Learning from the early adopters: developing the digital practitioner

This paper explores how Sharpe and Beetham’s Digital Literacies Framework which was derived to model students’ digital literacies, can be applied to lecturers’ digital literacy practices. Data from a small-scale phenomenological study of higher education lecturers who used Web 2.0 in their teaching and learning practices are used to examine if this pyramid model represents their motivations for adopting technology-enhanced learning in their pedagogic practices. The paper argues that whilst Sharpe and Beetham’s model has utility in many regards, these lecturers were mainly motivated by the desire to achieve their pedagogic goals rather than by a desire to become a digital practitioner

Scraping the Social? Issues in live social research

What makes scraping methodologically interesting for social and cultural research? This paper seeks to contribute to debates about digital social research by exploring how a ‘medium-specific’ technique for online data capture may be rendered analytically productive for social research. As a device that is currently being imported into social research, scraping has the capacity to re-structure social research, and this in at least two ways. Firstly, as a technique that is not native to social research, scraping risks to introduce ‘alien’ methodological assumptions into social research (such as an pre-occupation with freshness). Secondly, to scrape is to risk importing into our inquiry categories that are prevalent in the social practices enabled by the media: scraping makes available already formatted data for social research. Scraped data, and online social data more generally, tend to come with ‘external’ analytics already built-in. This circumstance is often approached as a ‘problem’ with online data capture, but we propose it may be turned into virtue, insofar as data formats that have currency in the areas under scrutiny may serve as a source of social data themselves. Scraping, we propose, makes it possible to render traffic between the object and process of social research analytically productive. It enables a form of ‘real-time’ social research, in which the formats and life cycles of online data may lend structure to the analytic objects and findings of social research. By way of a conclusion, we demonstrate this point in an exercise of online issue profiling, and more particularly, by relying on Twitter to profile the issue of ‘austerity’. Here we distinguish between two forms of real-time research, those dedicated to monitoring live content (which terms are current?) and those concerned with analysing the liveliness of issues (which topics are happening?)

Toward Empirical Constraints on the Global Redshifted 21 cm Brightness Temperature During the Epoch of Reionization

Preliminary results are presented from a simple, single-antenna experiment designed to measure the all-sky radio spectrum between 100 and 200 MHz. The system used an internal comparison-switching scheme to reduce non-smooth instrumental contaminants in the measured spectrum to 75 mK. From the observations, we place an initial upper limit of 450 mK on the relative brightness temperature of the redshifted 21 cm contribution to the spectrum due to neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) during the epoch of reionization, assuming a rapid transition to a fully ionized IGM at a redshift of 8. With refinement, this technique should be able to distinguish between slow and fast reionization scenarios. To constrain the duration of reionization to dz > 2, the systematic residuals in the measured spectrum must be reduced to 3 mK.Comment: Submitted to ApJ. 9 pages including 6 figure

Filling the Void: A Low Cost, High-Yield Method to Addressing Incidental Findings in Trauma Patients

In this study we: Report the incidence of incidental findings in a suburban trauma center treating primarily blunt and elderly trauma Propose simple solutions to increase the rate of disclosure to patientshttps://jdc.jefferson.edu/patientsafetyposters/1070/thumbnail.jp

Localizing Transcriptional Regulatory Elements at the Mouse Dlk1 Locus

Much effort has focused recently on determining the mechanisms that control the allele-specific expression of genes subject to genomic imprinting, yet imprinting regulation is only one aspect of configuring appropriate expression of these genes. Imprinting control mechanisms must interact with those regulating the tissue-specific expression pattern of each imprinted gene in a cluster. Proper expression of the imprinted Delta-like 1 (Dlk1) - Maternally expressed gene 3 (Meg3) gene pair is required for normal fetal development in mammals, yet the mechanisms that control tissue-specific expression of these genes are unknown. We have used a combination of in vivo and in vitro expression assays to localize cis-regulatory elements that may regulate Dlk1 expression in the mouse embryo. A bacterial artificial chromosome transgene encompassing the Dlk1 gene and 77 kb of flanking sequence conferred expression in most endogenous Dlk1-expressing tissues. In combination with previous transgenic data, these experiments localize the majority of Dlk1 cis-regulatory elements to a 41 kb region upstream of the gene. Cross-species sequence conservation was used to further define potential regulatory elements, several of which functioned as enhancers in a luciferase expression assay. Two of these elements were able to drive expression of a lacZ reporter transgene in Dlk1-expressing tissues in the mouse embryo. The sequence proximal to Dlk1 therefore contains at least two discrete regions that may regulate tissue-specificity of Dlk1 expression

Spectral Theory of Sparse Non-Hermitian Random Matrices

Sparse non-Hermitian random matrices arise in the study of disordered physical systems with asymmetric local interactions, and have applications ranging from neural networks to ecosystem dynamics. The spectral characteristics of these matrices provide crucial information on system stability and susceptibility, however, their study is greatly complicated by the twin challenges of a lack of symmetry and a sparse interaction structure. In this review we provide a concise and systematic introduction to the main tools and results in this field. We show how the spectra of sparse non-Hermitian matrices can be computed via an analogy with infinite dimensional operators obeying certain recursion relations. With reference to three illustrative examples --- adjacency matrices of regular oriented graphs, adjacency matrices of oriented Erd\H{o}s-R\'{e}nyi graphs, and adjacency matrices of weighted oriented Erd\H{o}s-R\'{e}nyi graphs --- we demonstrate the use of these methods to obtain both analytic and numerical results for the spectrum, the spectral distribution, the location of outlier eigenvalues, and the statistical properties of eigenvectors.Comment: 60 pages, 10 figure

