Assessing and measuring impact of a digital collection in the humanities: An analysis of the SPHERE (Stormont Parliamentary Hansards: Embedded in Research and Education) Project

Although a substantial corpus of digital materials is now available to scholarship across the disciplines, objective evidence of their use, impact, and value, based on a robust assessment, is sparse. Traditional methods of assessment of impact in the humanities, notably citation in scholarly publications, are not an effective way of assessing impact of digital content. These issues are problematic in the field of Digital Humanities where there is a need to effectively assess impact to justify its continued funding and existence. A number of qualitative and quantitative methods exist that can be used to monitor the use of digital resources in various contexts although they have yet to be applied widely. These have been made available to the creators, managers, and funders of digital content in an accessible form through the TIDSR (Toolkit for the Impact of Digital Scholarly Resources) developed by the Oxford Internet Institute. In 2011, the authors of this article developed the SPHERE project (Stormont Parliamentary Hansards: Embedded in Research and Education) specifically to use TIDSR to evaluate the use and impact of The Stormont Papers, a digital collection of the Hansards of the Stormont Northern Irish Parliament from 1921 to 1972. This article presents the methodology, findings, and analysis of the project. The authors argue that TIDSR is a useful and, critically, transferrable method to understand and increase the impact of digital resources. The findings of the project are modified into a series of wider recommendations on protecting the investment in digital resources by increasing their use, value, and impact. It is reasonable to suggest that effectively showing the impact of Digital Humanities is critical to its survival.

Impact of Age on the Importance of Systolic and Diastolic Blood Pressures for Stroke Risk:The MOnica, Risk, Genetics, Archiving, and Monograph (MORGAM) Project

This study investigates age-related shifts in the relative importance of systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) blood pressures as predictors of stroke and whether these relations are influenced by other cardiovascular risk factors. Using 34 European cohorts from the MOnica, Risk, Genetics, Archiving, and Monograph (MORGAM) Project with baseline between 1982 and 1997, 68 551 subjects aged 19 to 78 years, without cardiovascular disease and not receiving antihypertensive treatment, were included. During a mean of 13.2 years of follow-up, stroke incidence was 2.8%. Stroke risk was analyzed using hazard ratios per 10-mm Hg/5-mm Hg increase in SBP/DBP by multivariate-adjusted Cox regressions, including SBP and DBP simultaneously. Because of nonlinearity, DBP was analyzed separately for DBP =71 mm Hg and DBP

Design, recruitment, logistics, and data management of the GEHA (Genetics of Healthy Ageing) project

In 2004, the integrated European project GEHA (Genetics of Healthy Ageing) was initiated with the aim of identifying genes involved in healthy ageing and longevity. The first step in the project was the recruitment of more than 2500 pairs of siblings aged 90 years or more together with one younger control person from 15 areas in 11 European countries through a coordinated and standardised effort. A biological sample, preferably a blood sample, was collected from each participant, and basic physical and cognitive measures were obtained together with information about health, life style, and family composition. From 2004 to 2008 a total of 2535 families comprising 5319 nonagenarian siblings were identified and included in the project. In addition, 2548 younger control persons aged 50-75 years were recruited. A total of 2249 complete trios with blood samples from at least two old siblings and the younger control were formed and are available for genetic analyses (e.g. linkage studies and genome-wide association studies). Mortality follow-up improves the possibility of identifying families with the most extreme longevity phenotypes. With a mean follow-up time of 3.7 years the number of families with all participating siblings aged 95 years or more has increased by a factor of 5 to 750 families compared to when interviews were conducted. Thus, the GEHA project represents a unique source in the search for genes related to healthy ageing and longevity.

Helping the most vulnerable out of the poverty trap and reducing inequality: Policies, strategies, and services for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder, including intellectual and neurodevelopmental disabilities: BASE Project Report (Volume 2) NILT Survey Autism Module

The primary purpose of the BASE Project was to establish how to help individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder out of poverty by promoting social inclusion. In order to achieve this, a range of methodologies were utilised that aimed to provide a baseline against which the effect of the Autism Act (NI) 2011 and the associated Autism Strategy (2013-2020) and Action Plans can be measured. The BASE Project is reported in 5 volumes. Volume 2 reports on the analysis of the autism module of the Northern Ireland Life and Times (NILT) Survey that assessed public awareness, attitudes, knowledge, and projected behaviours with regard to individuals with ASD (all primary data and technical reports are available at www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/).

