Friends of the Public Libraries, Indiana Origins and Outlook

"Where there are friends, there is wealth," wrote Titus Maccius Plaurus more than 2,000 years ago (An Invitation). An advocacy group in Syracuse, N.Y., whose interest lay in the promotion of the welfare of its community's branch libraries and main libraries, took this sentiment to heart when they established their organization in 1922. They called themselves the Friends of Reading of Onondanga County, Inc., and in the process started a Friends of Libraries movement that has resulted in the strengthening of libraries nationwide. Friends of Libraries are very much an influential presence today, providing support for public, university, and special libraries at local, state and national levels

Platform values and democratic elections: how can the law regulate digital disinformation?

This article examines how governments can regulate the values of social media companies that themselves regulate disinformation spread on their own platforms. We use ‘disinformation’ to refer to motivated faking of news. We examine the effects that disinformation initiatives (many based on automated decision-making systems using Artificial Intelligence [AI] to cope with the scale of content being shared) have on freedom of expression, media pluralism and the exercise of democracy, from the wider lens of tackling illegal content online and concerns to request proactive (automated) measures of online intermediaries. We particularly focus on the responses of the member states and institutions of the European Union. In Section 1, we argue that the apparent significance of the threat has led many governments to legislate despite this lack of evidence, with over 40 national laws to combat disinformation chronicled by March 2019. Which types of regulation are proposed, which actors are targeted, and who is making these regulations? Regulating fake news should not fall solely on national governments or supranational bodies like the European Union. Neither should the companies be responsible for regulating themselves. Instead, we favour co-regulation. Co-regulation means that the companies develop – individually or collectively – mechanisms to regulate their own users, which in turn must be approved by democratically legitimate state regulators or legislatures, who also monitor their effectiveness. In Section 2, we explain the current EU use of Codes of Conduct. In Section 3, we then explain the relatively novel idea that social media content regulation, and specifically disinformation, can be dealt with by deploying AI at massive scale. It is necessary to deal with this technological issue in order to explain the wider content of co-regulatory policy options, which we explain and for which we argue in Section 4. In Section 5 we explain what this means for technology regulation generally, and the socio-economic calculus in this policy field

Fos imaging reveals that lesions of the anterior thalamic nuclei produce widespread limbic hypoactivity in rats

Activity of the immediate early gene c-fos was compared in rats with neurotoxic lesions of the anterior thalamic nuclei and in surgical controls. Fos levels were measured after rats had been placed in a novel room and allowed to run up and down preselected arms of a radial maze. An additional control group showed that in normal rats, this exposure to a novel room leads to a Fos increase in a number of structures, including the anterior thalamic nuclei and hippocampus. In contrast, rats with anterior thalamic lesions were found to have significantly less Fos-positive cells in an array of sites, including the hippocampus (dorsal and ventral), retrosplenial cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and prelimbic cortex. These results show that anterior thalamic lesions disrupt multiple limbic brain regions, producing hypoactivity in sites associated in rats with spatial memory. Because many of the same sites are implicated in memory processes in humans (e.g., the hippocampus and retrosplenial cortex), this hypoactivity might contribute to diencephalic amnesia

Teaching To Trouble: Critical Book Reviews as Pedagogy to Interrogate Education Praxis

How might education professors disrupt traditional curriculum and teaching practices that teach future teachers to label, segregate, and marginalize students with disabilities? The Disability Studies in Education (DSE) approach grounds practice on the perspectives of people with disabilities and challenges practices that isolate and de-humanize individuals. The pedagogy for eliciting critical book reviews using a DSE perspective is described

Integrating Quality Improvement Into the ECHO Model to Improve Care for Children and Youth With Epilepsy

