15,082 research outputs found
Life is too short to be serious all the time: Donald Duck presents unconventional motivations for publishing in academia
No full textIn this food for thought article, we introduce the ‘Donald Duck Phenomenon’ to consider ten unconventional reasons for publishing in academia. These include (i) symbolic immortality, (ii) personal satisfaction, (iii) a sense of pride, (iv) serious leisure, (v) cause credibility, (vi) altruism, (vii) collaboration with a friend or family member, (viii) collaboration with a hero, (ix) conflict or revenge, and (x) for amusement. The article was inspired by the lead author’s social media search for a co-author with the surname ‘Duck’. Through LinkedIn, the lead author, Associate Professor William E. Donald, who is based in the UK and specialises in Sustainable Careers and Human Resource Management, found a collaborator, Dr Nicholas Duck, based in Australia and specialises in Organisational Psychology. While the collaboration may appear somewhat ‘quackers’, per one of Donald Duck’s famous phrases, “Life is too short to be serious all the time, so if you can’t laugh at yourself then call me… I’ll laugh at you, for you”. We hope that this article offers some interesting insights, particularly for academics at the start of their scholarly journey, and acts as a way to stimulate conversation around unconventional reasons for publishing in academia
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A comparison of methods for treatment selection in seamless phase II/III clinical trials incorporating information on short-term endpoints
No full textIn an adaptive seamless phase II/III clinical trial interim
analysis data are used for treatment selection, enabling resources to be focussed on comparison of more effective treatment(s) with a control. In this paper we compare two methods recently proposed to enable use of short-term endpoint data for decision-making at the interim analysis. The comparison focusses on the power and the probability of correctly identifying the most promising treatment. We show that the choice of method depends on how well short-term data predict the best treatment, which may be measured by the correlation between treatment effects on short-term and long-term endpoints
The impacts of short break provision on disabled children and families: an international literature review
No full textFor over 30 years, short breaks have been part of the landscape of support provision for families with a disabled child. Historically, the term ‘respite care’ has been used in much of the research literature concerning short breaks for families with a disabled child. However, ‘short breaks’ has become the preferred term, partly due to the negative connotations of family carers requiring ‘respite’ from their children, and partly because short breaks now encompass a much wider range of supports than out-of-home placement in specialist residential facilities (Cramer and Carlin, 2008). As such, the term ‘short breaks’ will be used throughout this review, with the exception of direct quotes from research studies where the term ‘respite’ is used by study participants or study authors
The cult of St Nicholas in medieval Italy
No full textSt Nicholas was one of the most popular saints in medieval Italy. His cult attracted the attention
of popes, kings and emperors, and his shrine at Bari became an important international pilgrimage
destination. This thesis asks how the cult of St Nicholas came to be so widespread and popular in
Italy, and why the saint attracted the attention of diverse groups and individuals.
This thesis is structured around four chapters. The first demonstrates that through a
process of Latinisation the cult of St Nicholas became integrated within Italian literary traditions
and within a new spiritual era. Chapter Two reveals that this Latinisation also occurred within the
saint’s iconography. Chapters Three and Four are case studies of the cult in Puglia and Venice,
locations which claimed possession of the saint’s relics. These case studies show that the general
developments that the cult of St Nicholas underwent in Italy, identified in Chapters One and Two,
did not apply universally. Instead, the presence of the saint’s relics resulted in a different profile
of the saint in Bari and Venice. Through the process of Latinisation, the cult of St Nicholas
became updated and remained relevant for its new Italian audience; Chapters Three and Four
show alternative ways that the cult of St Nicholas gained widespread popularity.
This thesis presents for the first time an iconographical study of St Nicholas in Italian art,
which develops existing research of the saint’s Byzantine iconography. Chapter Four presents a
profile of the cult of St Nicholas in Venice in the Middle Ages, which is a significant oversight in
the literature. The thesis uses a variety of visual and textual sources, in particular fresco and
altarpiece representations, archival documents from Venice and Rome (including the Apostolic
Visitations), and under-exploited contemporary and antiquarian Venetian sources
Ethical issues with the disclosure of surgical trial short-term data
No full textBackground: This paper describes the distinctions between major surgical and pharmaceutical trials and questions the application of a common ethical paradigm to guide their conduct and reporting. Methods: Surgical trials differ from other trials in cumulative therapeutic effects, operator dependence, the clinical setting, interdependence of short- and long-term outcomes, and equipoise. A principal tenant of randomized controlled trial management is the maintenance of interim data confidentiality. Its application to complete surgical short-term data is examined across a variety of common clinical trial circumstances that influence data integrity and the reliability of conclusions regarding the benefit-to-risk profile of experimental interventions. Results: Complete perioperative results describe important treatment ends that cannot influence primary outcomes. These short-term results may inform patient consent, teaching and provide valuable procedural insights to surgeons outside trial precincts. Conclusion: Structured experimentation standards are necessary. But, the common paradigm applied across all clinical trials and the prohibition on short term data reporting may not serve the achievement of safe and effective advancements in surgery.Randall A. Allardyce, Philip F. Bagshaw, Christopher M. Frampton, Francis A. Frizelle, Peter J. Hewett, Nicholas A Rieger, J. Shona Smith, Michael J. Solomon and Andrew R. L. Stevenso
Factors that affect short-term commercial bank lending to developing countries
No full textDeveloping countries rely on short-term trade credits for imports of several essential consumer goods, including medicines and basic food supplies. The credits also facilitate export-related transactions. The mechanisms commercial banks use to provide trade credits to developing countries are complex and costly. Even a temporary break in the flow of short-term credit can seriously hurt a country's business. But since short-term trade credits can be structured so that they involve a few risks to a bank and at the same time are very costly to the debtor, they are generally the last forms of credit to be cut and the first to be reestablished in debt-distressed developing countries. To gauge the likelihood of continued short-term trade related financial flows to developing countries, the authors examined the factors that affect short-term commercial bank loans. They studied relevant data over time for seven countries for which data were available: Argentina, Brazil, Egypt,India, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey. They found that : a) countries with greater growth prospects get more short-term credit; b) short-term credits are usually meant to finance countries with significant trade deficits; c) higher levels of external indebtedness are generally coupled with higher levels of short-term indebtedness to commercial banks; and d) country-specific factors affect the volume of short-term lending to a country.Financial Intermediation,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Strategic Debt Management,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring
Improving clinical prediction rules in acute kidney injury with the use of biomarkers of cell cycle arrest: a pilot study
No full textIntroduction: Early recognition of patients developing acute kidney injury (AKI) is of considerable interest, we report the first use of a combination of a clinical prediction rule with a biomarker in emergent adult medical patients to improve AKI recognition. Methods: Single-centre prospective pilot study of medical admissions without AKI identified as high risk by a clinical prediction rule. Urine samples were obtained and tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-2 (TIMP-2) and insulin-like growth factor binding protein 7 (IGFBP7)–biomarkers associated with cell cycle arrest, were measured. Outcome: Creatinine-based KDIGO hospital-acquired AKI (HA-AKI). Results: Of 69 patients recruited, HA-AKI developed in 13% (n = 9), in whom biomarker values were higher (median 0.43 (interquartile range (IQR) 0.21–1.25) vs. 0.07 (0.03–0.16) in cases without (p = 0.008). Peak rise in creatinine was higher in biomarker positive cases (median 30 μmol/L (7–72) vs. 1 μmol/L (0–16), p = 0.002). AUROC was 0.78 (95% CI 0.57–0.98). At the suggested cut-off (0.3) sensitivity for predicting AKI was 78% (95% CI 40–97%), specificity 89% (78–95%), positive predictive value 50% (31–69%) and negative predictive value 96% (89–99%). Discussion: Addition of a urinary biomarker allows exclusion of a significant number of patients identified to be at higher risk of AKI by a clinical prediction rule.</p
Short author list codes
No full textThe literature contains articles on community-developed codes such as AstroPy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018) and yt4 (Turk et al. 2011), their importance in research, and the need for supporting these important codes and those who devote time and effort building and sustaining these resources (Turk 2013; Muna et al. 2016), but has comparatively little about the body of software written by 1, 2, or 3 people, what we here refer to as short author list (SAL) codes. A recent examination of the 1978 entries currently in the Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL,ascl.net) (Nemiroff & Wallin 1999) reveals that 1348 of them, 68%, are SAL codes
The mimic: a poem. [electronic resource] : By the author.
No full textA tribute to Samuel Foote.Verify pagination of first numbered pageElectronic reproduction.English Short Title Catalog,Reproduction of original from Harvard University Houghton Library
Short-term training in the Go/Nogo task: behavioural and neural changes depend on task demands
No full textNeural activity underlying executive functions is subject to modulation as a result of increasing cognitive demands and practice. In the present study, we examined these modulatory effects by varying task difficulty, as manipulated by reaction time deadline (RTD), on inhibitory control during a single Go/Nogo training session (8 blocks; 70% Go). Sixty adults were randomly assigned to one of three task difficulty conditions: High (n=20), Medium (n=20) and Low (n=20), with RTDs of 300, 500 or 1000ms, respectively. Task performance, Event-related potentials (ERPs) and task-related arousal (indexed by skin conductance level) were examined for training effects. Results indicated that improvements in behavioural Go/Nogo proficiency were optimised during conditions of moderate rather than low or high inhibitory demands. An across-session increase in task-related arousal did not differ between conditions, indicating a generalised increase in the mobilisation of mental resources with time-on-task. In contrast, training-related changes in ERPs were dependent on task demands such that the Low task difficulty condition showed an enhanced centroparietal Nogo P2, while a training-induced augmentation in the Nogo>Go P3 effect was greater in the High than Medium condition. The High condition also showed the greatest reduction in the Nogo N1. Although further research is needed in this area, these findings implicate the potential key role of task difficulty in training inhibitory control and suggest that practice-related changes are reflected by qualitative changes in brain activity
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