The NILT (2012) survey first ever autism module (n=1204) offered a baseline against which the impact of new autism legislation, policies, and strategies can be measured. Key findings:

• 82% awareness: Most people in Northern Ireland are aware of autism (n=989).
• 50% of all participants knew someone with autism personally (n=606).

Of those who were aware of autism:
• 19% had a close family member with autism (n=186), and/or a friends/acquaintance (n=296), and/or a work colleague (n=79) with autism.
• Autism awareness was particularly low for those from ethnic minorities and those with no internet access.
• Awareness of autism specific legislation was low (20%).
• Good levels of knowledge about autism strengths and challenges, slight tendency to overestimate the occurrence of special talents.
• Prevalence of autism was underestimated (62% thought autism was much less prevalent than official figures or did not know).
• Fairly accurate perception about causes of autism, i.e., not caused by poor parenting (84%).
• Strong support for evidence-based behavioural interventions (77%), but confusion about interventions that are not evidence-based (64%).
• Strong positive attitudes towards children and adults in social, educational and employment settings.
• Autism not viewed as necessarily ‘lifelong’ (58%); support for independent living (78%), e.g., driving a car (83%).
• More business for employers who employ people with autism (12%).
• Strong support for families caring rather than residential care (64%).
• Confusion about service responsibility: education (26%) health (33%) or both (28%).

Given increasing prevalence rates of ASD it is important that the general population is aware of autism and able to respond responsibly to the associated strengths and challenges. The results of the NILT (2012) first ever autism module show that the general public was well aware of autism, had positive attitudes, and was relatively knowledgeable about the issues faced by individuals and families affected directly. However, there was a lack of clarity about responsibility for effective service delivery. The NILT results show that a shift in focus is necessary from ‘awareness raising campaigns’ to an approach that delivers clarity with regard to intervention and accountability.

The European Union funded NEOShield project: A global approach to near-Earth object impact threat mitigation

Although discussions are underway within the Action Team 14 of the United Nations COPUOS, there is currently no concerted international plan addressing the impact threat from near-Earth objects (NEOs) and how to organize, prepare and implement mitigation measures. We report on a new international project to address impact hazard mitigation issues, being the subject of a proposal submitted to the European Commission in response to the 2011 FP7 Call "Prevention of impacts from near-Earth objects on our planet". Our consortium consists of 13 research institutes, universities, and industrial partners from 6 countries and includes leading US and Russian space organizations. The primary aim of the project, NEOShield, is to investigate in detail the three most promising mitigation techniques: the kinetic impactor, blast deflection,and the gravity tractor, and devise feasible demonstration missions. Furthermore, we will investigate options for an international strategy for implementation when an actual impact threat arises. The NEOShield project was formally accepted by the European Commission on 17 November 2011 and funded with a total of 5.8 million Euros for a period of 3.5 years. The kick-off meeting took place at the DLR Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, in January 2012. In this paper we present a brief overview of the planned scope of the project.

Participatory Sonic Arts: towards a socially engaged art of sound in the everyday (The Som da Maré Project)

Participatory and socially engaged art practices have, for a couple of decades, emerged a myriad of aesthetic and methodological strategies across different media. These are artistic practices that have a primary interest in participation, affecting social dynamics, dialogue and at times political activism. Nato Thompson in “Living Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011” surveys these
practices, which range from theatre to urban planning, visual art to healthcare. Linked to notions such as relational aesthetics (Bourriaud, 1998), community art and public art, socially engaged art often focuses on the development of a sense of ownership by the part of participants. If an artist is working truly collaboratively with participants and addressing the reality of a particular community, the long-term effect of a project lies in the process of engagement as well as in the artwork itself. Projects by New York based artist Pablo Helguera, for example, use different media to engage with social inequalities through participative action while rejecting the notion of art for art sake.

