Monthly Archives: August 2013

Walruses Choose Alaskan Beaches as Sea Ice Recedes

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With sea ice receding in the Arctic, animals that rely on this ice to rest are being forced to find alternate places to haul out. Pacific walruses, like those pictured above, are retreating from their typical resting spots on ice in the Chukchi Sea and instead heading to land on Alaskan beaches to rest in the summer. With animals closer to shore, it is easier for researchers to study these populations and obtain data that was previously difficult to capture.

Flying over the herds in a helicopter, researchers took videos of walruses as they lay on beaches (see the clip below) and evaluated their demographics. Researchers looked for distinguishing features to identify males and females and used Fay’s method which considers head morphology and the ratio of an individual’s tusk length to snout width or depth to estimated age. They found that a majority of the herd was comprised of females and young less than two years old.

The walruses seemed to gather in much larger groups on land than they did at sea, perhaps simply because the space allowed but this may also be a strategy to protect from predators that is not possible on ice.  Gathering in these large groups of up to 19,000 individuals, however, increases the risk of trampling calves. The researchers suggest this may be why young were found in greater numbers along the outer edges of the groups rather than within the herd. Being on the outside could possibly also allow a quick escape into the water should the herd be disturbed.

As sea ice continues to recede, populations of Pacific walrus, as well as other animals, will continue to adjust their behavior to survive. Monitoring their population dynamics could provide insight to how their habits may be influenced by climate change.

For more research on pinnipeds in PLOS ONE, check out this post on the cooling abilities of baby seals, or this video of a seal lion feeling its way through water on our Youtube Channel!

Citation: Monson DH, Udevitz MS, Jay CV (2013) Estimating Age Ratios and Size of Pacific Walrus Herds on Coastal Haulouts using Video Imaging. PLoS ONE 8(7): e69806. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069806

Image: Walrus 2 from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters http://bit.ly/19TeYMp

A way with words: Data mining uncloaks authors’ stylistic flair

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As any writer or wordsmith knows, searching for the right word can be a painful struggle. Here’s comforting news: word choice may be the key to understanding your stylistic flair.

New research in the field of text mining suggests that distinct writing styles are discernible by word selection and frequency. Even the use of common words, such as “you” and “say,” can help distinguish one writer from another. To learn more about style, the authors of a recent PLOS ONE paper turned to the famed lord of language, William Shakespeare.

The researchers assembled a pool of 168 plays written during the 16th and 17th centuries. After accounting for duplicates, 55,055 unique words were identified and then cross-referenced against the work of four writers from that time period: William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, and John Fletcher. The researchers counted how often these writers used words from the pool and ranked words by their frequency. Lists of twenty of the most-used and least-used words were then compiled for each writer and considered “markers” of their individual styles.

Fletcher, for one, frequently used the word “ye” in his plays, so a relatively high frequency of “ye” would be a strong marker of Fletcher’s particular writing style. Similarly, Middleton often used “that” in the demonstrative sense, and Jonson favored the word “or.” Shakespeare himself used “thou” the most frequently, and the word “all” the least.

In addition to looking at individual word use, the researchers analyzed specific works where the writer’s style changed significantly, such as in Middleton’s political satire “A Game at Chess,” which was notably different from his other works. They also compared word choice between writers. Their findings indicate that, unlike his contemporaries, Shakespeare’s style was marked more by his underuse of words rather than his overuse. Take, for example, Shakespeare’s use of “ye.” Unlike Fletcher, who used this word liberally, “ye” is one of Shakespeare’s least frequently used words.

Such analyses, the researchers suggest, may help with authorship controversies and disputes, but they can also address other concerns. In a post in The Conversation, the authors of this paper suggest that the mathematical method used to identify words as markers of style may also be helpful to identify biomarkers in medical research. In fact, the research team currently uses these methods to study cancer and the selection of therapeutic combinations, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s disease.

