Science Data Archive Research Articles

Data on the Margins – Data from LGBTIQ+ Populations in European Social Science Data Archives

Data gaps are a significant lack of data about marginalized groups existing due to unequal power relations (D’Ignazio and Klein, 2020). They both perpetuate and result in a dominance of male, white, hetero, and cis perspectives in how we make sense of and interact with the world. The most prominent data gap is the gender data gap notably described by Criado-Perez (2020). However, not only women, but all marginalized groups are affected by such gaps, as data about them are frequently not collected due to a disregard on behalf of those in power of the need to do so. LGBTIQ+ people, considered a ‘hidden population’ by demographers, are a case in point. The acronym is used to refer to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, and queer people, as well as all people with non-normative sexual or gender identities, including asexual and agender people, who do not consider themselves as falling under one of these labels. A first step towards identifying and closing data gaps is to take stock of data that already exist. In this paper we give an overview of LGBTIQ+ data in European social science archives. We researched all data archives of CESSDA ERIC, the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives, and found 66 LGBTIQ+ datasets in 9 of the 34 member and associated archives and 1 former member archive. We discuss characteristics, coverages, and findability of the identified datasets and approach the question of potential data gaps by analyzing the keywords assigned to each dataset by the archive.

A dataset for measuring the impact of research data and their curation

Science funders, publishers, and data archives make decisions about how to responsibly allocate resources to maximize the reuse potential of research data. This paper introduces a dataset developed to measure the impact of archival and data curation decisions on data reuse. The dataset describes 10,605 social science research datasets, their curation histories, and reuse contexts in 94,755 publications that cover 59 years from 1963 to 2022. The dataset was constructed from study-level metadata, citing publications, and curation records available through the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan. The dataset includes information about study-level attributes (e.g., PIs, funders, subject terms); usage statistics (e.g., downloads, citations); archiving decisions (e.g., curation activities, data transformations); and bibliometric attributes (e.g., journals, authors) for citing publications. This dataset provides information on factors that contribute to long-term data reuse, which can inform the design of effective evidence-based recommendations to support high-impact research data curation decisions.

A data-driven ensemble technique for the detection of false data injection attacks in the smart grid framework

The major component of the smart grid (SG) is the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), which monitors and controls the existing power system and provides interactive services for invoicing and electricity usage management with the utility. Including a cyber-layer in the metering system allows two-way communication but creates a new opportunity for energy theft, resulting in significant monetary loss. This article proposes an approach to detecting abnormal consumption patterns using energy metering data based on the ensemble technique AdaBoost, a boosting algorithm. Different statistical and descriptive features are retrieved from metering data samples, which account for extreme conditions. The model is trained for malicious and non-malicious data for five different attack scenarios, which are analyzed on the Irish Social Science Data Archive (ISSDA) smart meter dataset. In contrast to prior supervised techniques, it works well even with unbalanced data. The efficacy of the proposed theft detection method has been evaluated by comparing the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score with the other well-known approaches in the literature.