A comparison of similar aerosol measurements made on the NASA P3-B, DC-8, and NSF C-130 aircraft during TRACE-P and ACE-Asia

Two major aircraft experiments occurred off the Pacific coast of Asia during spring 2001: the NASA sponsored Transport and Chemical Evolution over the Pacific (TRACE-P) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored Aerosol Characterization Experiment-Asia (ACE-Asia). Both experiments studied emissions from the Asian continent (biomass burning, urban/industrial pollution, and dust). TRACE-P focused on trace gases and aerosol during March/April and was based primarily in Hong Kong and Yokota Air Force Base, Japan, and involved two aircraft: the NASA DC-8 and the NASA P3-B. ACE-Asia focused on aerosol and radiation during April/May and was based in Iwakuni Marine Corps Air Station, Japan, and involved the NSF C-130. This paper compares aerosol measurements from these aircraft including aerosol concentrations, size distributions (and integral properties), chemistry, and optical properties. Best overall agreement (generally within RMS instrumental uncertainty) was for physical properties of the submircron aerosol, including condensation nuclei concentrations, scattering coefficients, and differential mobility analyzer and optical particle counter (OPC) accumulation mode size distributions. Larger differences (typically outside of the RMS uncertainty) were often observed for parameters related to the supermicron aerosols (total scattering and absorption coefficients, coarse mode Forward Scattering Spectrometer Probe and OPC size distributions/integral properties, and soluble chemical species usually associated with the largest particles, e.g., Na+, Cl−, Ca2+, and Mg2+), where aircraft sampling is more demanding. Some of the observed differences reflect different inlets (e.g., low-turbulence inlet enhancement of coarse mode aerosol), differences in sampling lines, and instrument configuration and design. Means and variances of comparable measurements for horizontal legs were calculated, and regression analyses were performed for each platform and allow for an assessment of instrument performance. These results provide a basis for integrating aerosol data from these aircraft platforms for both the TRACE-P and ACE-Asia experiments

Infinite factorization of multiple non-parametric views

Combined analysis of multiple data sources has increasing application interest, in particular for distinguishing shared and source-specific aspects. We extend this rationale of classical canonical correlation analysis into a flexible, generative and non-parametric clustering setting, by introducing a novel non-parametric hierarchical mixture model. The lower level of the model describes each source with a flexible non-parametric mixture, and the top level combines these to describe commonalities of the sources. The lower-level clusters arise from hierarchical Dirichlet Processes, inducing an infinite-dimensional contingency table between the views. The commonalities between the sources are modeled by an infinite block model of the contingency table, interpretable as non-negative factorization of infinite matrices, or as a prior for infinite contingency tables. With Gaussian mixture components plugged in for continuous measurements, the model is applied to two views of genes, mRNA expression and abundance of the produced proteins, to expose groups of genes that are co-regulated in either or both of the views. Cluster analysis of co-expression is a standard simple way of screening for co-regulation, and the two-view analysis extends the approach to distinguishing between pre- and post-translational regulation

Spectra of Modular and Small-World Matrices

We compute spectra of symmetric random matrices describing graphs with general modular structure and arbitrary inter- and intra-module degree distributions, subject only to the constraint of finite mean connectivities. We also evaluate spectra of a certain class of small-world matrices generated from random graphs by introducing short-cuts via additional random connectivity components. Both adjacency matrices and the associated graph Laplacians are investigated. For the Laplacians, we find Lifshitz type singular behaviour of the spectral density in a localised region of small $|\lambda|$ values. In the case of modular networks, we can identify contributions local densities of state from individual modules. For small-world networks, we find that the introduction of short cuts can lead to the creation of satellite bands outside the central band of extended states, exhibiting only localised states in the band-gaps. Results for the ensemble in the thermodynamic limit are in excellent agreement with those obtained via a cavity approach for large finite single instances, and with direct diagonalisation results.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

Fracture toughness of the cancellous bone of FNF femoral heads in relation to its microarchitecture

This study considers the relationship between microarchitecture and mechanical properties for cancellous bone specimens collected from a cohort of patients who had suffered fractured necks of femur. OP is an acute skeletal condition with huge socioeconomic impact [1] and it is associated with changes in both bone quantity and quality [2], which affect greatly the strength and toughness of the tissue [3].Support was provided by the EPSRC (EP/K020196: Point-ofCare High Accuracy Fracture Risk Prediction), the UK Department of Transport under the BOSCOS (Bone Scanning for Occupant Safety) project, and approved by Gloucester and Cheltenham NHS Trust hospitals under ethical consent (BOSCOS – Mr. Curwen CI REC ref 01/179G)