Career development tips for today's nursing academic: bibliometrics, altmetrics and social media

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Aims: A discussion of bibliometrics, altmetrics and social media for the contemporary nursing scholar and academic researcher. Background: Today's nursing academic faces myriad challenges in balancing their daily life and, in recent years, academic survival has been increasingly challenged by the various research assessment exercises that evaluate the performance of knowledge institutions. As such, it is essential that today's nursing academic keep up to date with the core competencies needed for survival in a modern research career, particularly the intersecting triad of bibliometrics, altmetrics and social media. Design: Discussion paper. Data sources: Published literature and relevant websites. Implications for nursing: The rise of social media and altmetrics has important implications for contemporary nursing scholars who publish their research. Some fundamental questions when choosing a journal might be ‘does it have a Twitter and/or Facebook site, or a blog (or all three)’; and ‘does it have any other presence on social media, such as LinkedIn, Wikipedia, YouTube, ResearchGate and so on?’ Another consequence of embracing social media is that individual academics should also develop their own strategies for promoting and disseminating their work as widely as possible. Conclusion: The rising importance of social media and altmetrics can no longer be ignored, and today's nursing academic now has another facet to consider in their scholarly activities. Despite the changing nature of research dissemination, however, it is still important to recognize the undoubted value of established knowledge dissemination routes (that being the peer-reviewed publication)

Beyond prospective accountancy : reassessing the case for British membership of the single European currency comparatively

The fact that Britain will, at most, be a late signatory to the single European currency means that the strategic deliberations it faces in deciding whether to enter EMU are rather different to those of earlier entrants. However, this crucial point is lost in almost all discussion of the subject. To date, the academic debate has been dominated by what we term 'prospective accountancy', in which a series of abstract counterfactuals ostensibly inform a stylised cost–benefit analysis. This article moves beyond such an approach by combining conjectures about the specificities of the British case with a concrete analysis of the experiences of the Eurozone member whose economy appears most closely to resemble Britain's: namely, Ireland. The comparative dimension of our work facilitates more empirically-based analysis of the merits and demerits of British entry into EMU. Yet, it is important not to lose sight of the limits of an exclusively comparative approach, for the British growth model is qualitatively different to that of other European Union economies. British growth since the early 1990s has been consumption led, and this in turn has been fuelled to a considerable degree by the release of equity from the housing market. The likely impact of EMU on the British economy will be determined to a significant extent, then, by its effect upon this key catalyst of British growth. Sadly, no retrospective comparison can inform such an assessment

Roche tomography of cataclysmic variables - V. A high-latitude star-spot on RU Pegasi

We present Roche tomograms of the secondary star in the dwarf nova system RU Pegasi derived from blue and red arm ISIS data taken on the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope. We have applied the entropy landscape technique to determine the system parameters and obtained component masses of M1 = 1.06 Msun, M2 = 0.96 Msun, an orbital inclination angle of i = 43 degrees, and an optimal systemic velocity of gamma = 7 km/s. These are in good agreement with previously published values. Our Roche tomograms of the secondary star show prominent irradiation of the inner Lagrangian point due to illumination by the disc and/or bright spot, which may have been enhanced as RU Peg was in outburst at the time of our observations.We find that this irradiation pattern is axi-symmetric and confined to regions of the star which have a direct view of the accretion regions. This is in contrast to previous attempts to map RU Peg which suggested that the irradiation pattern was non-symmetric and extended beyond the terminator. We also detect additional inhomogeneities in the surface distribution of stellar atomic absorption that we ascribe to the presence of a large star-spot. This spot is centred at a latitude of about 82 degrees and covers approximately 4 per cent of the total surface area of the secondary. In keeping with the high latitude spots mapped on the cataclysmic variables AE Aqr and BV Cen, the spot on RU Peg also appears slightly shifted towards the trailing hemisphere of the star. Finally, we speculate that early mapping attempts which indicated non-symmetric irradiation patterns which extended beyond the terminator of CV donors could possibly be explained by a superposition of symmetric heating and a large spot.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societ

Gordon Brown's misplaced Smithian appeal : the eclipse of sympathy in changing British welfare norms

