Practical Digital Curation Skills for Archivists in the 21st Century

The University of Maryland's Digital Curation Innovation Center (DCIC) in the College of Information Studies promotes research and education in digital curation and fosters interdisciplinary partnerships using Big Records and archival analytics through public, industry, and government partnerships. In this session, technologists, archivists, and students from the DCIC will provide case studies involving archival records in a digital environment that focus on redlining in urban neighborhoods, the Japanese American experience in World War II internment camps, and navigating Holocaust-era digital data

Language endangerment and language documentation in Africa

Non peer reviewe

Methylphenidate in mania project (MEMAP): study protocol of an international randomised double-blind placebo-controlled study on the initial treatment of acute mania with methylphenidate.

BACKGROUND: Treatment of patients with acute mania remains a considerable medical challenge since onset of action of antimanic medication is delayed for several days. Psychostimulants could have an earlier onset of action. This assumption is based on the 'vigilance regulation model of mania' which postulates that vigilance is unstable in manic patients. Accordingly, vigilance-stabilising psychostimulants could be more useful than conventional treatment in acute mania. We present here the study protocol of a trial intended to study the efficacy and safety of methylphenidate in the initial treatment of acute mania. METHODS/DESIGN: A multi-centre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial will be conducted in 88 bipolar inpatients with acute mania. Male and female patients older than 18 years will be randomised to treatment with either methylphenidate (20 to 40 mg/day) or placebo for 2.5 days, given once or twice daily. The main outcome measure is the reduction in the Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS) after 2.5 days of treatment. Other outcome measures include the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale-Excited Component (PANSS-EC) the Clinical Global Impression-Bipolar Scale (CGI-BP), the Screen for Cognitive Impairment in Psychiatry (SCIP), actigraphy and the EEG-'Vigilance Algorithm Leipzig' (VIGALL). DISCUSSION: A positive study outcome of the proposed study could substantially impact our understanding of the etiopathogenesis of mania and open new treatment perspectives

Imputation of high-density genotypes in the Fleckvieh cattle population

BACKGROUND: Currently, genome-wide evaluation of cattle populations is based on SNP-genotyping using ~ 54 000 SNP. Increasing the number of markers might improve genomic predictions and power of genome-wide association studies. Imputation of genotypes makes it possible to extrapolate genotypes from lower to higher density arrays based on a representative reference sample for which genotypes are obtained at higher density. METHODS: Genotypes using 639 214 SNP were available for 797 bulls of the Fleckvieh cattle breed. The data set was divided into a reference and a validation population. Genotypes for all SNP except those included in the BovineSNP50 Bead chip were masked and subsequently imputed for animals of the validation population. Imputation of genotypes was performed with Beagle, findhap.f90, MaCH and Minimac. The accuracy of the imputed genotypes was assessed for four different scenarios including 50, 100, 200 and 400 animals as reference population. The reference animals were selected to account for 78.03%, 89.21%, 97.47% and > 99% of the gene pool of the genotyped population, respectively. RESULTS: Imputation accuracy increased as the number of animals and relatives in the reference population increased. Population-based algorithms provided highly reliable imputation of genotypes, even for scenarios with 50 and 100 reference animals only. Using MaCH and Minimac, the correlation between true and imputed genotypes was > 0.975 with 100 reference animals only. Pre-phasing the genotypes of both the reference and validation populations not only provided highly accurate imputed genotypes but was also computationally efficient. Genome-wide analysis of imputation accuracy led to the identification of many misplaced SNP. CONCLUSIONS: Genotyping key animals at high density and subsequent population-based genotype imputation yield high imputation accuracy. Pre-phasing the genotypes of the reference and validation populations is computationally efficient and results in high imputation accuracy, even when the reference population is small