Developing systems to encourage FAIR and secure research data

Welcome to first issue of IASSIST Quarterly for 2024; this is Volume 48 of the journal (IQ 48(1) 2024). The three papers in this issue represent different aspects of researchers’ use of data archives. Experts from three major data archives (ICPSR, IPUMS, and GESIS) share their experiences developing systems to make research resources in their archives more findable, accessible, and usable. Lafia, Million, and Hemphill in their article “Exploratory and directed search strategies at a social science data archive” investigate search strategies of users of a large social science data archive. In an effort to understand how users search for curated research data, the authors analyze data queries issued through the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) website’s search box. The study is meant to inform archives and repositories of their users’ experience and help develop systems that encourage dataset findability, accessibility and reuse. The authors identify two types of data searches, exploratory and directed searches. They find that while users that issued exploratory queries were able to navigate the ICPSR website successfully and refine their searches, they may benefit from more explicit support for query reformation. The authors suggest ways development of tools and training could improve users’ experience. In the article “Stewarding our resources: Building a sustainable IPUMS archival document access system” Daina Magnuson describes IPUMS experience building a web interface to support exploration and dissemination of archival materials associated with IPUMS International (IPUMS-I). Ancillary materials, including thousands of unique pieces of census and survey documentation were obtained by IPUMS-I during data acquisition efforts. This rich source material was curated and preserved by archival staff. Magnuson describes in details the development of a system that would make these resources findable, searchable and downloadable to internal users as well as IPUMS researchers. Strategies describe may inform other data archives considering developing similar tools. Deborah Wiltshire in her article “Developing canonical ‘Safe Researcher’ training materials for Trusted Research Environment” describes the development of training materials for researchers applying to access restricted data through Trusted Research Environment (TRE). The increased use of a virtual desktop environment, as opposed to physical safe rooms, offers researchers easier and more flexible access to restricted data; however, it offers fewer physical safeguards. Attending a mandatory ‘Safe Researcher’ training is one of the principles of the Five Safe Framework[i] developed by the UK’s Office for National Statistics to bridge this gap and assure the safe use of sensitive data. The process described in the article could be easily adapted by other TREs according to their needs and settings (e.g., in-person vs. online training). In the spirit of making information findable, accessible and reusable, we’re happy to share that the Open Journal System platform from the University of Alberta has enabled author linking to ORCID. This means that IQ authors are now able to connect their ORCID iDs to their IQ publications, so that their ORCID profiles will automatically update with those citations as their articles are published. For existing IQ account holders, log into your account at the upper right of the IQ page, and go to Profile > Public. Then click “Create or Connect your ORCID iD” (just below the Homepage URL field). For details, see this video walkthrough of profile authentication. New IQ users will automatically be prompted to link (or create) their ORCID iDs during IQ account creation. Authors are also encouraged to note their ORCID iD link with their affiliation and contact information in an endnote when submitting a manuscript for publication. We hope to see many of you at the 49th Annual IASSIST Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, May 28-31, 2024! Ofira Schwartz and Michele Hayslett, March 2024

Celebrating 30 years of access to NASA Space Life Sciences data.

NASA's space life sciences research programs established a decades-long legacy of enhancing our ability to safely explore the cosmos. From Skylab and the Space Shuttle Program to the NASA Balloon Program and the International Space Station National Lab, these programs generated priceless data that continue to paint a vibrant picture of life in space. These data are available to the scientific community in various data repositories, including the NASA Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA) and NASA GeneLab. Here we recognize the 30-year anniversary of data access through ALSDA and the 10-year anniversary of GeneLab.

Broken psychological contracts in health and social care during COVID-19 among nursing professionals.

In this study we are interested about the reasons why nurses leave their occupation as a nurse and what is the role of the COVID-19 pandemic behind this decision. Our focus is in registered and auxiliary nurses working in all fields of health and social care. The research, which this abstract is based, investigates why nursing professionals are leaving their occupation and how the health care as working environment should be developed in order to secure enough enthusiastic professionals to the field. Theoretical background leans on the concept of psychological contract which we using to describe the relationship between employer and employee referring to an individual´s beliefs about the terms and conditions of a mutual exchange agreement.
 Psychological contract exchange is based on the perceptions of employee and employer rather than what is explicitly agreed and written down. The studies of the psychological contract have emphasized to breach of the contract meaning the situation where another contract party has failed to fulfill the expectations and obligations of the other party. Psychological contract breach cause dissatisfaction towards to work, impairs commitment to the organization and affects to the employee´s mental well-being and retention to work. In this study we examine situation where the psychological contracts breach has already led to leave work in health and social care. Explicit research question is: Why nurses leave their nursing position and how the COVID-19 has influenced to this decision?
 Our data consists of 36 stories wrote by registered and auxiliary nurses telling why they have left their nursing position and it was collected in Autumn 2021 via textual data collection tool “Penna” which is maintaining by Finnish Social Science Data Archive (FSD). Written request was intentionally very open and gave respondents freedom to describe their thoughts why they have left the nursing position. Altogether there were 310 stories but in here, we decided to concentrate to stories (n=36) where the COVID-19 was mentioned to be the final reason to leave the field. Based on preliminary findings, it seems that psychological contract was breached many ways during the COVID-19. For example, nurses were strongly disappointed how the work was organized during the crisis (leadership issues, working environment). They felt that their self-determination was broken especially considering the vaccination policy. In these stories, the writers emphasize the workload and lack of appreciation.
 This study highlighted that there were critical perspectives towards health and social care working conditions that the COVID-19 made even worse. This means that the was negativity and feeling of unappreciation and the COVID-19 somehow enabled to final decision. This is appearing as increase in workload and nurses were not able to have their normal and entitled vacations. Based on preliminary findings, it seems that psychological contract breached.
 Study indicates that we need to recognize the factors that are breaching the psychological contracts in order to develop and plan health and social care as well as nursing profession. This should be considered in all levels: individual, leadership and management as we

The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey V: Cataloguing the sky at 1 367.5 MHz and the second data release of RACS-mid

Abstract The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) has surveyed the sky at multiple frequencies as part of the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS). The first two RACS observing epochs, at 887.5 (RACS-low) and 1 367.5 (RACS-mid) MHz, have been released (McConnell, et al. 2020, PASA, 37, e048; Duchesne, et al. 2023, PASA, 40, e034). A catalogue of radio sources from RACS-low has also been released, covering the sky south of declination $+30^{\circ}$ (Hale, et al., 2021, PASA, 38, e058). With this paper, we describe and release the first set of catalogues from RACS-mid, covering the sky below declination $+49^{\circ}$ . The catalogues are created in a similar manner to the RACS-low catalogue, and we discuss this process and highlight additional changes. The general purpose primary catalogue covering 36 200 deg $^2$ features a variable angular resolution to maximise sensitivity and sky coverage across the catalogued area, with a median angular resolution of $11.2^{\prime\prime} \times 9.3^{\prime\prime}$ . The primary catalogue comprises 3 105 668 radio sources, including those in the Galactic Plane (2 861 923 excluding Galactic latitudes of $|b|<5^{\circ}$ ), and we estimate the catalogue to be 95% complete for sources above 2 mJy. With the primary catalogue, we also provide two auxiliary catalogues. The first is a fixed-resolution, 25-arcsec catalogue approximately matching the sky coverage of the RACS-low catalogue. This 25-arcsec catalogue is constructed identically to the primary catalogue, except images are convolved to a less-sensitive 25-arcsec angular resolution. The second auxiliary catalogue is designed for time-domain science and is the concatenation of source lists from the original RACS-mid images with no additional convolution, mosaicking, or de-duplication of source entries to avoid losing time-variable signals. All three RACS-mid catalogues, and all RACS data products, are available through the CSIRO ASKAP Science Data Archive (https://research.csiro.au/casda/).

ECRIN - CESSDA strategies for cross metadata mappings in selected areas between life sciences and social sciences and humanities.

The recent COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019) pandemic dramatically underlined the multi-faceted nature of health research, requiring input from basic biological sciences, pharmaceutical technologies, clinical research), social sciences and public health and social engineering. Systems that could work across different disciplines would therefore seem to be a useful idea to explore. In this study we investigated whether metadata schemas and vocabularies used for discovering scientific studies and resources in the social sciences and in clinical research are similar enough to allow information from different source disciplines to be easily retrieved and presented together. As a first step a literature search was performed, exemplarily identifying studies and resources, in which data from social sciences have been usefully employed or integrated with that from clinical research and clinical trials. In a second step a comparison of metadata schemas and related resource catalogues in ECRIN (European Clinical Research Infrastructure Network) and CESSDA (Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives) was performed. The focus was on discovery metadata, here defined as the metadata elements used to identify and locate scientific resources. A close view at the metadata schemas of CESSDA and ECRIN and the basic discovery metadata as well as a crosswalk between ECRIN and CESSDA metadata schemas have shown that there is considerable resemblance between them. The resemblance could serve as a promising starting point to implement a common search mechanism for ECRIN and CESSDA metadata. In the paper four different options for how to proceed with implementation issues are presented.

Database of space life investigations and information on spaceflight plant biology.