Gordon Brown has eagerly lauded his fellow Kirkcaldy citizen, Adam Smith, as his main policy inspiration. This article tests the rigour of such a claim by matching Brown's promotion of Smithian ‘sympathy’ as the centrepiece of his programme for government with the changes introduced by his Treasury to the British welfare model. In the 1970s, Thomas Wilson showed that the traditions of the post-war British welfare state were compatible with a modified form of Smithian sympathy socialised at the level of the state. New Labour has set about reforming the welfare model with respect to both its underlying institutions and the basic subjectivities of its recipients. I show that Brown's substantive preference for an asset-based system of welfare moves those subjectivities away from the ‘relational self’ of Smithian sympathy and towards a much more ‘autonomous self’. Consequently, I conclude that it is stretching Smith's concept of sympathy too far, even in a modified socialised form, to associate it with New Labour's asset-based system of welfare

The Shifted Coupled Cluster Method: A New Approach to Hamiltonian Lattice Gauge Theories

It is shown how to adapt the non-perturbative coupled cluster method of many-body theory so that it may be successfully applied to Hamiltonian lattice $SU(N)$ gauge theories. The procedure involves first writing the wavefunctions for the vacuum and excited states in terms of linked clusters of gauge invariant excitations of the strong coupling vacuum. The fundamental approximation scheme then consists of i) a truncation of the infinite set of clusters in the wavefunctions according to their geometric {\em size}, with all larger clusters appearing in the Schr\"odinger equations simply discarded, ii) an expansion of the truncated wavefunctions in terms of the remaining clusters rearranged, or ``shifted'', to describe gauge invariant {\em fluctuations} about their vacuum expectation values. The resulting non-linear truncated Schr\"odinger equations are then solved self-consistently and exactly. Results are presented for the case of $SU(2)$ in $d=3$ space-time dimensions.Comment: 13 pages + 5 postscript figures, plain Late

Real Snail Mail

RDFID tagged snails were used as part of a messaging system in order introduce an element of uncertainty in the the delivery mechanism. One inspiration for the project was the Slow Art movement which aims to make people slow down and think about what they are doing. This project was a collaboration between Boredom Research within the Media School and The Creative technologies Research Group within DEC at Bournemouth University

The question of ‘alternatives’ within food and drink markets and marketing: introduction to the special issue

The question of 'alternatives' within food and drink markets and marketing: introduction to the special issu

Attitudes of Secondary School Principals Toward Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in General Education Classes

The researcher\u27s purpose of this study was to recognize perceptions of principals toward inclusion of students with disabilities in general education classrooms in secondary schools in the state of Georgia. The researcher administered to 405 with e-mail address of the 448 principals of public high schools in Georgia a modified Principals and Inclusion Survey (2000) developed by Dr. Cindy L Praisner. Returned surveys included 102 principals\u27 complete portions of the survey with 98 completing all portion of the survey. Data gathered with this survey were used to determine the current perceptions of secondary school principals related to their experience, attitude, and impact toward inclusion in Georgia. The survey results showed Georgia secondary principals reported a positive attitude toward inclusion of students with disabilities

THE RELATIONSHIP OF PERSONALITY TRAITS AS MEASURED BY THE BERNREUTER PERSONALITY INVENTORY TO SOME PHYSICAL TRAITS OF FRESHMEN COLLEGE WOMEN OF KANSAS STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE AT PITTSBURG, KANSAS

Purpose. The purpose of this study is to determine the amount of relationship existing between certain personality traits and certain physical traits of approximately 135 freshmen women at the Kansas State Teachers College of Pittsburg, Kansas. Procedure. A personality test and various physical tests were administered to approximately 135 freshmen women at the Kansas State Teachers College of Pittsburg. The six personality trait scores measured by the Bernreuter Personality Inventory were correlated with the physical test scores measuring General Motor Capacity, General Motor Ability, Physical Fitness Index, and body build. Pearson\u27s formula for determining the coefficient of correlation was used for all correlations. As a somewhat different approach to the problem, body build was arbitrarily divided into three Groups, linear, average, and stocky. The average personality test scores of these three groups selected on the basis of body build were then compared in an attempt to determine the amount of relationship and difference. Findings. All in all, while the possibility of a relationship between emotional adjustment, as measured by the B1-N score on the Bernreuter Test, and body build has been suggested by the results of this study, the findings as a whole would seam to justify the conclusion that there is only a very small relationship between physical and personality traits; as these have been measured in this investigation. The fact that this finding is in essential agreement with another closely related study (Middleton\u27s) would seem to provide additional confirmation for it