Are Italian research assessment exercises size-biased?

Research assessment exercises have enjoyed ever-increasing popularity in many countries in recent years, both as a method to guide public funds allocation and as a validation tool for adopted research support policies. Italy’s most recently completed evaluation effort (VQR 2011–14) required each university to submit to the Ministry for Education, University, and Research (MIUR) 2 research products per author (3 in the case of other research institutions), chosen in such a way that the same product is not assigned to two authors belonging to the same institution. This constraint suggests that larger institutions, where collaborations among colleagues may be more frequent, could suffer a size-related bias in their evaluation scores. To validate our claim, we investigate the outcome of artificially splitting Sapienza University of Rome, one of the largest universities in Europe, in a number of separate partitions, according to several criteria, noting significant score increases for several partitioning scenarios

Which Conference Is That? A Case Study in Computer Science

Conferences play a major role in some disciplines such as computer science and are often used in research quality evaluation exercises. Differently from journals and books, for which ISSN and ISBN codes provide unambiguous keys, recognizing the conference series in which a paper was published is a rather complex endeavor: There is no unique code assigned to conferences, and the way their names are written may greatly vary across years and catalogs. In this article, we propose a technique for the entity resolution of conferences based on the analysis of different semantic parts of their names. We present the results of an investigation of our technique on a dataset of 42,395 distinct computer science conference names excerpted from the DBLP computer science repository,1 which we automatically link to different authority files. With suitable data cleaning, the precision of our record linkage algorithm can be as high as 94%. A comparison with results obtainable using state-of-the-art general-purpose record linkage algorithms rounds off the article, showing that our ad hoc solution largely outperforms them in terms of the quality of the results

DREAM. A project about non-Latin script data

The DREAM project is a large research project founded by Sapienza University of Rome, dealing with bibliographic data in non-Latin scripts. As the National Bibliographic Service catalogue (SBN) does not yet manage data in non-Latin scripts, the aim of DREAM is to offer researchers a catalogue searchable through original scripts (such as Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, etc.). One of the most remarkable features of the project is the creation of an ILS-independent working context in which the cataloguer may find and retrieve data in original script from authoritative catalogues, starting from the existing romanized ones. From a technical standpoint, the ever increasing Unicode support offered by modern operating systems, DBMSs and indexing engines makes the rapid development of the relevant software tools a concrete possibility. This in turn implies a shift in scientific focus towards the (often subtle) record linkage operations between different data sources. The authors hope that the DREAM project will gather the adhesion of other Italian libraries that perceive the same needs. Furthermore, as soon as SBN will support the management of data in non-Latin scripts, the DREAM project partners will be able to contribute with their data

Why, When and How Should Clinicians Use Physiology in Patients with Acute Coronary Syndromes?

Current data support the use of coronary physiology in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS). In patients with ST-elevation MI, the extent of myocardial damage and microvascular dysfunction create a complex conundrum to assimilate when considering clinical management and risk stratification. In this setting, the index of microcirculatory resistance emerged as an accurate tool to identify patients at risk of suboptimal myocardial reperfusion after primary percutaneous coronary intervention who may benefit from novel adjunctive therapies. In the context of non-ST-elevation ACS, coronary physiology should be carefully interpreted and often integrated with intracoronary imaging, especially in cases of ambiguous culprit lesion. Conversely, the functional assessment of bystander coronary disease is favoured by the available evidence, aiming to achieve complete revascularisation. Based on everyday clinical scenarios, the authors illustrate the available evidence and provide recommendations for the functional assessment of infarct-related artery and non-culprit lesions in patients with ACS

IMPLEMENTASI BUDAYA LITERASI DALAM PEMBENTUKAN KARAKTER INTEGRITAS SISWA DI SMA NEGERI 02 BATU

This study aims to describes the implementation of literacy culture in reporting the integrity character of students at SMA Negeri 02 Batu; mistakes and the solution of the problem in implementing literacy culture in order to characterize the integrity of students at SMA Negeri 02 Batu. The research method used qualitative research and descriptive approaches. This research consists of procedures, implementation and data analysis. The data technique are uses observation, interview and documentation. The data analysis technique consist of four stages of activity, namely data collection, data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The data validity technique used source triangulation. The results showed that the implementation of Cultural Literacy was carried out through various stages, namely the habituation, development and learning stages. Constraints originating from GLS administrators and teachers are those who lack literacy training, students are low reading interest and different character of students, family is an understanding of the understanding of the character of education at home. Damage to GLS administrators and teachers, the solution is to provide training to improve competence, to students the solution is to motivate and approach each student, trust that comes from parents, the solution provides an understanding of character education at home

ORAl iMmunosuppressive therapy to prevent in-Stent rEstenosiS (RAMSES) cooperation: a patient-level meta-analysis of randomized trials

n/

Sleep quality and sex-related factors in adult patients with immune-mediated diabetes: a large cross-sectional study

AimTo analyze sleep quality and its relationships with clinical and biochemical features in a large cohort of adults with autoimmune diabetes.MethodsWe administered to 553 patients with autoimmune diabetes the questionnaires: Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), diabetes distress scale, diabetes-related quality of life and diabetes treatment satisfaction questionnaire. We excluded patients with missing HbA1c +/- 4 months from PSQI administration or incorrect PSQI compilation (n = 110).ResultsAltered sleep quality was recorded in 142/443 subjects (32%), insufficient total sleep time in 177/443 (40%). The altered sleep quality group had higher HbA1c (median 56 mmol/mol [interquartile range-IQR 49-62] vs 59 [IQR 52-68]; P < 0.001), higher average HbA1c in the previous 36 months (59 mmol/mol [IQR 54-68] vs 56 [IQR 51-62]; P < 0.001), and more individuals with HbA1c > 53 mmol/mol (74.6% vs 62.8%; P = 0.014). Diabetes duration (P = 0.63), type of insulin delivery (P = 0.48) and glucose monitoring (P = 0.35) were uninfluential. Patients with altered sleep quality showed higher prevalence of autoimmune (42 vs 28%; P = 0.005) and mental diseases (12 vs 4%; P = 0.002); there were greater emotional distress, and lower quality of life and treatment satisfaction (P < 0.001 for all), irrespective of sex. Men with altered sleep quality had higher HbA1c and prevalence of autoimmune diseases. Women showed greater prevalence of psychiatric disorders. Average HbA1c of the previous 36 months, autoimmune or psychiatric disorders were independent predictive factors for altered sleep quality.ConclusionOne-third of the patients with autoimmune diabetes showed altered sleep quality, which associates with worse glycemic control, and autoimmune and mental disorders, with sex-specific differences

Mirror quiescence and high-sensitivity position measurements with feedback

We present a detailed study of how phase-sensitive feedback schemes can be used to improve the performance of optomechanical devices. Considering the case of a cavity mode coupled to an oscillating mirror by the radiation pressure, we show how feedback can be used to reduce the position noise spectrum of the mirror, cool it to its quantum ground state, or achieve position squeezing. Then, we show that even though feedback is not able to improve the sensitivity of stationary position spectral measurements, it is possible to design a nonstationary strategy able to increase this sensitivity.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figure