Guidelines for Improving the Effectiveness of Boards of Directors of Nonprofit Organizations

The purpose of this book is to help boards of directors of nonprofit organizations improve their performance after completing the Board Check-Up, online board performance self-assessment tool found at www.boardcheckup.com. This book is also valuable as a stand-alone resource for any board seeking to assess its performance in that it contains the diagnostic questions on which the online self-assessment tool is based. It goes further by providing a framework for boards to use in discussing needed changes in board performance. It also forms an integral part of a University at Albany, SUNY online course titled, The Governance of Nonprofit Organizations. This massive open online course (MOOC) can be taken for free or academic credit through Coursera’s online teaching and learning platform.https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/oer-ost/1014/thumbnail.jp

A librarian perspective on Sci-Hub: the true solution to the scholarly communication crisis is in the hands of the academic community, not librarians

Sci-Hub is a pirate website that provides free access to millions of research papers otherwise locked behind paywalls. Widespread dissatisfaction with scholarly communications has led many to overlook or dismiss concerns over the site’s legality, praising its disruptive technology and seeing justification in the free access it affords people all over the world. Ruth Harrison, Yvonne Nobis and Charles Oppenheim discuss the challenges Sci-Hub presents to librarians advocating for open access to scholarly content. Sci-Hub perversely enhances the status of prestige publication and its narrow view of what constitutes value in scholarly communications, its users risk causing their libraries to be in breach of licensing agreements, and the site operates with an utter contempt for copyright law that should not be ignored

Developing a common evaluation methodology for CCAM

The European research and innovation action FAME is developing a common evaluation methodology (CEM) that provides guidance on how to set up and carry out an evaluation or assessment of direct and indirect impacts of cooperative and connected automated mobility (CCAM) solutions. The CEM will be part of European framework for testing [of CCAM] on public roads. The objectives set for CEM include ensuring that subsequent evaluation results are easy to compare, allowing all projects to benefit from the best methodological practices found. This should maximise the benefits of the evaluation work carried out in this domain. Once the first version of CEM is complete it will be validated and piloted, i.e., applied in actual projects that need to prepare for an evaluation or impact assessment. For good uptake, consensus and CEM community building will be needed, as well as a strategy for the application of CEM in future projects

T-violation tests for relativity principles

We consider the implications of a violation of the equivalence principle or of Lorentz invariance in the neutrino sector for the T-asymmetry $\Delta P_T \equiv P(\nu_{\alpha} \to \nu_{\beta}) - P(\nu_{\beta} \to \nu_{\alpha})$ in a three-flavour framework. We find that additional mixing due to these mechanisms, while obeying all present bounds, can lead to a substantial enhancement, suppression, and/or sign change in $\Delta P_T$ for the preferred energies and baselines of a neutrino factory. This in turn allows for the possibility of improving existing constraints by several orders of magnitude.Comment: 2 pages; Talk given at the 4th NuFact '02 Workshop (Neutrino Factories Based On Muon Storage Rings), 1-6 Jul 2002, London, England; To appear in proceeding

Immunohistochemical evidence for an endocrine/paracrine role for ghrelin in the reproductive tissues of sheep

BACKGROUND: The gut hormone, ghrelin, is involved in the neuroendocrine and metabolic responses to hunger. In monogastric species, circulating ghrelin levels show clear meal-related and body weight-related changes. The pattern of secretion and its role in ruminant species is less clear. Ghrelin acts via growth hormone secretagogue receptors (GHSR-1a) to alter food intake, fat utilization, and cellular proliferation. There is also evidence that ghrelin is involved in reproductive function. In the present study we used immunohistochemistry to investigate the presence of ghrelin and GHSR-1a in sheep reproductive tissues. In addition, we examined whether ghrelin and GHSR-1a protein expression is developmentally regulated in the adult and fetal ovine testis, and whether there is an association with markers of cellular proliferation, i.e. stem cell factor (SCF) and proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA). METHODS: Antibodies raised against ghrelin and its functional receptor, GHSR-type 1a, were used in standard immunohistochemical protocols on various reproductive tissues collected from adult and fetal sheep. GHSR-1a mRNA presence was also confirmed by in situ hybridisation. SCF and PCNA immunoexpression was investigated in fetal testicular samples. Adult and fetal testicular immunostaining for ghrelin, GHSR-1a, SCF and PCNA was analysed using computer-aided image analysis. Image analysis data were subjected to one-way ANOVA, with differences in immunostaining between time-points determined by Fisher's least significant difference. RESULTS: In adult sheep tissue, ghrelin and GHSR-1a immunostaining was detected in the stomach (abomasum), anterior pituitary gland, testis, ovary, and hypothalamic and hindbrain regions of the brain. In the adult testis, there was a significant effect of season (photoperiod) on the level of immunostaining for ghrelin (p < 0.01) and GHSR-1a (p < 0.05). In the fetal sheep testis, there was a significant effect of gestational age on the level of immunostaining for ghrelin (p < 0.001), GHSR-1a (p < 0.05), SCF (p < 0.05) and PCNA (p < 0.01). CONCLUSION: Evidence is presented for the presence of ghrelin and its receptor in various reproductive tissues of the adult and fetal sheep. In addition, the data indicate that testicular expression of ghrelin and its receptor is physiologically regulated in the adult and developmentally regulated in the fetus. Therefore, the ghrelin ligand/receptor system may have a role (endocrine and/or paracrine) in the development (cellular proliferation) and function of the reproductive axis of the sheep