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Significance of Digital Libraries For Students and Academic Institutions

texila_digipedia_online_librarySummary: Nowadays, most of the libraries are filled with informative contents that are created and researched by famous scientist and scholars.

Online libraries and journal websites are becoming a boon for many people. They have become a source where people can not only harvest contents but, download them as and when required. Previously, individuals were more inclined to going to a library, checking out the shelves and borrowing the book or noting down the important points. Not only this was time consuming, but people literally had to travel from their home to the library.

However, with the advent of the Internet, people can relax at their homes and get the required contents in an instant. No more they have to wait and go to the physical libraries. With a PC and a decent internet connection, individuals can search for the required content as well as download it.

In addition, digital libraries and journal website have become portals for people to publish their researches and gain information to enhance their thesis and experiments. Nowadays, most of the libraries are filled with informative contents that are created and researched by famous scientist and scholars. These contents can be a great source of research materials for scientist in their experiments and based on the findings of these researches they can do a further research.

Such online libraries are advantageous for the scientific society as it acts as a reservoir for storage of critical information and findings. Since a lot of physical records of scientific studies and researches are getting destroyed and lost, online copies can be of great asset for the coming generations. It can help various individuals to know what kind of research was followed and how to expand those researches.

Digital libraries can enhance one’s knowledge by giving them access to multiple contents. It gives a great amount of choice and with a huge amount of selections; it becomes easy for people to expand their horizons in learning. And with this enormous amount of knowledge, individuals can share them with others and help in the expansion of education.

No wonder it is not surprising to see various universities and academic institutions having their own digital library websites. These online libraries act as an open source consortium for their students and teachers. It helps their students to access the required information related to the course they are studying.

Hence, one can say that digital libraries have indeed revolutionized the way education system functions. It has created an easy access for individuals to get the required information at a go and that too without any hassle.

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Symptoms of PTSD are likely to drink more alcohol

ptsd symptomsThe estimated 9 percent of college students who have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are likely to drink more alcohol than peers without the psychological condition. In turn, heavy alcohol consumption exacerbates their PTSD symptoms over time, prolonging a vicious cycle.

These are the conclusions of the first empirical study to examine the bidirectional influences of the two phenomena, influences that had been theorized but never tested.

The study, “Reciprocal Associations Between PTSD Symptoms and Alcohol Involvement in College: A Three-Year Trait-State-Error Analysis,” was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and is published in the most recent edition of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology

College is a time of important developmental changes and a period of risk for heavy drinking, trauma exposure and post-traumatic stress symptoms,” says Jennifer P. Read, PhD, associate professor of psychology at the University at Buffalo and principle investigator on the study. (medical ebooks)

“Heavy drinking is common on college campuses and related to risk for sexual assault, interpersonal violence and serious injury, any of which may trigger PTSD,” says Read, who noted that although there has been an assumption that the two are mechanistically associated in the college population, until now, the nature of their relationship was unclear.

The study examined the relationships between PTSD and heavy drinking in 486 students as they transitioned into college and at 11 additional points over the following three years.

“We show that alcohol use and associated problems are linked over time to an exacerbation in PTSD symptoms, and that PTSD symptoms show a similar effect on alcohol consumption. Each affects the other. As such, both PTSD and heavy drinking are risk factors for one another, each with implications for the other over the course of college,” Read says.

“This information is useful and perhaps imperative for those who assist students dealing with these problems.”

The study employed the trait-state-error modeling analytic approach, which allowed the examination of prospective and reciprocal associations among these constructs while accounting for intra-individual stability.

Co-authors on the study, both in the UB Department of Psychology, are Jeffery D. Wardell, doctoral candidate in clinical psychology, and Craig R. Colder, PhD, professor of clinical psychology. (digital library)

Read’s research focuses on the etiology of and interventions for problematic alcohol and other substance use in young adults. Her prior research has examined both environmental and individual determinants of alcohol use, in particular, how individual-level factors such as gender, affective state and alcohol cognitions (e.g., expectancies, motives) may account for different responses to the social environment.

In a 2011 study of 3,000 college students, published in the journal Psychological Trauma, she found that about 9 percent met the criteria for PTSD, with the disorder found to be most common among those exposed to sexual and physical assault, most of whom were women.

A 2012 study by Read and colleagues found that the transition into college is marked by an escalation in heavy drinking, drug use and use-related negative consequences, and suggested interventions that may help to ameliorate problem substance use and ultimately facilitate a stronger transition into college and beyond. src; news medical

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Get Gene Therapy to Improve your Vision

gene therapyTwo adults with a rare disease that causes gradual loss of eyesight had their vision improved after being treated with a new gene therapy, according to preliminary results from a new study.

The study involved six patients ages 35 to 63 with choroideremia, an inherited condition with no cure that causes vision problems early in life, and eventually leads to blindness. Patients have a mutation in a gene called CHM, which causes light-sensitive cells in the eye to slowly stop working.

The goal behind the new gene therapy is to use a safe virus to deliver a working copy of the gene to the right part of the eye to prevent the cells from degenerating.

The new study was an early test of the therapy in which the researchers aimed to carry out the treatment without causing damage to the eye. (Patients must have an eye surgery so that the virus can be injected under the retina with a fine needle).

