Implementing Transitive Credit with JSON-LD

Science and engineering research increasingly relies on activities that facilitate research but are not currently rewarded or recognized, such as: data sharing; developing common data resources, software and methodologies; and annotating data and publications. To promote and advance these activities, we must develop mechanisms for assigning credit, facilitate the appropriate attribution of research outcomes, devise incentives for activities that facilitate research, and allocate funds to maximize return on investment. In this article, we focus on addressing the issue of assigning credit for both direct and indirect contributions, specifically by using JSON-LD to implement a prototype transitive credit system.Comment: accepted by WSSSPE2 - http://wssspe.researchcomputing.org.uk/wssspe2

Diffuse Interstellar Bands in z < 0.6 CaII Absorbers

The diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) probably arise from complex organic molecules whose strength in local galaxies correlates with neutral hydrogen column density, N(HI), and dust reddening, E(B-V). Since CaII absorbers in quasar (QSO) spectra are posited to have high N(HI) and significant E(B-V), they represent promising sites for the detection of DIBs at cosmological distances. Here we present the results from the first search for DIBs in 9 CaII-selected absorbers at 0.07 < z_abs < 0.55. We detect the 5780Ang DIB in one line of sight at z_abs = 0.1556; this is only the second QSO absorber in which a DIB has been detected. Unlike the majority of local DIB sight-lines, both QSO absorbers with detected DIBs show weak 6284Ang absorption compared with the 5780Ang band. This may be indicative of different physical conditions in intermediate redshift QSO absorbers compared with local galaxies. Assuming that local relations between the 5780Ang DIB strength and N(HI) and E(B-V) apply in QSO absorbers, DIB detections and limits can be used to derive N(HI) and E(B-V). For the one absorber in this study with a detected DIB, we derive E(B-V) = 0.23mag and log[N(HI)] >= 20.9, consistent with previous conclusions that CaII systems have high HI column densities and significant reddening. For the remaining 8 CaII-selected absorbers with 5780Ang DIB non-detections, we derive E(B-V) upper limits of 0.1-0.3mag.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Accepted to MNRAS Letter

Citizen Science: Contributions to Astronomy Research

The contributions of everyday individuals to significant research has grown dramatically beyond the early days of classical birdwatching and endeavors of amateurs of the 19th century. Now people who are casually interested in science can participate directly in research covering diverse scientific fields. Regarding astronomy, volunteers, either as individuals or as networks of people, are involved in a variety of types of studies. Citizen Science is intuitive, engaging, yet necessarily robust in its adoption of sci-entific principles and methods. Herein, we discuss Citizen Science, focusing on fully participatory projects such as Zooniverse (by several of the au-thors CL, AS, LF, SB), with mention of other programs. In particular, we make the case that citizen science (CS) can be an important aspect of the scientific data analysis pipelines provided to scientists by observatories.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Astro2020 APC white paper: Elevating the role of software as a product of the research enterprise

Software is a critical part of modern research, and yet there are insufficient mechanisms in the scholarly ecosystem to acknowledge, cite, and measure the impact of research software. The majority of academic fields rely on a one-dimensional credit model whereby academic articles (and their associated citations) are the dominant factor in the success of a researcher\u27s career. In the petabyte era of astronomical science, citing software and measuring its impact enables academia to retain and reward researchers that make significant software contributions. These highly skilled researchers must be retained to maximize the scientific return from petabyte-scale datasets. Evolving beyond the one-dimensional credit model requires overcoming several key challenges, including the current scholarly ecosystem and scientific culture issues. This white paper will present these challenges and suggest practical solutions for elevating the role of software as a product of the research enterprise

Undergraduate medical textbooks do not provide adequate information on intravenous fluid therapy: a systematic survey and suggestions for improvement

&lt;b&gt;Background&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Inappropriate prescribing of intravenous (IV) fluid, particularly 0.9% sodium chloride, causes post-operative complications. Fluid prescription is often left to junior medical staff and is frequently poorly managed. One reason for poor intravenous fluid prescribing practices could be inadequate coverage of this topic in the textbooks that are used.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Methods&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; We formulated a comprehensive set of topics, related to important common clinical situations involving IV fluid therapy, (routine fluid replacement, fluid loss, fluids overload) to assess the adequacy of textbooks in common use. We assessed 29 medical textbooks widely available to students in the UK, scoring the presence of information provided by each book on each of the topics. The scores indicated how fully the topics were considered: not at all, partly, and adequately. No attempt was made to judge the quality of the information, because there is no consensus on these topics.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Results&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; The maximum score that a book could achieve was 52. Three of the topics we chose were not considered by any of the books. Discounting these topics as “too esoteric”, the maximum possible score became 46. One textbook gained a score of 45, but the general score was poor (median 11, quartiles 4, 21). In particular, coverage of routine postoperative management was inadequate.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Conclusions&lt;/b&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; Textbooks for undergraduates cover the topic of intravenous therapy badly, which may partly explain the poor knowledge and performance of junior doctors in this important field. Systematic revision of current textbooks might improve knowledge and practice by junior doctors. Careful definition of the remit and content of textbooks should be applied more widely to ensure quality and “fitness for purpose”, and avoid omission of vital knowledge

Space Warps II. New Gravitational Lens Candidates from the CFHTLS Discovered through Citizen Science

We report the discovery of 29 promising (and 59 total) new lens candidates from the CFHT Legacy Survey (CFHTLS) based on about 11 million classifications performed by citizen scientists as part of the first Space Warps lens search. The goal of the blind lens search was to identify lens candidates missed by robots (the RingFinder on galaxy scales and ArcFinder on group/cluster scales) which had been previously used to mine the CFHTLS for lenses. We compare some properties of the samples detected by these algorithms to the Space Warps sample and find them to be broadly similar. The image separation distribution calculated from the Space Warps sample shows that previous constraints on the average density profile of lens galaxies are robust. SpaceWarps recovers about 65% of known lenses, while the new candidates show a richer variety compared to those found by the two robots. This detection rate could be increased to 80% by only using classifications performed by expert volunteers (albeit at the cost of a lower purity), indicating that the training and performance calibration of the citizen scientists is very important for the success of Space Warps. In this work we present the SIMCT pipeline, used for generating in situ a sample of realistic simulated lensed images. This training sample, along with the false positives identified during the search, has a legacy value for testing future lens finding algorithms. We make the pipeline and the training set publicly available.Comment: 23 pages, 12 figures, MNRAS accepted, minor to moderate changes in this versio

Galaxy Zoo: Mergers – Dynamical models of interacting galaxies

The dynamical history of most merging galaxies is not well understood. Correlations between galaxy interaction and star formation have been found in previous studies, but require the context of the physical history of merging systems for full insight into the processes that lead to enhanced star formation. We present the results of simulations that reconstruct the orbit trajectories and disturbed morphologies of pairs of interacting galaxies. With the use of a restricted three-body simulation code and the help of citizen scientists, we sample 105 points in parameter space for each system. We demonstrate a successful recreation of the morphologies of 62 pairs of interacting galaxies through the review of more than 3 million simulations. We examine the level of convergence and uniqueness of the dynamical properties of each system. These simulations represent the largest collection of models of interacting galaxies to date, providing a valuable resource for the investigation of mergers. This paper presents the simulation parameters generated by the project. They are now publicly available in electronic format at http://data.galaxyzoo.org/mergers.html. Though our best-fitting model parameters are not an exact match to previously published models, our method for determining uncertainty measurements will aid future comparisons between models. The dynamical clocks from our models agree with previous results of the time since the onset of star formation from starburst models in interacting systems and suggest that tidally induced star formation is triggered very soon after closest approach