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This is a survey developed by members of the Reproducible Research Oxford steering group (https://ox.ukrn.org/), and administered at the University of Oxford between 12th January 2021 and 1st March 2021. The aim of this survey is to assess the views of researchers on open research practices, related training needs and provision, and recruitment criteria to inform the implementation of open research practices and responsible research assessment at Oxford. Page 2 to 25: survey ‘Open research at Oxford’ Page 26: form to enter a raffle for a chance to win vouchers

The Gulf of Pozzuoli (GoP) is a marginal sub-basin of Tyrrhenian Sea, characterized by a strong anthropogenic impact, due to high population density and intense commercial and tourist traffic. Historically, the GoP is dedicated to the farming of bivalve mollusks which are constantly subject to chemical and microbiological monitoring to protect the health of consumers. In the winter season, high levels of PAHs were found in mussels from the Lucrino area. This study reports the environmental analyses and the activities carried out in order to investigate the levels and sources of contamination by PAHs.

Researchers, institutions, funders, and publishers are considering how to improve research culture and quality, but no single part of the research ecosystem can effect change on its own. The UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) was established to facilitate the necessary coordination. Its experience can inform the establishment of like-minded networks around the world to drive positive change.

The contrade are 17 communities that divide the historic city centre of Siena, Italy, and they hold great potential to shed light on human group dynamics. Here we provide a systematic description of these communities, drawing on published materials and on a series of field-based studies, combined with a workflow grounded in open research practices. We estimate that the contemporary contrada system involves on the order of 30,000 individuals. Our survey (n = 508) indicates that membership is linked to strong familial and other social ties. Assessment of the attitude of members (n = 42) reveals variation shaped by the relationships between the groups (as alliance, neutral, or rivalry). This pattern is reflected in how members behave, collectively and individually, in the course of a ritual event (185 person-hours of GPS data). In this contemporary urban setting, then, social interactions within and across group boundaries are shaped by symbolic divisions rooted in history.

The IsoArcH Open Science in Archaeology event took place on the 20th of May. This overview presents a brief overview of the main takeaways of the event (1-IsoArcH-Event_Summary), the programme (2-IsoArcH-Event_Programme), as well as the slides used by the speakers (3-7).

Background and objectives ANCA-associated vasculitis is extremely rare in children. We report the clinicopathologic features, long-term outcomes, and prognostic factors of a large pediatric cohort of patients with ANCA-associated kidney vasculitis. Design, setting, participants, & measurements This retrospective study included 85 consecutive patients with kidney biopsy specimen–proven ANCA-associated vasculitis from tertiary referral centers in Italy and Canada. Kidney biopsy specimens were categorized as focal, crescentic, sclerotic, or mixed, according to the Berden classification. The prognostic significance of baseline clinical, laboratory, and histologic findings was analyzed with respect to kidney failure or CKD stage 3–5/kidney failure. Results A total of 53 patients had microscopic polyangiitis (62%), and 32 had granulomatosis with polyangiitis (38%). Rapidly progressive GN was the most frequent presentation (39%); a third of the patients also had nephrotic-range proteinuria. Kidney biopsy specimens were classified as focal in 21% of the patients, crescentic in 51%, sclerotic in 15%, and mixed in 13%. Remission-induction therapies included cyclophosphamide in 78% of patients. A total of 25 patients (29%) reached kidney failure. The median (interquartile range) time to kidney failure or last follow-up was 35 (6–89) months in the whole cohort, and 73 (24–109) months among the patients who did not reach this outcome. Patients whose biopsy specimens showed sclerotic histology had significantly shorter kidney survival (hazard ratio, 11.80; 95% confidence interval, 2.49 to 55.99) and survival free of CKD stage 3–5 (hazard ratio, 8.88; 95% confidence interval, 2.43 to 32.48), as compared with those with focal/mixed histology. Baseline eGFR, low serum albumin, hypertension, central nervous system complications, and sclerotic histology, which reflected severe kidney involvement, were associated with both kidney failure and CKD stage 3–5/kidney failure at unadjusted analysis; no independent prognostic factors emerged at multivariable analysis. Conclusions Children with ANCA-associated kidney vasculitis often have aggressive presentation; a third of such children progress to kidney failure and this usually occurs early during follow-up. A severe clinical presentation is associated with the development of CKD or kidney failure.

