Regular Readers Research Articles

Key users of Polish digital libraries

PurposeThe article concerns efforts to identify the key users of Polish digital libraries.Design/methodology/approachThe research was based on a questionnaire containing 19 questions, on subjects which included ways of using the library, reasons for using it, and which types of publications were most often used. Use was also made of statistical data collected on the library's server. An attempt was made to characterize the dominant groups of digital library users, taking a user's interests as the main determinant. The analysis focused on age, sex, level of education, and size of town where users reside. An attempt was also made to determine approximately the total number of users.FindingsApproximately 60 per cent of users are amateur historians with an interest in the history of their place of residence or genealogists interested in the history of their family. The remaining 40 per cent consist mainly of academic researchers and students. The number of regular readers – those who use the library at least several times per year – is approximately 30,000. There will probably be a significant rise in the number of users in the amateur historians and genealogists category. One of the factors that may affect the number of users is the expansion of information technology infrastructure in rural areas. This will undoubtedly cause a significant rise in the number of internet users, although the number of digital library users will probably increase only marginally as a result of this. A second factor is the spreading of internet skills in the over‐70 age group. In a few years' time that group will be more numerous. The group that affords the greatest prospects for expansion is students. Firstly this is a group that numbers two million people in Poland, and secondly they require universal access to textbooks. A cause for concern is the minimal interest in digital libraries shown by teachers and school pupils.Research limitations/implicationsThis is the first stage of research into the function performed by digital libraries in Polish society.Originality/valueThis is the first study carried out in Poland to answer the question of who uses digital libraries, to what extent, and why.

Special issue: Diversity, participation and creativity in learning

In our evolving international policy landscape there is continued pressure to ensure that students are attending school, achieving targets and making appropriate levels of progress. Regular readers of this journal are familiar with editorial arguments that, where performance, targetand testdriven regimes dominate, this threatens pedagogical processes and the breadth of the curriculum and neglects the vital purposes of schooling in working towards social justice and equity (Wrigley, 2012). Where such regimes are less prevalent, there are still considerable and continual challenges in identifying and implementing strategies to ensure that schooling is engaging, relevant and lifeenhancing in supporting the learning and well-being of all children and young people. There are further challenges in exploring opportunities for enabling schools to draw upon the rich learning resources beyond their boundaries, in turn enhancing the involvement and experience of families and local communities in a reciprocal educational process.

APSA Africa Workshops: 2012 Program Update and FAQs

Regular readers of the International Programs section of PS will be familiar with APSA's Africa Workshop program, an academic conference series funded by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation, now going into its 5th annual iteration. This summer, approximately 30 scholars from across Africa and the United States will gather at the University of Botswana in Gaborone for this year's workshop “Local Communities and the State in Africa.”

An International Collaboration

Over the past several years, we have included occasional contributions concerning neonatology in other countries under the heading of International Perspectives . This month’s issue of NeoReviews could perhaps be considered a “giant” International Perspective . As regular readers of NeoReviews will know, during the past decade, we have managed to attract contributions from several countries other than North America for review …

Regression Analysis and Causal Inference: Cause for Concern?

Norman A. Constantine is senior scientist and director, Center for Research on Adolescent Health and Development, Public Health Institute, Oakland, CA, and clinical professor of community health and human development, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley. Regular readers of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health may have noticed a preference among published authors for regression analysis as their primary methodology. In fact, last year, a substantial majority of this journal’s articles employed some form of regression analysis, predominantly logistic regression. Such methodological dominance—which is by no means unique to this journal—supports the need for a critical review of the common uses and misuses of these types of analyses, and a careful examination of the validity threats and issues associated with the claims, conclusions and recommendations that typically result. When used appropriately, regression analysis can be a powerful tool: It allows one to statistically model the relationship between a dependent (outcome) variable and a set of independent (predictor) variables. Linear regression is used with continuous dependent variables, such as number of sex partners or infant birth weight, while logistic regression is used with dichotomous dependent variables, such as a history of pregnancy or STD infection. Both forms of regression allow for the assessment of whether an independent variable (such as age, attitudes, protective behaviors or services received) is associated with an outcome variable while controlling for (statistically removing) the outcome’s overlapping associations with other variables. These types of analyses are generally applied to correlational data, such as survey, census or administrative data, in so-called observational studies. Of course, regression analysis is not needed in every study employing quantitative data. For example, results of abortion surveillance over time and across locations can be usefully presented employing just percentage or rate distributions. The potential power and added complexity of regression analysis are best reserved for either predicting outcomes or explaining relationships. The prediction of outcomes on the basis of current characteristics is possible without regard to the causal relationships among variables. For instance, regression analyses have shown that Asian and college-educated parents are the least likely among all social and demographic subgroups to support human papillomavirus vaccination for their daughters; these fi ndings can be used to identify the need for educational campaigns for these two subgroups even without understanding why they are the least supportive of vaccination. However, to develop effective educational campaigns, it is also necessary to understand the factors that infl uence parents’ support for having their daughters vaccinated. When the goal is to understand (i.e., explain) the causal infl uences on a population outcome—a prerequisite for the design and development of any sexual health intervention—regression analysis can be a powerful tool, but it has some fundamental limitations. Its appropriate use requires substantial care and skill, as well as suffi cient inferential humility.