Extensive spaceflight life investigations (SLIs) have revealed observable space effects on plants, particularly their growth, nutrition yield, and secondary metabolite production. Knowledge of these effects not only facilitates space agricultural and biopharmaceutical technology development but also provides unique perspectives to ground-based investigations. SLIs are specialized experimental protocols and notable biological phenomena. These require specialized databases, leading to the development of the NASA Science Data Archive, Erasmus Experiment Archive, and NASA GeneLab. The increasing interests of SLIs across diverse fields demand resources with comprehensive content, convenient search facilities, and friendly information presentation. A new database SpaceLID (Space Life Investigation Database http://bidd.group/spacelid/ ) was developed with detailed menu search tools and categorized contents about the phenomena, protocols, and outcomes of 459 SLIs (including 106 plant investigations) of 92 species, where 236 SLIs and 57 plant investigations are uncovered by the existing databases. The usefulness of SpaceLID as an SLI information source is illustrated by the literature-reported analysis of metabolite, nutrition, and symbiosis variations of spaceflight plants.In conclusion,this study extensively investigated the impact of the space environment on plant biology, utilizing SpaceLID as an information source and examining various plant species, including Arabidopsis thaliana, Brassica rapa L., and Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch. The findings provide valuable insights into the effects of space conditions on plant physiology and metabolism.

Smartphone Dependency, Happiness, and Social Class Awareness Among Middle School Students in South Korea

Smartphone dependency (SD) has been linked to decreased happiness; however, research has not yet explored potential mediating mechanisms such as social class awareness (SCA) in this relationship. This study examined the association between SD and happiness among middle school students and the mediating effect of SCA in this relationship. Data from the 11th Korea-Child Happiness Index 2019 Survey were used, which is a cross-sectional survey administered to children and adolescents residing in South Korea collected by the Korea Social Science Data Archive (KOSSDA). A total of 2,296 Korean middle school students were selected for analysis. Findings suggest that higher levels of SD were associated with lower levels of happiness. SCA mediated the relationship between SD and happiness among middle school students. SD prevention and intervention approaches should consider the extent to which SCA impacts happiness of middle school students.

Cohort profile: The Vitality 90+ Study—a cohort study on health and living conditions of the oldest old in Tampere, Finland

PurposeVitality 90+ is an ongoing population-based study with repeated cross-sectional data collections. The study was designed to examine trends in health, functioning, living conditions, quality of life and care needs...

The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey IV: continuum imaging at 1367.5 MHz and the first data release of RACS-mid

Abstract The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) is being used to undertake a campaign to rapidly survey the sky in three frequency bands across its operational spectral range. The first pass of the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS) at 887.5 MHz in the low band has already been completed, with images, visibility datasets, and catalogues made available to the wider astronomical community through the CSIRO ASKAP Science Data Archive (CASDA). This work presents details of the second observing pass in the mid band at 1367.5 MHz, RACS-mid, and associated data release comprising images and visibility datasets covering the whole sky south of $\delta_{\text{J2000}}=+49^\circ$ . This data release incorporates selective peeling to reduce artefacts around bright sources, as well as accurately modelled primary beam responses. The Stokes I images reach a median noise of 198 $\mu$ Jy PSF $^{-1}$ with a declination-dependent angular resolution of 8.1–47.5 arcsec that fills a niche in the existing ecosystem of large-area astronomical surveys. We also supply Stokes V images after application of a widefield leakage correction, with a median noise of 165 $\mu$ Jy PSF $^{-1}$ . We find the residual leakage of Stokes I into V to be $\lesssim 0.9$ – $2.4$ % over the survey. This initial RACS-mid data release will be complemented by a future release comprising catalogues of the survey region. As with other RACS data releases, data products from this release will be made available through CASDA.

Database of space life investigations and bioinformatics of microbiology in extreme environments.