Isolated aortitis and periaortitis are inflammatory diseases of the aorta and its branches. They essentially differ in the extension of inflammation, which is confined to the aortic wall in aortitis and extends into the periaortic space in periaortitis. Isolated aortitis is classified as a single-organ vasculitis and occurs in the absence of other infectious or rheumatologic disorders. Periaortitis is either idiopathic or secondary to a wide array of etiologies (drugs, infections, malignancies, other proliferative diseases). Notably, both isolated aortitis and periaortitis may arise in the context of IgG4-related disease, a recently recognized fibro-inflammatory systemic disease. Prompt diagnosis and treatment are essential for both conditions in order to avoid life-threatening complications.

Free and open source software (FOSS) is any computer program released under a licence that grants users rights to run the program for any purpose, to study it, to modify it, and to redistribute it in original or modified form. Our aim is to explore the intersection between FOSS and computational reproducibility. We begin by situating FOSS in relation to other ‘open’ initiatives, and specifically open science, open research, and open scholarship. In this context, we argue that anyone who actively contributes to the research process today is a computational researcher, in that they use computers to manage and store information. We then provide a primer to FOSS suitable for anyone concerned with research quality and sustainability—including researchers in any field, as well as support staff, administrators, publishers, funders, and so on. Next, we illustrate how the notions introduced in the primer apply to resources for scientific computing, with reference to the GNU Scientific Library as a case study. We conclude by discussing why the common interpretation of ‘open source’ as ‘open code’ is misplaced, and we use this example to articulate the role of FOSS in research and scholarship today. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reliability and reproducibility in computational science: implementing verification, validation and uncertainty quantification in silico ’.

Cultural events are an important driver of socio-cultural-economic transformation. The growth of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has affected the ways in which people can play an active role in cultural event management and urban planning. This work proposes a methodological approach that identifies the key elements for building bottom-up urban e-planning strategies. After a brief theoretical analysis of the impact of cultural activities, tourism and ICTs on urban planning, this paper presents the results of an empirical study carried out in the Puglia region (south of Italy) during the cultural event known as “La Notte della Taranta”, in which the crowd created added-value information via comments posted on social media. Data were collected using a mobile application specifically created for this event as part of the Folkture project, as well as from Facebook and Twitter posts. Using network-analytic and sentiment/semantic algorithms, the work aims to support the event management decisional process and produce results valuable to the field of urban planning.

An important aspect of health monitoring is effective knowledge of food consumed. In this regard, a methodology of analysis is proposed in order to know in advance the food choices of the final consumers. This can give added value to the agricultural productions of the territory and of the farmers, facilitating the direct relationship between agriculture and the final consumer. To build a prediction model, web monitoring and traditional marketing analysis will be performed. The results of analysis can be used to sensitize the consumers towards a greater alimentary awareness, helping to manage of diet-related diseases like obesity, diabetes, and even cardiovascular diseases.

There is ongoing debate regarding the robustness and credibility of published scientific research. We argue that these issues stem from two broad causal mechanisms: the cognitive biases of researchers and the incentive structures within which researchers operate. The UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) is working with researchers, institutions, funders, publishers, and other stakeholders to address these issues.

