DCC Digital Curation Manual: Instalment on Investment in an Intangible Asset

Instalment on the role of digital information as an intangible asset. From an economist’s point of view, this instalment explores some key properties of digital assets and digital preservation and argues the case that digital information should be classified as an intangible asset. Intangible assets (and investment) have recently been the subject of increased attention from economists, business analysts and accountancy and financial experts. This reflects the recognition that contemporary businesses owe much more of their market value to intangible assets than was formerly the case

A Trend Analysis of the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Application, 1960-2010

It is well known that mathematics is a unique field, somewhere between the sciences and humanities. It is not well known, however, how researchers within the mathematics community use mathematical literature. In this study, I have examined 450 articles from the Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Application from 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010 in order to discover how publishing has changed over time as well as country, institution, author and topic representation within the journal. From the data gathered, I have found that there has been a large amount of growth in the number of published articles as well as the number of countries represented. It was also seen that this journal follows Lotka;s law: a small number of authors publish the most papers while a large group of authors publish few papers. This work has provided insight and inspiration for future research in mathematical publishing and literature

A Digital Divide? Assessing Self-Perceived Communication Competency in an Online and Face-to-Face Basic Public Speaking Course

Previous research has documented an inverse relationship between speaking anxiety and self-perceived communication competence (SPCC). However, a recent assessment case study of an online basic public speaking course revealed that while the course decreased students’ speaking anxiety, it failed to increase their SPCC. Prompted by this surprising discrepancy and bolstered by continuing calls for increased exploration of educational quality of online public speaking courses, the current study compared SPCC between online (n = 147) and face-to-face (F2F) (n = 544) delivery of the large, standardized, multi-section basic public speaking course at our institution. Pretest scores of students’ overall SPCC were not significantly different between learning modalities. By the end of the F2F course, students perceived significant increases in SPCC. In stark contrast, however, the online sections failed to produce significant changes in SPCC. These findings suggest that the online basic public speaking course at our institution may not be designed in a way which promotes the development of SPCC—an important marker of our programmatic assessment. These results also draw attention to the need for further research assessing the comparison of delivery methods of the basic communication course and further discussion of best practices for online delivery of the course

Shaking in Their Digital Boots: Anxiety and Competence in the Online Basic Public Speaking Course

In response to a call for increased research on educational quality of online public speaking courses, this study assessed online course impacts on students’ (N = 147) speaker anxiety and self-perceived communication competence. A significant decrease in speaking anxiety occurred over the course of the semester, supporting efficacy of the online basic speech course at the university level. However, the predicted significant increase in self-perceived communication competence was not found, warranting additional considerations in online course designs. The significant reduction in speaking anxiety within the online course is promising and suggests that this learning goal can be met in this instructional setting. However, since enhancing students’ self-perceived communication competence remains a critical learning outcome of the basic communication course, these findings suggest that online course development heighten focus on related interventions

New and improved proteomics technologies for understanding complex biological systems: Addressing a grand challenge in the life sciences

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/93688/1/pmic7183.pd

NY Food 20/20: Vision, Research, and Recommendations During COVID-19 and Beyond

The public health and economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic to the New York City (NYC) food system have been tremendous. In the six months since March 2020, when the pandemic reached NYC’s 5 boroughs, the number of food-insecure individuals has nearly doubled from 1.2 million to 2 million;1 diet quality for many individuals has decreased;2 the local food workforce has lost more than two-thirds of its workers;3 and more than 1,000 NYC restaurants and food retail outlets have closed,4 some never to re-open. Too often the impacts of a crisis such as COVID-19 are not measured until long after the opportunity to implement policy and programmatic solutions has passed. In this report, researchers from three of NYC’s leading food policy and research institutions analyze COVID-19’s impact on NYC’s food system during the first six months of the pandemic. Our goal is to provide research-based recommendations for policies and programs that support food security, retail, quality, and the food workforce as the COVID-19 crisis continues to unfold

A multi-stage genome-wide association study of bladder cancer identifies multiple susceptibility loci.

We conducted a multi-stage, genome-wide association study of bladder cancer with a primary scan of 591,637 SNPs in 3,532 affected individuals (cases) and 5,120 controls of European descent from five studies followed by a replication strategy, which included 8,382 cases and 48,275 controls from 16 studies. In a combined analysis, we identified three new regions associated with bladder cancer on chromosomes 22q13.1, 19q12 and 2q37.1: rs1014971, (P = 8 × 10⁻¹²) maps to a non-genic region of chromosome 22q13.1, rs8102137 (P = 2 × 10⁻¹¹) on 19q12 maps to CCNE1 and rs11892031 (P = 1 × 10⁻⁷) maps to the UGT1A cluster on 2q37.1. We confirmed four previously identified genome-wide associations on chromosomes 3q28, 4p16.3, 8q24.21 and 8q24.3, validated previous candidate associations for the GSTM1 deletion (P = 4 × 10⁻¹¹) and a tag SNP for NAT2 acetylation status (P = 4 × 10⁻¹¹), and found interactions with smoking in both regions. Our findings on common variants associated with bladder cancer risk should provide new insights into the mechanisms of carcinogenesis