 

Citation: Marsden J, Budden D, Craig H, Moscato P (2013) Language Individuation and Marker Words: Shakespeare and His Maxwell’s Demon. PLoS ONE 8(6): e66813. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0066813

Image: First Folio – Folger Shakespeare Library – DSC09660, Wikimedia Commons

Food and Energy Security Publishes Issue 2.2

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Food and Energy Security CoverFood and Energy Security has now published its latest issue featuring a number of articles focussing on improving global security of energy and food resouces by using agricultural methods. The following articles have been selected by Editor-in-Chief: Martin Parry:

Metallic trace elements in cereal grain – a review: how much metal do we eat?
Tihana Tekli?, Zdenko Lon?ari?, Vlado Kova?evi? and Bal Ram Singh
Summary: This review aimed to give an overview of data regarding metallic trace elements (Fe, Mn, Zn, and Cu) content in the grain of globally most important cereals – wheat, rice, and maize. As an important component of human and animal food, cereal grains represent a plant available load of these metals into the food chain.

Avoiding damage and achieving cold tolerance in rice plants
Renata Pereira da Cruz, Raul Antonio Sperotto, Denise Cargnelutti, Janete Mariza Adamski, Tatiana de FreitasTerra and Janette Palma Fett
Summary: Cold temperatures can have negative impacts on rice plants during germination, vegetative growth, and reproductive stages, leading to decreased productivity. Here we review the efforts that have been made to achieve cold tolerance in rice through breeding, the major tools used for evaluating cold tolerance in rice plants, the discovery of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) and genes related to this tolerance and the results obtained so far by genetic transformation of rice plants with potential cold-tolerance genes. Possible future approaches are suggested.

 Alternate wetting and drying irrigation for rice in Bangladesh: Is it sustainable and has plant breeding something to offer?
Adam H. Price, Gareth J. Norton, David E. Salt, Oliver Ebenhoeh, Andrew A. Meharg, Caroline Meharg, M. Rafiqul Islam, Ramen N. Sarma, Tapash Dasgupta, Abdelbagi M. Ismail, Kenneth L. McNally, Hao Zhang, Ian C. Dodd and William J. Davies
Summary: The article describes the technique of alternate wetting and drying (AWD) which is being promoted in Bangladesh as a water saving technique for dry season rice production. It highlights the unknown aspects of the adoption of the method which relate to its effectiveness in the long term. Finally it reports an innovative multi-disciplinary project which aims to examine sustainability and offer solutions through genomics, soil biogeochemistry, plant physiology and systems biology.

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Submit your article or review to Food and Energy Security >

President of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) analyses the state of Open Access in NATURE

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Open Access to academic publications is on the tear, but the transition period seems to be long and expensive. To overcome this, research funders and research performing organisations have to launch common positions and funding programmes, especially to counteract the market power of some oligopolistic academic publishers. Europe is in an ideal position to take the lead in this process.

see: http://www.nature.com/news/a-coordinated-approach-is-key-for-open-access-1.13610?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20130829

The OA Citation Advantage: Comparing Apples and Oranges

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The Open Access (OA) citation advantage has been repeatedly demonstrated for Green OA, that is, articles published in any journal at all, but made open access by their authors by self-archiving them free for all online.

But the significant citation advantage for OA articles over non-OA articles — which has been found in every field tested — is based on comparing like with like: journal articles appearing in the same journal and year, and even sometimes matched for topic via title words.

Testing for a citation advantage of OA journals (Gold OA) over non-OA journals (“EC study finds low citation gains for gold open access“) requires comparisons between journals, instead of between articles within the same journal. As a consequence, even if efforts are made to compare journals within the same field, there is no way to ensure that the journals cover the same subject matter, nor, perhaps even more important, to ensure that they are of the same quality. For journals do differ not only in subject matter but in the quality of their content.

As Eric Archambault notes, Gold OA journals are handicapped by the fact that they tend to be younger, and hence have not had a chance to establish a track record for either subject matter or quality.

But even for journals of the same age, and even if they are closely matched for subject matter, it is impossible to match them for quality. And to make it even worse, journal average citation counts (“journal impact factors”) are sometimes taken as a proxy for quality! Hence equating journals for quality that way would guarantee that there could be no citation advantage between matched OA and non-OA journals!