In current scenario an evolution, regarding several actors involved in food network, emerges. Food Democracy and Food Citizenship movements show new awareness by consumers during the food purchase experience, who demand more and several information about food. The channel to convey this information is the label. Designing strategically a label able to satisfy the consumer needs could represent the success of food industry. The change of the market pushes producers and food companies to shift towards a vision ethical and sustainability oriented of the food production and packaging. The challenge consists to communicate all the information that consumer wants, taking into account how he approaches food label. In order to understand the contents about food information demanded by consumer, a crosssectional survey was conducted interviewing visitors to a food and wine Italian event. The answers were processed and analysed through qualitative analysis of the content and term frequency analysis. Four main clusters of information were identified. From literature, four patterns of processing label information adopted by consumer emerged. The purpose of the present work is to match content and patterns of approach to the food label, designing and proposing four different layouts of a smart label leveraging on IT solution.

Female-biased kinship (FBK) arises in numerous species and in diverse human cultures, suggesting deep evolutionary roots to female-oriented social structures. The significance of FBK has been debated for centuries in human studies, where it has often been described as difficult to explain. At the same time, studies of FBK in non-human animals point to its apparent benefits for longevity, social complexity and reproduction. Are female-biased social systems evolutionarily stable and under what circumstances? What are the causes and consequences of FBK? The purpose of this theme issue is to consolidate efforts towards understanding the evolutionary significance and stability of FBK in humans and other mammals. The issue includes broad theoretical and empirical reviews as well as specific case studies addressing the social and ecological correlates of FBK across taxa, time and space. It leverages a comparative approach to test existing hypotheses and presents novel arguments that aim to expand our understanding of how males and females negotiate kinship across diverse contexts in ways that lead to the expression of female biases in kinship behaviour and social structure. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The evolution of female-biased kinship in humans and other mammals’.

I draw on insights from anthropology to outline a framework for the study of kinship systems that applies across animal species with biparental sexual reproduction. In particular, I define lineal kinship organization as a social system that emphasizes interactions among lineally related kin—that is, individuals related through females only, if the emphasis is towards matrilineal kin, and individuals related through males only, if the emphasis is towards patrilineal kin. In a given population, the emphasis may be expressed in one or more social domains, corresponding to pathways for the transmission of different resources across generations (e.g. the allocation of food, the transfer of access to the natal territory or household). A lineal bias in any domain can be viewed as a bias in investment towards a particular set of kin—specifically, towards the offspring of daughters if the bias is matrilineal, and towards the offspring of sons if the bias is patrilineal. Effectively, investment is restricted to the offspring of the females in the population in one case, and to the offspring of the males in the other. This is distinct from a bias in investment towards daughters and towards sons, respectively. Overall, I propose a shift in focus—from viewing matrilineal and patrilineal kinship as unitary phenomena, to consideration of the different aspects of the social system featuring a bias towards lineally related kin. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The evolution of female-biased kinship in humans and other mammals’.

In this paper, we present a pattern language for sharing practical knowledge to design innovative projects, which we call project design patterns. This pattern language consists of 32 patterns about designing projects, which are organised into five categories: core, learn, create, live, and pleasure. This collection of practical knowledge behind designing projects was created through a mining process of interviewing professional project designers, organising the mined elements using the KJ method (a method for clustering ideas named based on the initials of its originator), and writing the information in the pattern format: pattern name, illustration, context, problem, solution, and consequence. This paper presents three patterns in full as well as summaries of all 32 patterns. Survey results and responses of workshop participants and users, presented in the later sections of the paper, provide exploratory data which testify to the potential power of the proposed language for thinking, reflection, and dialogue on designing innovative projects.

Cultural events are an important driver of socio-cultural-economic transformation. The growth of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has affected the ways in which people can play an active role in cultural event management and urban planning. This work proposes a methodological approach that identifies the key elements for building bottom-up urban e-planning strategies. After a brief theoretical analysis of the impact of cultural activities, tourism and ICTs on urban planning, this paper presents the results of an empirical study carried out in the Puglia region (south of Italy) during the cultural event known as “La Notte della Taranta”, in which the crowd created added-value information via comments posted on social media. Data were collected using a mobile application specifically created for this event as part of the Folkture project, as well as from Facebook and Twitter posts. Using network-analytic and sentiment/semantic algorithms, the work aims to support the event management decisional process and produce results valuable to the field of urban planning.