“Socially engaged art functions by attaching itself to subjects and problems that normally belong to other disciplines, moving them temporarily into a space of ambiguity. It is this temporary snatching away of subjects into the realm of art-making that brings new insights to a particular problem or condition and in turn makes it visible to other disciplines.” (Helguera, 2011)

Socially engaged practices develop the notion of artwork about or by a community, to work of a community. In this chapter we address how socially engaged, participatory approaches can form a context for the sonic arts, arguably less explored than practices such as theatre and performance art. The use of sound is clearly present in a wide range of socially engaged work (e.g. Helguera’s “Aelia Media” enabling a nomadic radio station in Bologna or Maria Andueza “Immigrant Sounds – Res(on)Art (Stockholm)” exploring ways of sonically resonating a city, or Sue MacCauley’s “The Housing Project” addressing ways of representing the views of urban dwellers on public scape through sound art. It is nevertheless rare to encounter projects which take our experience of sound in the everyday as a trigger for community social engagement in a participatory context.
We address concepts and methodologies behind the project Som da Maré, a participatory sonic arts project in the favelas of Maré, Rio de Janeiro.

Further assessment of the complement component 2 and factor B region associated with age-related macular degeneration

PURPOSE. Polymorphic variation in genes involved in regulation of the complement system has been implicated as a major cause of genetic risk, in addition to the LOC387715/HTRA1 locus and other environmental influences. Previous studies have identified polymorphisms in the complement component 2 (CC2) and factor B (CFB) genes, as potential functional variants associated with AMD, in particular CFB R32Q and CC2 rs547154, both of which share strong linkage disequilibrium (LD). METHODS. Data derived from the HapMap Project were used to select 18 haplotype-tagging SNPs across the extended CC2/ CFB region for genotyping, to measure the strength of LD in 318 patients with neovascular AMD and 243 age-matched control subjects to identify additional potential functional variants in addition to those originally reported. RESULTS. Strong LD was measured across this region as far as the superkiller viralicidic activity 2-like gene (SKIV2L). Nine SNPs were identified to be significantly associated with the genetic effect observed at this locus. Of these, a nonsynonymous coding variant SKIV2L R151Q (rs438999; OR, 0.48; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.31- 0.74; P < 0.001), was in strong LD with CFB R32Q, rs641153 (r2 = 0.95) and may exert a functional effect. When assessed within a logistic regression model measuring the effects of genetic variation at the CFH and LOC387715/HTRA1 loci and smoking, the effect remained significant (OR, 0.38; 95% CI, 0.22- 0.65; P < 0.001). Additional variation identified within this region may also confer a weaker but independent effect and implicate additional genes within the pathogenesis of AMD. CONCLUSIONS. Because of the high level of LD within the extended CC2/CFB region, variation within SKIV2L may exert a functional effect in AMD. Copyright © Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology.

The impact of newly identified loci on coronary heart disease, stroke and total mortality in the MORGAM prospective cohorts

Recently, genome wide association studies (GWAS) have identified a number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) as being associated with coronary heart disease (CHD). We estimated the effect of these SNPs on incident CHD, stroke and total mortality in the prospective cohorts of the MORGAM Project. We studied cohorts from Finland, Sweden, France and Northern Ireland (total N=33,282, including 1,436 incident CHD events and 571 incident stroke events). The lead SNPs at seven loci identified thus far and additional SNPs (in total 42) were genotyped using a case-cohort design.We estimated the effect of the SNPs on disease history at baseline, disease events during follow-up and classic risk factors. Multiple testing was taken into account using false discovery rate (FDR) analysis. SNP rs1333049 on chromosome 9p21.3 was associated with both CHD and stroke (HR5=.20, 95% CI 1.08-1.34 for incident CHD events and 1.15, 0.99-1.34 for incident stroke). SNP rs11670734 (19q12) was associated with total mortality and stroke. SNP rs2146807 (10q11.21) showed some association with the fatality of acute coronary event. SNP rs2943634 (2q36.3) was associated with high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and SNPs rs599839, rs4970834 (1p13.3) and rs17228212 (15q22.23) were associated with non-HDL cholesterol. SNPs rs2943634 (2q36.3) and rs12525353 (6q25.1) were associated with blood pressure. These findings underline the need for replication studies in prospective settings and confirm the candidacy of several SNPs that may play a role in the etiology of cardiovascular disease.