Biological experiments performed in space crafts like space stations, space shuttles, and recoverable satellites has enabled extensive spaceflight life investigations (SLIs). In particular, SLIs have revealed distinguished space effects on microbial growth, survival, metabolite production, biofilm formation, virulence development and drug resistant mutations. These provide unique perspectives to ground-based microbiology and new opportunities for industrial pharmaceutical and metabolite productions. SLIs are with specialized experimental setups, analysis methods and research outcomes, which can be accessed by established databases National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Life Science Data Archive, Erasmus Experiment Archive, and NASA GeneLab. The increasing research across diverse fields may be better facilitated by databases of convenient search facilities and categorized presentation of comprehensive contents. We therefore developed the Space Life Investigation Database (SpaceLID) http://bidd.group/spacelid/, which collected SLIs from published academic papers. Currently, this database provides detailed menu search facilities and categorized contents about the studied phenomena, materials, experimental procedures, analysis methods, and research outcomes of 448 SLIs of 90 species (microbial, plant, animal, human), 81 foods and 106 pharmaceuticals, including 232 SLIs not covered by the established databases. The potential applications of SpaceLID are illustrated by the examples of published experimental design and bioinformatic analysis of spaceflight microbial phenomena.

Collaboration between social science data archives and scientific journals in the development and implementation of data sharing policies

Major commercial scientific journal publishers have already introduced data sharing and citation policies, while independent journals are implementing such changes more slowly. As more and more funders of scientific research require researchers to make their research data as open as possible, all journals will have to adapt to support new ways of scientific communication. Social science data archives in Europe and around the world were established decades ago and have collectively accumulated vast experience in dealing with data, especially data that are sometimes hard to share because of various ethical and legal concerns. Because of this knowledge, they also have a role to play in supporting journal editors and publishers in developing and implementing editorial policies related to data sharing and citation.In this short talk we will present examples of support activities for journals from the Slovenian and Croatian Social Science Data Archive (ADP and CROSSDA, respectively). Both are service providers (SPs) for CESSDA ERIC, a recognised European research infrastructure (RIs) for social sciences.As a coordinator of the project establishing Research Data Alliance (RDA) Node in Slovenia, ADP prepared guidelines for Slovenian journals on implementing editorial policies related to data sharing and data citation (Štebe, Bezjak, Dolinar, 2020). These guidelines are based on internationally renowned practices and policies, particularly the RDA Research Data Policy Framework (Hrynaszkiewicz, I., at. al., 2020) and were adopted by four journals (from fields of archaeology, history, linguistics and social sciences) in a pilot phase (Štebe, Dolinar, Bezjak, Inkret, 2020).Both ADP and CROSSDA are part of the ongoing CESSDA Journals Outreach project, which started in 2020. As part of the project, editors-in-chief of several social science journals were invited to share their views on data sharing and to discuss how data archives can provide support. At the same time, CESSDA SPs answered to a survey whose aim was to explore the capacities of data archives to support journals. In 2021, two events were organised for researchers, journal publishers, and data archives to discuss transparency in social science research and the challenges of sharing data through publications.By now, ADP has helped three Slovenian journals to implement research data policies: Socialno delo, Central European Public Administration Review, and Economic and Business Review. These policies are not mandatory, and so far, no author decided to share their data before publishing the article. The journal Javnost, in turn, has taken a different approach. The guest editor of one supplement issue asked the authors who had passed peer review to share and cite their data before publishing with the support of ADP. All authors agreed to make additional effort and prepare the data, documentation, and metadata, so that their results could be verified, and data reused.In Croatia, one journal, Croatian Sociological Review, introduced its first open science policy, which is partly based on the TOP Guidelines (Nosek at al., 2021) and includes several elements of research transparency, not just data transparency (Vučković Juroš, 2021). Data sharing will not be mandatory, and transparency will be implemented taking into consideration various epistemological assumptions in the humanities and social sciences. The next step is to set up instructions for authors and reviewers to make this policy official, which will be done in cooperation with CROSSDA.

