Online Deliberation in Academia: Evaluating the Quality and Legitimacy of Cooperatively Developed University Regulations

This article focuses on the potential of online participation to enable the cooperative development of norms by affected stakeholders, investigating whether such processes can produce norms of both high quality and legitimacy. To answer this question, we designed, implemented, and evaluated an online norm setting process that goes beyond the scope of those usually described in the literature. Taking as a case study a process to redraft the examination regulations for doctoral degrees at a science faculty of a German university, we show that such instances of online deliberation can integrate the diversity of opinions of all affected stakeholders. The result was a norm that implemented previously controversial external recommendations for doctoral dissertation procedures and that was met with high satisfaction from both those who participated as well as those who remained passive. While we believe that the university context in which this process was conducted is particularly promising for such efforts because of its organization, its members, and the issue that was at stake, we argue that similar conducive conditions exist, for example, for political parties. As such, the findings can be instructive for understanding the potential and limits of successful online participation in other contexts

Ab-initio Quantum Enhanced Optical Phase Estimation Using Real-time Feedback Control

Optical phase estimation is a vital measurement primitive that is used to perform accurate measurements of various physical quantities like length, velocity and displacements. The precision of such measurements can be largely enhanced by the use of entangled or squeezed states of light as demonstrated in a variety of different optical systems. Most of these accounts however deal with the measurement of a very small shift of an already known phase, which is in stark contrast to ab-initio phase estimation where the initial phase is unknown. Here we report on the realization of a quantum enhanced and fully deterministic phase estimation protocol based on real-time feedback control. Using robust squeezed states of light combined with a real-time Bayesian estimation feedback algorithm, we demonstrate deterministic phase estimation with a precision beyond the quantum shot noise limit. The demonstrated protocol opens up new opportunities for quantum microscopy, quantum metrology and quantum information processing.Comment: 5 figure

Building ProteomeTools based on a complete synthetic human proteome.

We describe ProteomeTools, a project building molecular and digital tools from the human proteome to facilitate biomedical research. Here we report the generation and multimodal liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry analysis of \u3e330,000 synthetic tryptic peptides representing essentially all canonical human gene products, and we exemplify the utility of these data in several applications. The resource (available at http://www.proteometools.org) will be extended to \u3e1 million peptides, and all data will be shared with the community via ProteomicsDB and ProteomeXchange

Collaborative development of predictive toxicology applications

OpenTox provides an interoperable, standards-based Framework for the support of predictive toxicology data management, algorithms, modelling, validation and reporting. It is relevant to satisfying the chemical safety assessment requirements of the REACH legislation as it supports access to experimental data, (Quantitative) Structure-Activity Relationship models, and toxicological information through an integrating platform that adheres to regulatory requirements and OECD validation principles. Initial research defined the essential components of the Framework including the approach to data access, schema and management, use of controlled vocabularies and ontologies, architecture, web service and communications protocols, and selection and integration of algorithms for predictive modelling. OpenTox provides end-user oriented tools to non-computational specialists, risk assessors, and toxicological experts in addition to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for developers of new applications. OpenTox actively supports public standards for data representation, interfaces, vocabularies and ontologies, Open Source approaches to core platform components, and community-based collaboration approaches, so as to progress system interoperability goals

THE CONCISE GUIDE TO PHARMACOLOGY 2021/22: G protein-coupled receptors

The Concise Guide to PHARMACOLOGY 2021/22 is the fifth in this series of biennial publications. The Concise Guide provides concise overviews, mostly in tabular format, of the key properties of nearly 1900 human drug targets with an emphasis on selective pharmacology (where available), plus links to the open access knowledgebase source of drug targets and their ligands (www.guidetopharmacology.org), which provides more detailed views of target and ligand properties. Although the Concise Guide constitutes over 500 pages, the material presented is substantially reduced compared to information and links presented on the website. It provides a permanent, citable, point-in-time record that will survive database updates. The full contents of this section can be found at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/bph.15538. G protein-coupled receptors are one of the six major pharmacological targets into which the Guide is divided, with the others being: ion channels, nuclear hormone receptors, catalytic receptors, enzymes and transporters. These are presented with nomenclature guidance and summary information on the best available pharmacological tools, alongside key references and suggestions for further reading. The landscape format of the Concise Guide is designed to facilitate comparison of related targets from material contemporary to mid-2021, and supersedes data presented in the 2019/20, 2017/18, 2015/16 and 2013/14 Concise Guides and previous Guides to Receptors and Channels. It is produced in close conjunction with the Nomenclature and Standards Committee of the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (NC-IUPHAR), therefore, providing official IUPHAR classification and nomenclature for human drug targets, where appropriate

THE CONCISE GUIDE TO PHARMACOLOGY 2019/20 : G protein- coupled receptors

The Concise Guide to PHARMACOLOGY 2019/20 is the fourth in this series of biennial publications. The Concise Guide provides concise overviews of the key properties of nearly 1800 human drug targets with an emphasis on selective pharmacology (where available), plus links to the open access knowledgebase source of drug targets and their ligands (www.guidetopharmacology.org), which provides more detailed views of target and ligand properties. Although the Concise Guide represents approximately 400 pages, the material presented is substantially reduced compared to information and links presented on the website. It provides a permanent, citable, point-in-time record that will survive database updates. The full contents of this section can be found at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bph.14748. G protein-coupled receptors are one of the six major pharmacological targets into which the Guide is divided, with the others being: ion channels, nuclear hormone receptors, catalytic receptors, enzymes and transporters. These are presented with nomenclature guidance and summary information on the best available pharmacological tools, alongside key references and suggestions for further reading. The landscape format of the Concise Guide is designed to facilitate comparison of related targets from material contemporary to mid-2019, and supersedes data presented in the 2017/18, 2015/16 and 2013/14 Concise Guides and previous Guides to Receptors and Channels. It is produced in close conjunction with the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology Committee on Receptor Nomenclature and Drug Classification (NC-IUPHAR), therefore, providing official IUPHAR classification and nomenclature for human drug targets, where appropriate.Peer reviewe

Addressing climate change with behavioral science: a global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors