Collections Data, Tools, and Strategy: Applying R, Tableau, and Excel to Print Assessment

As is the case at most academic libraries, collection assessment has become an essential component of collection management and development work. Although much of the assessment focus has disproportionately fallen on e-resources, print collections remain fruitful areas for evaluation and review. At Emory, print collections, including a complex approval plan, continue to be a significant component of our overarching collection strategy (in volume and expenditure). However, shifting priorities for library space and the growth of interdisciplinary programs and centers within the University are placing a higher demand on subject librarians for communication and coordinated decision-making regarding print acquisitions. As a result, we are currently preparing for a comprehensive print collection review, of which the approval plan is an integral component. This assessment will inform a more coherent print strategy, which effectively and efficiently meets research and teaching requirements as well as administrative needs. Using data cleaning and visualization tools, such as R, Excel, and Tableau, we have enriched our local usage data with detailed Gobi approval data (e.g., series, publisher, subject, etc.) and profile parameters. Merging these data types and enriching local use data will allow us to analyze the print collection in a more nuanced fashion and ask questions that do not require the LC classification framework. This analysis considers the development of additional tools and approaches that facilitate subject specialist communication with collection management and overall collaborative decision-making, especially in cross disciplinary areas

Situated Learning with Bebras Tasklets

A Bebras short task, a tasklet, is designed to provide a source for exploring a computational thinking concept: at the end of the contest it could be used as a starting point to delve deeper into a computing topic. In this paper we report an experience which aims at taking full advantage of the potential of Bebras tasklets. A math teacher asked her pupils to act as Bebras \u201ctrainers\u201d for younger mates. The pupils, in pairs, were assigned to design and prepare a tangible game inspired by a Bebras tasklet, devised for the younger pupils to practice. They also had to explain the game to the younger pupils, make them play and support them in solving it. In carrying out this assignment the pupils acting as trainers had to deeply explore the Bebras tasklet and face its computational thinking challenge, and also practiced soft skills as collaborating with peers towards a common goal, adapting language and communicative style to engage with younger mates, devising and designing a tangible object, and planning its creation. The experience proved that using Bebras tasklets as the social and cultural context for situated learning of computational thinking competencies is indeed quite productive

ATR-FTIR chemical screening for adulterants and sugar characterisation in honeys

The search for improvements in honey analysis is an important topic due to the relevance that adulterations and variations of sugar composition have in this food. Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform InfraRed spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) is a reliable and fast analytical instrumentation for analysis of liquids, semi-solids and solids, which is currently used in food chemistry for qualitative and quantitative investigations. This work is aimed to build a fast analytical method, using ATR-FTIR and Partial Least Square (PLS) chemometric tool, to quantitative determination of glucose, fructose and sucrose present in honeys. We analyzed 25 honeys from Trentino and Sicily and a significant spectral range from the whole ATR-FTIR spectra were selected. Then a PLS multivariate calibration model was built by using mixtures of glucose, fructose and sucrose at various concentration. Samples for cross-validation were selected, thereby allowing quantitative evaluation of glucose, fructose and sucrose in all samples. Furthermore, a representative number of honeys were mixed with common adulterant syrups to simulate adulteration procedures and to verify the reliability of the ATR-FTIR technique in recognizing them. Preliminary results revealed not only the quantitative reliability of ATR-FTIR spectroscopy in the evaluation of sugars in honeys, but also its ability in recognizing honey adulteration

