Friends Make a Difference

While many people think in terms of Friends groups for public libraries, such groups also play an important role in academic libraries. The first Friends organization for an academic library dates back to Harvard in 1925. The idea for a Friends group at Ball State University was proposed at a luncheon at the dedication of the Alexander M. Bracken Library, named for then president of the Ball State University Board of Trustees, on March 28, 1976

Biologically Inspired Feedback Design for Drosophila Flight

We use a biologically motivated model of the Drosophila's flight mechanics and sensor processing to design a feedback control scheme to regulate forward flight. The model used for insect flight is the grand unified fly (GUF) [3] simulation consisting of rigid body kinematics, aerodynamic forces and moments, sensory systems, and a 3D environment model. We seek to design a control algorithm that will convert the sensory signals into proper wing beat commands to regulate forward flight. Modulating the wing beat frequency and mean stroke angle produces changes in the flight envelope. The sensory signals consist of estimates of rotational velocity from the haltere organs and translational velocity estimates from visual elementary motion detectors (EMD's) and matched retinal velocity filters. The controller is designed based on a longitudinal model of the flight dynamics. Feedforward commands are generated based on a desired forward velocity. The dynamics are linearized around this operating point and a feedback controller designed to correct deviations from the operating point. The control algorithm is implemented in the GUF simulator and achieves the desired tracking of the forward reference velocities and exhibits biologically realistic responses

Integrative Model of Drosophila Flight

This paper presents a framework for simulating the flight dynamics and control strategies of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. The framework consists of five main components: an articulated rigid-body simulation, a model of the aerodynamic forces and moments, a sensory systems model, a control model, and an environment model. In the rigid-body simulation the fly is represented by a system of three rigid bodies connected by a pair of actuated ball joints. At each instant of the simulation, the aerodynamic forces and moments acting on the wings and body of the fly are calculated using an empirically derived quasi-steady model. The pattern of wing kinematics is based on data captured from high-speed video sequences. The forces and moments produced by the wings are modulated by deforming the base wing kinematics along certain characteristic actuation modes. Models of the fly’s visual and mechanosensory systems are used to generate inputs to a controller that sets the magnitude of each actuation mode, thus modulating the forces produced by the wings. This simulation framework provides a quantitative test bed for examining the possible control strategies employed by flying insects. Examples demonstrating pitch rate, velocity, altitude, and flight speed control, as well as visually guided centering in a corridor are presented

Poetry in the Primary Classroom: Collaboration and Response

The most recent learning and literary theories are challenging the ways in which practitioners are teaching reading and understanding. In the past, the focus in teaching reading has been on the acquisition of a hierarchy of subskills and the mastery of a controlled vocabulary. Comprehension was separable from and dependent on the development of the lower level word identification skills. Much of reading time was spent on isolated skills that were intended to improve, but did not include, the act of reading, particularly the reading of poetry. These skills were considered to be important steps in the process of enabling the reader to extract the correct and determinable meaning from text

The impacts of feral boar on woodland flora and fauna in Great Britain

Mayle, B., Harmer, R., Kewitt, A., Peace, A., Straw, N., Williams, D., Upson, M

The architectures of media power: editing, the newsroom, and urban public space

This paper considers the relation of the newsroom and the city as a lens into the more general relation of production spaces and mediated publics. Leading theoretically from Lee and LiPuma’s (2002) notion of ‘cultures of circulation’, and drawing on an ethnography of the Toronto Star, the paper focuses on how media forms circulate and are enacted through particular practices and material settings. With its attention to the urban milieus and orientations of media organizations, this paper exhibits both affinities with but also differences to current interests in the urban architectures of media, which describe and theorize how media get ‘built into’ the urban experience more generally. In looking at editing practices situated in the newsroom, an emphasis is placed on the phenomenological appearance of media forms both as objects for material assembly as well as more abstracted subjects of reflexivity, anticipation and purposiveness. Although this is explored with detailed attention to the settings of the newsroom and the city, the paper seeks to also provide insight into the more general question of how publicness is material shaped and sited

Total prostatectomy as a treatment for prostatic carcinoma in 25 dogs

Objective: To describe the complications and outcome after total prostatectomy in dogs with histologically confirmed prostatic carcinoma. Study Design: Multi-institutional retrospective case series. Animals: 25 client-owned dogs. Methods: Medical records of dogs undergoing total prostatectomy were reviewed from 2004 to 2016. Data retrieved included signalment, presenting signs, preoperative clinical findings, laboratory data, diagnostic imaging, surgical technique, histologic diagnosis, postoperative complications, occurrence of postoperative metastasis, and survival. Results: Twenty-five dogs underwent total prostatectomy for prostatic carcinoma. Urinary anastomotic techniques included urethrourethral anastomosis in 14 dogs, cystourethral anastomosis in 9 dogs, ureterocolonic anastomosis in 1 dog, and anastomosis between the bladder neck and penile urethra in 1 dog. All dogs survived to discharge. Fifteen dogs were diagnosed with transitional cell carcinoma, 8 dogs with prostatic adenocarcinoma, 1 with prostatic cystadenocarcinoma, and 1 with an undifferentiated carcinoma. Permanent postoperative urinary incontinence was present in 8 of 23 dogs. The median survival time was shorter in dogs with extracapsular tumor extension compared with those with intracapsular tumors. The overall median survival time was 231 days (range, 24-1255), with 1- and 2-year survival rates equal to 32% and 12%, respectively. Conclusion and Clinical Significance: Total prostatectomy, combined with adjunct therapies, prolongs survival and lowers complication rates compared to previous reports of dogs with prostatic carcinoma. It should be noted, however, that case selection likely played a significant role in postoperative outcome

New Labour's communitarianisms

This article argues that communitarianism can be analysed on different levels — sociological, ethical and meta—ethical — and along different dimensions — conformist/pluralist, more conditional/less conditional, progressive/conservative, prescriptive/voluntary, moral/socioeconomic and individual/corporate. We argue that New Labour's communitarianism is a response to both neo-liberalism and old social democracy. It is sociological, ethical and universalist rather than particularist on the meta-ethical level. Labour increasingly favours conditional, morally prescriptive, conservative and individual communitarianisms. This is at the expense of less conditional and redistributional socioeconomic, progressive and corporate communitarianisms. It is torn between conformist and pluralist versions of communitarianism. This bias is part of a wider shift in Labour thinking from social democracy to a liberal conservatism which celebrates the dynamic market economy and is socially conservative

Policy as a Crime Scene

This paper explores how policy constructs the objects it seeks to regulate, taking as its case the setting of penal policy in contemporary Scotland. It employs two distinctive theoretical frames to develop the analysis: Science and Technology Studies (STS) and ‘scene theory’ a body of work in cultural studies. These offer distinctive lenses that bring into focus how the technologies of policy – statistical reports, independent Commissions, research advice – help produce populations that require intervention. The penal policy setting in question, we argue, can be understood in the same way as a crime scene, where investigators must re-construct forensically a narrative that will be legally validated. In line with the theme of this book, it offers a reflexive account of how researchers themselves are drawn into and participate as key witnesses in the scene, testifying to ‘facts’ about a crime that may have never taken place. The article aims to make the case for the potential of STS and scene theory in producing insights about our understanding of policy, particularly criminal justice policy. In doing this, it also offers a critique of the formation of the criminological discipline in a way that has side-lined policy as an ‘administrative’ rather than critical intellectual issue

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the management of chronic heart failure

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is an unprecedented challenge. Meeting this has resulted in changes to working practices and the impact on the management of patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) is largely unknown. We performed a retrospective, observational study contrasting patients diagnosed with HFrEF attending specialist heart failure clinics at a UK hospital, whose subsequent period of optimisation of medical therapy was during the COVID-19 pandemic, with patients diagnosed the previous year. The primary outcome was the change in equivalent dosing of ramipril and bisoprolol at 6-months. Secondary outcomes were the number and type of follow-up consultations, hospitalisation for heart failure and all-cause mortality. In total, 60 patients were diagnosed with HFrEF between 1 December 2019 and 30 April 2020, compared to 54 during the same period of the previous year. The absolute number of consultations was higher (390 vs 270; p = 0.69), driven by increases in telephone consultations, with a reduction in appointments with hospital nurse specialists. After 6-months, we observed lower equivalent dosing of ramipril (3.1 ± 3.0 mg vs 4.4 ± 0.5 mg; p = 0.035) and similar dosing of bisoprolol (4.1 ± 0.5 mg vs 4.9 ± 0.5 mg; p = 0.27), which persisted for ramipril (mean difference 1.0 mg, 95% CI 0.018–2.09; p = 0.046) and bisoprolol (mean difference 0.52 mg, 95% CI -0.23–1.28; p = 0.17) after adjustment for baseline dosing. We observed no differences in the proportion of patients who died (5.0% vs 7.4%; p = 0.59) or were hospitalised with heart failure (13.3% vs 9.3%; p = 0.49). Our study suggests the transition to telephone appointments and re-deployment of heart failure nurse specialists was associated with less successful optimisation of medical therapy, especially renin-angiotensin inhibitors, compared with usual care