The good news is that there is no reason to believe that the OA citation advantage that has been repeatedly demonstrated by within-journal comparisons using Green OA should not also generalize to OA provided by Gold OA — for articles of comparable quality.

One last point: Our studies have found that the size of the OA advantage is itself correlated with quality (or at least with quality as measured by citation counts): The size of the Green OA advantage is greater in journals with higher average citation counts. We tentatively conclude that the citation advantage is greater for “more citable” articles. A lower quality article will not gain as much as a higher quality article from being made more accessible. OA may even lower the citation counts of low quality articles by levelling the playing field, making all articles accessible, and hence making it possible for authors to access, use and cite the best articles, rather than being limited to the ones their institutions can afford to access via institutional subscriptions.

Gargouri, Y., Hajjem, C., Lariviere, V., Gingras, Y., Brody, T., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2010) Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research. PLOS ONE 5 (10) e13636

Open Access Week 2013 Planning – start posting your events now

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Whether your events are focused on getting faculty and students informed on Open Access Issues or if you want to promote Open Access projects your campus has begun, start planning and posting your events now to get maximum participation!

 

The theme this year is “Redefining Impact” –so what does that mean for your campus? See what groups are doing with Article Level Metrics to change the way scholarly communication is measured—read the SPARC Innovator article on the creators of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

 

Some ideas for collateral at your events: use our template to create buttons, flyers, stickers to hand out and promote open access at your events. Create posters to have as backdrops to your speakers. 

 

Are there people right on your campus who could speak? Has your campus been using Open Access Funds? Showcase your progress. See how other campuses are using their funds.

 

To help you start planning watch the SPARC Webcast with Brian Glanz on Hackathon’s. You could build an event around a simple Hack.

 

Play these resource videos at or build your event around them:

 

Livestream (or show the recorded) Kickoff event at the World Bank on Monday October 21st. Speakers will soon be announced.

 

Watch the Right to Research’s PhD Comics “Open Access Explained” video Link: 

 

Watch Jack Andraka explain how Open Access to research allowed him to discover breakthrough diagnostic for pancreatic cancer. 

 

Join a group here to get more ideas or see what others are planning.

 

Let us know if you need any other ideas. Use the resources here on the Open Access Week website.

 

And here’s to an engaging and lively Open Access Week 2013!

Best,

Andrea

 


Open Journal of Medicine: The really free and open biomedical journal

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Open Journal of Medicine  (ISSN: 2174-680X) is a journal published by iMedPub for Internet Medical Society. It has been created as a challenge to provide authors with a system for publishing articles open access for free with high quality of publishing standards.
We offer an innovative publishing system where all manuscripts received meeting the standards are accepted directly in the version provided by authors. This system is called self-publishing.

Open access
OJM provides unrestricted access to all its articles. OJM applies the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) to all works we publish (read the human-readable summary or the full license legal code). Under the CCAL, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their article, but authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy article, so long as the original authors and source are cited. Learn more on the benefits of publishing open access in our blog.

Indexing
Articles published in OJM receive a DOI and are indexed in GoogleScholar, SHERPA/ROMEO, SWETS, DeepDive, ProQuest, EBSCO, HINARI and Scientific Commons.

Archiving
This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. We also archive all articles in Medbrary, the online medical library, and Scribd. In addition we support self archiving: make your research visible and accessible to your peers by uploading a full-text version of this publication to your institution’s archive or anywhere else.

Open Journal of Medicine: The really free and open biomedical journal

Posted on by

logo.gif

Open Journal of Medicine  (ISSN: 2174-680X) is a journal published by iMedPub for Internet Medical Society. It has been created as a challenge to provide authors with a system for publishing articles open access for free with high quality of publishing standards.
We offer an innovative publishing system where all manuscripts received meeting the standards are accepted directly in the version provided by authors. This system is called self-publishing.

Open access
OJM provides unrestricted access to all its articles. OJM applies the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) to all works we publish (read the human-readable summary or the full license legal code). Under the CCAL, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their article, but authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy article, so long as the original authors and source are cited. Learn more on the benefits of publishing open access in our blog.

