UNL Libraries Book Use by Broad Discipline (Social Sciences, Sciences, and Humanities): Circulations and Renewals: Books Acquired 2003/04 – 2007/08 via Approval Plan Selection, Librarian Firm Order, and ILL Patron-Driven Acquisition

On numerous occasions over the course of the UNL Libraries’ continuing discussions concerning the allocation of collections monies, the UNL Libraries’ liaison librarians have made a variety of assertions, arguments, and claims concerning their patrons and their patrons’ needs. For example, the humanities librarians have repeatedly staked a claim to the humanities’ being the “book” discipline and have made a variety of assertions concerning humanities patrons and humanities books that could be treated as testable hypothesis. For example: 1) Humanities patrons use books more than do other disciplines’ patrons; 2) Humanities patrons use more books than do other disciplines’ patrons; 3) Humanities books are used more than are other disciplines’ books; 4) Humanities books’ circulation is an inadequate and/or inaccurate measure of humanities’ patrons’ need for and/or use of their books because it does not account for in-house usage, for ILL requests for returnables, or for circulation renewals (Note: this last argument has been that humanities patrons use books for deeper scholarship and for longer periods, so some portion of their potential circulations will be transformed into and lost as renewals); 5) …and so forth. It would be, of course, impossible to provide a complete and comprehensive analysis of collections usage that would address every issue and objection, but the authors hope here to address a few of the above points somewhat. Unfortunately, we cannot address the points concerning humanities patrons using books more or using more books than do the patrons of the other disciplines. Not least because of privacy concerns, the UNL Libraries simply does not track their patrons in a way that would allow for those analyses. Likely, patrons’ revealed preferences in this area could only be approached somewhat obliquely via citation analysis. For similar reasons, we cannot address the point concerning in-house usage by patron affiliation without arranging for data to be collected through direct observation and demographic interviews. The point concerning ILL borrowing of returnables might be addressable in future as the Delivery/ILL department collects a tremendous amount of data, but that data is not available for analysis at the moment. The questions that we can somewhat address here involve the books themselves: 1) Was a greater percentage of any one discipline’s books circulated over the interval? Renewed? Did it matter who selected the book? 2) Did any one discipline’s books experience more circulations? More circulations-and-renewals? 3) Which variables, in future, might be useful for predictively modelling circulation and/or circulations-and-renewals? 4) Could early relative performance predict future performance

The Dynamic Developers Innovation Portfolio

We appreciate your interest in the work of our team, The Dynamic Developers. We take great pride in the work we have done over the course of four months. Our research consisted of reading numerous scholarly articles, interviewing multiple stakeholders, and collecting feedback on our work through collaborator debriefs. From this portfolio, you will be able to see the Design Thinking Process we followed to develop a solution that will better student engagement at the Frederik Meijer Honors College. Our team consisted of five Honors College Students with diverse backgrounds and areas of study. Each team member brought different perspectives and strengths to our process. We believe our final innovation will provide a solution to encourage student governance of the Honors College. From this innovation, Honors Students will have an opportunity to share their voice and have a role in improving their Honors College experience. We are grateful for those we interviewed, our professor, our classmates, and our collaborators for providing us valuable insights that have contributed to our research. Thank you for taking the time to read our Design Thinking journey. We hope our hard work will improve the future of the Frederik Meijer Honors College

The Scholarly Impact of Books Acquired via Approval Plan Selection, Librarian Orders, and Patron-Driven Acquisitions as Measured by Citation Counts

Patron-driven acquisition has been an important, if contentious, topic for decades, with numerous programs having been piloted, adopted, and reported on, largely favorably, in the library literature. Still, questions and doubts persist for academic libraries, especially where the composition of vendor plans and packages and the judgment of patrons are concerned. Past literature has approached the assessment of patron-driven acquisition by analyzing circulation/usage, comparing peer-library holdings, seeking patrons’ or librarians’ judgments of utility and suitability, looking for evidence of collection imbalances, and testing for overlap in patrons’ and librarians’ purchases. To contribute to this literature, this study addresses scholarly impact and examines whose selections—approval plans’, librarians’, or patrons’—have been most heavily cited. For the social sciences, the sciences, and the humanities, the authors gathered topic-matched random samples of books acquired via approval plans and librarian orders during the first five years of operation of their institutions’ interlibrary loan purchase-on-demand patron-driven acquisition program and compared their citation counts to the counts of books acquired via the program. Google Scholar was employed to tally citations

EV’s Leading in China, Ford is a Few Cars Behind

As the world is looking at sustainable energy sources, electric vehicles are likely to be a big part of the perceived future. China has 18.47% of the world’s population, is one of the highest emitters of carbon dioxide, and is the world’s largest market for electric vehicles (Country Meters). China’s GDP was USD 13.608 trillion in 2018 and is expected to increase substantially in coming years (Wang, 2019). With 25 million vehicles sold in 2019, China’s automobile market is the biggest in the world. With that, China accounts for 27.52% of the world’s CO2 emissions (Statista). To decrease that number, China stated in 2019 their goal was to have 60% of all automobiles sold in 2035 to run on electric motors (Tian, 2019). With car sales in China declining rapidly over the past 3 years, automobile companies are looking for a way to develop a sustainable competitive advantage. Ford Motor Company, a $156 billion global leader, has been struggling to compete in China and is now looking to the electric vehicle market as a way to expand. However, China’s EV market is hypercompetitive with over 400 domestic EV manufacturers, including some multinationals like General Motors. To differentiate themselves from the competition, Ford announced plans of building facilities that will specialize in creating technology for their EV’s. SYNC+ is a popular technological option available to enhance the consumers experience (Media Ford, 2019). However, investment in technology could raise the prices of their vehicles. With annual income in China at about 82,413 yuan ($11,727 USD), raising prices may not be an option for Ford (Statista). This case study discusses the many challenges that Ford faces in China and how it needs to change its marketing mix in order to succeed there. Keywords: Ford, China, Electric Vehicles, Pollution, Environment, Automobiles, Case Study, Emerging Markets, International marketin

Regularized Maximum Likelihood Image Synthesis and Validation for ALMA Continuum Observations of Protoplanetary Disks

Regularized Maximum Likelihood (RML) techniques are a class of image synthesis methods that achieve better angular resolution and image fidelity than traditional methods like CLEAN for sub-mm interferometric observations. To identify best practices for RML imaging, we used the GPU-accelerated open source Python package MPoL, a machine learning-based RML approach, to explore the influence of common RML regularizers (maximum entropy, sparsity, total variation, and total squared variation) on images reconstructed from real and synthetic ALMA continuum observations of protoplanetary disks. We tested two different cross-validation (CV) procedures to characterize their performance and determine optimal prior strengths, and found that CV over a coarse grid of regularization strengths easily identifies a range of models with comparably strong predictive power. To evaluate the performance of RML techniques against a ground truth image, we used MPoL on a synthetic protoplanetary disk dataset and found that RML methods successfully resolve structures at fine spatial scales present in the original simulation. We used ALMA DSHARP observations of the protoplanetary disk around HD 143006 to compare the performance of MPoL and CLEAN, finding that RML imaging improved the spatial resolution of the image by up to a factor of 3 without sacrificing sensitivity. We provide general recommendations for building an RML workflow for image synthesis of ALMA protoplanetary disk observations, including effective use of CV. Using these techniques to improve the imaging resolution of protoplanetary disk observations will enable new science, including the detection of protoplanets embedded in disks.Comment: 27 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in PAS

Acceptability of Aggression Among Children Who Reside With Substance-Abusing Parents: The Influence of Behavioral Dysregulation, Exposure to Neighborhood Violence, and Interparental Violence

The present study examined how interparental violence, neighborhood violence, behavioral regulation during parental conflict, and age predicted beliefs about the acceptability of aggression and the acceptance of retaliation against an aggressive peer among youths. Participants were 110 families (mothers, fathers, and children) in which one or both parents met criteria for substance use disorder. Results of a bootstrapped multivariate regression model revealed higher exposure to neighborhood violence predicted greater acceptability of general aggression, whereas higher father-to-mother violence perpetration predicted lower acceptability of general aggression. Higher exposure to neighborhood violence, behavioral dysregulation during parental conflict, and older child age predicted greater approval of retaliation toward an aggressive peer. Findings are interpreted as related to the cognitive-contextual framework

Adherence of SARS‐CoV‐2 Seroepidemiologic Studies to the ROSES‐S Reporting Guideline During the COVID‐19 Pandemic

Background: Complete reporting of seroepidemiologic studies is critical to their utility in evidence synthesis and public health decision making. The Reporting of Seroepidemiologic studies—SARS‐CoV‐2 (ROSES‐S) guideline is a checklist that aims to improve reporting in SARS‐CoV‐2 seroepidemiologic studies. Adherence to the ROSES‐S guideline has not yet been evaluated. Objectives: This study aims to evaluate the completeness of SARS‐CoV‐2 seroepidemiologic study reporting by the ROSES‐S guideline during the COVID‐19 pandemic, determine whether guideline publication was associated with reporting completeness, and identify study characteristics associated with reporting completeness. Methods: A random sample from the SeroTracker living systematic review database was evaluated. For each reporting item in the guideline, the percentage of studies that were adherent was calculated, as well as median and interquartile range (IQR) adherence across all items and by item domain. Beta regression analyses were used to evaluate predictors of adherence to ROSES‐S. Results: One hundred and ninety‐nine studies were analyzed. Median adherence was 48.1% (IQR 40.0%–55.2%) per study, with overall adherence ranging from 8.8% to 72.7%. The laboratory methods domain had the lowest median adherence (33.3% [IQR 25.0%–41.7%]). The discussion domain had the highest median adherence (75.0% [IQR 50.0%–100.0%]). Reporting adherence to ROSES‐S before and after guideline publication did not significantly change. Publication source (p < 0.001), study risk of bias (p = 0.001), and sampling method (p = 0.004) were significantly associated with adherence. Conclusions: Completeness of reporting in SARS‐CoV‐2 seroepidemiologic studies was suboptimal. Publication of the ROSES‐S guideline was not associated with changes in reporting practices. Authors should improve adherence to the ROSES‐S guideline with support from stakeholders