The Optimization Path of Research Support Services in University Libraries from the Perspective of Affordance Theory

University libraries,as an integral component of university research capabilities,are tasked with serving education by providing research support to faculty and students.This study adopts an affordance research perspective originating from ecological psychology to explore the optimization path of research support services in libraries in the new media era.Based on the characteristics of university library services,this research analyzes three aspects:production affordance,mobile affordance,and social affordance,and proposes practical recommendations to guide future research service practices of university libraries.

CAS researcher Receives Distinguished Service Award from American Fisheries Society

CHEN Yushun,an expert on aquaculture and aquatic ecosystems from the Institute of Hydrobiology,Chinese Academy of Sciences,received the Distinguished Service Award on August 23,2017 at the American Fisheries Society(AFS)Annual Meeting in Tampa,Florida.The Distinguished Service Award recognizes outstanding contributions of time and energy for

Integrating beneficiaries into assessment of ecosystem services from managed forests at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest,USA

Background：Forests contribute to human wellbeing through the provision of important ecosystem services.Methods：In this study,we investigated how the perceived importance of ecosystem services may impact the overall benefit provided by managed watersheds at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest over a 45-year period,using standardized measures of service capacity weighted by service importance weights derived from a survey of beneficiaries.Results：The capacity of watersheds to regulate water flow and quality was high in all watersheds throughout the study period,whereas cultural services such as scenic beauty declined after harvest.Impacts on greenhouse gas regulation depended on the efficiency with which harvested biomass was used.Surveys revealed that stakeholders placed high value on all ecosystem services,with regulating and cultural services seen as more important than provisioning services.When service metrics were weighted by survey responses and aggregated into a single measure,total service provision followed the same overall trend as greenhouse gas regulation.Where biomass use was less efficient in terms of greenhouse gas emissions,harvesting resulted in an overall ＂ecosystem service debt＂;where use was more efficient,this ＂ecosystem service debt＂ was reduced.Beneficiaries＇ educational backgrounds significantly affected overall assessment of service provision.Beneficiaries with college or university degrees incurred smaller ＂ecosystem service debts＂ and were less negatively affected by harvesting overall.Conclusions：This study highlights the importance of including empirical measures of beneficiary preference when attempting to quantify overall provision of ecosystem services to human beneficiaries over time.

Priorities for Social and Humanities Projects Based on Text Analysis

Purpose:Changes in the world show that the role,importance,and coherence of SSH(social sciences and the humanities)will increase significantly in the coming years.This paper aims to monitor and analyze the evolution(or overlapping)of the SSH thematic pattern through three funding instruments since 2007.Design/methodology/approach:The goal of the paper is to check to what extent the EU Framework Program(FP)affects/does not affect research on national level,and to highlight hot topics from a given period with the help of text analysis.Funded project titles and abstracts derived from the EU FP,Slovenian,and Estonian RIS were used.The final analysis and comparisons between different datasets were made based on the 200 most frequent words.After removing punctuation marks,numeric values,articles,prepositions,conjunctions,and auxiliary verbs,4,854 unique words in ETIS,4,421 unique words in the Slovenian Research Information System(SICRIS),and 3,950 unique words in FP were identified.Findings:Across all funding instruments,about a quarter of the top words constitute half of the word occurrences.The text analysis results show that in the majority of cases words do not overlap between FP and nationally funded projects.In some cases,it may be due to using different vocabulary.There is more overlapping between words in the case of Slovenia(SL)and Estonia(EE)and less in the case of Estonia and EU Framework Programmes(FP).At the same time,overlapping words indicate a wider reach(culture,education,social,history,human,innovation,etc.).In nationally funded projects(bottom-up),it was relatively difficult to observe the change in thematic trends over time.More specific results emerged from the comparison of the different programs throughout FP(top-down).Research limitations:Only projects with English titles and abstracts were analyzed.Practical implications:The specifics of SSH have to take into account—the one-to-one meaning of terms/words is not as important as,for example,in the exact sciences.Thus,even in co-word analysis,the final content may go unnoticed.Originality/value:This was the first attempt to monitor the trends of SSH projects using text analysis.The text analysis of the SSH projects of the two new EU Member States used in the study showed that SSH’s thematic coverage is not much affected by the EU Framework Program.Whether this result is field-specific or country-specific should be shown in the following study,which targets SSH projects in the so-called old Member States.

Review on Efficacy and Health Services Research Studies of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Objective：To assess the evidence of the use and efficacy for complementary and alternative medicine（CAM） in inflammatory bowel disease（IBD）. Methods：A systematic literature search in MEDLINE was performed for randomized controlled trials（RCTs） in Crohn＇s disease and ulcerative colitis.Moreover,a selective literature search for health services research studies on the use of CAM in patients with IBD was performed.Results：Health services research studies showed a high use of CAM in adult and pediatric patients with IBD worldwide.In contrast to the high use among IBD patients,there was a lack of high-quality data for many of the used CAM methods.Although most of the studies showed positive results,the methodological quality of most studies was rather low;therefore,the results had to be interpreted with caution.While there were many studies for probiotics and fish oil,RCTs for the highly used method homeopathy, for most herbal products,and for traditional Chinese medicine methods apart from acupuncture RCTs were completely lacking.Conclusions：The lack of high-quality studies might be the consequence of the problems associated with the funding of clinical trials involving CAM.However,having the high user rates in mind,high-quality studies assessing efficacy and safety of those methods are urgently needed.Furthermore,there is a need for better representation of CAM in undergraduate and postgraduate medical education.

Healthcare delivery interventions to reduce cancer disparities worldwide

Globally,cancer care delivery is marked by inequalities,where some economic,demographic,and sociocultural groups have worse outcomes than others.In this review,we sought to identify patient-facing interventions designed to reduce disparities in cancer care in both high-and low-income countries.We found two broad categories of interventions that have been studied in the current literature:Patient navigation and telehealth.Navigation has the strongest evidence base for reducing disparities,primarily in cancer screening.Improved outcomes with navigation interventions have been seen in both high-and low-income countries.Telehealth interventions remain an active area of exploration,primarily in high income countries,with the best evidence being for the remote delivery of palliative care.Ongoing research is needed to identify the most efficacious,costeffective,and scalable interventions to reduce barriers to the receipt of cancer care globally.