Aquilegia, Vol. 38 No. 1, Spring 2014, Newsletter of the Colorado Native Plant Society

https://epublications.regis.edu/aquilegia/1147/thumbnail.jp

Evaluation of articles in metabolism research on the basis of their citations

Introduction: The number of research papers and journals each year is increasing and millions of dollars are spent. Despite this there is evidence to suggest that many publications do not impact clinical practice. We used citation analysis to measure the influence of metabolism publications from 2003-2013. Those papers with lower citation rates are likely to be of the least value and high rates of such publications may be a marker of research waste. Materials and methods: We analysed 67 journals with 81,954 articles related to metabolism indexed on the Scopus station database from 2003- 2013. We identified those articles with less than 5 citations within 5 years from publication date as poorly cited. Journals were ranked by the percentage of articles that were poorly cited or uncited. Results: Over the 10-year period, the number of total articles increased by 127%. We found that 24% of articles were poorly cited within 5 years of publication. Journals in the bottom 25% and top 25% of rankings by citation rates accounted for a similar proportion of poorly cited articles. Most of the open access journals were ranked in the top 25% for citation rates. Conclusions: Our analysis contradicts concerns over increasing amounts of publications with little impact. The proportion of poorly cited articles are low, with little change in the trend over 10 years. The top and bottom ranked journals produced similar proportions of poorly cited articles. These findings suggest the necessity of pursuing further research to study waste in metabolism research

A Health Needs Assessment for people living with neurological conditions in Lincolnshire: Summary Report July 2018

The Healthy Ageing Research Group (HARG) is a group of researchers within the School of Health and Social Care at the University of Lincoln. In September 2017 we were asked by Lincolnshire County Council to undertake an independent health needs assessment for people living with neurological conditions in the county. A health needs assessment is a way in reviewing the current resources available to meeting the needs of a specific population. This report is a summary of the work. Please email Thomas George for the full report (email: [email protected] or phone: 01522 837496). The review looked at adults over the age of 18, and young adults moving into adult services. It covered a range of neurological conditions, including stroke, epilepsy, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, among others. Lincolnshire County Council had previously undertaken a separate review looking at the needs of people with dementia, so dementia was not included within this study

Developing a Health Needs Assessment for people living with neurological conditions in Lincolnshire

The Healthy Ageing Research Group (HARG) from the School of Health and Social Care at the University of Lincoln were commissioned by Lincolnshire County Council to undertake an independent health needs assessment for people living with neurological conditions in the county in September 2017. The purpose of this work is to establish the distribution of neurological conditions within the county; the level of service activity; gaps and limitations in service provision as well as examples of effective provision and good practice. The review focuses on adults over the age of 18, and young adults transitioning into adult services, with a range of neurological conditions, including stroke. The report does not include data on people with dementia

The Common Core Writing Standards: A Descriptive Study of Content and Alignment with A Sample of Former State Standards

Many students do not meet expected standards of writing performance, despite the need for writing competence in and out of school. As policy instruments, writing content standards have an impact on what is taught and how students perform. This study reports findings from an evaluation of the content of a sample of seven diverse states’ current writing standards compared to content of the Common Core State Standards for writing and language (CCSS-WL). Standards were evaluated for breadth of content coverage (range), how often content was referenced (frequency), the degree of emphasis placed on varied content elements (balance), and the degree of overlap between one set of standards and another (alignment). The study addressed two research questions: (1) What is the nature of the CCSS-WL and the sample states’ standards for writing with respect to content breadth, frequency, and balance? (2) To what degree do the states\u27 writing standards align with the CCSS-WL? Results indicated that CCSS-WL are succinct and balanced, with breadth of coverage in some aspects of writing but not others. The seven states’ standards represented varying degrees of breadth, frequency, and balance with few patterns across states. None of the states’ standards had strong alignment with CCSS-WL, indicating a potential mismatch between prior curricular materials and instructional methods developed with former standards as guides to help students meet grade-level writing expectations in the new CCSS

Magnetic Screening at Finite Temperature

It is shown that at finite temperature and in the presence of magnetic sources magnetic fields are screened. This is proven within the framework of classical transport theory both for the Abelian and non-Abelian plasmas. Magnetic screening arises in this formalism as a consequence of polarization effects occurring in the plasmas, and it is proportional to the inverse of the gauge coupling constant. It is then discussed whether this mechanism could be relevant in realistic quantum gauge field theories, such as QCD.Comment: 21 pages, RevTex; rewritten discussion, misleading sentences have been eliminated, results unchange

End of life care for long-term neurological conditions: A meta-ethnographic review of the experiences of informal carers

Background: Family and friends are key providers of care for people living with a long-term neurological condition. Neurological conditions are a significant global contributor to disability and premature death. However, previous research suggests carers often struggle to access appropriate support at end of life. Aims: This review sought to synthesise qualitative studies discussing end-of-life and palliative issues for informal carers supporting people living with neurological conditions. Design: This was a meta-ethnographic synthesis of 38 qualitative studies discussing end-of-life and palliative issues for informal carers supporting people living with long-term neurological conditions. Data Sources: Qualitative articles published after January 2010 in English, addressing carers of people with long-term neurological conditions with regard to palliative care, end of life and/or bereavement. Papers were excluded if it was not possible to separately assess the views of carers. Quality appraisal was not undertaken, but consideration was given to research context. Results. Across the papers, five key themes were identified: the future (un)certainties in the progression of life-limiting neurological conditions; an information paradox of not receiving the right information at the right time; access to support; carers’ roles in decision making around end of life; and maintaining continuity while facing change and disruption in day-to-day living. Conclusions: Given the broad agreement on the challenges faced by carers of people living with long-term neurological conditions, future research should consider opportunities to improve information and support for this group, and the development and evaluation of practical models of service delivery

Experiences of self-managing progressive neurological conditions in people living in rural and remote communities: a systematic review of qualitative evidence

Wealth of neurological conditions, over 600+, therefore not feasibly possible to review all. Progressive neurological conditions are one of the most prevalent categories of neurological conditions, due to the progressive deterioration in functioning (WHO, 2006)

Effective permittivity of random plasmonic composites

An effective-medium theory (EMT) is developed to predict the effective permittivity \epsilon_eff of dense random dispersions of high optical-conductivity metals such as Ag, Au and Cu. Dependence of \epsilon_eff on the volume fraction \phi, a microstructure parameter \kappa related to the static structure factor and particle radius a is studied. In the electrostatic limit, the upper and lower bounds of \kappa correspond to Maxwell-Garnett and Bruggeman EMTs respectively. Finite size effects are significant when |\beta^2(ka/n)^3| becomes O(1) where \beta, k, and n denote the nanoparticle polarizability, wavenumber and matrix refractive index respectively. The coupling between the particle and effective medium results in a red-shift in the resonance peak, a non-linear dependence of \epsilon_eff on \phi, and Fano resonance in \epsilon_eff.Comment: Manuscript submitted to J. Opt. Soc. Am. B. 33 page

Fluid models of congestion collapse in overloaded switched networks

We consider a switched network (i.e. a queueing network in which there are constraints on which queues may be served simultaneously), in a state of overload. We analyse the behaviour of two scheduling algorithms for multihop switched networks: a generalized version of max-weight, and the α-fair policy. We show that queue sizes grow linearly with time, under either algorithm, and we characterize the growth rates. We use this characterization to demonstrate examples of congestion collapse, i.e. cases in which throughput drops as the switched network becomes more overloaded.We further show that the loss of throughput can be made arbitrarily small by the max-weight algorithm with weight function f (q) = q[superscript α] as α→0.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Career CNS-0546590