Technical analysis of a Central Asian wall painting detached from a Buddhist cave temple on the northern Silk Road

A great number of Central Asian wall paintings, archeological materials, architectural fragments, and textiles, as well as painting fragments on silk and paper, make up the so called Turfan Collection at the Asian Art Museum in Berlin. The largest part of the collection comes from the Kucha region, a very important cultural center in the third to ninth centuries. Between 1902 and 1914, four German expeditions traveled along the northern Silk Road. During these expeditions, wall paintings were detached from their original settings in Buddhist cave complexes. This paper reports a technical study of a wall painting, existing in eight fragments, from the Buddhist cave no. 40 (Ritterhöhle). Its original painted surface is soot blackened and largely illegible. Grünwedel, leader of the first and third expeditions, described the almost complete destruction of the rediscovered temple complex and evidence of fire damage. The aim of this case study is to identify the materials used for the wall paintings. Furthermore, soot deposits as well as materials from conservation interventions were of interest. Non-invasive analyses were preferred but a limited number of samples were taken to provide more precise information on the painting technique. By employing optical and scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, micro X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction analysis, and Raman spectroscopy, a layer sequence of earthen render, a ground layer made of gypsum, and a paint layer containing a variety of inorganic pigments were identified.     

Introduction to Usus,a Community Website on Library Usage,and a Discussion about COUNTER 4

Established in 2014, Usus (Latin for usage), supported by Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources (COUNTER), but editorially independent, is a community-run website designed to provide a space for librarians, consortia, publishers, aggregators, repository managers, and scholars to discuss all aspects of usage, including particular ways that use is measured. In this session, Usus Supervisory Board members provided an introduction to Usus, outlined the purpose of the community-run site, and discussed how librarians may utilize the site to submit ongoing and complex usage issues. In addition, the presenters engaged attendees in discussing specific e-resource usage issues they have encountered as well as report changes and additions in the recently released COUNTER Code of Practice 4.     

The influence of achievement motivation and chess-specific motivation on deliberate practice

Although the importance of high motivation to engage in deliberate practice has been acknowledged, no research has directly tested this hypothesis. Therefore, the present study examined this relation in adolescent elite chess players by means of a questionnaire. In addition, to provide an explanation for dropout among promising chess players, differences in motivation between persistent and dropout chess players were analyzed. Competitiveness and the will to excel proved to be predictors of investments in deliberate practice. Moreover, achievement motivation and chess-specific motivation differed to a certain extent between persisters and dropouts. Our results suggest that motivation to engage in deliberate practice not only contains elements of the will to improve performance, but also of the will to attain exceptional levels of performance.     

Measuring Textbook Content Coverage: Efficient Content Analysis with Lesson Sampling

This study addresses measurement issues around a standards-based content analysis of mathematics textbooks’ coverage of standards for use in large-scale monitoring of standards implementation as proposed in a 2013 report by the National Research Council. An earlier study produced an exhaustive content analysis of textbooks using the 2012 Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. This yielded an accurate and reliable portrait of a textbook's coverage of standards. However, such an in-depth analysis is not feasible for large-scale standards-implementation monitoring in which a large number of textbooks may need to be analyzed. To provide such a portrait with sufficient accuracy while also substantially reducing the associated resources needed to produce such a portrait, a simulation study was conducted with the exhaustively coded database to compare different sampling schemes. Results indicated that sampling 1 day from each week and coding the corresponding lessons led to sufficiently accurate representations of the overall content of the textbook. The results provide empirical evidence for large-scale standards-based content analyses of mathematics textbooks for monitoring standards implementation which could be adapted for other subject areas.     

Using Food Science Demonstrations to Engage Students of All Ages in Science,Technology, Engineering,and Mathematics (STEM)

Abstract: The overarching goal of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Initiative is to foster effective STEM teaching and learning throughout the educational system at the local, state, and national levels, thereby producing science literate citizens and a capable STEM workforce. To contribute to achieving this goal, we have assembled six food science demonstrations for use at all educational levels and have presented these lessons to students at the elementary through higher education levels. The focus of this article is to share these food science demonstrations and our experiences using them so that others can use them for engaging students in STEM disciplines, through food science, at any educational level. Featured demonstrations include: (1) liquid nitrogen ice cream: a matter of changing phases, (2) seeing our senses work together, (3) whipping up the cream, (4) milk versus dark: what is the difference?, (5) counting calories by burning them, and (6) culinary spherification: the wonders of cross‐linking. Overall, our experience with using these demonstrations has been very positive. Students appear engaged in the learning process and love to consume the demonstration end products. Downloadable handouts containing demonstration details for each demonstration are available as supporting information.     

Synthetic biology in the view of European public funding organisations

We analysed the decisions of major European public funding organisations to fund or not to fund synthetic biology (SB) and related ethical, legal and social implication (ELSI) studies. We investigated the reaction of public organisations in six countries (Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.K.) towards SB that may influence SB's further development in Europe. We examined R&D and ELSI communities and their particular funding situation. Our results show that the funding situation for SB varies considerably among the analysed countries, with the U.K. as the only country with an established funding scheme for R&D and ELSI that successfully integrates these research communities. Elsewhere, we determined a general lack of funding (France), difficulties in funding ELSI work (Switzerland), lack of an R&D community (Austria), too small ELSI communities (France, Switzerland, Netherlands), or difficulties in linking existing communities with available funding sources (Germany), partly due to an unclear SB definition.     

Circulation of core collection monographs in an academic medical library

Academic medical librarians responsible for monograph acquisition face a challenging task. From the plethora of medical monographs published each year, academic medical librarians must select those most useful to their patrons. Unfortunately, none of the selection tools available to medical librarians are specifically intended to assist academic librarians with medical monograph selection. The few short core collection lists that are available are intended for use in the small hospital or internal medicine department library. As these are the only selection tools available, however, many academic medical librarians spend considerable time reviewing these collection lists and place heavy emphasis on the acquisition of listed books. The study reported here was initiated to determine whether the circulation of listed books in an academic library justified the emphasis placed on the acquisition of these books. Circulation statistics for "listed" and "nonlisted" books in the hematology (WH) section of Indiana University School of Medicine's Ruth Lilly Medical Library were studied. The average circulation figures for listed books were nearly two times as high as the corresponding figures for the WH books in general. These data support the policies of those academic medical libraries that place a high priority on collection of listed books.