/excellent performance that are protected against grade inflation. It could be implemented as a stand-alone method of standard setting, or as part of the post-examination analysis of results for assessments for which pre-examination criterion-referenced standard setting is employed

Robust statistics towards detection of the 21 cm signal from the Epoch of Reionization

© 2019 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. We explore methods for robust estimation of the 21 cm signal from the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). A Kernel Density Estimator (KDE) is introduced for measuring the spatial temperature fluctuation power spectrum from the EoR. The KDE estimates the underlying probability distribution function of fluctuations as a function of spatial scale, and contains different systematic biases and errors to the typical approach to estimating the fluctuation power spectrum. Extraction of histograms of visibilities allows moments analysis to be used to discriminate foregrounds from 21 cm signal and thermal noise. We use the information available in the histograms, along with the statistical dis-similarity of foregrounds from two independent observing fields, to robustly separate foregrounds from cosmological signal, while making no assumptions about the Gaussianity of the signal. Using two independent observing fields to robustly discriminate signal from foregrounds is crucial for the analysis presented in this paper. We apply the techniques to 13 h of Murchison Widefield Array EoR data over two observing fields. We compare the output to that obtained with a comparative power spectrum estimation method, and demonstrate the reduced foreground contamination using this approach. Using the second moment obtained directly from the KDE distribution functions yields a factor of 2-3 improvement in power for k < 0.3 h Mpc-1 compared with a matched delay space power estimator, while weighting data by additional statistics does not offer significant improvement beyond that available for thermal noise-only weights