The result showed that the treatment did not cause harm, and in fact, improved vision in a few of the patients.

Six months after the treatment, four patients recovered the visual acuity (clearness or acuteness of vision) that they had before the surgery, and developed increased sensitivity to light. And two patients had improvements in vision: They were able to read two to four more lines on a sight chart.

“We did not expect to see such dramatic improvements in visual acuity,” study researcher Robert MacLaren, of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology at the University of Oxford in the U.K., said in a statement. It is still too early to know if the improvements will last, but they have so far been maintained for as long as two years, MacLaren said.

The study is the first to test gene therapy in patients before they’d experienced significant thinning of the retinal cells, MacLaren said. click

“Our findings hold great promise for gene therapy to prevent loss of sight in other retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration,” MacLaren said.

The researchers are now studying the effects of higher doses of gene therapy to find out what level is needed to stop degeneration, MacLaren added.

“It’s a very small [study] but the concept is very promising,” said Dr. Mark Fromer, an ophthalmologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, who was not involved in the study.

“Those genes that they’re injecting essentially have the ability to make the correct protein” that is unavailable in patients with defective genes, Fromer said.  click

While larger studies are needed, “it’s the right track” to attempt to correct the problem in patients before they’ve experienced significant vision loss, Fromer said.

With regard to using the therapy to treat other types of vision loss, Fromer said, “It’s is a long road, but it makes a lot of sense to try to treat the disease before it’s caused any damage.”

The study is published in today’s (Jan. 15) issue of the journal The Lancet.  src – live science

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Online Libraries–Gaining Momentum in Todays Educational Field

edu-todaySummary: Free online libraries have somehow gained a huge place in the minds of each individual. The most promising aspect of this is the presences of various online library websites and the hundred of users who are logging in it every day

Libraries can be an interesting part of our lives, as they can be a one-stop informative arena for bookworms as well as booklovers. Libraries are always filled with interesting and informative books which can be a great asset for ones who enjoy gaining new knowledge throughout their lives. And surprisingly, online libraries somehow surpassed their predecessor, normal libraries in being the most accessible means of information.

Free online libraries have somehow gained a huge place in the minds of each individual. The most promising aspect of this is the presences of various online library websites and the hundred of users who are logging in it every day. From fiction to non-fiction, academic to research work, etc; books related to various topics and categories are easily available in most of the online libraries.

Digital libraries are free to use and easily accessible. To become a member in most of the online libraries, only need is a valid email id. Also it is very easy to access the books present in such libraries as all a person has to do is login in and search for the specific books that he or she wants by using the search option. As soon as an individual types a keyword which can be the category or name of the book or author’s name, etc; in the search option, it will display the details of the specific book or the list of the books matching the results given.

One of the main reasons why online books websites are becoming popular is that they are easily available and to use. Sitting at home or office, a person can search for the book he or she wants and in a matter of minutes. No more a person has to wait in line to get the books stamped or noted by librarians or search for books from the multiple shelves.

Simplicity is what online libraries are about. No wonder there are various schools and colleges who have started their own free digital libraries. Seriously, these educational institutions have realized the importance of online libraries. They have become aware of the fact that their students might need extra resources or materials to compete in this highly cutthroat educational field.

They would want their students to go an extra mile in academics and become highly successful which can be a great asset for them. Plus it even helps the students to think out of the box and reach the ultimate goal of reaching the high levels in the field of academic research and scientific studies.

Do you know that most of the scientist and researchers often refer online libraries for their research work? There is no doubt that online libraries have a significant importance in the current finding and research work that are happening in todays society.

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Relevance of Online Libraries

texila-digipedia-Summary:  Another great advantage of digital libraries is that they act as a reservoir of precious information. Most of the information related to pre-historical times are quite sacred and difficult to find.

Nowadays, the amount of importance that online or digital libraries have is truly amazing. People want things right at their fingertips and immediately. The same can be said about digital libraries. It gives them the required information in a matter of seconds. That is why most of the online libraries are quite successful and have loads of users visiting them daily.

For an average person finding or searching for books is a laborious process and it is something that they dread about. Like taking the garbage out, people really hate to go to libraries and bookstore and spend some time in searching for books. Rather than checking out the book and seeing it physically, people prefer to check out the online version which easily gives more information than physical ones.

Most of the digital libraries have information related to authors, his or her background, other publications written by him or her, the details about the publisher, the previous edition of the current book, information about other books related to the given topic, etc. Such information can easily help a user to make decision and select the book of his or her choice.

Another great advantage of digital libraries is that they act as a reservoir of precious information. Most of the information related to pre-historical times are quite sacred and difficult to find. They are less in number and chances are there that copies of such information could be less or there would be lost or mishandled as years passed by. Such information is precious and is something that needs to be preserved.

Online libraries help to store such information and act as a storage house which will publish the information as and when required. This is very much significant as the future generations can access these information and know about the various researches and findings that took place years before.

Time factor can be another reason why online libraries are famous. Searching for books electronically can be quite advantageous as you can easily search for the required book using the keyword like the name of the book or the category.  Most of the people prefer to choose books based on categories and digital libraries are one of these sources. Category wise selection can easily help in identifying the required books that you want.

Frankly, digital libraries have craved a pathway where people can know what kind of books or information is available, and access it without any difficulty.