The use of theory in research relating to open access: practitioner perspectives

The relationship between theory and practice has long been considered problematic for many applied academic disciplines. In this short paper we report preliminary findings from a two‐year research project investigating the ways and the extent that theory and practice have interacted in the development of open‐access (OA) approaches to the publishing and dissemination of research outputs. Based on interviews with practitioners and researchers working on OA related issues, we explore the ways in which theory is (and isn't) of value to practice. We find that while practitioners acknowledge that theory has the potential to improve understanding, bestow credibility on work, and codify existing knowledge about OA, they also perceive it as “mood music” to the practical work of OA, lacking explicit links to action

Containing epidemic outbreaks by message-passing techniques

The problem of targeted network immunization can be defined as the one of finding a subset of nodes in a network to immunize or vaccinate in order to minimize a tradeoff between the cost of vaccination and the final (stationary) expected infection under a given epidemic model. Although computing the expected infection is a hard computational problem, simple and efficient mean-field approximations have been put forward in the literature in recent years. The optimization problem can be recast into a constrained one in which the constraints enforce local mean-field equations describing the average stationary state of the epidemic process. For a wide class of epidemic models, including the susceptible-infected-removed and the susceptible-infected-susceptible models, we define a message-passing approach to network immunization that allows us to study the statistical properties of epidemic outbreaks in the presence of immunized nodes as well as to find (nearly) optimal immunization sets for a given choice of parameters and costs. The algorithm scales linearly with the size of the graph and it can be made efficient even on large networks. We compare its performance with topologically based heuristics, greedy methods, and simulated annealing

Correlation of thyroid hormone measurements with thyroid stimulating hormone stimulation test results in radioiodine-treated cats.

BACKGROUND: Iatrogenic hypothyroidism can develop after radioiodine-I131 (RAI) treatment of hyperthyroid cats and can be diagnosed using the thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) stimulation test. OBJECTIVES: To assess the effect of noncritical illness on TSH stimulation test results in euthyroid and RAI-treated cats. To assess the correlation of low total-thyroxine (tT4), low free-thyroxine (fT4), and high TSH concentrations with TSH stimulation test results. ANIMALS: Thirty-three euthyroid adult cats and 118 client-owned cats previously treated with RAI. METHODS: Total-thyroxine, fT4, and TSH were measured, and a TSH stimulation test was performed in all cats. Euthyroid control cats were divided into apparently healthy and noncritical illness groups. RAI-treated cats were divided into RAI-hypothyroid (after-stimulation tT4 ≤ 1.5 μg/dL), RAI-euthyroid (after-stimulation tT4 ≥ 2.3 μg/dL OR after-stimulation tT4 1.5-2.3 μg/dL and before : after tT4 ratio > 1.5), and RAI-equivocal (after stimulation tT4 1.5-2.3 μg/dL and tT4 ratio < 1.5) groups. RESULTS: Noncritical illness did not significantly affect the tT4 following TSH stimulation in euthyroid (P = .38) or RAI-treated cats (P = .54). There were 21 cats in the RAI-equivocal group. Twenty-two (85%) RAI-hypothyroid cats (n = 26) and 10/71 (14%) of RAI-euthyroid cats had high TSH (≥0.3 ng/mL). Twenty-three (88%) RAI-hypothyroid cats had low fT4 (<0.70 ng/dL). Of the 5 (7%) RAI-euthyroid cats with low fT4, only one also had high TSH. Only 5/26 (19%) RAI-hypothyroid cats had tT4 below the laboratory reference interval (<0.78 μg/dL). CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: The veterinary-specific chemiluminescent fT4 immunoassay and canine-specific TSH immunoassay can be used to aid in the diagnosis of iatrogenic hypothyroidism in cats

Open access in theory and practice : the theory-practice relationship and openness

Open Access in Theory and Practice investigates the theory-practice relationship in the domain of open access publication and dissemination of research outputs. Drawing on detailed analysis of the literature and current practice in OA, as well as data collected in detailed interviews with practitioners, policymakers, and researchers, the book discusses what constitutes ‘theory’, and how the role of theory is perceived by both theorists and practitioners. Exploring the ways theory and practice have interacted in the development of OA, the authors discuss what this reveals about the nature of the OA phenomenon itself and the theory-practice relationship. Open Access in Theory and Practice contributes to a better understanding of OA and, as such, should be of great interest to academics, researchers, and students working in the fields of information science, publishing studies, science communication, higher education policy, business, and economics. The book also makes an important contribution to the debate of the relationship between theory and practice in information science, and more widely across different fields of the social sciences and humanitie

Exploring the significance of land-cover change in South Africa

Changing land cover is a phenomenon that is growing in magnitude and significance, both globally1 and in South Africa2 . Changes in land cover include the conversion of natural vegetation to agricultural crops and forest plantations, changes to natural vegetation through bush encroachment and overgrazing, soil erosion, invasion by alien plant species, and accelerating urbanisation. Land-cover changes increasingly relate to climate and atmospheric changes in ways that are currently poorly understood but potentially significant, especially in terms of compromising or enhancing the delivery of vital ecosystem services from rangelands, agricultural croplands, water catchments and conservation areas. Land-cover change is being studied in different ways, and at different scales, by ecologists, plant physiologists, applied biologists and social scientists. A core group of scientists has recently formed the Land Cover Change Consortium (LCCC), which aims to begin integrating the results of the varied approaches to studying land-cover change, and to guide future research directions, with a view to building a better science base for informing policy and management decision-making in conservation, agriculture and environmental management. The group has developed a simple conceptual outline that links field experiments, observation and monitoring, modelling and prediction of land-cover change (Figure 1), and is currently developing a funding base to support collaboration in addressing fundamental questions about how ecosystems might change in the coming decades, in training new graduates, and in communicating effectively with policymakers. The LCCC hopes to provide a theoretical and practical multidisciplinary platform for scientific collaboration on global change issues that also includes different stakeholder groups and contributes to policy and decision-making. Multidisciplinary collaboration is notoriously challenging, but holds great promise for novel insights

