First Steps to Promoting Open Access for Research Data and Publications on Campus.

Open Access (OA) is “the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the right to use these articles fully in the digital environment.” (SPARC, 2014) While much of the conversation about OA centers on business models, economics, workflow processes, institutional policy, and the transformative influence on academic publishing, limited dialogue occurs about best practices to guide educational and research institutions when planning to develop a policy on Open Access. In 2015, the Dean’s Council at Stephen F Austin State University (SFASU) agreed to support Open Access on campus for research data and publications. The SFA Scholar Works, the University’s institutional repository would archive a wide range of research and scholarship produced by the academic community (i.e., faculty-student research, electronic thesis and dissertations (ETDs), and multimedia items). The Steen Library and Center for Digital Scholarship would play an active role in encouraging and educating members of the academic community on adopting Open Access and developing a policy for open research data and publications. However, many concerns among faculty on campus in regard to adopting a required mandate to open research created the need to consider methods that first focused on faculty interests, concerns, and ultimately acceptance. Student research: undergraduate and graduate were viewed as essential tools for building consensus. Results one year later were surprising and reveal how key measures when considered can help to initiate change. This presentation will discuss best practices and provide examples of the innovative steps taken to generate support for Open Access at SFASU

Ralph W. Steen Library 2015 – 2016 Quantitative Comparative Statistical Analysis

For academic libraries at public state universities, the challenge continues on how to evaluate performance, measure progress, and find meaningful ways to demonstrate their worth. The challenge is to find meaningful ways to demonstrate how library programs and services contribute to learning outcomes and student success. This report presents a comparative analysis of Ralph W. Steen Library and ten peer institutions to highlight areas of excellence and under-performance that may warrant further attention

Mobile Computing in Physics Analysis - An Indicator for eScience

This paper presents the design and implementation of a Grid-enabled physics analysis environment for handheld and other resource-limited computing devices as one example of the use of mobile devices in eScience. Handheld devices offer great potential because they provide ubiquitous access to data and round-the-clock connectivity over wireless links. Our solution aims to provide users of handheld devices the capability to launch heavy computational tasks on computational and data Grids, monitor the jobs status during execution, and retrieve results after job completion. Users carry their jobs on their handheld devices in the form of executables (and associated libraries). Users can transparently view the status of their jobs and get back their outputs without having to know where they are being executed. In this way, our system is able to act as a high-throughput computing environment where devices ranging from powerful desktop machines to small handhelds can employ the power of the Grid. The results shown in this paper are readily applicable to the wider eScience community.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Presented at the 3rd Int Conf on Mobile Computing & Ubiquitous Networking (ICMU06. London October 200

A prospective and observational study on complications of type 2 diabetes mellitus in correlation with body mass index

Background: The aim of this study is to observe the prevalence of complications of diabetes mellitus (Type 2) among patients and to minimize their occurrence through patient education. The study helps to assess the clinical data of patients with diabetes mellitus (Type 2) along with the analysis of patterns, frequencies and predictive factors of microvascular, macrovascular complications and to educate and minimize the complications of diabetes mellitus among patients.Methods: Prospective and observational study was conducted among the type 2 diabetes mellitus patients at Sree Diabetes Clinic for a period of 6 months. The patients were interviewed using the patient data collection form which included demographic details, chief complaints and different diagnostic tools to detect type of complications. Both micro and macrovascular complications were evaluated.Results: A total of 150 type 2 diabetic cases were collected. Out of these 38(25.33%) patients were having BMI <25, and 112(74.67%) were having BMI ≥25 (overweight and obese). Out of 150 diabetic cases collected, a total of 131 diabetic complications were found. Out of these, 64(42.6%) were neuropathy, 3(2%) were nephropathy, 20(13.3%) were retinopathy and 17(11.3%) were having cardiovascular complications. Out of 112 patients with BMI ≥25, 60(54%) were found to have diabetic complications and out of 38 patients with BMI <25, 18(47%) were found to have diabetic complications. 90 out of 150 patients had a history of hypertension and 17 out of 150 patients had an abnormal lipid level.Conclusions: In this study, author found that obesity is a major risk factor for the development of diabetes mellitus and its complications

Antimicrobial resistance characteristics and fitness of Gram-negative fecal bacteria from volunteers treated with minocycline or amoxicillin.

A yearlong study was performed to examine the effect of antibiotic administration on the bacterial gut flora. Gram-negative facultative anaerobic bacteria were recovered from the feces of healthy adult volunteers administered amoxicillin, minocycline or placebo, and changes determined in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) gene carriage. Seventy percent of the 1039 facultative anaerobic isolates recovered were identified by MALDI-TOF as Escherichia coli. A microarray used to determine virulence and resistance gene carriage demonstrated that AMR genes were widespread in all administration groups, with the most common resistance genes being bla TEM, dfr, strB, tet(A), and tet(B). Following amoxicillin administration, an increase in the proportion of amoxicillin resistant E. coli and a three-fold increase in the levels of bla TEM gene carriage was observed, an effect not observed in the other two treatment groups. Detection of virulence genes, including stx1A, indicated not all E. coli were innocuous commensals. Approximately 150 E. coli collected from 6 participants were selected for pulse field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and a subset used for characterisation of plasmids and Phenotypic Microarrays (PM). PFGE indicated some E. coli clones had persisted in volunteers for up to 1 year, while others were transient. Although there were no unique characteristics associated with plasmids from persistent or transient isolates, PM assays showed transient isolates had greater adaptability to a range of antiseptic biocides and tetracycline; characteristics which were lost in some, but not all persistent isolates. This study indicates healthy individuals carry bacteria harboring resistance to a variety of antibiotics and biocides in their intestinal tract. Antibiotic administration can have a temporary effect of selecting bacteria, showing co-resistance to multiple antibiotics, some of which can persist within the gut for up to 1 year

Verrucopapillary Lesions of the Oral Cavity: A Review

Verrucopapillary lesions are a spectrum of benign, potentially malignant and malignant lesions of the oral mucosa which usually are misdiagnosed. They pose a great diagnostic challenge mainly due to confusing terminology and also due to similar clinical and histopathological features which often makes these lesions indistinguishable from one another. The human papilloma virus (HPV) plays a important role in the pathogenesis of majority of these lesions. This review aims to summarize and highlight the key clinical and histopathological features of these lesions, and also provides a diagnostic approach to these entities

Evolutionary Timescale of the DAV G117-B15A: The Most Stable Optical Clock Known

We observe G117-B15A, the most precise optical clock known, to measure the rate of change of the main pulsation period of this blue-edge DAV white dwarf. Even though the obtained value is only within 1 sigma, Pdot = (2.3 +/- 1.4) x 10^{-15} s/s, it is already constraining the evolutionary timescale of this cooling white dwarf star.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ

Explaining deep neural networks: A survey on the global interpretation methods

A substantial amount of research has been carried out in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) models, especially in those which explain the deep architectures of neural networks. A number of XAI approaches have been proposed to achieve trust in Artificial Intelligence (AI) models as well as provide explainability of specific decisions made within these models. Among these approaches, global interpretation methods have emerged as the prominent methods of explainability because they have the strength to explain every feature and the structure of the model. This survey attempts to provide a comprehensive review of global interpretation methods that completely explain the behaviour of the AI models. We present a taxonomy of the available global interpretations models and systematically highlight the critical features and algorithms that differentiate them from local as well as hybrid models of explainability. Through examples and case studies from the literature, we evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the global interpretation models and assess challenges when these methods are put into practice. We conclude the paper by providing the future directions of research in how the existing challenges in global interpretation methods could be addressed and what values and opportunities could be realized by the resolution of these challenges

Bioinspired metal–polymer thin films with varying hydrophobic properties

Nanocomposites involve the inclusion of one material into the layers of another material at a nanoscale level. Inspired by nature, nanocomposites material systems offer functionalities over their bulk forms which in some cases have evolved over millions of years. Here, thin film coatings have been fabricated by PVD sputtering, comprising a soft PTFE phase which is combined with a hard metallic NiTi phase. A series of coatings with PTFE ranging from 10 to 75 vol% have been prepared, and their surface energies and microstructures investigated. The surface energy of the nanocomposite films changes with the PTFE content, falling in the range between PTFE and NiTi with water contact angles between 80° and 102° for a thin film with 25 and 75 vol% of PTFE, respectively. Here, both TEM and EDX reveal PTFE forming along NiTi column boundaries. Coatings with PTFE content greater than 50 vol% failed due to a build-up of intrinsic stress. The degree of hybridization between NiTi and PTFE was found to be dependent on the PTFE layer thickness. SEM analysis of this coating reveals PTFE at the surface embedded within the NiTi matrix

Rapid Orbital Decay in the 12.75-Minute Binary White Dwarf J0651+2844

We report the detection of orbital decay in the 12.75-minute, detached binary white dwarf (WD) SDSS J065133.338+284423.37 (hereafter J0651). Our photometric observations over a 13 month baseline constrain the orbital period to 765.206543(55) s and indicate that the orbit is decreasing at a rate of (-9.8 +/- 2.8) x 10(-12) s s(-1) (or -0.31 +/- 0.09 ms yr(-1)). We revise the system parameters based on our new photometric and spectroscopic observations: J0651 contains two WDs with M-1 = 0.26 +/- 0.04 M-circle dot and M-2 = 0.50 +/- 0.04 M-circle dot. General relativity predicts orbital decay due to gravitational wave radiation of (-8.2 +/- 1.7) x 10(-12) s s(-1) (or -0.26 +/- 0.05 ms yr(-1)). Our observed rate of orbital decay is consistent with this expectation. J0651 is currently the second-loudest gravitational wave source known in the milli-Hertz range and the loudest non-interacting binary, which makes it an excellent verification source for future missions aimed at directly detecting gravitational waves. Our work establishes the feasibility of monitoring this system's orbital period decay at optical wavelengths.NSF AST-0909107, AST-1008734Norman Hackerman Advanced Research Program 003658-0252-2009Astronom