Librarians as Mentors in an Undergraduate Research Program

Projects in undergraduate research programs differ from assignments in courses in that they are independent of an institution's curriculum, and faculty mentoring plays a more important role. These programs can be fertile ground for librarians interested in participating. Whether such librarians would make good mentors for undergraduate researchers depends largely on their experience and education. Texas Tech University has two of these programs, but library support for them has been sporadic. The time is overdue for librarians involved in campus outreach and instruction to examine how they can best support Texas Tech's undergraduate research activities, and, in particular, whether they are adequately prepared to provide effective mentoring to undergraduate research students. This article reports on such an examination.     

大规模数据挖掘中的数据流管理

在企业环境中,管理数据流或者实时数据更新是任何数据挖掘操作的一个主要挑战.无论是数据还是元数据,都要确保数据流的稳定、正确、可验.在这种环境下,实时数据更新很复杂,且数据量大而难懂.管理频繁变化的数据和元数据对企业是巨大的挑战.本文阐述了在管理企业数据的任务中的技术问题,并提出了一种解决方法.这种解决方法可以结合多个领域里的知识,如工程技术和统计学,来理解和标准化企业挖掘的准备工作,以使信息采集和质量管理自动化.     

Hidden in the Middle: Culture,Value and Reward in Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics – the so-called shotgun marriage between biology and computer science – is an interdiscipline. Despite interdisciplinarity being seen as a virtue, for having the capacity to solve complex problems and foster innovation, it has the potential to place projects and people in anomalous categories. For example, valorised ‘outputs’ in academia are often defined and rewarded by discipline. Bioinformatics, as an interdisciplinary bricolage, incorporates experts from various disciplinary cultures with their own distinct ways of working. Perceived problems of interdisciplinarity include difficulties of making explicit knowledge that is practical, theoretical, or cognitive. But successful interdisciplinary research also depends on an understanding of disciplinary cultures and value systems, often only tacitly understood by members of the communities in question. In bioinformatics, the ‘parent’ disciplines have different value systems; for example, what is considered worthwhile research by computer scientists can be thought of as trivial by biologists, and vice versa. This paper concentrates on the problems of reward and recognition described by scientists working in academic bioinformatics in the United Kingdom. We highlight problems that are a consequence of its cross-cultural make-up, recognising that the mismatches in knowledge in this borderland take place not just at the level of the practical, theoretical, or epistemological, but also at the cultural level too. The trend in big, interdisciplinary science is towards multiple authors on a single paper; in bioinformatics this has created hybrid or fractional scientists who find they are being positioned not just in-between established disciplines but also in-between as middle authors or, worse still, left off papers altogether.     

Inductive Influence

Objective Bayesianism has been criticised for not allowing learningfrom experience: it is claimed that an agent must give degreeof belief     

Mental health among former students with special educational needs who are now in their mid‐30s

This article discusses how psychosocial health in adolescence influences adult mental health among former students with special educational needs in Norway. These individuals have been followed prospectively from their teens and into their mid‐30s. The study is inspired by life course perspectives with an emphasis on cumulative processes. The logistic regression analysis reveals that the risk of suffering from adult mental distress is higher among those with psychosocial difficulties in their juvenile years compared with those without such problems. Our results also show that the mental health of subjects who experienced health problems and received social security benefits in their late 20s is negatively affected when they are 33 to 34 years of age. In addition, the risk of poor adult mental health is considerably higher for females than males. Receiving assistance from teaching assistants in the classroom at upper secondary school does not seem to be conducive to subsequent positive mental health.     

Doing Good and Feeling Good: The Experiences of Older Volunteers in a University Research Registry

This paper reports the findings from a study that explored the experiential knowledge of older volunteers who participated in university research projects. Findings suggest that most participants were very positive about their experiences, and they appreciated the opportunity to contribute to research into ageing issues. In terms of areas of improvement, many highlighted the need for researchers to provide feedback on research outcomes and to consider access and transport issues. The capacity for critical reflection amongst participants suggests the potential for the development of more responsive research as well as for cultivating partnerships with older people in future research activities.     

Perceptions of communication content and life satisfaction among the elderly

This investigation examines the reported conversational content of elderly interaction as it relates to the ability of aged individuals to adapt successfully to life. One hundred twenty individuals over the age of 65 living in three separate environments completed the Adult Communication Survey. Results indicate that reports of certain topics of conversation covary with reported life satisfaction. This result is complex mitigated by living environment. The theoretical as well as pragmatic implications of these results are discussed.