Resources and Services for Remote Access: A Content Analysis of Alabama’s Public Four-Year University Library Web Sites

This study examines the web sites of the sixteen Alabama public senior colleges and universities in order to identify the principle characteristics and current trends in web-based services. Because web sites are evolving constantly, the study intends to make a static comparison of web-based resources and services provided by those libraries at a fixed point in time. Besides identifying trends in library web sites, this study will serve as a benchmark for comparisons of future web-based developments and for improving existing services and resources in the subject libraries

Customization of Web-Scale Discovery Tools in Alabama’s Public & Independent College and University Libraries: A Longitudinal Study

This longitudinal survey of the library websites of sixteen Alabama senior universities tracks customizations done to these libraries’ web-scale discovery tools over a twenty-one month period. The findings of this survey could serve as reference points that could benefit libraries who have had web-scale discovery for some time as well as libraries considering purchase of web-scale discovery

Internal Contrastive Learning for Generalized Out-of-distribution Fault Diagnosis (GOOFD) Framework

Fault diagnosis is essential in industrial processes for monitoring the conditions of important machines. With the ever-increasing complexity of working conditions and demand for safety during production and operation, different diagnosis methods are required, and more importantly, an integrated fault diagnosis system that can cope with multiple tasks is highly desired. However, the diagnosis subtasks are often studied separately, and the currently available methods still need improvement for such a generalized system. To address this issue, we propose the Generalized Out-of-distribution Fault Diagnosis (GOOFD) framework to integrate diagnosis subtasks, such as fault detection, fault classification, and novel fault diagnosis. Additionally, a unified fault diagnosis method based on internal contrastive learning is put forward to underpin the proposed generalized framework. The method extracts features utilizing the internal contrastive learning technique and then recognizes the outliers based on the Mahalanobis distance. Experiments are conducted on a simulated benchmark dataset as well as two practical process datasets to evaluate the proposed framework. As demonstrated in the experiments, the proposed method achieves better performance compared with several existing techniques and thus verifies the effectiveness of the proposed framework

Microglia Prevent Beta-Amyloid Plaque Formation in the Early Stage of an Alzheimer\u27s Disease Mouse Model with Suppression of Glymphatic Clearance

BACKGROUND: Soluble beta-amyloid (Aβ) can be cleared from the brain through various mechanisms including enzymatic degradation, glial cell phagocytosis, transport across the blood-brain barrier, and glymphatic clearance. However, the relative contribution of each clearance system and their compensatory effects in delaying the pathological process of Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) are currently unknown. METHODS: Fluorescent trace, immunofluorescence, and Western blot analyses were performed to compare glymphatic clearance ability and Aβ accumulation among 3-month-old APP695/PS1-dE9 transgenic (APP/PS1) mice, wild-type mice, aquaporin 4 knock out (AQP4−/−) mice, and AQP4−/−/APP/PS1 mice. The consequence of selectively eliminating microglial cells, or downregulating apolipoprotein E (apoE) expression, on Aβ burden, was also investigated in the frontal cortex of AQP4−/−/APP/PS1 mice and APP/PS1 mice. RESULTS: AQP4 deletion in APP/PS1 mice significantly exaggerated glymphatic clearance dysfunction, and intraneuronal accumulation of Aβ and apoE, although it did not lead to Aβ plaque deposition. Notably, microglia, but not astrocytes, increased activation and phagocytosis of Aβ in the cerebral cortex of AQP4−/−/APP/PS1 mice, compared with APP/PS1 mice. Selectively eliminating microglia in the frontal cortex via local injection of clodronate liposomes resulted in deposition of Aβ plaques in AQP4−/−/APP/PS1 mice, but not APP/PS1 mice. Moreover, knockdown of apoE reduced intraneuronal Aβ levels in both APP/PS1 mice and AQP4−/−/APP/PS1 mice, indicating an inhibitory effect of apoE on Aβ clearance. CONCLUSION: The above results suggest that the glymphatic system mediated Aβ and apoE clearance and microglia mediated Aβ degradation synergistically prevent Aβ plague formation in the early stages of the AD mouse model. Protecting one or both of them might be beneficial to delaying the onset of AD

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

UCDRS and Trend of CollaboratedReal Time Digital Reference Services in China

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Comparison of Bacterial Diversity Between Two Traditional Starters and the Round-Koji-Maker Starter for Traditional Cantonese Chi-Flavor Liquor Brewing

Xiaoqu is a traditional fermentation starter that is used for Chinese liquor production. Although microorganisms in the starters are closely associated with the quality and flavor of liquor, knowledge of the microbiota in xiaoqu is still far from complete, let alone the starters produced by new processes. Here, Illumina MiSeq high-throughput sequencing was applied to study bacterial composition in three types of xiaoqu used in Cantonese soybean-flavor (Chi-flavor) liquor, namely two traditional starters (Jiu Bing and Bing Wan) and a Round-Koji-maker starter (San qu) produced by the automatic starter-making disk machine. The results showed bacterial diversity in traditional starters was similar and higher than that in the Round-Koji-maker starter. Lactobacillus and Pediococcus were the dominant genera in all starters, while other different dominant genera also existed in different starters, which were Weissella, Acetobacter, and Gluconobacter for Jiu Bing, Weissella for Bing Wan, and Bacillus, Acetobacter, Acinetobacter and Klebsiella for San qu, respectively. Meanwhile, Cytophagaceae, one particular microbial family, and some pathogens including Klebsiella, Cronobacter, and Enterobacter were also found in San qu, indicating the automatic starter-making disk machine should be ameliorated before applied into industrial production. These results enriched our knowledge on xiaoqu-related microorganisms and might be helpful in industrial Chi-flavor liquor production and the development of fermentation technology