The repeatability of self-reported exposure after miscarriage

BACKGROUND: The Avon Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood is a prospective study of women who were resident in Avon and who were expected to deliver a baby between April 1991 and December 1992. METHODS: The study provided an opportunity to test the repeatability of responses from 220 women who experienced a miscarriage and who reported exposure to occupational substances and common household products and appliances in two questionnaires. The first questionnaire was completed in the early part of the pregnancy and the second after the miscarriage. Women were asked to score their frequency of exposure on a five-point scale from 'daily' to 'never'. Their responses were analysed to assess the degree of agreement between replies to identical questions in the two questionnaires using the kappa statistic. A new frequency variable was created which compared the replies for the two questionnaires; this was analysed for all exposures by cross-tabulation with possible explanatory variables (age of mother, social class, history of miscarriage and the time lag between questionnaires). RESULTS: In general there was good agreement in the reported exposures to 48 substances and products. The results showed a small and consistent pattern of reporting exposures less frequently in the second questionnaire, i.e. after miscarriage. This was not explained by the analysis of possible confounding variables. Given the literature, the authors had expected to find a shift in the opposite direction. CONCLUSION: The study reinforces the need to be cautious when using the results from single surveys of retrospective self-reported exposure

The struggle to understand Isaiah as Christian scripture

Author: Childs, Brevard Springs, 1923-2007 Struggle to understand Isaiah as Christian scripture xii, 332 p. Publisher: Grand Rapids, Mich : Eerdmans, 2004

Commentary on the Makridakis Time Series Competition (M- Competition)

In 1982, the Journal of Forecasting published the results of a forecasting competition organized by Spyros Makridakis (Makridakis et al., 1982). In this, the ex ante forecast errors of 21 methods were compared for forecasts of a variety of economic time series, generally using 1001 time series. Only extrapolative methods were used, as no data were available on causal variables. The accuracies of methods were compared using a variety of accuracy measures for different types of data and for varying forecast horizons. The original paper did not contain much interpretation or discussion. Partly this was by design, to be unbiased in the presentation. A more important factor, however, was the difficulty in gaining consensus on interpretation and presentation among the diverse group of authors, many of whom have a vested interest in certain methods. In the belief that this study was of major importance, we decided to obtain a more complete discussion of the results. We do not believe that the data speak for themselves.Makridakis, commentary, time series competition, m competition

Opening the sealed book: interpretations of the Book of Isaiah in late antiquity

Author: Blenkinsopp, Joseph Opening the sealed book xx, 315 p. Publisher: Grand Rapids ; Cambridge : Eerdmans, 2006. (Isiaiah 1-39, 40-55, 56-66, Joseph Blenkinsoff, Anchor Bible

Thoughts about disordered thinking: measuring and quantifying the laws of order and disorder

Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

SportsAnno: what do you think?

The automatic summarisation of sports video is of growing importance with the increased availability of on-demand content. Consumers who are unable to view events live often have a desire to watch a summary which allows then to quickly come to terms with all that has happened during a sporting event. Sports forums show that it is not only summaries that are desirable but also the opportunity to share one’s own point of view and discuss the opinions with a community of similar users. In this paper we give an overview of the ways in which annotations have been used to augment existing visual media. We present SportsAnno, a system developed to summarise World Cup 2006 matches and provide a means for open discussion of events within these matches

An unpublished poem on Porphyry

This paper offers an editio princeps, an English translation and a commentary of an interesting epigram on Porphyry, the commentator of Aristotle. The epigram was transcribed in Vat. Reg. 166 by Ioannes Malaxos (16th c.) and is ascribed to Petros Servilos, a poet unknown from other sources. The paper discusses the poem’s manuscript context, as well as its authorship, genre, content and function. Further, it attempts to shed light on the poem’s relation to Porphyry’s philosophy and his reception in Byzantine poetry

THE ACCUSED IS ENTERING THE COURTROOM: THE LIVE-TWEETING OF A MURDER TRIAL.

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupThe use of social media is now widely accepted within journalism as an outlet for news information. Live tweeting of unfolding events is standard practice. In March 2014, Oscar Pistorius went on trial in the Gauteng High Court for murder. Hundreds of journalists present began live-tweeting coverage, an unprecedented combination of international interest, permission to use technology and access which resulted in massive streams of consciousness reports of events as they unfolded. Based on a corpus of Twitter feeds of twenty-four journalists covering the trial, this study analyses the content and strategies of these feeds in order to present an understanding of how microblogging is used as a live reporting tool. This study shows the development of standardised language and strategies in reporting on Twitter, concluding that journalists adopt a narrow range of approaches, with no significant variation in terms of gender, location, or medium. This is in contrast to earlier studies in the field (Awad, 2006, Hedman, 2015; Kothari, 2010; Lariscy, Avery, Sweetser, & Howes, 2009 Lasorsa, 2012; Lasorsa, Lewis, & Holton, 2011; Sigal, 1999, Vis, 2013).Peer reviewe

The Grub-Street Journal and the Changing Culture of Information in the Early 1730s

Between 1730 and 1733, the Grub-Street Journal was one of the most renowned and controversial weekly news-sheets produced and sold in London. This article traces the attempts made by the editors of the Journal to make sense of, and manipulate, the changing fashions related to the organization and consumption of information. The Grub-Street Journal linked critiques of new forms of information organization, such as printed volumes with prefaces and indexes, with wider societal changes taking place. This can be seen in the Journal’s shifting relationships with its audiences and competing journals. As the weekly news-sheet became increasingly outmoded, the editors of the Journal could no longer successfully manipulate its position within the London coffee-house network, launching more direct attacks on the publication trade. The Journal offers a fascinating insight into the changing culture of information in the 1730s and highlights the way in which images connected to information are used to explore cultural change, throughout recorded history