Indexing
Articles published in OJM receive a DOI and are indexed in GoogleScholar, SHERPA/ROMEO, SWETS, DeepDive, ProQuest, EBSCO, HINARI and Scientific Commons.

Archiving
This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. We also archive all articles in Medbrary, the online medical library, and Scribd. In addition we support self archiving: make your research visible and accessible to your peers by uploading a full-text version of this publication to your institution’s archive or anywhere else.

Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government Consultation – my comment

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Following is the comment that I just posted to Clement’s consultation on the Action Plan on Open Government, currently queued for moderation.

Good progress has been made on the Action Plan. However, progress on the details does not begin to make up for overall increasing secrecy and lack of accountability by this government. For example, when the International Monetary Fund “devotes nine pages to the trials and travails of Page’s five years trying to shine a torchlight in the government’s murky budget process — and especially on the toxic responses he got from Harper’s ministers” (from http://globalnews.ca/news/765289/imf-gives-page-high-marks-for-pbo-work/) our Prime Minister prorogues parliament when there are major questions relating to accountability that should be answered in Parliament, serious scholars like John Dupuis document The Canadian War on Science: a long, unexaggerated, devastating chronological indictment http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/05/20/the-canadian-war-on-science-a-long-unexaggerated-devastating-chronological-indictment/, Canada engages in secretive trade treaty negotiations like FIPA and TPP, “Open Government” sounds like a phrase straight out of Orwell’s 1984. Canada needs to step back and ask, not whether we are making progress on these details (good though this is in itself) – that is to say, not to ask “how much progress are we making towards open government”, but rather “are we moving towards open government at all, or are we moving fast in the opposite direction, towards more secret and unaccountable government”? I am really sorry to have to write such a critical comment as I am sincere about the genuine progress made by Clement and those who really are working for open government and would much rather give them the applause that they deserve, but this is far too important and we need to focus on the big picture.

DFATD Development Data widget generator

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The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD) Development Data widget generator is a tool that anyone can use to create a widget for a website that will search the DFATD aid data. This tool can also be adapted for use with other aid agencies that share data according to the IATI standard. The example below illustrates how someone with an interest in Canada’s support for basic health care in Haiti can create a widget like the one displayed at the bottom of this blog that will gather information on Haiti as a recipient country and health as a sector. This tool is a supplement to other search tools for aid development such as aidview, a global search tool for aid data designed for the end user.  

How to use the widget generator

The DFATD data that is searched by the widget generator can be viewed in xml format here. This file adheres to the International Aid Transparency Intitiative (IATI) file standard. The codes can be viewed at the IATI site. For example, the general category for the health sector is 121; sub-categories add an additional 2 numbers. Following is a sample widget. This can be copied and pasted into a website tool such as google blogger’s gadget function from the blogger layout menu, that accepts html/javascript. The DFATD Development Data widget generator is a tool that anyone can use to create a widget for a website that will search the DFATD data using any two parameters. For example, someone with an interest in Canada’s support for basic health in Haiti can create a widget that will gather information on Haiti as a recipient country and health as a sector.

To create your own widget, simply copy the script and change the parameters that are of interest to you, your group or community.

For example, to search a different recipient country, find the place in the script that says:

recipient-country&up_mykeyword2=HT

and change the country code from HT (for Haiti) to the country code of your choice. The country codes are listed on the IATI codes site here. To change the recipient country to Bhutan, for example, code the piece of code above, replacing HT with BT.

To change the language to french, find the part of the code that says lang=en and change to lang=fr. The IATI site provides a list of language codes; DFATD information is available in english and french.

