Marshall University Libraries Enhance Scholarly Publication

Marshall University Library has been experiencing a fruitful collaboration with various departments and programs on campus involving the publication of peer-reviewed journals, which are hosted on Marshall’s open access institutional repository (OAIR), Marshall Digital Scholar (MDS). Euscorpius, Marshall Journal of Medicine and Sermon Studies are currently publishing peer-reviewed research articles. Two other peer-reviewed journals are in the planning stage to begin publication this year. One of these, the Journal of Applied Digital Evidence (JADE) is a collaboration with the forensic sciences programs at Marshall University, Eastern Kentucky University and Purdue

Establishing Open Textbooks at Marshall University

We discuss the process used at Marshall University to implement open textbook adoption, statistics and future plans

Controlled release of paclitaxel from a self-assembling peptide hydrogel formed in situ and antitumor study in vitro

Background: A nanoscale injectable in situ-forming hydrogel drug delivery system was developed in this study. The system was based on a self-assembling peptide RADA16 solution, which can spontaneously form a hydrogel rapidly under physiological conditions. We used the RADA16 hydrogel for the controlled release of paclitaxel (PTX), a hydrophobic antitumor drug. Methods: The RADA16-PTX suspension was prepared simply by magnetic stirring, followed by atomic force microscopy, circular dichroism analysis, dynamic light scattering, rheological analysis, an in vitro release assay, and a cell viability test. Results: The results indicated that RADA16 and PTX can interact with each other and that the amphiphilic peptide was able to stabilize hydrophobic drugs in aqueous solution. The particle size of PTX was markedly decreased in the RADA16 solution compared with its size in water. The RADA16-PTX suspension could form a hydrogel in culture medium, and the elasticity of the hydrogel showed a positive correlation with peptide concentration. In vitro release measurements indicated that hydrogels with a higher peptide concentration had a longer half-release time. The RADA16-PTX hydrogel could effectively inhibit the growth of the breast cancer cell line, MDA-MB-435S, in vitro, and hydrogels with higher peptide concentrations were more effective at inhibiting tumor cell proliferation. The RADA16-PTX hydrogel was effective at controlling the release of PTX and inhibiting tumor cell growth in vitro. Conclusion: Self-assembling peptide hydrogels may work well as a system for drug delivery

Introduction to Marshall Digital Scholar/Everything You Thought You Knew About Copyright

Copyright Primer: demystifying the law and best practices for librarians. Ignorance of the law is no longer acceptable and individuals can now be assessed astronomically high statutory damages per infringement. Join us for a frank and informative discussion regarding current copyright law and application in your library when working with digital publisher content. We don’t pretend to have all the answers but our team will share our MDS workflow for securing permissions for inclusion in the institutional repository for public acces

Causal Discovery from Temporal Data: An Overview and New Perspectives

Temporal data, representing chronological observations of complex systems, has always been a typical data structure that can be widely generated by many domains, such as industry, medicine and finance. Analyzing this type of data is extremely valuable for various applications. Thus, different temporal data analysis tasks, eg, classification, clustering and prediction, have been proposed in the past decades. Among them, causal discovery, learning the causal relations from temporal data, is considered an interesting yet critical task and has attracted much research attention. Existing casual discovery works can be divided into two highly correlated categories according to whether the temporal data is calibrated, ie, multivariate time series casual discovery, and event sequence casual discovery. However, most previous surveys are only focused on the time series casual discovery and ignore the second category. In this paper, we specify the correlation between the two categories and provide a systematical overview of existing solutions. Furthermore, we provide public datasets, evaluation metrics and new perspectives for temporal data casual discovery.Comment: 52 pages, 6 figure

Resilience-based multifactorial model of depression among people who lost an only-child in China

Objective: There are almost one million families who lost their only child in China, and 65.6% of them had severe and long lasting depression and needed timely psychointervention. This study aims to explore the relationship among resilience and its influential factors, and to compare their effect on depression. Methods: A total of 212 only-child loss person in 9 administrative regions in Changsha were assessed by using Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, Zung Self-rating Depression Scale, Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire, Simplified Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Social Support Rating Scale, and General Self-efficacy Scale. A hypothetical model was tested based on Kumpfer resilience framework and stress-coping theory. Results: The influential factors of resilience were: positive coping (the total effect value was 0.480), support utilization (the total effect value was 0.359), neuroticism (the total effect value was -0.326), negative coping (the total effect value was 0.279), extraversion (the total effect value was 0.219), and objective support (the total effect value was 0.077). The process of individual-environment interaction showed a greater impact on resilience, which had a direct effect on depression (the total effect value was −0.344, 67.1%), and also indirect effect through self-efficacy (the total effect value was −0.169). The total effect of resilience accounted for 20.1% of the total effect of all variables. Conclusion: Resilience mainly impacts depression directly, and can negatively predict depression in only-child loss parents. Resilience, located before self-efficacy, is a significant stress mediating variables. Personality traits and support utilization indirectly impact resilience via negative and positive coping. The key to promote the reorganization of resilience is the process of individual-environmental interaction, involving support utilization, positive coping, and some sorts of negative coping strategies, which plays an important role in developing a resilience intervention program and can improve the depression of the only-child loss person

Supplemental Material for A Primer on How to Launch an Institutional Repository Successfully.

This is a case study of the implementation of an institutional repository (IR). It is written for academic librarians who are looking for a primer on how to create an IR for their campus. Based upon Marshall University’s research and experience with this process, we present the essential elements needed to construct an institutional repository. Policies and procedures are provided that offer guidelines and checklists to follow for a successful ramp up and launch. A discussion about the value of an IR is followed by ways to secure funding and to implement a basic system that can be scaled up over time. This article mimics the scalable approach to IR implementation by starting with a discussion of the essentials, then addressing more complex IR functions. The investigation and planning stages of IR implementation can take a long time. Marshall University (MU) took (? Months) from the start of the process until the first items placed into the IR went public. It is the intention of this paper to simplify and speed the process for others. Libraries have always collected information from a worldwide marketplace and have disseminated these resources locally. The IR has created a new function for the library by making it practical to acquire locally developed resources and to disseminate them freely worldwide. The institutional repository has altered the traditional role of librarians by empowering us to respond in new ways to the challenges of a new century. This suggests a broader set of implications for the future usefulness and relevancy of the IR as doors open to new partnerships that will strengthen the university and the library’s place within it