Objective: Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), a telementoring program, utilizes lectures, case-based learning, and an “all teach–all learn” approach to increase primary care provider (PCP) knowledge/confidence in managing chronic health conditions. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Epilepsy and Comorbidities ECHO incorporated quality improvement (QI) methodology to create meaningful practice change, while increasing PCP knowledge/self-efficacy in epilepsy management using the ECHO model. Methods: Monthly ECHO sessions (May 2018 to December 2018) included lectures, case presentations/discussion, and QI review. Pediatric practices were recruited through the AAP. Practices engaged in ECHO sessions and improvement activities including monthly Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, team huddles, chart reviews, and QI coaching calls to facilitate practice change. They were provided resource toolkits with documentation templates, safety handouts, and medication side effects sheets. QI measures were selected from the American Academy of Neurology Measurement Set for Epilepsy. The AAP Quality Improvement Data Aggregator was used for data entry, run chart development, and tracking outcomes. Participants completed retrospective surveys to assess changes in knowledge and self-efficacy. Results: Seven practices participated across five states. Average session attendance was 14 health professionals (range = 13-17). A total of 479 chart reviews demonstrated improvement in six of seven measures: health care transition (45.3%, P =.005), safety education (41.6%, P =.036), mental/behavioral health screening (32.2% P =.027), tertiary center referral (26.7%, not significant [n.s.]), antiseizure therapy side effects (23%, n.s.), and documenting seizure frequency (7.1%, n.s.); counseling for women of childbearing age decreased by 7.8%. Significance: This project demonstrated that integrating QI into an ECHO model results in practice change and increases PCP knowledge/confidence/self-efficacy in managing epilepsy

Setting live coding performance in wider historical contexts

This paper sets live coding in the wider context of performing arts, construed as the poetic modelling and projection of liveness. Concepts of liveness are multiple, evolving, and scale-dependent: entities considered live from different cultural perspectives range from individual organisms and social groupings to entire ecosystems, and consequently reflect diverse temporal and spatial orders. Concepts of liveness moreover evolve with our tools, which generate and reveal new senses and places of vitality. This instability complexifies the crafting of live events as artistic material: overriding habitual frames and scales of reference is a challenge when handling infinitely scalable computational phenomena. With its generative affordances, improvised interactive programming, and notational possibilities, live coding introduces unique qualities into the performance arena. At the same time, performance history abounds in adaptive systems which anticipate certain live coding criteria. Historic performance and contemporary coding practices raise shared questions that can enhance our understanding of live art, notably to do with feedback, fixed versus on-the-fly programmable conceptual and physical frameworks, and inscriptive practices and notation methods for live action. I attempt to address such questions by setting live coding in a wider performance history perspective

Socio-cultural influences on the behaviour of South Asian women with diabetes in pregnancy: qualitative study using a multi-level theoretical approach

BACKGROUND: Diabetes in pregnancy is common in South Asians, especially those from low-income backgrounds, and leads to short-term morbidity and longer-term metabolic programming in mother and offspring. We sought to understand the multiple influences on behaviour (hence risks to metabolic health) of South Asian mothers and their unborn child, theorise how these influences interact and build over time, and inform the design of culturally congruent, multi-level interventions. METHODS: Our sample for this qualitative study was 45 women of Bangladeshi, Indian, Sri Lankan, or Pakistani origin aged 21-45 years with a history of diabetes in pregnancy, recruited from diabetes and antenatal services in two deprived London boroughs. Overall, 17 women shared their experiences of diabetes, pregnancy, and health services in group discussions and 28 women gave individual narrative interviews, facilitated by multilingual researchers, audiotaped, translated, and transcribed. Data were analysed using the constant comparative method, drawing on sociological and narrative theories. RESULTS: Key storylines (over-arching narratives) recurred across all ethnic groups studied. Short-term storylines depicted the experience of diabetic pregnancy as stressful, difficult to control, and associated with negative symptoms, especially tiredness. Taking exercise and restricting diet often worsened these symptoms and conflicted with advice from relatives and peers. Many women believed that exercise in pregnancy would damage the fetus and drain the mother's strength, and that eating would be strength-giving for mother and fetus. These short-term storylines were nested within medium-term storylines about family life, especially the cultural, practical, and material constraints of the traditional South Asian wife and mother role and past experiences of illness and healthcare, and within longer-term storylines about genetic, cultural, and material heritage - including migration, acculturation, and family memories of food insecurity. While peer advice was familiar, meaningful, and morally resonant, health education advice from clinicians was usually unfamiliar and devoid of cultural meaning. CONCLUSIONS: 'Behaviour change' interventions aimed at preventing and managing diabetes in South Asian women before and during pregnancy are likely to be ineffective if delivered in a socio-cultural vacuum. Individual education should be supplemented with community-level interventions to address the socio-material constraints and cultural frames within which behavioural 'choices' are made