Acknowledging small acts of kindness

As regular readers will know, a number of recent editorials in Nursing Ethics have focused on unethical health-care practice. It is necessary to strive to understand this and to work in our different areas of practice to eradicate it. It is also important to draw attention to, celebrate and reward ethical practice. Therefore, I would like to share a practice example that highlights, I believe, the very best of nursing practice. It was just after 9 am on a Monday morning when an email with the subject ‘Fab student’ was forwarded to me by a colleague. The email was from a staff nurse in the emergency department of a local hospital. She described a practice situation where one of our student nurses had, in her view, gone beyond the call of duty in delivering end-of-life care to a patient. I contacted both the student and the staff nurse and asked them to describe the situation in detail. Each wanted to give credit to the other for the actions that undoubtedly enhanced the final hours of an elderly patient. The staff nurse, Sarah, emailed me her version of events. She described her busy practice area and the admission of a patient she called ‘Lily’ (not her real name). Lily was a 78-year-old woman who was admitted from a residential home. ‘She had been an independent woman who only gave up work a couple of years before which she worked as a carer in a rest home herself’. Lily had no family and had arrived at the hospital, around lunchtime, after collapsing and having a period of unconsciousness. A variety of diagnoses were initially suggested. She was found to have significant abdominal pain and was referred to the surgical team who thought she may have a perforated bowel secondary to an obstruction. Sarah said:

Partial Caries Excavation

Regular readers will note that we depart from our normal Critical Appraisal format in this issue of the Journal. This particular Critical Appraisal resembles an expanded Contemporary Issues feature and describes a protocol for partial caries excavation that was recently implemented in the student clinics of the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Dentistry.

Brain activity while reading words and pseudo-words: A comparison between dyslexic and fluent readers

In recent years many studies have focused on brain activity differences between fluent and dyslexic readers in order to understand the neural basis of dyslexia. The aim of the current study was to examine the processing of words and pseudo-words in the two hemispheres among dyslexic as compared to fluent readers, using behavioral, and electrophysiological source estimation measures. Two matched groups of university students, fluent and dyslexic readers, performed a lexical decision task in order to examine the processes of word recognition. Dyslexic readers showed overall less activity than fluent readers, mainly during late processing stages. In addition, the distinctive patterns of activity for words and pseudo-words displayed by fluent readers were not apparent in dyslexic readers. In particular, the increased activation of left-hemisphere language areas found in response to pseudo-words was absent in dyslexics. These findings are further evidence of orthographic and phonological impairments in dyslexia.

The social weaving of a reading atmosphere

This paper discusses how public library readers in Almeida Garrett, Porto, create a reading atmosphere, focusing on meanings associated with aural conditions. Through a qualitative, single case study, ethnographic and interview techniques were applied. Readers’ actual practices and discourses, through a theoretical sample, and those of managers, staff and architects were analysed; a spatial analysis was conducted within the framework of social inequalities and power relations. The paper proposes the concept of reading atmosphere and suggests that its social production is based on a tacit, informal code of conduct in which some regular readers played an influential role. Some recommendations on service provision are made.