HubbleAsteroid Hunter

Context.Large and publicly available astronomical archives open up new possibilities to search for and study Solar System objects. However, advanced techniques are required to deal with the large amounts of data. These unbiased surveys can be used to constrain the size distribution of minor bodies, which represents a piece of the puzzle for the formation models of the Solar System.Aims.We aim to identify asteroids in archival images from the ESAHubbleSpace Telescope (HST) Science data archive using data mining.Methods.We developed a citizen science project on the Zooniverse platform,HubbleAsteroid Hunter, and have asked members of the public to identify asteroid trails in archival HST images. We used the labels provided by the volunteers to train an automated deep learning model built with Google Cloud AutoML Vision to explore the entire HST archive to detect asteroids crossing the field-of-view.Results.We report the detection of 1701 new asteroid trails identified in archival HST data via our citizen science project and the subsequent machine learning exploration of the ESA HST science data archive. We detect asteroids to a magnitude of 24.5, which are statistically fainter than the populations of asteroids identified from ground-based surveys. The majority of asteroids are distributed near the ecliptic plane, as expected, where we find an approximate density of 80 asteroids per square degree. We matched 670 trails (39% of the trails found) with 454 known Solar System objects in the Minor Planet Center database; however, no matches were found for 1031 (61%) trails. The unidentified asteroids are faint, on average 1.6 magnitudes fainter than the asteroids we succeeded in identifying. They probably correspond to previously unknown objects.Conclusions.Citizen science and machine learning are very useful techniques for the systematic search for Solar System objects in existing astronomy science data archives. This work describes a method for finding new asteroids in astronomical archives that span decades; it could be effectively applied to other datasets, increasing the overall sample of well-characterised small bodies in the Solar System and refining their ephemerides.

Extended Duration Orbiter Medical Project

Biomedical issues have presented a challenge to flight physicians, scientists, and engineers ever since the advent of high-speed, high-altitude airplane flight in the 1940s. In 1958, preparations began for the first manned space flights of Project Mercury. The medical data and flight experience gained through Mercury's six flights and the Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab projects, as well as subsequent space flights, comprised the knowledge base that was used to develop and implement the Extended Duration Orbiter Medical Project (EDOMP). The EDOMP yielded substantial amounts of data in six areas of space biomedical research. In addition, a significant amount of hardware was developed and tested under the EDOMP. This hardware was designed to improve data gathering capabilities and maintain crew physical fitness, while minimizing the overall impact to the microgravity environment. The biomedical findings as well as the hardware development results realized from the EDOMP have been important to the continuing success of extended Space Shuttle flights and have formed the basis for medical studies of crew members living for three to five months aboard the Russian space station, Mir. EDOMP data and hardware are also being used in preparation for the construction and habitation of International Space Station. All data sets were grouped to be non-attributable to individuals, and submitted to NASA s Life Sciences Data Archive.

Unleashing analytics to reduce electricity consumption using incremental clustering algorithm

PurposeTo reduce the electricity consumption in our homes, a first step is to make the user aware of it. Reading a meter once in a month is not enough, instead, it requires real-time meter reading. Smart electricity meter (SEM) is capable of providing a quick and exact meter reading in real-time at regular time intervals. SEM generates a considerable amount of household electricity consumption data in an incremental manner. However, such data has embedded load patterns and hidden information to extract and learn consumer behavior. The extracted load patterns from data clustering should be updated because consumer behaviors may be changed over time. The purpose of this study is to update the new clustering results based on the old data rather than to re-cluster all of the data from scratch.Design/methodology/approachThis paper proposes an incremental clustering with nearness factor (ICNF) algorithm to update load patterns without overall daily load curve clustering.FindingsExtensive experiments are implemented on real-world SEM data of Irish Social Science Data Archive (Ireland) data set. The results are evaluated by both accuracy measures and clustering validity indices, which indicate that proposed method is useful for using the enormous amount of smart meter data to understand customers’ electricity consumption behaviors.Originality/valueICNF can provide an efficient response for electricity consumption patterns analysis to end consumers via SEMs.

