2,802 research outputs found

    Qaisra Shahraz in Interview with Claire Chambers

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    Qaisra Shahraz is a popular and acclaimed Pakistan-born and Manchester-resident screenwriter, educationalist, novelist and short story author. She was recently recognised as number 1 out of the 50 most influential women in Manchester. Last year she won the National Diversity “Lifetime Achiever” Award for services to literature, education, women’s rights and interfaith relationships. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and advisor to Asia Pacific Writers & Translators partnerships. Her novels have been translated into many languages including Mandarin. In this interview, Claire Chambers discusses her new short story collection The Concubine and the Slave-Catcher in detail with Shahraz, as well as asking her to give readers a preview of her current work

    Holding chambers (spacers) versus nebulisers for beta-agonist treatment of acute asthma

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    Background In acute asthma inhaled beta₂-agonists are often administered by nebuliser to relieve bronchospasm, but some have argued that metered-dose inhalers with a holding chamber (spacer) can be equally effective. Nebulisers require a power source and need regular maintenance, and are more expensive in the community setting. Objectives To assess the effects of holding chambers (spacers) compared to nebulisers for the delivery of beta₂-agonists for acute asthma. Search methods We searched the Cochrane Airways Group Trial Register and reference lists of articles. We contacted the authors of studies to identify additional trials. Date of last search: February 2013. Selection criteria Randomised trials in adults and children (from two years of age) with asthma, where spacer beta₂-agonist delivery was compared with wet nebulisation. Data collection and analysis Two review authors independently applied study inclusion criteria (one review author for the first version of the review), extracted the data and assessed risks of bias. Missing data were obtained from the authors or estimated. Results are reported with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Main results This review includes a total of 1897 children and 729 adults in 39 trials. Thirty-three trials were conducted in the emergency room and equivalent community settings, and six trials were on inpatients with acute asthma (207 children and 28 adults). The method of delivery of beta₂-agonist did not show a significant difference in hospital admission rates. In adults, the risk ratio (RR) of admission for spacer versus nebuliser was 0.94 (95% CI 0.61 to 1.43). The risk ratio for children was 0.71 (95% CI 0.47 to 1.08, moderate quality evidence). In children, length of stay in the emergency department was significantly shorter when the spacer was used. The mean duration in the emergency department for children given nebulised treatment was 103 minutes, and for children given treatment via spacers 33 minutes less (95% CI -43 to -24 minutes, moderate quality evidence). Length of stay in the emergency department for adults was similar for the two delivery methods. Peak flow and forced expiratory volume were also similar for the two delivery methods. Pulse rate was lower for spacer in children, mean difference -5% baseline (95% CI -8% to -2%, moderate quality evidence), as was the risk of developing tremor (RR 0.64; 95% CI 0.44 to 0.95, moderate quality evidence). Authors' conclusions Nebuliser delivery produced outcomes that were not significantly better than metered-dose inhalers delivered by spacer in adults or children, in trials where treatments were repeated and titrated to the response of the participant. Spacers may have some advantages compared to nebulisers for children with acute asthma

    Empirical Best Linear Unbiased Prediction for Out of Sample Areas

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    Models for small area estimation based on a random effects specification typically assume population units in different areas are uncorrelated. However, they can be extended to account for the correlation between areas by assuming that area random effects are spatially correlated. In this paper we suggest a simple variance-covariance structure for such a spatial correlation structure within the context of a linear model for the population characteristic of interest, and derive estimates of parameters and components of variance using maximum likelihood and restricted maximum likelihood methods. This allows empirical best linear unbiased predictions for area totals to be computed for areas in sample as well as those that are not in sample. An expression for the mean cross-product error (MCPE) matrix of these predicted small area totals is derived, as is an estimator of this matrix. The estimation approach described in the paper is then evaluated by a simulation study, which compares the new method with other methods of small area estimation for this situation