Letter to the Editor

11 July 2011 Dear Editor, Being regular readers and sometimes contributors to the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, recognising its importance as both an academic and clinical forum for best practice in child and adolescent health, we were very disappointed to see such a negative depiction of an adolescent patient in the cartoon by Henry Kilham on page 339 of the June issue of the journal. Although we are sure that the motivation for inclusion of such a cartoon was good humour, even perhaps containing a positive message of a young person demanding high-quality health care, with respect, we feel that the overriding message is both negative and unnecessary. As two paediatricians working regularly with young people, especially those from marginalised and disenfranchised groups, we find a key and frequently encountered barrier to health provision and advocacy are prejudice, often presenting as the kind of stereotype well demonstrated in this image. As you will know, the burden of illness is significantly higher in older children and adolescents than in the under 5-year age group.1 Advocacy is central to tackling this deficit and we view publishing such an anachronistic depiction of an adolescent patient unhelpful in trying to get our profession to see adolescent patients as a core part of our daily business. Furthermore, at a time where the RACP has released several policies advocating for adolescent health2, 3 and has recently developed a SAC for training in adolescent and young adult health, we find the inclusion of such a cartoon incongruous with broader college changes. The offending cartoon, by Henry Kilham. Yours sincerely,

On Interpretivism and Formalism in Sports Officiating: From General to Particular Jurisprudence

By what standards can rules, norms, and practices of sport be meaningfully or appropriately evaluated? Naturally, such rules and practices can be evaluated by reference to general—i.e., “external”—moral or other normative standards. Similarly, the practices of a given sport can be evaluated by reference to that sport’s own rules. But do sports furnish standards, principles, or values, not contained within or reducible to their formal rules, against which the sport’s rules and practices are rationally evaluable? As regular readers of this journal know, philosophers of sport have increasingly converged on an affirmative answer to this question, a position that Robert Simon dubbed “internalism.” (Simon 2000) Furthermore, many sport philosophers follow J.S. Russell (Russell 1999) in believing that Ronald Dworkin’s work in the philosophy of law (e.g., Dworkin 1986) offers the most compelling account or defense of internalism. As applied to sport, Dworkin’s theory, “interpretivism,” provides (to a first approximation) that abstract principles are part of the law governing a sport and that those principles can be determined by reflection on the values and purposes that best cohere with the institutional history of the sport and show it in its best light.

Can Intervention Programs Influence How the Dyslexic Brain Processes Low-Level Visual Stimuli?

This preliminary study employed event-related potentials (ERPs) to determine the effect of different intervention programs for dyslexia. Two intervention programs were used; the CogniFit Personal Coach (CPC) and the Reading Acceleration Program (RAP). Differences between a small group of dyslexic readers and a control group of regular readers were examined on two visual oddball tasks. The two oddball tasks included a non-alphabetic task and a non-contextual alphabetic one. The amplitude and latency of ERP component P1 is reported here, showing a decrease in amplitude and an increase in latency after training, suggesting an amplitude-latency tradeoff after visual training.

The locomotor system as seen in Brazilian medical journals: a restricted collection of papers

This review covers recent publications on the motor system (orthopedics and movement) in Brazilian journals recently admitted to the ISI-Thomson Journal of Citations Index. Two of these are still pleading for admission into PubMed which will eventually enhance their global visibility. We offer this contribution to experts on these areas who are regular readers of Revista da Associação Médica Brasileira. Full free copies of all of them are available at www.scielo.br. The main areas covered are orthopedics of limb articulations, fractures, movement, posture, gait, exercise and animal models.

The locomotor system as seen in Brazilian medical journals: a restricted collection of papers

This review covers recent publications on the motor system (orthopedics and movement) in Brazilian journals recently admitted to the ISI-Thomson Journal of Citations Index. Two of these are still pleading for admission into PubMed which will eventually enhance their global visibility. We offer this contribution to experts on these areas who are regular readers of Revista da Associação Médica Brasileira. Full free copies of all of them are available at www.scielo.br. The main areas covered are orthopedics of limb articulations, fractures, movement, posture, gait, exercise and animal models.

