1,148 research outputs found

    sj-zip-2-smm-10.1177_09622802231188518 - Supplemental material for Multiple imputation approaches for epoch-level accelerometer data in trials

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    Supplemental material, sj-zip-2-smm-10.1177_09622802231188518 for Multiple imputation approaches for epoch-level accelerometer data in trials by Mia S Tackney, Elizabeth Williamson, Derek G Cook, Elizabeth Limb, Tess Harris and James Carpenter in Statistical Methods in Medical Research</p

    sj-pdf-1-smm-10.1177_09622802231188518 - Supplemental material for Multiple imputation approaches for epoch-level accelerometer data in trials

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    Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-smm-10.1177_09622802231188518 for Multiple imputation approaches for epoch-level accelerometer data in trials by Mia S Tackney, Elizabeth Williamson, Derek G Cook, Elizabeth Limb, Tess Harris and James Carpenter in Statistical Methods in Medical Research</p

    Derek Walcott: A Shipwrecked Mind

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    The paper addresses Derek Walcott's Collected Poems, reading the persistence of images like harbors, islands, shipwrecks and sails as the poetic response that the author offers to the uncomfortable questions of cultural identity and language in the Caribbean archipelago, where the brutal experience of colonial enslavement has left a destiny of creolization behind

    A critical edition of Derek Walcott's Omeros

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    The thesis is a Critical Edition of Derek Walcott’s Omeros, consisting of a Critical Introduction and Annotations. The Critical Introduction analyses: - Narrative - Settings - Metaphor and Paronomasia - Symbolism - Historiography - Intertexts - Dualism - Autobiography - Dialects - Prosody. The Annotations comment on more than 1000 references that may be obscure and on specifics of narrative, language and prosody. This study presents new conclusions about some aspects of Omeros: - It challenges the prevailing view that the work is written substantially in a variation of terza rima and shows that regular quatrains predominate. - It demonstrates ways in which the metrics follow the sense of the narrative and takes a more balanced position on the use of Caribbean as opposed to classical metrics than that put forward previously. - It identifies a paragraphic structure to the verse. - It proposes a new prosodic structure for the significant Chapter XXX/iii. - It extends Walcott’s recognised use of numerology into word counting the names of characters. - It develops the idea of Walcott’s dualism and his use of pairing and contradiction as a dialectical method. - It defines his wide use of paronomasia and shows that many of the puns have a metaphorical aspect beyond mere word-play. - It analyses some of Walcott’s symbolism. - It identifies intertextual links to his earlier works and to some thirty other writers, and suggests homage to Hemingway and possibly Heaney. - It provides the first complete analysis of Walcott’s rhyme types in Omeros. In its analysis of Omeros and in the Annotations it has included commentary from across the critical literature, to provide some sense of other views on Walcott’s writing, and has included as many as possible of Walcott’s own comments on Omeros and on the writer’s task, as a background to understanding the poem

    Evolution of the G+C content frontier in the rat cytomegalovirus genome

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    Within the 230138 bp of the rat cytomegalovirus (RCMV) genome, the G+C content changes abruptly at position 142644, constituting a G+C content frontier. To the left of this point, overall G+C content is 69.2%, and to the right it is only 47.6%. A region of extremely low G+C content (33.8%) is found in the 5 kb immediately to the right of the frontier, in which there are no predicted coding sequences. To the right of position 147501, the G+C content rises and predicted coding sequences reappear. However, these genes are much shorter (average 848bp, 50% G+C) than those in the left two-thirds of the genome (average 1462bp, 70% G+C). Whole genome alignment of several viruses indicates that the initial ultra-low G+C region appeared in the common ancestor of the genera Cytomegalovirus and Muromegalovirus, and that the lowering of G+C in the right third has been a subsequent process in the lineage leading to RCMV. The left two-thirds of RCMV has stop codon occurrences at 67.5% of their expected level, based on a modified Markov chain model of stop codon distribution, and the corresponding figure for the right third is 78%. Therefore, despite heavy mutation pressure, selective constraint has operated in the right third of the RCMV genome to maintain a degree of gene length unusual for such low G+C sequences

    Cardiometabolic risk markers in Indian children: comparison with UK Indian and white European children

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    Objective: UK Indian adults have higher risks of coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes than Indian and UK European adults. With growing evidence that these diseases originate in early life, we compared cardiometabolic risk markers in Indian, UK Indian and white European children.Methods: Comparisons were based on the Mysore Parthenon Birth Cohort Study (MPBCS), India and the Child Heart Health Study in England (CHASE), which studied 9–10 year-old children (538 Indian, 483 UK Indian, 1375 white European) using similar methods. Analyses adjusted for study differences in age and sex.Results: Compared with Mysore Indians, UK Indians had markedly higher BMI (% difference 21%, 95%CI 18 to 24%), skinfold thickness (% difference 34%, 95%CI 26 to 42%), LDL-cholesterol (mean difference 0.48, 95%CI 0.38 to 0.57 mmol/L), systolic BP (mean difference 10.3, 95% CI 8.9 to 11.8 mmHg) and fasting insulin (% difference 145%, 95%CI 124 to 168%). These differences (similar in both sexes and little affected by adiposity adjustment) were larger than those between UK Indians and white Europeans. Compared with white Europeans, UK Indians had higher skinfold thickness (% difference 6.0%, 95%CI 1.5 to 10.7%), fasting insulin (% difference 31%, 95%CI 22 to 40%), triglyceride (% difference 13%, 95%CI 8 to 18%) and LDL-cholesterol (mean difference 0.12 mmol/L, 95%CI 0.04 to 0.19 mmol/L).Conclusions: UK Indian children have an adverse cardiometabolic risk profile, especially compared to Indian children. These differences, not simply reflecting greater adiposity, emphasize the need for prevention strategies starting in childhood or earlier