    Letter From William Bell Scott to Mr Chambers

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    abstract: Concerning Scott's thanks, his writings about his own works, and a manuscript of "The Nightingale Unheard."Seller's Description: Reads "A.L.S. from Author to Mr. Chambers explaining how busy he is... The sonnet is printed in the book. Fredeman: 56.7 £87.50"Handwritten Note: Unknown handwriting at top right reads "June 1st 1877."Publication Details: "The Nightingale Unheard" published in "Poems" by William Bell Scott.Creation Date Details: Undated range is the author's lifespan.Provenance: Removed from: Poems / by William Bell Scott. Ballads, studies from nature, sonnets, etc. / illustrated by seventeen etchings by the author and L. Alma Tadema. Publisher London : Longmans, Green, 1875. CALL # HAYDEN SPECIAL COLL SPEC PRB-13

    Letter from M.L.A. Tom Chambers

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    Letter from Tom Chambers (M.L.A. for Edmonton Calder Constituency) to Mr. John Birzgalis describing a monitary award of $1,000.00 from Horst A. Schmidt, Miniter of Culture toward's the Edmonton Latvian Society's Imanta.1.0 Imanta, 1.1.1 Histor of Imanta in Albert

    Modelling Truncated and Clustered Count Data

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    Count response data often exhibit departures from the assumptions of standard Poisson generalized linear models (McCullagh & Nelder 1989). In particular, cluster level correlation of the data and truncation at zero are two common characteristics of such data. In this paper we describe a random components truncated Poisson model that can be applied to clustered and zero-truncated count data. Residual maximum likelihood method estimators for the parameters of this model are developed and their use illustrated using a data set of non-zero counts of sheets with edge strain defects in iron sheets produced by the Mobarekeh Steel Complex, Iran. We also report on a small scale simulation study that supports the estimation procedure

    Another Map, another History, another Modernity

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    In this article, the author criticizes the consensual cultural configuration of present-day Italy by displacing concerns of historical and intellectual identity onto a wider Mediterranean map. Elaborating an interdisciplinary and intercultural position that looks to languages and histories that Italian academic life and institutional culture tends to ignore, or repress, the disparaged sides of modernity – the South, the Mediterranean, the Muslim world – become the sites of a diverse critical understanding. Drawing upon the metaphorical powers of the sea itself, this “Mediterranean” view of modern Italy, of the formation of its cultural and critical languages, proposes a more unsettled and fluid cartography that renders inherited questions and “solutions” vulnerable to an inquiry that a national culture is unable to authorize. In particular, the desire for cultural and critical continuity, sustained in a diffuse historicist syntax and policed by moribund disciplinary protocols, is challenged via a “postcolonial” elaboration of Italy as both a Mediterranean and modern formation. This leads to a proposed rupture with the mold of a fundamentally patrician and provincial understanding of native culture. In particular, the contemporary figure of the so-called illegal migrant announces the hidden colonial histories that planetary process return to disturb the surfaces of everyday life. It is the unwelcome turbulence of migration, as one of the central chapters of modernity itself, which now cuts into the historical, political, and cultural body of Italy, exposing it in a global frame that can only be registered in “worldly thinking” (Antonio Gramsci). Precisely at this point, it becomes imperative to draw up another map, narrate another history, and seek another modernity

    Britain Through Muslim Eyes:An Interview with Claire Chambers

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    Claire Chambers is a senior lecturer in global literature at the University of York. She is the author of Britain Through Muslim Eyes: Literary Representations, 1780–1989 (2015) and British Muslim Fictions: Interviews with Contemporary Writers (2011). She edited (with Caroline Herbert) Imagining Muslims in South Asia and the Diaspora (2014). In this 2017 interview with Anastasia Valassopoulos, she discusses her exploration of literary representations of Muslims in Britain and South Asia, and her engagement with audiences and scholars in that field. She also discusses her current writing and reflects on sources such as the Making Britain archive that have helped to shape her current work. Finally, Claire explores crucial questions around liberalism and contemporary multicultural politics

    Jack Chambers : Selection of Paintings and Drawings = Jack Chambers : Sélection de peintures et dessins

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    Poole discusses Chambers' manner in the painter's own term "perceptual realism". The author notes the growing importance of light in the artist's work. Biographical notes
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