University Library

New attention to the power of data in research has brought new kinds of data questions to the university research library. This study seeks to understand the character of research data questions in order to help research libraries develop the structures, technologies, collections, and professional skills needed to meet the needs of the research communities. It employs two original metrics to analyze 42 cases: The Data Question Typology, which allows for the organization of data questions into categories based on researcher objectives, and the Modified READ Scale for Data Questions (MRSD), which is used to record the magnitude of difficulty presented by each case. It finds that data questions differ significantly across academic fields and that successful research assistance often requires partnerships between subject specialists librarians and technological or computational experts. It concludes with a recommendation on how research libraries can facilitate a collaborative process and workflow for handling a diversity of data questions from across the university.

Topic: Resilience engineering (RE) offers a powerful framework for designing processes that enable organizations to respond effectively to and learn from large-scale disruptions such as system outages, funding loss, natural disasters, and unexpected leadership transitions. While resilience is often viewed as a personal trait, resilience takes on new significance in RE’s systems approach, emphasizing the critical need for organizational-level resilience. This perspective is particularly relevant to libraries, whose operations and services are pivotal to institutional adaptability and sustainability.   

This 90-minute interactive workshop will introduce participants to the principles of RE, exploring how its application can empower librarians to strengthen organizational resilience. Through real-world examples and participatory activities, attendees will gain practical strategies for integrating RE concepts into their daily work, highlighting how information work serves as a foundation for bolstering resilience at both the library and organizational levels.   

Target Audience: mid-career or experienced librarians, particularly those in leadership or influential roles, who aim to enhance their library’s adaptability in the face of disruptions.  

Summary of Workshop Objectives:  Participants will leave this workshop with knowledge to apply resilience engineering principles to enhance library services, develop strategies for building organizational resilience, and advocate for the evolving role of librarians in times of disruption.  

Short Description of Interactivity: Participants will engage in hands-on, practical case studies designed to help them translate RE concepts into realistic scenarios, applying the concept to library services and broader organizational functions. 

Vaccination is one of the most effective public health strategies, yet concerns about vaccine safety, and mistrust in institutions influenced acceptance in Zambia, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic. This practicum examined how adults in Lusaka Province, Zambia prioritize COVID-19 vaccine concerns and how these concerns shape willingness to accept other novel vaccines. Using the COVID-19 Best-Worst Scaling (BWS) dataset, this project identified five distinct concern profiles that reflect different patterns of beliefs, motivations, and information needs. A focused literature search identified 14 relevant sources provided context for understanding vaccine hesitancy in the country. Descriptive analyses showed meaningful differences in demographic variables across profiles. Regression analyses demonstrated that some profiles were less likely to express high intention to accept future vaccines, even after accounting for demographic and behavioral factors. These findings indicate that vaccine concerns in Zambia are not uniform but cluster into recognizable patterns that influence intention. Understanding these profiles can help guide more targeted, context-specific communication strategies aimed at strengthening vaccine confidence and improving uptake of upcoming novel vaccines in Zambia and similar low-and middle-income settings.

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of a novel imaging modality, digital tomosynthesis (DT), for identification of predefined anatomic dental and maxillomandibular structures in dogs. Methods: DT images were compared to conventional intraoral dental radiography (DR) for the diagnostic yield regarding the presence and quality of visualization of 35 structures. DT imaging and full mouth DR were obtained on 16 canine cadaver heads and a semi-quantitative scoring system was used to characterize the ability of each imaging method to identify the anatomic structures. Results: The results demonstrated that each imaging modality, and orientation, was superior for certain anatomic structures. Discussion: Overall, although one modality did not prove superior to the other, digital tomosynthesis appears to be an appropriate novel tool for identification of specific anatomic structures in the dog skull.

Introduction: Olive oil is a widely recognized and appreciated food commodity, its quality and health benefits can be compromised when the oil goes through oxidative processes that may occur during production and storage. This study aimed to investigate the effects of the olive genotype on polar phenolic content after seven months of storage. Methods: Oil produced from eight different olive cultivars (Leccino, Leccio del Corno, Moraiolo, Frantoio, Bianchera, Pendolino, Maurino, and Caninese) grown in southern Tuscany, Italy, were subjected to chemical analysis such as free fatty acids, peroxide value, K232 and K268, phenolics and UPLC-DAD at the beginning of the trial (Control) and seven months later (Stored). Results and Conclusions: Free fatty acids, peroxide values, K232 and K268, significantly increased, suggesting heightened hydrolysis and oxidation after storage. A cultivar effect was observed, with Leccino, Moraiolo, and Pendolino showing less susceptibility to oxidation (low differences between Control and Stored). In contrast, others (Bianchera and Caninese) are more affected (higher differences between Control and Stored). Phenolics analysis supports this observation, revealing that samples with higher resistance to oxidation exhibit elevated levels of hydroxytyrosol, tyrosol, vanillic acid, caffeic acid, p-coumaric acid, and ferulic acid. Principal Component Analysis highlights that Bianchera and Caninese cultivars correlate with rutin, tyrosol, and pinoresinol. As this research delves into the intricate relationship between genotype diversity, phenolic composition, and oxidative stability, a nuanced understanding emerges, shedding light on how different cultivars may present varying compositions and concentrations of phenols, ultimately influencing the oil's resistance to the oxidation that occurred during storage.

