Electronic libraries and electronic librarians: Who does what in a national electronic community

This talk will have two parts: First, I'm going to describe very briefly what this new kind of library technology is like through a discussion of the Worm Community System (WCS), why it is going to be very important, and why it will involve a lot of money. What I want to emphasize at the start is that while WCS may seem like an esoteric research project, in fact it is one of the flagship information projects funded by the National Science Foundation. In addition, the National Information Infrastructure Act looms in the immediate future, authorizing an enormous amount of money to be spent in the development of digital libraries in specialized areas. Digital libraries will require information systems like WCS. This project has become a national model of this new kind of information system, but its primary content is really just a special collection, in the same sense you already know. It is an important national effort, but there will be lots of other efforts like this in many different subject areas. Second, I'm going to discuss in more detail what kinds of people are required to do this kind of activity. The roles range from traditional librarians all the way to systems architects. Similarly, the roles range from those that involve no computer knowledge at all to those that involve very intensive computing. My expectation is that people who call themselves "librarians" in the foreseeable future will actually span this entire range, even though now they are significantly skewed towards the traditional end.published or submitted for publicatio

On the Representation and Use of Semantic Categories: A Survey and Prospectus

This report describes research conducted at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Support for the Laboratory's artificial intelligence research is provided in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense under Office of Naval Research contract number N00014-75-C-0643.This paper is intended as a brief introduction to several issues concerning semantic categories. These are the everyday, factual groupings of world knowledge according to some similarity in characteristics. Some psychological data concerning the structure, formation, and use of categories is surveyed. Then several psychological models (set-theoretic and network) are considered. Various artificial intelligence representations (concerning the symbol mapping and recognition problems) dealing with similar issues are also reviewed. It is argued that these data and representations approach semantic categories at too abstract a level and a set of guidelines which may be helpful in constructing a microworld are given.MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agenc

Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Treatment Center Are Associated with Insulin Pump Therapy in Youth in the First Year Following Diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes

Background: Increasing numbers of children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes (T1D) have been placed on insulin pump therapy. Nevertheless, data are limited regarding patterns of pump use during the first year of treatment and the clinical and socioeconomic factors associated with early use of pump therapy. Therefore, we sought to determine factors associated with pump therapy within the first year of diagnosis in youth enrolled in the Pediatric Diabetes Consortium (PDC) T1D New-Onset (NeOn) Study. Subjects and Methods: The NeOn Study includes youth <19 years old at T1D diagnosis who have been followed from the time of diagnosis at seven U.S. pediatric diabetes centers. Cox regression was used to determine factors associated with transition from injection to pump therapy during the first year of T1D in 1,012 participants. Results: Twenty-seven percent (n=254) of participants began pump therapy within the first year of diagnosis, ranging from 18% to 59% among the seven centers. After adjusting for center effect, factors associated with pump use in multivariate analysis included private health insurance (37% vs. 7%; P<0.001), having annual household income over $100,000 (50% vs. 15%; P<0.001), and non-Hispanic white race (36% vs. 11%; P<0.001). The hemoglobin A1c level did not appear to influence the decision to initiate pump use. Conclusions: Participants of non-Hispanic white race and higher socioeconomic status were more likely to be placed on pumps during the first year. Further investigations are needed to gain a better understanding of barriers to use of pumps in youth with T1D, especially in disadvantaged and minority families.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140353/1/dia.2013.0132.pd

American Thoracic Society and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Implementation Research Workshop Report

To advance implementation research (IR) in respiratory, sleep, and critical care medicine, the American Thoracic Society and the Division of Lung Diseases from the NHLBI cosponsored an Implementation Research Workshop on May 17, 2014. The goals of IR are to understand the barriers and facilitators of integrating new evidence into healthcare practices and to develop and test strategies that systematically target these factors to accelerate the adoption of evidence-based care. Throughout the workshop, presenters provided examples of IR that focused on the rate of adoption of evidence-based practices, the feasibility and acceptability of interventions to patients and other stakeholders who make healthcare decisions, the fidelity with which practitioners use specific interventions, the effects of specific barriers on the sustainability of an intervention, and the implications of their research to inform policies to improve patients’ access to high-quality care. During the discussions that ensued, investigators’ experience led to recommendations underscoring the importance of identifying and involving key stakeholders throughout the research process, ensuring that those who serve as reviewers understand the tenets of IR, managing staff motivation and turnover, and tackling the challenges of scaling up interventions across multiple settings

Neotropical ant-plant Triplaris americana attracts Pseudomyrmex mordax ant queens during seedling stages

The association between the myrmecophyte Triplaris and ants of the genus Pseudomyrmex is an often-reported example of mutualism in the Neotropics. The ants colonize the hollow stems of their hosts, and in exchange, the plants benefit from a reduced degree of herbivory. The previous studies have shown that workers can discriminate their host from other plants, including a closely related species. Little is known about how queens locate their host during the colonization process, but it has been suggested that host recognition is mediated by volatiles. Since queens of Pseudomyrmex mordax colonize their hosts during the seedling stage, we hypothesized that queens would discriminate leaves of seedlings from adult plants. To evaluate our hypothesis, we used a two-sided olfactometer, to test the preference of queens towards different leaf and plant ages of Triplaris americana. Virgin queens of Pseudomyrmex mordax preferred seedlings over adult plants, as well as plant leaves over empty controls, showing no discrimination for leaf age. Our results suggest that the volatiles virgin queens recognize are either produced or are more abundant at the early growing stage of the host when colonization is crucial for the host's survival. © 2017, The Author(s)

Information Analysis in the Net: The Interspace of the Twenty-First Century

First, the discussion will center around how prediction of technology trends has gone in the past. So the discussion will be about the evolution of the Net and where things are going, just very briefly, as well as about the evolution of the Net and where things are going by providing a historical example. I then will talk about cross-correlation, generic community systems, and spaces not networks. Those probably do not mean very much right now, but an attempt will be made to give enough examples so that you can get a feeling for what those concepts might actually mean.published or submitted for publicatio