Following the triple helix (TH) model and the way knowledge is transferred into the industry domain, this chapter aims to define features interface that should be implemented in order to facilitate the University–Industry (UI) relationship and thus encourage the spin-off creation. In order to support this relationship, a new business model configuration of an entrepreneurial ecosystem is proposed, aiming at creating a sustainable environment, where business entities can grow. The field of the Governance of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems is also investigated in order to define a framework for launching, developing, and sustaining a company over time. This chapter presents a case study developed within the University of Salento (Italy). It capitalizes results from three different research analyses, based on questionnaires and interviews with actors of the spin-off network (professors and researchers, graduating students, admin-tech staff of the Technology Transfer Office, spin-offs’ CEOs/Associates, and R&D managers of external companies) and on results coming from scientific publications and regional/national reports in the innovation context. A research methodology based on semantic network analysis and sentiment analysis has been applied in order to identify which features an interface should implement in order to facilitate the UI relationship and encourage the spin-off creation. To support the start-up overcoming the “death valley,” the creation of a link between the strategy used to transfer value to the market and the phase of innovation is proposed inside the business model configuration. Some aspects of a governance model of an entrepreneurial ecosystem were also presented in order to support the business evolution of a single business entity and assuring sustainability over time.

This study examines the University-Industry (UI) interface, in Triple Helix (TH) Model. In the era of Knowledge-based Economy, the Third Mission generates new value that depending from UI interface. New businesses, revealed with the Spin-offs creation, catalyzed by this interface, aims to commercialize the results coming from research activities. The purpose of this article is to understand features of an UI interface in order to support adequately the spin-off establishment and reduce the risk of not overcome the Death Valley. The study was conducted through direct interviews to 39 CEOs of the University of Salento' spin-offs. So, applying Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Sentiment Analysis (SA) techniques, four clusters of main emerged themes and the relative text sentiment were identified.

My aim in this article is to elucidate the relevance of the evolutionary paradigm to the study of kinship and marriage systems. I begin with a discussion of conceptual and methodological issues that arise in approaching human social systems from an evolutionary perspective. I then narrow the focus on key tools used in contemporary cross-cultural research within evolutionary anthropology. Next, as a case study, I provide an overview of work aimed at reconstructing the (pre)history of the nuclear family in Indo-European-speaking societies, focusing on the interplay between monogamous marriage and neolocal residence. I conclude with musings on the prospect of a biologically based social anthropology.

This study tried to deepen the gamification dynamics’ effects on on-line interactions, by adopting a graph theory approach for quantifying controversies. By using as a case study a unique, collected dataset of conversations exchange and interactions from users of FolkTure mobile app, designed and developed for the folk music Festival “La Notte della Taranta”, we adopted an interdisciplinary approach to data analysis, to verify the hypotesis that the gamification logics implemented inside the app had influenced the rise and progress of controversies within the on-line community. Network analysis’ results has been verified through both the analytic point of view (the graph theory) and the observation of the pragmatic aspects of communication.

Bright red coloration is a signal of male competitive ability in animal species across a range of taxa, including non-human primates. Does the effect of red on competition extend to humans? A landmark study in evolutionary psychology established such an effect through analysis of data for four combat sports at the 2004 Athens Olympics [1]. Here we show that the results do not replicate in an equivalent, independent dataset for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and that there is substantial variation in the fraction of wins by red across sports in both years. We uncover a number of shortcomings with the research design, analysis, and interpretation underlying the original results. For example, the variation observed in the data may reflect bias towards wins by one color over the other, linked to specific features of the tournament structure for the sports analysed. Reanalysis of the data to address these shortcomings indicates that there is no evidence for an effect of red on the outcomes of Olympic combat sports. Our results refute past claims based on analysis of this system, challenging the related notion that any effect of red in human competition is an evolved response shaped by sexual selection.

