“When You Use Social Media You Are Not Working”: Barriers for the Use of Metrics in Social Sciences

The Social Sciences have long been struggling with quantitative forms of research assessment—insufficient coverage in prominent citation indices and overall lower citation counts than in STM subject areas have led to a widespread weariness regarding bibliometric evaluations among social scientists. Fueled by the rise of the social web, new hope is often placed on alternative metrics that measure the attention scholarly publications receive online, in particular on social media. But almost a decade after the coining of the term altmetrics for this new group of indicators, the uptake of the concept in the Social Sciences still seems to be low. Just like with traditional bibliometric indicators, one central problem hindering the applicability of altmetrics for the Social Sciences is the low coverage of social science publications on the respective data sources—which in the case of altmetrics are the various social media platforms on which interactions with scientific outputs can be measured. Another reason is that social scientists have strong opinions about the usefulness of metrics for research evaluation which may hinder broad acceptance of altmetrics too. We conducted qualitative interviews and online surveys with researchers to identify the concerns which inhibit the use of social media and the utilization of metrics for research evaluation in the Social Sciences. By analyzing the response data from the interviews in conjunction with the response data from the surveys, we identify the key concerns that inhibit social scientists from (1) applying social media for professional purposes and (2) making use of the wide array of metrics available. Our findings show that aspects of time consumption, privacy, dealing with information overload, and prevalent styles of communication are predominant concerns inhibiting Social Science researchers from using social media platforms for their work

“When You Use Social Media You Are Not Working”: Barriers for the Use of Metrics in Social Sciences

The Social Sciences have long been struggling with quantitative forms of research assessment—insufficient coverage in prominent citation indices and overall lower citation counts than in STM subject areas have led to a widespread weariness regarding bibliometric evaluations among social scientists. Fueled by the rise of the social web, new hope is often placed on alternative metrics that measure the attention scholarly publications receive online, in particular on social media. But almost a decade after the coining of the term altmetrics for this new group of indicators, the uptake of the concept in the Social Sciences still seems to be low. Just like with traditional bibliometric indicators, one central problem hindering the applicability of altmetrics for the Social Sciences is the low coverage of social science publications on the respective data sources—which in the case of altmetrics are the various social media platforms on which interactions with scientific outputs can be measured. Another reason is that social scientists have strong opinions about the usefulness of metrics for research evaluation which may hinder broad acceptance of altmetrics too. We conducted qualitative interviews and online surveys with researchers to identify the concerns which inhibit the use of social media and the utilization of metrics for research evaluation in the Social Sciences. By analyzing the response data from the interviews in conjunction with the response data from the surveys, we identify the key concerns that inhibit social scientists from (1) applying social media for professional purposes and (2) making use of the wide array of metrics available. Our findings show that aspects of time consumption, privacy, dealing with information overload, and prevalent styles of communication are predominant concerns inhibiting Social Science researchers from using social media platforms for their work. Regarding indicators for research impact we identify a widespread lack of knowledge about existing metrics, their methodologies and meanings as a major hindrance for their uptake through social scientists. The results have implications for future developments of scholarly online tools and show that researchers could benefit considerably from additional formal training regarding the correct application and interpretation of metrics

Effect of Flooding, Acidity and High Temperatures on Seed Germination and Durability of Common Purslane

Three separate experiments conducted to survey the response of two populations of common purslane weed collected from Karaj and Ahvaz on germination and early growth. The first experiment was based on 4 levels of flooding, including 1, 2, 4, 8 days plus non-flooding treatment as a control. Second experiment addressed the impact of various acidity levels, such as 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and finally third experiment considered the influence of high temperatures of 60, 80, 100, 120, 140, 160, 180, 200, 220 centigrade on germination rate, germination percentage, radicle length and plumule length as well as fresh weight of the aforementioned population of common purslane (Karaj and Ahvaz). Analysis of variance revealed that in both weed populations, all germination indices were impressed by flooding periods, acidity levels and high temperatures. Extending the flooding periods resulted in reducing all measured parameters in both weed populations, so the growth of common people was completely inhibited less than 8 consecutive days of flooding. Germination rate and percentage improved gradually by increasing the acidity value from 4 up to 7. An adverse relation was observed between the measured parameters and temperature variations in both Karaj and Ahvaz weed population. Germination rate and percentage, radicle and plumule length, as well as the fresh weight of seedling, decreased significantly in response to increasing the oven temperature. Overall, it can be concluded that boosting our knowledge about both ecology and biology aspects of the common person can pave the way for introducing new ways in line with expanding long-term strategies, improving management systems and predicting the mode of germination and growth of this important weed

Evaluating altmetrics acts through their creators – how to advance?

<p>One of the grand challenges in the meaningful use and interpretation of altmetrics is the heterogeneity of the acts behind them (Haustein, 2016). On the one hand, the diversity of the online interactions as a measure of scholarly impact is part of what makes altmetrics such a promising complement to traditional impact measures. On the other hand, this diversity makes the interpretation of altmetrics a difficult endeavor, as altmetrics derived from different social media platforms are shaped by significantly different premises. Although different actions on those platforms are in many cases fundamentally different regarding both the respective user’s degree of involvement and intention, their scores are displayed side by side by altmetrics providers without much further explanation of their diverse premises. For example, bookmarking a publication in Mendeley has a substantially different meaning from writing a post about the same publication in Facebook. In order to account for semantic differences between acts from different sources for altmetrics, efforts have been made to classify interactions regarding the required degree of involvement (Haustein, Bowman, & Costas, 2016) or their stakeholders’ main use cases („NISO RP-25-2016, Outputs of the NISO Alternative Assessment Project - National Information Standards Organization“, 2016). One largely unexplored premise that should be considered when interpreting altmetrics are differences regarding the platforms’ userships – the users that are responsible for the interactions underlying altmetrics. Referring to past studies, the share of academics among the users interacting with scientific articles seems to vary considerably between platforms: while for example Jin-Cheon Na & Yingxin Estella Ye (2017) found a distinct predominance of non-academic users in discussions of psychological academic articles on Facebook, Vainio & Holmberg (2017) found researchers to be strongly represented among Twitter users responsible for tweeting scientific articles. And even for those platforms for which we can assume that the relevant share of interactions with scientific publications is committed by researchers such as Mendeley and ResearchGate (Sugimoto, Work, Larivière, & Haustein, 2016), there still might be considerable differences regarding the overall researchers’ professional experience, productivity in terms of traditional publications or represented fields of research between individual platforms. </p> <p>The differentiation between the semantics of acts in altmetrics – and their weighting based on this differentiation – leads to many questions regarding a sensible methodology and also its overall desirableness.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p

Growth of Neisseria gonorrhoeae in the Female Mouse Genital Tract Does Not Require the Gonococcal Transferrin or Hemoglobin Receptors and May Be Enhanced by Commensal Lactobacilli

Neisseria gonorrhoeae is capable of utilizing a variety of iron sources in vitro, including human transferrin, human lactoferrin, hemoglobin, hemoglobin-haptoglobin complexes, heme, and heterologous siderophores. Transferrin has been implicated as a critical iron store for N. gonorrhoeae in the human male urethra. The demonstration that gonococci can infect the lower genital tracts of estradiol-treated BALB/c mice in the absence of human transferrin, however, suggests that other usable iron sources are present in the murine genital tract. Here we demonstrate that gonococcal transferrin and hemoglobin receptor mutants are not attenuated in mice, thereby ruling out transferrin and hemoglobin as essential for murine infection. An increased frequency of phase variants with the hemoglobin receptor “on” (Hg(+)) occurred in ca. 50% of infected mice; this increase was temporally associated with an influx of neutrophils and detectable levels of hemoglobin in the vagina, suggesting that the presence of hemoglobin in inflammatory exudates selects for Hg(+) phase variants during infection. We also demonstrate that commensal lactobacilli support the growth of N. gonorrhoeae in vitro unless an iron chelator is added to the medium. We hypothesize that commensal lactobacilli may enhance growth of gonococci in vivo by promoting the solubilization of iron on mucosal surfaces through the production of metabolic intermediates. Finally, transferrin-binding lipoprotein (TbpB) was detected on gonococci in vaginal smears, suggesting that although gonococci replicate within the genital tracts of mice, they may be sufficiently iron-stressed to express iron-repressible proteins. In summary, these studies support the potential role of nontransferrin, nonhemoglobin iron sources during gonococcal infection of the female genital tract

The effect of CRISPR constructs microinjection on the expression of developmental genes in Rag1 knocked-out mice embryo

Despite all the advances in the production of transgenic mice, the production efficiency of these animal models is still low. Given that the expression of developmental genes has a critical role in growth and development of embryo, we determined the expression pattern of pluripotency, trophectoderm and imprinting genes in the Rag1 (recombination-activating gene 1) knocked-out blastocysts resulting from microinjection of CRISPR/Cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated protein 9) constructs into the zygote cytoplasm of C57bl6 mice. Following microinjection, the embryos were cultured and the gene expression of developed blastocysts and natural blastocysts (Sham and control groups) were evaluated using real-time PCR. The agarose gel to confirm the deletion in the Rag1 gene in Rag1 knocked-out blastocyst. Our results showed that the expression of trophectoderm genes (-TEAD-4 and Cdx2), pluripotency genes (Nanog and Oct-4) and imprinting gene (H19) in the Rag1 knocked-out group was significantly lower compared with the embryos obtained from Natural fertilization. According to these findings, manipulation, embryo culture and microinjection of CRISPR constructs into the zygote cytoplasm of mice led to reduced expression of imprinting, pluripotency and trophectoderm genes. Therefore, the Rag1 knocked-out embryos produced by the CRISPR/Cas9 system are of low quality, which reduces the chances of live birth in these animals and may cause various abnormalities in fetuses. © 2021 The Authors Veterinary Medicine and Science Published by John Wiley & Sons Lt

Design and synthesis of benzodiazepine-1,2,3-triazole hybrid derivatives as selective butyrylcholinesterase inhibitors

Abstract: A new series of compounds based on benzodiazepine-1,2,3-triazole were synthesized and evaluated as cholinesterase inhibitors by Ellman�s method. The compounds proved to be selective inhibitors of butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE) over acetylcholinesterase. The most potent compound was 3,3-dimethyl-11-(3-((1-(4-nitrobenzyl)-1H-1,2,3-triazol-4-yl)methoxy)phenyl)-2,3,4,5,10,11-hexahydro-1H-dibenzob,e1,4diazepin-1-one, identified as a submicromolar inhibitor of BuChE with IC50 value of 0.2 µM. In addition, the amyloid-β self-aggregation evaluation studies for selected compounds showed potent inhibitory effects compared to donepezil. The docking and cell viability studies supported the potential of compound 9b-6 as significant BuChE inhibitor. Graphic abstract: Figure not available: see fulltext. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG