An evaluation of information behaviour studies through the Scholarly Capital Model

Influence and capital are two concepts used to evaluate scholarly outputs, and these can be measured using the Scholarly Capital Model as a modelling tool. The tool looks at the concepts of connectedness, venue representation, and ideational influence using centrality measures within a social network. This research used co‐authorships and h‐indices to investigate authors who have published papers in the field of information behaviour between 1980 and 2015 as extracted from Web of Science. The findings show a relationship between the authors’ connectedness and the venue (journal) representation. It could be seen that the venue (journal) influences the chance of citation, and equally, the prestige (centrality) of authors probably raises the citations of the journals. The research also shows a significant positive relationship between the venue representation and ideational influence. This means that a research work that is published in a highly cited journal will find more visibility and will receive more citations.     

Social capital and relationship maintenance: uses of social media among the South Asian Diaspora in the U.S.

This study uses the framework of bridging and bonding social capital to explore how South Asian immigrants to the U.S. negotiate relationships amongst three social groups: their ties in their home country, their ties to Americans, and their ties to other South Asian immigrants living in the U.S. In so doing, it develops a model for immigrant social media use that contributes to an ongoing reassessment of the notion of community.     

Urbanizing folklore,Folkloricizing the urban: cultural communication between the urban poor and popular music in Dhaka

This article explores how a particular kind of popular music of Dhaka city called ‘urban folk’ and the cultural identity of the rural migrants have been producing each other in an ongoing process of cultural communication. Following a discussion on the historical background of urban migration and its depiction in the prevailing pop music culture, this article uses the concepts of ‘cultural hybridity’ by Homi K. Bhabha and ‘political society’ by Partha Chatterjee to argue how the fluid structure of this hybrid form of music and its unconventional mobility between the folk and the pop have been in close association with the urban poor's formation of political society in contemporary Dhaka.     

Extracting Core ICT Indicators Using Entropy Method

In this article a methodology is presented to extract indicators that appropriately measure the information society and the digital divide between countries and the relevant statistics that the majority of countries can collect. With the help of content analysis, the entropy method, and consideration of the diffusion aspects of digitalization, 37 reputable information society and digital divide models are analyzed to indentify “core information and communication technology (ICT) indicators.” To overcome the limitation of the nonexistence of data, the information and the knowledge embedded in information society and digital divide models are employed as proxies for experts' opinions for extracting the core ICT indicators. Comparison of the prior indicators and the proposed ones reveals that the former ignore three important dimensions: e-learning, e-government, and networked world enablers.     

Investigating the potential of using acoustic frequency on the degradation of linear alkylbenzen sulfonates from aqueous solution

The effectiveness of using acoustical (sonochemical) reactor for degradation of linear alkylbenzen sulfonate (LAS) from aqueous solution was investigated. LASs are anionic surfactants,found in relatively high amounts in domestic and industrial wastewaters. In this study,experiments on LAS solution were performed using methylene blue active substances (MBAS) method. The effectiveness of acoustical processor reactor for LAS degradation is evaluated with emphasis on the effect of treatment time and initial LAS concentration. Experiments were performed at initial concentrations of 0.2,0.5,0.8 and 1.0 mg/L,acoustic fre-quency of 130 kHz,applied power of 500 W and temperature of 18 °C～20 °C. At the conditions involved,LAS degradation was found to increase with increasing sonochemical time. In addition,as the concentration increased,the LAS degradation rate de-creased in the acoustical processor reactor.     

A culturally-adaptive Iranian version of the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction to investigate English teachers’ interpersonal behaviour

We investigated Iranian secondary-school English teachers’ interpersonal behaviour with a validated culturally-adaptive Iranian version of the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction. Data were collected from 971 Iranian secondary-school students (398 students participated in the pilot study and 573 students in the main study) and 55 Iranian secondary-school English teachers (23 teachers participated in the pilot study and 32 in the main study). The construction of the instrument started with an open-ended questionnaire followed by semi-structured interviews to prepare items for the questionnaire. Next, expert judgement, pilot administration of the questionnaire and statistical analyses ensured its reliability and construct validity before final administration of the questionnaire to the main participants followed. The study supported the validity and reliability of the questionnaire and confirmed its usability in the Iranian secondary-school context. Furthermore, the results indicated that the students perceived their English teachers as being Tolerant and Authoritative, showing higher degrees of friendship, leadership and understanding behaviour and relatively low levels of uncertain and dissatisfied behaviour. The results showed a discrepancy between students’ perceptions of actual and ideal teacher interpersonal behaviour. Also students’ perceptions of their actual teachers’ interpersonal behaviour were significantly different from those of the teachers’ self-perceptions. One important implication of this study is that the QTI can be used in secondary-school contexts as a valuable feedback instrument to encourage teachers to reflect on their performance and improve their interpersonal behaviour as a part of their professional development.     

An evaluation of traditional admission standards in predicting Kuwait University students' academic performance

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of the traditional admission standards utilized by Kuwait University in predicting students' academic performance. It was found that the established practice of using students' score in standardized secondary school examinations and branch of study (i.e. sciences or arts emphasis) to be highly predictive of their college cumulative grade point average. Moreover, it was established that students' secondary school scores reflect intellective as well as the non-intellective factors pertaining to students' background.     

Polymorphonuclear leukocyte mediated oxidative inactivation of alpha-1-proteinase inhibitor: Modulation by nitric oxide

Alpha-1-proteinase inhibitor activity was studied in presence of resting and activated polymorphonuclear leucocytes. Four different agonists; phorbol myristic acetate, N-formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine, opsonised zymosan and arachidonic acid decreased the inhibitor activity by 23.3%, 20%, 12% and 16.6^ respectively. The inhibitor activity was protected by using various free radical scavengers. Catalase and superoxide dismutase both restored activity by about 18%, mannitol by 13% and sodium azide by 17.3%. The inhibitor activity was also protected significantly by pretreatment of polymorphs with L-Arg, a precursor of nitric oxide, before activation. L-Arg was also observed to suppress the generation of superoxide and hydroxyl radical appreciably. The nitric oxide synthase inhibitor, aminoguanidine drastically inhibited the nitrite release and reversed the protection offered by L-Arg to the inhibitor activity. Our results indicate a multifactorial nature of the inactivation process, the culprit species being superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, hydroxyl radical and hypohalides. Nitric oxide seems to scavenge the superoxide radical directly after its formation rather than inhibiting its generation by NADPH oxidase as was believed earlier.     

Evolution and adoption of contributor role ontologies and taxonomies

Contributor Role Ontologies and Taxonomies (CROTs) are standard vocabularies to describe individual contributions to a scholarly project or research output. Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) is one of the most widely used CROTs, and has been adopted by numerous journals to describe author's contributions, and recently formalized as a ANSI/NISO standard. Despite these developments, there is still much work left to be done to improve how CROTs are used across different research domains, research output types, and scholarly workflows. In this paper, we describe how CROTs could be extended to include roles from various disciplines in an ethical and inclusive manner. We explore potential approaches to apply CROTs to diverse research objects and various disciplines; as well as envision their integration into various scholarly workflows, such as promotion and tenure in academic institutions. Lastly, we discuss potential mechanisms for wide adoption and use. While acknowledging that improving current systems of attribution is a slow and iterative process, we believe that engaging the community in the evolution of CROTs will ultimately enhance the ethical attribution of credit and responsibilities in scholarly publications.