Preliminary studies of geochemical tools to traceability of Sicilian honey

Today is increasing the attention of consumers for the origin of food and high reputation of products with a distinct geographical identity. Food traceability is an important issue in food safety and quality control, with impacts on food security, its quantity and overall availability. Furthermore, the possibility of tracing the origin of foodstuff is assuming an increasingly important role at the legislative level, as a tool that may allow to prove on product authenticity and to control adulteration So, establish systems to trace food or feed products through specified stages of production, processing and distribution play a key role also to ensure food safety. For these reason, in the last years, a various of analytical techniques have been tested to found ways to establish the geographical origin of different kinds of food and many works reported that the combination of different analytical methods associated a multifactorial analysis of the data seems to be the most promising system to establish univocal traceability systems. Despite, the honey is a well appreciated natural product in the world and the detection of potential fraud could be favored through tools linking the chemistry composition of this production to producing area. A relatively small number of investigations regarding traceability of honey can be found in the scientific literature. Therefore, in these contest the development of fingerprinting techniques based on the determination of the specific markers of provenance analyzed whit chemometric approach represents an interesting area of research. Recent works have been demonstrated the potentiality of the study of the distribution patterns of rare earth as a promising analytical method for traceability of food products due coherent and predictable chemical behaviour of these compounds. Also, have been demonstrated that their distribution in soil keeps unaltered in plants growing on that soil and eventually in agricultural products obtained from those plants and through the normalization of the REEs distribution, it is possible to appreciate their relative enrichments in soil-plant- agro food products The aim of the research is to observe if the REEs normalizated pattern of honey is kept unaltered respect the soils of production to establish a correlation between geographic area and honey product. In this first study the REE approach, give very intriguing results in the geographical traceability of honey samples. The results have been supported by statistical treatment. A larger study is in progress to optimize the analytical methodology and to extend the research to a major number of sample for a better geographical characterization

Gene Expression and the Diversity of Identified Neurons

Nervous systems consist of diverse populations of neurons that are anatomically and functionally distinct. The diversity of neurons and the precision with which they are interconnected suggest that specific genes or sets of genes are activated in some neurons but not expressed in others. Experimentally, this problem may be considered at two levels. First, what is the total number of genes expressed in the brain, and how are they distributed among the different populations of neurons? Second, can we identify specific genes expressed in individual neurons and relate the expression of these genes to the unique functional properties of these neurons

Novel insights into the transport mechanism of the human amino acid transporter LAT1 (SLC7A5) : probing critical residues for substrate translocation

BACKGROUND: LAT1 (SLC7A5) is the transport competent unit of the heterodimer formed with the glycoprotein CD98 (SLC3A2). It catalyzes antiport of His and some neutral amino acids such as Ile, Leu, Val, Cys, Met, Gln and Phe thus being involved in amino acid metabolism. Interestingly, LAT1 is over-expressed in many human cancers that are characterized by increased demand of amino acids. Therefore LAT1 was recently acknowledged as a novel target for cancer therapy. However, knowledge on molecular mechanism of LAT1 transport is still scarce. METHODS: Combined approaches of bioinformatics, site-directed mutagenesis, chemical modification, and transport assay in proteoliposomes, have been adopted to unravel dark sides of human LAT1 structure/function relationships. RESULTS: It has been demonstrated that residues F252, S342, C335 are crucial for substrate recognition and C407 plays a minor role. C335 and C407 cannot be targeted by SH reagents. The transporter has a preferential dimeric structure and catalyzes an antiport reaction which follows a simultaneous random mechanism. CONCLUSIONS: Critical residues of the substrate binding site of LAT1 have been probed. This site is not freely accessible by molecules other than substrate. Similarly to LeuT, K+ has some regulatory properties on LAT1. GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE: The collected data represent a solid basis for deciphering molecular mechanism underlying LAT1 function

Volumetric Lissajous confocal microscopy with tunable spatiotemporal resolution

Dynamic biological systems present challenges to existing three-dimensional (3D) optical microscopes because of their continuous temporal and spatial changes. Most techniques are rigid in adapting the acquisition parameters over time, as in confocal microscopy, where a laser beam is sequentially scanned at a predefined spatial sampling rate and pixel dwell time. Such lack of tunability forces a user to provide scan parameters, which may not be optimal, based on the best assumption before an acquisition starts. Here, we developed volumetric Lissajous confocal microscopy to achieve unsurpassed 3D scanning speed with a tunable sampling rate. The system combines an acoustic liquid lens for continuous axial focus translation with a resonant scanning mirror. Accordingly, the excitation beam follows a dynamic Lissajous trajectory enabling sub-millisecond acquisitions of image series containing 3D information at a sub-Nyquist sampling rate. By temporal accumulation and/or advanced interpolation algorithms, the volumetric imaging rate is selectable using a post-processing step at the desired spatiotemporal resolution for events of interest. We demonstrate multicolor and calcium imaging over volumes of tens of cubic microns with 3D acquisition speeds of 30 Hz and frame rates up to 5 kHz

New chemiometric technique applied to traceability of Sicilian honey of Sulla (Hedysarum coronarium L.)