Terrorists and other transnational extremist groups are responsible for thousands of civilian deaths. In confronting extremists, governments have relied heavily on threats, demands, denunciations, and other forms of verbal conflict. Do these efforts at verbal coercion have any effect on terrorist behavior? This analysis focuses on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which continues to be the world's deadliest terrorist group and was responsible for recent high-profile attacks in Baghdad, Vienna, Kabul, and Russia. We use Bayesian structural vector autoregression models to analyze daily event data on interactions between ISIS and foreign governments for the 2014-2020 period. We find that verbal conflict initiated by governments not only failed to deter ISIS but in fact increased the frequency of ISIS's attacks on civilians. Additional empirical analyses, combined with evidence from ISIS's publications and public statements, suggest that this effect resulted from a perceived credibility deficit. Extremists use terror attacks to signal that they have the capabilities and willingness to inflict pain and suffering on civilian targets. Government attempts to coerce extremist groups verbally, rather than militarily, reflect an underestimation of the group's capabilities and resolve. In an effort to solidify their reputations, extremists engage in further violence toward civilians, thus leading to worse humanitarian consequences. We extend the analysis to Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Boko Haram and find similar results.

The story of how Mesoamerican food activists faced down Monsanto . . . and wonRight before the 2014 World Cup, US trade interests pressured Guatemala’s legislature into lifting its national ban on genetically modified (GM) crops and criminalizing traditional seed saving practices. Maya elders responded with a campaign of mass civil disobedience, blocking highways until the Guatemalan Congress repealed this “Monsanto Law.” Uniting rural and urban Guatemalans, this uprising spotlighted the existential threat of GM corn to the livelihood, dignity, and cultural heritage of maize-producing milperos (small farmers) throughout Mesoamerica. Ten years later, Mexico is also facing down US trade aggression to defend a 2020 presidential ban on the import of GM corn for human consumption.Liza Grandia chronicles how diverse coalitions in Mexico and Guatemala have defended their sacred maize against corporate threats to privatize it. Rather than just “voting with their forks” like the consumer-driven US food movement, Mesoamerican farmers and their allies have voted with their feet through direct action. In a world of interconnected trade, their victories chart a path that other food movements might follow. They also show how everyday people can demand better regulatory protections for environmental health and forge more climate-resilient agricultural systems with native seed saving.Dramatic and timely, Kernels of Resistance celebrates this Indigenous triumph over corporate greed.

Suzana Sawyer traces Ecuador’s lawsuit against the Chevron corporation for the environmental devastation resulting from its oil drilling practices, showing how distinct legal truths were relationally composed of, with, and through crude oil.

In The Aesthetic Character of Blackness, Jemma DeCristo theorizes the means by which black art liberates the free world but does not and cannot liberate black people. Drawing on Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Alain Locke and as well as the aesthetic thought of Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Theodor Adorno, DeCristo critiques the exaltation of black culture and art’s saving power by analyzing the violence underneath aesthetic production. She tracks black music’s representational and anti-representational capacities in projects of black non/humanization from nineteenth-century abolitionism and the founding of the recording industry to the emergence of black queer blues performers and the rise of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Theorizing the contemporary neoliberalization of black audio-visual spectacle, DeCristo ultimately demonstrates that the voluptuous world of black aesthetics beautifies an anti-black world that wields black art and culture as a weapon against black life.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the generous support of the University of California Libraries.

This book argues that major patterns of variation across languages are structured by general principles of efficiency in language use and communication. Evidence for these comes from languages permitting structural choices from which selections are made in performance, e.g. between competing word orders and between relative clauses with a resumptive pronoun versus a gap. The preferences and patterns of performance within languages are reflected in the fixed conventions and variation patterns across grammars, leading to a ‘‘Performance–Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis.’’ The general theory that is laid out in Hawkins’s Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars (OUP) is extended and updated. New areas of grammar and of performance are discussed, new research findings are incorporated that test Hawkins’s earlier predictions, and new advances in the contributing fields of language processing, linguistic theory, historical linguistics, and typology are addressed. This efficiency approach to variation has far-reaching theoretical consequences of relevance for many current issues in the language sciences. These include the notion of ease of processing and how to measure it, the role of processing in language change, the nature of language universals and their explanation, the theory of complexity, the relative strength of competing and cooperating principles, and the proper definition of fundamental grammatical notions such as ‘dependency.’ The book also gives a new typology of VO and OV languages and their correlating properties seen from this perspective, and a new typology of the noun phrase and of argument structure.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the generous support of the University of California Libraries.

Migration is a dramatic behaviour distinct from other movements. It is an important component of life histories of biodiverse organisms including terrestrial and marine vertebrates, insects, many invertebrates, and the propagules of some plants. This sequel discusses migration across a wide range of groups and species drawing comparisons to illuminate migratory life cycles and their evolution. It takes an integrative approach to migration as a physiological and behavioural phenomenon with important ecological consequences. Part I defines migration in relation to other movements, provides examples, and includes an updated chapter on recent results from newly developed electronic tracking and other methods. Part II surveys proximate mechanisms including physiology, morphology, constraints, the use of winds and currents, and new discoveries regarding the ability to orient and navigate. Part III on the evolution of migratory life histories is the longest section of the book. It addresses adaptations of migration to various habitats, the genetics and evolution of migration syndromes and variability, and the role of migrants in ecological communities. Part IV is a brief discussion of applied aspects of migration including disease transmission, pest management, and conservation. This book concentrates on the literature since 1996 and updates a vital subject. It provides comprehensive information to students and researchers in animal behaviour, ecology, and conservation biology across organisms from aphids and butterflies to birds and whales.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the generous support of the University of California Libraries.