Containing Epidemic Outbreaks by Message-Passing Techniques

The problem of targeted network immunization can be defined as the one of finding a subset of nodes in a network to immunize or vaccinate in order to minimize a tradeoff between the cost of vaccination and the final (stationary) expected infection under a given epidemic model. Although computing the expected infection is a hard computational problem, simple and efficient mean-field approximations have been put forward in the literature in recent years. The optimization problem can be recast into a constrained one in which the constraints enforce local mean-field equations describing the average stationary state of the epidemic process. For a wide class of epidemic models, including the susceptible-infected-removed and the susceptible-infected-susceptible models, we define a message-passing approach to network immunization that allows us to study the statistical properties of epidemic outbreaks in the presence of immunized nodes as well as to find (nearly) optimal immunization sets for a given choice of parameters and costs. The algorithm scales linearly with the size of the graph, and it can be made efficient even on large networks. We compare its performance with topologically based heuristics, greedy methods, and simulated annealing on both random graphs and real-world networks

Suppression of properties associated with malignancy in murine melanoma-melanocyte hybrid cells.

Murine and human melanoma cells differ relatively reliably from non-tumorigenic melanocytes in certain biological properties. When cultured at low pH, melanocytes tend to be pigmented and melanoma cells unpigmented. The growth of virtually all metastatic melanoma cells is inhibited by phorbol esters such as TPA (12-O-tetradecanoyl phorbol-13-acetate), which stimulate melanocyte growth. Melanocytes fail to grow in suspension culture or produce tumours when implanted in animals, while many melanoma lines can do both. Here we studied which of these properties were dominant in hybrid cells formed by fusion of drug-resistant murine B16-F10RR melanoma cells to melanocytes of the albino and brown lines, melan-c and melan-b. The albino melanocytes are unpigmented but well-differentiated, the brown melanocytes produce pale brown pigment and the melanoma cells are unpigmented under the conditions used. All hybrid colonies observed produced black pigment, except some melan-b/melanoma hybrids when growing sparsely with TPA. Thus pigmentation was generally dominant. 14/15 hybrid lines showed stimulation of proliferation by TPA, as do melanocytes. Most hybrid lines showed no or reduced capacity for growth in suspension, though some grew better in suspension when TPA was present. There was marked suppression of the tumorigenicity of the parental melanoma cells in 4/8 hybrids examined, and tumorigenicity was reduced in the others, despite considerable chromosome loss by the passage level tested. Thus most properties of the non-tumorigenic pigment cells were dominant, as often observed for other cell lineages, and providing further evidence for gene loss in the genesis of malignant melanoma

Lost in translation: how can education about dementia be effectively integrated into medical school contexts? A realist synthesis

\ua9 Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2023. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. OBJECTIVES: The prevalence of dementia in both community and hospital settings requires a clinical workforce that is skilled in diagnosis and management of the condition to competently care for patients. Though evidence of successful educational interventions about dementia exists, effective translation into medical school curricula is the exception rather than the norm. DESIGN: We adopted a realist synthesis approach following Realist And MEta-narrative Evidence Syntheses: Evolving Standards (RAMESES) guidelines to answer the following questions: (1) what are the barriers to integrating effective interventions about dementia into medical school curricula and (2) where they are successfully delivered, what are the contextual factors that allow for this enactment? DATA SOURCES: We searched PubMed, Embase, CINAHL and PsycINFO using the MesH terms Schools, Medical; Students, Medical; Education, Medical AND Neurocognitive disorders or the closest possible set of terms within each database. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Undergraduate or graduate entry medical school programme, teaching and learning focussing on dementia, evaluating student outcomes (satisfaction, knowledge, skills, attitudes or behaviours), interventions described clearly enough to classify teaching method, any research design (quantitative and qualitative), English language. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: We used a shared spreadsheet to enter key information about eligible studies and the reasons for excluding studies that did not fit eligibility criteria. We extracted descriptive data about the nature of educational interventions and narrative information as to barriers and facilitators to implementing those interventions. RESULTS: Our initial literature search identified 16 relevant papers for review. Systematic extraction of data informed the development of an initial programme theory (IPT) structured around four contextual barriers: \u27culture\u27, \u27concern for patient welfare\u27, \u27student attitudes\u27 and \u27logistics\u27 with associated facilitatory mechanisms embed medical education about dementia. CONCLUSIONS: We outline the process of generating our IPT, including overlap with Cultural Historical Activity Theory. We outline our intention to refine our programme theory through ongoing review of the evidence base and collaboration with stakeholders, with the aim of finalising a model for successful integration of dementia education

A laterally-fused N-heterocyclic carbene framework from polysubstituted aminoimidazo[5,1-b]oxazol-6-ium salts

A polysubstituted 3-aminoimidazo[5,1-b]oxazol-6-ium framework has been accessed from a new nitrenoid reagent by a two-step ynamide annulation and imidazolium ring-formation sequence. Metalation with Au(I), Cu(I) and Ir(I) at the C2 position provides an L-shaped NHC ligand scaffold that has been validated in gold-catalysed alkyne hydration and arylative cyclisation reactions