The consumers have an increasing interest about food traceability with respect to safety, quality and typicality issues. Food traceability is an important issue in food safety and quality control, with impacts on food security, its quantity and overall availability. Furthermore, the possibility of tracing the origin of foodstuff is assuming an increasingly important role at the legislative level, as a tool that may allow to prove on product authenticity and to control adulteration. So, establish systems to trace food products through specified stages of production, processing and distribution play a key role also to ensure food safety. In the last years, several of analytical techniques have been tested to found ways to establish the geographical origin of different kinds of food and many works reported that the combination of different analytical methods associated a multifactorial analysis of the data seems to be the most promising system to establish univocal traceability systems. The honey is a natural food well appreciated in the world and the detection of potential fraud could be favored through tools linking the chemistry composition of this production to producing area. A small number of investigations regarding traceability of honey can be found in the scientific literature. Therefore, in these contest the development of fingerprinting techniques based on the determination of the specific markers of provenance analyzed whit chemometric approach represents an interesting area of research. Recent works have been demonstrated the potentiality of the study of the distribution patterns of rare earth as a promising analytical method for traceability of food products due coherent and predictable chemical behavior of these compounds. Also, have been demonstrated that their distribution in soil keeps unaltered in plants growing on that soil and eventually in agricultural products obtained from those plants and through the normalization of the REEs distribution, it is possible to appreciate their relative enrichments in soil-plant- agro food products The aim of the research was to observe if the REEs normalizated pattern of honey of Sulla (Hedysarum coronarium L.) was kept unaltered respect the soils of production to establish a correlation between geographic area and honey product. For this study, different production areas of Sulla in Sicily were considered. The production fields explored by the bees within 2 km of the hives were taken into consideration, the soil and the flowering plants were sampled. Flowers and leaves were analyzed from the plant. In the hive, pollen and honey were taken in three different days during the flowering period of the Sulla. Of same areas were sampled to the same methods in different periods where other monofloral honeys were product, these samples were used for a control. In this study the REE approach, give very intriguing results in the geographical traceability of honey samples and are the first. The results have been supported by statistical treatment

Transition metal nanoparticles on pyrrole-decorated sp2 carbon allotropes for selective hydrogen isotopic exchange

Compared to homogeneous catalysts, heterogeneous systems possess more attractiveness in the chemical industry because of the easier separation from the reaction products, lower amount of wastes, larger recyclability and lower toxicity and corrosiveness. Preparation of supported metal nanoparticles often requires energy demanding techniques such as laser ablation, electrochemical reduction, and high temperature heat treatments. In this work we present a facile and sustainable method to functionalize multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and exploit the novel surface reactivity to deposit Ruthenium nanoparticles. Serinol pyrrole (SP) was synthesized and, through a Domino reaction, grafted on carbon nanotubes’ surface. Mild reducing conditions were employed to decorate CNT-SP with Ruthenium nanoparticles. The latter adduct was characterized by means of X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. Ru/CNT-SP was then tested in the selective deuteration of quinoline. High selectivity and conversion, determined through H-NMR, were achieved compared to commercial Ru/C catalysts. The results obtained in this work led to the filing of two patent applications

Transition metal nanoparticles on pyrrole-decorated sp2 carbon allotropes for selective hydrogen isotopic exchange

Compared to homogeneous catalysts, heterogeneous systems possess more attractiveness in the chemical industry because of the easier separation from the reaction products, lower amount of wastes, larger recyclability, and lower toxicity and corrosiveness. Objective of this research was to prepare more efficient and more selective heterogeneous catalysts, by anchoring transition metal cations and nanoparticles on nitrogen decorated sp2 carbon allotrope (CA), which were functionalized with pyrrole compounds. Triethylenetetramine pyrrole (TETAP) was selected as the pyrrole compound: it was synthesized and grafted onto multiwalled carbon nanotubes and high surface area graphite with efficient and viable methodology. The CA/TEPAP adduct was used as the support of transition metal nanoparticles. It is here reported the example of ruthenium supported catalyst, investigated by means of elemental and surface area analyses, X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy. The catalyst was used for the Hydrogen Isotopic Exchange (HIE) of aromatic compounds of pharmaceutical interest. Outstanding selectivity was obtained