Change… and a holiday? The 24th National Conference and Exhibition

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts. Arnold Bennett Regular readers of the Australian Occupational Therapy Journal will recall the letter to the Editor Scholarly communication and concerns for our conferences (Lannin et al., 2009) and the concern raised that occupational therapy associations were travelling down a path, where scientific conferences were more about current ideologies than scholarly research. In 2009, Occupational Therapy Australia (OTA) established a Conference Scientific Program Review Taskforce and in late 2009 performed a comprehensive review of the scientific review process. This resulted in three key changes related to how the Scientific Committee was formed, the rating system for abstracts and the process of abstract review. The resultant changes will be showcased at the upcoming 24th National Conference to be held 29 June – 1 July 2011 in the Gold Coast. Changes to the Scientific Review Committee membership stated for the first time that all members must demonstrate PhD research capacity or equivalent as an indicator for understanding of methodology. This committee was involved in review of the rating system and is solely responsible for the review of anonymous abstracts. Abstract review is the key point of programming of a scientific conference. Ideally, each participant should leave the meeting with the feeling of having been exposed to the state of the art research and clinical practice exemplars. Selecting the best papers is not an easy job: many abstracts are excellent and to rank them in a meritocratic order is complicated. To assist in ranking papers, this year OTA implemented a standardised rating system (based on the Canadian Occupational Therapy Association guidelines) with operationally defined rating categories in an effort to improve rater reliability. To address rating variability, each anonymous abstract was assessed separately by five members of the Scientific Committee. This will be the first time that abstracts were rated by a consistent group of methodological and content experts. While the new system is not without drawbacks, the largest being the time-consuming nature of abstract review, it does overcome the problems of multiple raters and the wide variability in abstract rating quality. The reliability of the new system of abstract review is currently being evaluated in an effort to ensure that these changes have achieved the desired outcomes. Finally, to accommodate a larger number of paper presentations, we have also included short paper sessions, designed where five or six papers on related topics presented successively followed then by questions and discussion with the audience. The Conference Scientific Program Committee has created a balanced programme of 352 papers, 61 posters, and nine invited workshops/symposia exploring evidence-based occupational therapy and the implications on the individual therapist, our clients and profession. And this year, we will also offer consumer presentations as part of our scientific programme, including a keynote address from Emma Gee an occupational therapist who suffered a stroke at the young age of 24. It must be noted that change is never easy. Occupational therapy is a practice-based profession and concerns were raised early by members suggesting that many were uncomfortable that change might mean the end of clinician-led papers. The Scientific Committee has worked hard to ensure that this is not the case. Fifty percent of the members of the Scientific Committee are clinician-researchers, and within the programme, more than 80 practice notes will be presented as platform papers. The Scientific Committee was also selected from a broad representation of our profession in an effort to ensure that all papers were able to be reviewed by methodology and content experts. This has resulted in a broad, representative programme, with 18 occupational therapy practice areas having dedicated streams. The importance of moving forwards as one unified group has never been so important. So, while change may feel uncomfortable, we must embrace it. This year we celebrate the birth of our national Association, the move towards national registration, and I invite all readers to join us at the (new) 24th National Conference in June. It will be a time to share experiences, knowledge and expectations to continue walking this path of change, together.

The influence of newspaper coverage and a media campaign on smokers' support for smoke-free bars and restaurants and on secondhand smoke harm awareness: findings from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Netherlands Survey

ObjectiveTo assess the influence of newspaper coverage and a media campaign about Dutch smoke-free legislation on smokers' support for smoke-free bars and restaurants and on secondhand smoke (SHS) harm awareness.Design...

New Measures

Regular readers of this column might recall the installment that appeared in the November/ December 2010 issue, "An Index of Cybersecurity," which suggested that such an index (the ICS) would soon appear. Prophesy is now fulfilled: the ICS has begun publication at cybersecurityindex.org. It's what is called a sentiment-based index- if you're familiar with the US Consumer Confidence Index, then you already know what it is (http://tinyurl.com/3sb633k). Respondents to the ICS are competent security practitioners "with direct operational responsibility who share, each month, how their view of security in several areas has changed since the month before. Thanks to them for their willingness to engage. The ICS is one leg of strategy; with colleagues Alex Hutton (Verizon) and Greg Shannon (CERT), the second leg is a formal prediction market for cyber security, now in beta test. Where the ICS is a measure of position, a prediction market is a measure of momentum (direction and velocity). Prediction markets have an extensively documented theory and great design flexibility, but the short form description of the simplest prediction market is tha tin such a market the participants are vying with each other to better predict whether concrete future events will or will not occur. They do this by the buying and selling of contracts that posit that such and such an event will occur by such and such a time.