Study protocol for TILDA COVID-19 survey. Altered lives in a time of crisis: preparing for recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives of older adults

Background: Older adults are the most at-risk of contracting severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and among the most affected by measures put in place to prevent the spread of the virus. While the full effect of the public health measures, such as social distancing and wearing masks in public spaces, implemented since March 2020 are not yet known, it is expected that they will have a severely damaging effect on physical and psychological wellbeing. The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) has been researching the lives of older adults in Ireland since 2008 with data collection conducted at two-year intervals. With an established research infrastructure, TILDA was ideally placed to examine the effect of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on older adults. The aim of this study is to document the lives of older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand the effect of the pandemic and public health responses on their wellbeing. Methods: Data was collected from TILDA participants via self-completion-questionnaire (SCQ). The SCQ contains ten sections that capture information on many aspects of people’s lives during the pandemic including, changes in behaviour and social interactions, physical and psychological wellbeing indicators, healthcare utilisation, and exposure to SARS-CoV-2. Ethical approval was granted by the National Research Ethics Committee (NREC). Conclusions: Research findings will be shared in a variety of formats including research reports and briefs, presentations, and academic papers. Data will be archived in the Irish Social Science Data Archive (ISSDA) and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). As well as documenting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on older adults, findings from this study will provide important information to policy-makers as we respond to the damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey Paper II: First Stokes I Source Catalogue Data Release

Abstract The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS) is the first large sky survey using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), covering the sky south of $+41^\circ$ declination. With ASKAP’s large, instantaneous field of view, ${\sim}31\,\mathrm{deg}^2$ , RACS observed the entire sky at a central frequency of 887.5 MHz using 903 individual pointings with 15 minute observations. This has resulted in the deepest radio survey of the full Southern sky to date at these frequencies. In this paper, we present the first Stokes I catalogue derived from the RACS survey. This catalogue was assembled from 799 tiles that could be convolved to a common resolution of $25^{\prime\prime}$ , covering a large contiguous region in the declination range $\delta=-80^{\circ}$ to $+30^\circ$ . The catalogue provides an important tool for both the preparation of future ASKAP surveys and for scientific research. It consists of $\sim$ 2.1 million sources and excludes the $|b|<5^{\circ}$ region around the Galactic plane. This provides a first extragalactic catalogue with ASKAP covering the majority of the sky ( $\delta<+30^{\circ}$ ). We describe the methods to obtain this catalogue from the initial RACS observations and discuss the verification of the data, to highlight its quality. Using simulations, we find this catalogue detects 95% of point sources at an integrated flux density of $\sim$ 5 mJy. Assuming a typical sky source distribution model, this suggests an overall 95% point source completeness at an integrated flux density $\sim$ 3 mJy. The catalogue will be available through the CSIRO ASKAP Science Data Archive (CASDA).

Data processing software for Chandrayaan-2 Solar X-ray Monitor

Solar X-ray Monitor (XSM) instrument of India’s Chandrayaan-2 lunar mission carries out broadband spectroscopy of the Sun in soft X-rays. XSM, with its unique features such as low background, high time cadence, and high spectral resolution, provides the opportunity to characterize transient and quiescent X-ray emission from the Sun even during low activity periods. It records the X-ray spectrum at one-second cadence, and the data recorded on-board are downloaded at regular intervals along with that of other payloads. During ground pre-processing, the XSM data is segregated, and the level-0 data is made available for higher levels of processing at the Payload Operations Center (POC). XSM Data Analysis Software (XSMDAS) is developed to carry out the processing of the level-0 data to higher levels and to generate calibrated light curves and spectra for user-defined binning parameters such that it is suitable for further scientific analysis. A front-end for the XSMDAS named XSM Quick Look Display (XSMQLD) is also developed to facilitate a first look at the data without applying calibration. XSM Data Management-Monitoring System (XSMDMS) is designed to carry out automated data processing at the POC and to maintain an SQLite database with relevant information on the data sets and an internal web application for monitoring data quality and instrument health. All XSM raw and calibrated data products are in FITS format, organized into day-wise files, and the data archive follows Planetary Data System-4 (PDS4) standards. The XSM data is made available along with the XSM Data Analysis Software from ISRO Science Data Archive (ISDA) hosted at Indian Space Science Data Center (ISSDC). Here we discuss the design and implementation of all components of the software for the XSM data processing and the contents of the XSM data archive.