    Infection risk in elderly people with reduced glycaemic control

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    Refers to: Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard, Samkeliso Blundell, Tess Harris, Derek G Cook, Julia Critchley Diabetes and infection: assessing the association with glycaemic control in population-based studies The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, Volume 4, Issue 2, February 2016, Pages 148-15

    Trends in the prevalence and management of diagnosed type 2 diabetes 1994-2001 in England and Wales.

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    BACKGROUND: Type 2 diabetes is an important cause of morbidity and mortality. Its prevalence appears to be increasing. Guidelines exist regarding its management. Recommendations regarding drug therapy have changed. Little is known about the influence of these guidelines and changed recommendations on the actual management of patients with type 2 diabetes. This study aims to document trends in the prevalence, drug treatment and recording of measures related to the management of type 2 diabetes; and to assess whether recommended targets can be met. METHODS: The population comprised subjects registered between 1994 and 2001 with 74 general practices in England and Wales which routinely contribute to the Doctors' Independent Network database. Approximately 500,000 patients and 10,000 type 2 diabetics were registered in each year. RESULTS: Type 2 diabetes prevalence rose from 17/1000 in 1994 to 25/1000 in 2001. Drug therapy has changed: use of long acting sulphonylureas is falling while that of short acting sulphonylureas, metformin and newer therapies including glitazones is increasing. Electronic recording of HbA1c, blood pressure, cholesterol and weight have risen steadily, and improvements in control of blood pressure and cholesterol levels have occurred. However, glycaemic control has not improved, and obesity has increased. The percentage with a BMI under 25 kg/m2 fell from 27.0% in 1994 to 19.4% in 2001 (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Prevalence of type 2 diabetes is increasing. Its primary care management has changed in accordance with best evidence. Monitoring has improved, but further improvement is possible. Despite this, glycaemic control has not improved, while the prevalence of obesity in the diabetic population is rising

    Voices of inheritance : aspects of British film and television in the 1980s and 1990s

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    During the 1990s the notion of the heritage film has become a taken for granted category of British cinema. Rather than dispute the merits of particular films that lie within this genre I question the construction of the relation between the idea of heritage and contemporary British film and television. Using the critical literature established by the contending cultural histories that address the rise of heritage in British culture, I highlight other, frequently personal and national engagements with inherited pasts. The concentration upon inheritance lends a greater emphasis to what is passed on from the past and endures in the present. The modes of articulating these inherited pasts are formally distinctive and constructed out of the vocabulary of documentary and fiction. The corpus of texts begins with the apparently radical avant garde film-making of Derek Jannan and moves through the work of the Black Audio Film Collective to the apparently conservative television documentaries of Alan Bennett. These key voices are then situated in relation to the hegemonic definition of heritage and current debates concerning British film and television. The persisting opposition which defined British cinema during the 1980s posits an unofficial cinema characterized by dissent and urban decay against an official cinema represented by the heritage film. My corpus of texts challenges this opposition. The different engagements with inherited pasts take place from different speaking positions and represent a diminishing publicly funded tradition of film and television production. The range of positions from margins to centre reveal that there was a contestation of the cultural sources which are aggregated into the construction of heritage during the 1980s and 1990s

    Maternal cotinine level during pregnancy and birthweight for gestational age

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    Background Recent studies have found that cotinine is a better predictor of birthweight than the number of cigarettes smoked in pregnancy. In this paper we test this hypothesis and use cotinine to explore the effect of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) on birthweight.MethodsIn all, 1254 white women were interviewed at booking, 28 and 36 weeks about the number and brand of cigarette smoked. Cotinine was assayed from blood samples taken on the day of interview. The outcome was birthweight for gestational age.Results There was good agreement between self-reported smoker/non-smoker status and maternal cotinine with 1.3% women mis-reported as non-smokers at booking, 0.6% and 1.8% mis-reported at 28 and 36 weeks respectively. Among smokers, cotinine was more closely related to birthweight than the number of cigarettes smoked at all three time points (r = -0.25 versus r = -0.16 at booking). A reduction in cotinine between booking and 28 weeks was associated with increased birthweight but the effect was not statistically significant. Among non-smokers the association between birthweight and cotinine was not statistically significant after adjusting for maternal height, parity, sex and gestational age. Difference in mean birthweight between non-smokers in the lower and upper quintiles of cotinine was 0.2% (95% CI: -2.4, 2.8). Pooling the results of 10 studies plus our own gave an estimated difference in mean birthweight between women unexposed and exposed to passive smoke of 31 g (95% CI: 19, 44).Conclusions Cotinine is a better predictor of birthweight than the reported number of cigarettes smoked. If biochemical analysis is impossible, then self-reported smoking habit should be obtained prospectively using a structured approach. Any effect on birthweight of maternal passive smoking during pregnancy is small compared with the effects of maternal active smoking
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