This file provides additional information on the data and methods used in Fortunato (2011a, b), and discussion of the results of the fossilization of nodes Proto-Indo-Hittite (PIH) and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) for marriage and residence strategies.

Influence measures, like social network analysis (SNA) metrics, Twitter social parameters, sentiment score and influence maximisation, are used in the literature in order to provide a characterisation of the user role and the content of messages inside a social media communication network. Using a Twitter network related to the international event EXPO2015, crawled from the event’s page, the paper measures the correlation between different influence measurements. The aim is to obtain an influence indicator framework able to interpret different user behaviour through the evaluation of user popularity, participation, influence and polarity of texts.

Accurate reconstruction of prehistoric social organization is important if we are to put together satisfactory multidisciplinary scenarios about, for example, the dispersal of human groups. Such considerations apply in the case of Indo-European and Austronesian, two large-scale language families that are thought to represent Neolithic expansions. Ancestral kinship patterns have mostly been inferred through reconstruction of kin terminologies in ancestral proto-languages using the linguistic comparative method, and through geographical or distributional arguments based on the comparative patterns of kin terms and ethnographic kinship ‘facts’. While these approaches are detailed and valuable, the processes through which conclusions have been drawn from the data fail to provide explicit criteria for systematic testing of alternative hypotheses. Here, we use language trees derived using phylogenetic tree-building techniques on Indo-European and Austronesian vocabulary data. With these trees, ethnographic data and Bayesian phylogenetic comparative methods, we statistically reconstruct past marital residence and infer rates of cultural change between different residence forms, showing Proto-Indo-European to be virilocal and Proto-Malayo-Polynesian uxorilocal. The instability of uxorilocality and the rare loss of virilocality once gained emerge as common features of both families.

In this work, we studied the effect of some growth parameters on the polarization behavior of InAs/GaAs closely stacked quantum dot (CSQDs). In particular, we focused on the surface reconstruction time of GaAs spacer, its thickness and the number of QD layers. We found that the most effective parameter to enhance the TM/TE intensity ratio is the surface reconstruction time of the GaAs spacer before the subsequent QD deposition. By varying this parameter between 20 s and 120 s, a TM/TE ratio as high as 0.86 has been achieved. A further fine tuning of GaAs spacer thickness and QD layer number increased this ratio up to a value of 0.92 in structures containing only 3 QD layers.

Due to their delta-like density of states, quantum dots (QDs) were expected to improve laser device performances with respect to quantum wells (QWs). Nevertheless, some important drawbacks limit this technology. For instance, QD laser still suffers from a low value of the modal gain, due to the low areal density of QDs, and inhomogeneous broadening, especially when multistacked layers are used. In this paper, we demonstrate that a linear increase of the QD modal gain with the QD layers number, as typically achieved in multi-QW lasers, is possible by a careful control of the Stranski-Krastanov QDs growth and QDs stacking optimization. A low-transparency current density of 10 A/cm(2) per QD layer and a modal gain of 6 cm(-1) per QD layer Were achieved from laser structures containing up to seven QD layers. We demonstrate 10-Gb/s direct modulation (until a temperature of 50 degrees C and high T-0 (110 K) from a single-mode device containing six QD layers.

The scope of this paper is to test the adoption of a statistical model derived from Condensed Matter Physics, aiming at the reconstruction of a networked structure from observations of the states of the nodes in the network. The inverse Potts model, normally applied to observations of quantum states, is here addressed to observations of the node states in a network and their (anti)correlations, thus inferring interactions as links connecting the nodes. Adopting the Bethe approximation, such an inverse problem is known to be tractable. Within this operational framework, we discuss and apply this network-reconstruction method to a small real-world social network, where it is easy to track statuses of its members: the Italian parliament, adopted as a case study. The dataset is made of (co)sponsorships of law proposals by parliament members. In previous studies of similar activity-based networks, the graph structure was inferred directly from activity co-occurrences: here we compare our statistical reconstruction with standard methods, outlining discrepancies and advantages.

Socio-demographic, behavioral, functional and anthropometric data for groups of elderly Quechua Indians of Peru were used to investigate the effects of gender and lifestyle patterns on nutritional status. Two community-dwelling samples were selected for study, representative of divergent lifestyles in terms of their combination of socio-economic, demographic and cultural contexts, plus an ad-hoc sample of institutionalized individuals with controlled food intake and reduced physical activity. Results suggest that differences in socio-demographic, behavioral and functional characteristics exist between the sexes and across settings (low- vs. highland) and lifestyles (institutionalized vs. community-dwelling; semi-urban vs. rural). These factors are likely to be related to diverging dietary and physical activity patterns, and have considerable effects on the nutritional status of the respondents.

The role of human resources has become a key factor for the success of an organization. Based on a research collaboration with an aeronautical company, the paper proposes a comparison of two different approaches for the reconstruction of a collaborative social network in the business realm: the use of traditional Social Network Analysis and novel statistical inference models. Both approaches were evaluated against data provided by the company, in order to scout the key people in the network and the knowledge-transfer processes. As a main outcome of this paper, it was found how the network reconstruction using statistical models has an increased robustness, as well as sensitivity, allowing to discover hidden correlations among the users.

A marriage system is the set of rules and norms that regulate reproduction in a given human society. This article provides an overview of key concepts and general themes in the study of their evolution. The focus is on the number of spouses allowed (i.e., whether marriage is monogamous or polygamous), and the social and ecological factors associated with this aspect of the marriage system.

Conflict with conspecifics from neighbouring groups over territory, mating opportunities and other resources is observed in many social organisms, including humans. Here we investigate the evolutionary origins of social instincts, as shaped by selection resulting from between-group conflict in the presence of a collective action problem. We focus on the effects of the differences between individuals on the evolutionary dynamics. Our theoretical models predict that high-rank individuals, who are able to usurp a disproportional share of resources in within-group interactions, will act seemingly altruistically in between-group conflict, expending more effort and often having lower reproductive success than their low-rank group-mates. Similar behaviour is expected for individuals with higher motivation, higher strengths or lower costs, or for individuals in a leadership position. Our theory also provides an evolutionary foundation for classical equity theory, and it has implications for the origin of coercive leadership and for reproductive skew theory., In many group-living organisms high-rank individuals act as bullies usurping a greater share of resources. Here, Gavrilets and Fortunato show that in between-group conflicts such individuals will expend more effort towards the group’s success and pay higher costs than their group-mates.

We report on the growth and characterization of low threshold 1.32-μm quantum dots (QDs) laser diodes. The quantum dot active region was optimised to get the highest photoluminescence emission and the lowest Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM). From samples containing multilayer QDs and using the Limited-Area Photoluminescence (LAPL) technique we have shown that the gain of an N-layer structure is higher than N times that of a single layer. This enhancement is attributed to the increase of the quantum dot density in the upper layers and also to the use of the high growth temperature spacer layer. Broad area laser diodes were processed from the grown samples containing three layers of InAs QDs grown directly on GaAs and capped with 4-nm-thick In x Ga 1-x As layer. Than measurements were performed at room temperature under pulsed excitation. The laser diodes operate at room temperature and emit between 1.29 and 1.32-μm which is beyond the strategic telecommunication wavelength. The characteristic temperature is around 80 K and very stable in the hole range of the operating temperature (from 0 to 90 °C). The internal quantum efficiency is 53% and the modal gain per QD layer was estimated to be ~ 6 cm -1 . For an infinite cavity length a threshold current density of 8 A/cm 2 per QD layer was obtained. From the calculation of the optical confinement of QDs, we have estimated a material gain of 1979 cm -1 .