BaBar - A Community Web Site in an Organizational Setting

The BABAR Web site was established in 1993 at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) to support the BABAR experiment, to report its results, and to facilitate communication among its scientific and engineering collaborators, currently numbering about 600 individuals from 75 collaborating institutions in 10 countries. The BABAR Web site is, therefore, a community Web site. At the same time it is hosted at SLAC and funded by agencies that demand adherence to policies decided under different priorities. Additionally, the BABAR Web administrators deal with the problems that arise during the course of managing users, content, policies, standards, and changing technologies. Desired solutions to some of these problems may be incompatible with the overall administration of the SLAC Web sites and/or the SLAC policies and concerns. There are thus different perspectives of the same Web site and differing expectations in segments of the SLAC population which act as constraints and challenges in any review or re-engineering activities. Web Engineering, which post-dates the BABAR Web, has aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of Web development. This paper reports on the first part of a recent review of application of Web Engineering methods to the BABAR Web site, which has led to explicit user and information models of the BABAR community and how SLAC and the BABAR community relate and react to each other. The paper identifies the issues of a community Web site in a hierarchical, semi-governmental sector and formulates a strategy for periodic reviews of BABAR and similar sites.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 8 pages, PDF, PSN MONT00

Enhancer-like Properties of an RNA Element That Modulates Tombusvirus RNA Accumulation

AbstractPrototypical defective interfering (DI) RNAs of the plus-strand RNA virus tomato bushy stunt virus contain four noncontiguous segments (regions I–IV) derived from the viral genome. Region I corresponds to 5′-noncoding sequence, regions II and III are derived from internal positions, and region IV represents a 3′-terminal segment. We analyzed the internally located region III in a prototypical DI RNA to understand better its role in DI RNA accumulation. Our results indicate that (1) region III is not essential for DI RNA accumulation, but molecules that lack it accumulate at significantly reduced levels (∼10-fold lower), (2) region III is able to function at different positions and in opposite orientations, (3) a single copy of region III is favored over multiple copies, (4) the stimulatory effect observed on DI RNA accumulation is not due to region III-mediated RNA stabilization, (5) DI RNAs lacking region III permit the efficient accumulation of head-to-tail dimers and are less effective at suppressing helper RNA accumulation, and (6) negative-strand accumulation is also significantly depressed for DI RNAs lacking region III. Collectively, these results support a role for region III as an enhancer-like element that facilitates DI RNA replication. A scanning-type mutagenesis strategy was used to define portions of region III important for its stimulatory effect on DI RNA accumulation. Interestingly, the results revealed several differences in the requirements for activity when region III was in the forward versus the reverse orientation. In the context of the viral genome, region III was found to be essential for biological activity. This latter finding defines a critical role for this element in the reproductive cycle of the virus

My Dream Girl

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/3667/thumbnail.jp

Maternal Depression and Infant’s Bias Towards Faces

This study was conducted to examine the relationship between maternal depression and infant bias toward faces. Three-month-old infants were shown faces and objects and their looking times were recorded. The results showed that there was a significant correlation between maternal depression and infant face preference. Specifically, infants who had mothers with higher depression symptomology showed longer looking times to the faces versus the objects. This finding suggests that maternal depression may shape the development of social information processing skills very early in life

If You Were Here

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/5514/thumbnail.jp

Fundamentals for Assessment Success: A Sustainable Data Organization Strategy Within a Construction Management Technology Program

Few events within a successful academic program are as administratively demanding as an onsite accreditation assessment visit. It is a particularly stressful period where a program must fully account for itself by presenting evidence to external evaluators that its students, faculty, alumni, administrators, curriculum, policies, resources, and facilities satisfy a rigorous criteria established by an accrediting body. To accomplish this, the program must retrieve all of the relevant data, compile it into a prodigious report and organize it in a manner that is both profoundly clear and obvious while simultaneously complying with the report format requirements prescribed by the accrediting institution. Anyone who has experienced an on-site accreditation visit is very familiar with these daunting challenges. A number of factors seem to conspire against the successful execution of this documentation process. One of the most fundamental is the complexity associated with the ongoing, sustainable, semester-to-semester compilation of data from a myriad of different sources. Of these various sources, faculty is one of the most critical. It is the faculty after all, that is the origin of the assessment data that forms the bedrock of any program’s assessment regimen. This challenge is compounded if the program is heavily dependent on adjunct faculty. Many educational institutions that offer a technology-based curriculum are particularly reliant on adjunct faculty. Clearly adjunct faculty is highly valued in technology programs for its course – specific expertise and industry correlation. However this faculty is typically teaching as a supplement to a separate full time career and therefore does not have the resources available to devote to a protracted or confusing assessment routine. In order to compile a successful assessment report, a sustainable assessment program must be established that distills the complex requirements into components that can be easily and efficiently executed by its faculty. The reporting system must be sufficiently clear and unambiguous such that it becomes a part of the semester close-out routine. Additionally, a reporting system must be developed that efficiently captures crucial assessment data, making it available for systematic review at the conclusion of every semester and ultimately for inclusion in the accreditation report. This paper documents the process of a construction management technology program as it developed its own ultimately successful assessment structure by focusing on the methods and the tools. The tools described include: Simplified, unambiguous forms that capture assessment data A reporting system to facilitate data dissemination A formalized process that ensures collaboration through the utilization of the captured data on a regular, end-of-semester routine Implementation of an assessment routine that clearly links course data to outcomes to program

Peralkaline Silicic Extrusive Rocks: Magma Genesis, Evolution, Plumbing Systems, and Eruption.

Peralkaline silicic extrusive rocks are an important component of the volcanological record. Here we review several aspects of their formation and evolution, including the tectonic settings in which they occur, their main petrological and geochemical features, the magmatic lineages along which they evolve, and the parameters (T, P, fO2, melt water contents) that control the lineages. Particular attention is paid to the composition of the extraordinary melts formed at the lowest temperatures. Various lines of evidence are presented to explain the silica-gaps in some lineages. The partial melting of continental crust and the role of crustal contamination are considered to be of relatively minor importance in their genesis. High P-T experiments aimed at quantifying the lineages are assessed. Geophysical and petrological evidence for the depth and nature of the plumbing systems is presented. Differentiation mechanisms within reservoirs and the ubiquity of the formation of compositional zonation are discussed, as are the timescales involved. Volcanic hazards and the environmental impact of eruptions are described and a brief assessment of the ore potential of the extrusives is given

Roundtable on Institutional Repositories

An Institutional Repository (IR) is a set of services and technologies that provide the means to collect, manage, provide access to, disseminate, and preserve digital materials produced at an institution (Shreeves and Cragin, 2008). The take up of IR technologies in universities has been broadly contemporaneous with the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies, beginning with the release of the first usable system, DSpace, in 2002. Since 2002, IRs have moved from academia to government, museums and corporations. Today, IRs are increasingly seen as a key component of the ‘networked information economy’ (Benkler, 2006). In many institutions, libraries are assuming program responsibility for institutional repositories