Examples<script type=”text/javascript” src=”//www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/108447061287942535117/hello3.xml&up_myfield1=sector&up_mykeyword1=12220&up_myfield2=recipient-country&up_mykeyword2=HT&synd=open&w=250&h=300&title=Haiti+Basic+Health+Data&lang=en&country=ALL&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js”>“</script> <script src=”//www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/108447061287942535117/hello3.xml&up_myfield1=sector&up_mykeyword1=15160&up_myfield2=recipient-country&up_mykeyword2=CN&synd=open&w=350&h=350&title=Droits+de+L’homme+n+Chine&lang=fr&country=ALL&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js”></script&lgt;

 

Future possibilities

  • GUI interface (e.g. drop down menus) to make it easier for website administrators to generate new widgets
  • more style options
  • Transparency might be enhanced by giving beneficiaries in the recipient countries and other key stakeholders an opportunity to crowdsource their own quantitative or qualitative assessment of the results of a project, and/or suggestions for future projects. 

About this project: The CIDA Development Data widget generator is an early prototype designed to illustrate the potential for enhanced searching of development data created by Team Widget, my group at the Citizen Attaché hackathon.The project website which includes technical information and contacts, is available here.

This post is part of the Creative Globalization series.

♥ Copying is an act of love. Please copy and share according to the principles of copyheart.

Predicting Movie Box Office Success Using Wikipedia

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Iron Man photo by HarshLight

It’s Friday evening and perhaps you’re planing to watch a movie, but will the new release you choose be a blockbuster or a lackluster flop? Well Wikipedia may help predict your choice’s success or failure in the box office, according to a recently published study.

In this study, researchers tracked activity on Wikipedia entries for 312 movies (released in 2010), including aspects like number of views, users, and edits; and compared this activity to the box office success of the movies in a computational model. They found a strong correlation between higher Wikipedia activity before a movie was released, and the box office success of the film.

The study could accurately predict the blockbuster success of movies like Iron Man 2, Shutter Island and Inception, but was unsuccessful with movies such as The Lottery and Animal Kingdom. The scientists attribute the lack of predictability to the amount of data provided for the different types of movies. According to the authors, their analysis can be used to provide reasonable predictions about a movie’s success as early as a month prior to its release.

The study is a foray into using “big data” generated from the social web to predict people’s reactions to a new product- in this case, a movie. Previous studies have used social data, such as tweets related to an event, to estimate public sentiment and reactions. Here, the authors use social data in advance of the ‘event’ to gauge public sentiment after the movie has launched. They conclude, “Our statistical approach, free of any language based or sentiment analysis, can be easily generalized to non-English speaking movie markets or even other kinds of products.”

Citation: Mestyán M, Yasseri T, Kertész J (2013) Early Prediction of Movie Box Office Success Based on Wikipedia Activity Big Data. PLoS ONE 8(8): e71226. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0071226

Image Credit: Iron Man Tech by HarsLight

Delayed Access (DA) Is Not Open Access (OA) Any More Than Subscription Access (SA) is OA

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It is heartening to know that 50% of articles published in 2008 were freely accessible online in 2012. But when did they become accessible? It could have been at any time from the date of acceptance for publication to December 2012!

A = Access (can be, free or paid, open or restricted, immediate or delayed)
SA = Subscription Access (also called TA: toll access, to include subscription access, licensed access, and pay-to-view access).
OA = Open Access (immediate, permanent, Gratis or Libre)
Gratis OA = toll-free online access
Libre OA = toll-free online access plus certain re-use rights
DA = Delayed Access (free online access after a delay period or embargo
Green OA = OA provided by author self-archiving
Gold OA = OA provided by the publisher — sometimes, but not always, for a publication fee
Delayed Green = free online access provided by the author after a delay (instead of immediately upon publication, which would been Green OA)
Delayed Gold = free online access provided by the publisher after a delay (instead of immediately upon publication, which would been Gold OA)

The purpose of Open Access (OA) is to maximize the uptake, usage, applications and impact of research findings by making them accessible to all users online, rather than just to those users who have subscription access (SA).

There are two ways for authors to make access to their published findings free for all: Publish them in a journal that makes the articles free for all online (“Gold OA”). Or publish them in any journal at all, but also self-archive the final, peer-reviewed draft free for all online (“Green OA”).

But both the Green and the Gold paths to access can be taken immediately, or only after a delay of months or years.

If subscription access (SA) is not OA but restricted access, because it is restricted to subscribers only, then surely both delayed Green Access and delayed Gold Access are not OA either, because access is restricted during any delay period.

Some journals, for example, impose a 12-month embargo on Green self-archiving. And of those journals where the journal itself makes its own articles freely accessible, some journals only do so 12 months after publication or longer.

In many fields, the growth tip for accessing and building upon new findings is within the first year or even earlier. (See the figure from Gentil-Beccot 2009). With delays, potential research progress is slowed and reduced, some of it perhaps even permanently lost.

Hence 50% DA is certainly better than 25% DA — but until research has 100% OA, there’s really not that much to tipple about…

Harnad, S (2013) OA 2013: Tilting at the Tipping Point. Open Access Archivengelism 1022

Pharmacology Research & Perspectives – Editorial Board Appointed

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prp_cover_final.inddPharmacology Research &Perspectives’ editorial board has now been appointed to lead the publication in its infancy alongside Editor-in-Chief Mike Curtis and Deputy Editor Darrell Abernethy.  The new board members are listed in full below.

The journal launched at Experimental Biology 2013 and the first articles will be published shortly. The editors have appointed a strong team to help to shape the strategic direction of the journal. The consulting editors and the remainder of the editorial board will work closely with the editors to ensure a rigorous peer review processs for the journal.

Authors are invited to submit their articles using the online submission site.

Editor-in-Chief
Michael J. Curtis, London, UK

Deputy Editor
Darrell R. Abernethy, Maryland, USA

Consulting Editors
Thomas Brand, Imperial College, UK
John Challiss, University of Leicester, UK
Mark Connor, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Josephine Egan, National Institute of Aging, Baltimore, USA
Alison Gurney, The University of Manchester, UK
Paul Insel, University of California San Diego, USA
Donald Mager, University at Buffalo, New York, USA
Andrew McLachlan, University of Sydney, Australia
Michael Randall, University of Nottingham, UK

Editorial Board
Karin Aubrey, University of Sydney, Australia
Chris Bailey, University of Bath, UK
Wah Chin Boon, The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Australia
Elizabeth Cartwright, The University of Manchester, UK
Thomas Chang, The University of British Columbia, Canada
Ying Chen, University of Surrey, UK
Mark Cunningham, Newcastle University, UK
Margaret Cunningham, University of Bristol, UK
Susan Currie, University of Strathclyde, UK
Yvonne Dempsie, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK
Robert Drummond, University of Strathclyde, UK
Ryoichi Fujiwara, Kitasato University, Japan
Jacob George, University of Dundee, UK
Daniel Gonzalez, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
Natasha Grimsbey, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Subash Gupta, University of Mississippi Medical Center, USA
Ioannis Haralambopoulos, University of Crete, Greece
Liz Hardaker, Novartis, UK
Anders Haunso, Merck Research Laboratories, USA
Nick Holliday, University of Nottingham, UK
Dana Hutchinson, Monash University, Australia
Jee Hyan Kim, University of Melbourne, Australia
Manoj Lalu, University of Ottawa, Canada
Emma Lane, Cardiff University, UK
Robert Lane, Monash University, Australia
Derek Lang, Cardiff University, UK
Anastassios Lymperopoulos, Nova Southeastern University, USA
Oliver Mace, Heptare Therapeutics, UK
Leanne Mackay, University of Glasgow, UK
Kevin Morgan, University of Hull, UK
Ben Mulcahy, University of Southampton, UK
Lucy Norling, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Terence Pang, University of Melbourne, Australia
Nimesh Patel, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Ryan Pelis, Dalhousie University, Canada
Victoria Ridger, University of Sheffield, UK
Bianca Rocca, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy
Liz Rosethorne, Novartis, UK
Pawan Sharma, University of Calgary, Canada
Douglas Sweet, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA
Jerome Swinny, University of Portsmouth, UK
Gareth Veal, Newcastle University, UK
Catriona Waitt, The University of Liverpool, UK
James Whiteford, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Jeanette Wollard, University of Nottingham, UK
Tiantai Zhang, Peking Union Medical College, China