In praise of a paper journal

A JRSM reader recently told me that she was switching back to the print publication because visiting the website (jrsm.rsmjournals.com) to read JRSM wasn't part of her routine and was never likely to be. The only way to read JRSM, then, was to pick up the print edition. We know visitors to journal websites are usually seeking specific information, a particular article that they have discovered via a web search. They may not necessarily be regular readers of your journal, and have no particular loyalty to it. Reading one article is unlikely to convert them into regular readers. The first challenge for journals, therefore, is to develop online services that will be valuable to readers and are not possible in print. Despite radio, television, the Internet, and now Kindle, people still enjoy reading a book or a journal in print. Will print journals ever disappear entirely? Many will die – eventually – but plenty will survive to satisfy our desire for touching words on a page. The journals that endure will publish much else besides research. They will major on editorials, essays and reviews. They will synthesize knowledge for a community instead of publishing random bites of information. They will also need to entertain. The second challenge for journals, therefore, is to develop a print version that will be valuable to readers without publishing research. None of this is new, these prophecies have been written for more than a decade, but the challenge is more immediate. Online-only journals, many with an author-pays model like JRSM Short Reports (shortreports.rsmjournals.com), are attracting a larger number of submissions. Their value is in publishing research quickly and being less selective about their publication policies. JRSM Short Reports is now on PubMed Central and we have applied for full indexing. The online world is moving rapidly in terms of publication of research. Meanwhile, the print world is more sedate but it needs to quicken its speed of change. Bigger, richer, weekly journals have sufficient resources to adapt and have an in built inertia that can weather the winds of change. The predicament is more acute for smaller journals, and their battle for survival, because of the laws of economics, will become more acute. These are dangerous times. JRSM floats somewhere between the big beasts of the publishing ocean and the minnows battling for survival, although our aspiration is to swim with big beasts rather than be consumed like minnows. As such, we are considering the next stage in the evolution of both print and online versions of JRSM. We have many ideas for development but we welcome suggestions from JRSM readers about how the journal might better serve their needs in print and online while positioning itself cleverly for the future of medical journals.

Lexical decision with left, right and center visual field presentation: a comparison between dyslexic and regular readers by means of electrophysiological and behavioral measures

This study examined the differences in processing between regular and dyslexic readers in a lexical decision task in different visual field presentations (left, right, and center). The research utilized behavioral measures that provide information on accuracy and reaction time and electro-physiological measures that permit the examination of brain activity during cognitive processing. Two groups of university students, regular and dyslexic readers, were matched on age, gender, intelligence, socioeconomic status, and handedness. A lexical decision task was used in order to examine the processes during word recognition. Subjects were required to decide whether a sequence of letters constituted a real word existing in spoken language or whether the stimulus seen was not an accurate word. For the behavioral measures, it was found that the dyslexics read slower and with more errors than the regular readers. Moreover, the ERP components appeared later in dyslexics as compared to regular readers in this task. The performance of the dyslexics improved and even approached that of the regular readers when the stimuli were presented to the left visual field. Thus, it seems that the dyslexics were relying more on their right hemisphere for linguistic processing, whereas the regular readers were relying more on their language areas in the left hemisphere.

Revisiting CEWIGs: A reflection on the usage of collocations of ‘English’ with ‘world’, ‘international’ and ‘global’

As regular readers ofEnglish Todaywould probably be aware, in the early years of the 21st Century, when applied linguists discuss the world-wide significance of the most widely learned and used language, it is not always enough to simply refer to it as ‘English’ or ‘the English language’. On the contrary, it has become almostde rigueurto collocate the word ‘English’ with ‘world’, ‘international’ or ‘global’. Thus, we have the six commonly used expressions set out in Table 1. At the risk of adding further to the crowded landscape of abbreviations in applied linguistics, I will refer to these as ‘CEWIGs’ (Collocations of ‘English’ with ‘world’, ‘international’ and ‘global’).