Monkey mountain as a megazoo: analysing the naturalistic claims of “wild monkey parks” in Japan

In Japan yaen koen or ‘wild monkey parks’ are popular visitor attractions that show free-ranging monkey troops to the paying public. Unlike zoos, which display animals through confinement, monkey parks control the movements of the monkeys through provisioning. The parks project an image of themselves as ‘natural zoos’, claiming to practice a more authentic form of wild animal display than that practiced by the zoo. This article critically evaluates the monkey park’s claim by examining park management of the monkeys. The monkey park’s claim to display ‘wild monkeys’ is shown to be questionable because of the way that provisioning changes monkey behaviour. Against the background of human encroachment onto the forest habitat of the monkey, the long-term effect of provisioning is to sedentarize what were nomadic monkeys and to turn the ‘wild monkey park’ into a megazoo.

Project Omnivore: A Variable Compression Ratio ATAC 2-Stroke Engine for Ultra-Wide-Range HCCI Operation on a Variety of Fuels

The paper describes the principal features of Omnivore, a spark-ignition-based research engine designed to investigate the possibility of true wide-range HCCI operation on a variety of fossil and renewable liquid fuels. The engine project is part-funded jointly by the United Kingdom's Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Department of the Environment of Northern Ireland (DoENI). The engineering team includes Lotus Engineering, Jaguar Cars, Orbital Corporation and Queen's University Belfast.

The Advent of Modern Irish Drama and the Abjection of Peasant Popular Culture: Folklore, Fairs and Faction Fighting

This paper is part of a larger project in which the author is interested in recovering popular performative traditions and practices that have been occluded by the modernist project of the Irish Revival. This erasure has been compounded by subsequent historiographical paradigms that have reinforced the revivalist narrative of theatre history and excluded indigenous forms, traditions and practices (mumming, rhymers, strawboys) along with the wider performative culture of patterns, wakes, fairs, faction fights etc. This essay subjects to scrutiny what the author sees as a disjuncture between the riotous reality of peasant popular culture and its representation in Revivalist dramas to argue that Irish Theatre Studies needs to develop alternative historiographies of performance and to methodologically engage with theoretical models extant in Performance Studies.

On being a good nurse: reflections on the past and preparing for the future

On being a good nurse: reflections on the past and preparing for the future. The objectives of this paper include reflecting on the attributes of the ‘good’ nurse in the past, outlining thematically the essential attributes (virtues) required by the ‘good’ nurse today and presenting an original four- point framework for ethics in practice. While there is no doubt that nurses in the past were highly professional, the culture within which they practiced tended to stifle the emergence of autonomy, assertiveness, advocacy and accountability. An original table of contemporary attributes, which is congruent with a neo Aristotelian virtue ethical approach, is arranged in themes of Intellectual and Practical Attributes, Dispositional Attributes and Moral Attributes. A framework for professional practice, the ‘Four As’ is then extrapolated from these themes. These four key professional attributes, autonomy, advocacy, accountability and assertiveness, along with the virtues listed in the themes, exemplify the ‘good’ nurse and are identified as the linchpins of modern professional ethics and good conduct.

Propensity to Apply for Judicial Office under the new Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments System::A qualitative study for the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission October

The study of representation and participation in the judiciary is hardly novel. There have been substantial studies in a number of countries – often these have preceded the setting up of judicial appointment commissions – which have looked at the continuing problem of female representation in judicial posts. Prior to the setting up of the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission a study carried out by Dermot Feenan for the Commissioner for Judicial Appointments for Northern Ireland also looked into this topic and produced a large number of recommendations. What differs from the Feenan project, in this project, has been the number of individuals consulted in interviews and focus groups. This has allowed us to provide a detailed qualitative attitudinal perspective to enhance the questionnaire study undertaken as Stage 1 in this research project. Further, we have carried out this study after many of the recommendations made in previous research have been implemented.
2
Our interviews and focus groups covered a broad range of individuals – solicitors outwith and within Belfast (private and public service), barristers in private practice and public service and also barristers no longer in practice. We also sought responses from student lawyers. In total there were 71 respondents, with a typical interview/focus group length of 60 minutes. The group included candidates who had little interest in applying for judicial office, those who might consider this in future, and candidates who had applied for one or more judicial posts and who may or may not consider reapplication. We did not seek the views of successful candidates for judicial posts under the new NIJAC process.
The timing of this project, with interviews and focus groups held between December 2007 and March 2008, offers an early perspective on the whether the creation of a NI Judicial Appointments Commission has affected, and if so, in what way, the decision to apply for a judicial post. Generally, we found that there was a significant impact upon attitudes to judicial application which had arisen from the creation of NIJAC and that this was more positive than negative.