Nekrolog jako gatunek tekstu : analiza wydania internetowego The New York Times

The thesis presents an analysis of the death notice as a genre, which has been conducted by applying the research models of genre analysis designed by John Swales and Vijay K. Bhatia, and taxonomy of Polish death notices by Jacek Kolbuszewski. This in-depth structural analysis is based on a large corpus of texts (1843 texts consisting of 210,021 words), containing all death notices published in the online edition of The New York Times in a threemonth period (October 1st, 2012 – December 31st, 2012), and downloaded from Legacy.com (the leading global provider of online obituaries and death notices). The analysis involves identifying subgenres of the death notice and their communicative purposes, applying the Move and Steps analytical model to investigate the macrostructure of each subgenre of the death notice and its variants, and carrying out a register analysis, based on lexical and syntactic study with the aim of discovering patterns and lexemes characteristic of each move and/or step. Contrary to the well-researched staff-edited obituary, the genre of American death notice, written by non-professional authors (e.g. relatives, friends, employers or colleagues of the deceased) has not been thoroughly investigated; therefore, it is believed that the thesis will not only make a valuable contribution to the understanding of the genre in question, but it can be used as a reference manual helping prospective writers create a death notice in accordance with the American traditions and rules of the genre. The thesis consists of a theoretical part (Chapters One to Four) and a research part (Chapters Five to Eight). Chapter One revolves around the concepts of discourse, text and genre, and presents an overview of their theories. Chapter Two investigates the American discourse of death; it concentrates on the issue of death as a language taboo and various ways of coping with it, and provides a historical overview of numerous genres commemorating the dead. Chapter Three focuses on the both genres in question; it outlines their origin and evolution in the early British press, and summarizes contemporary research into them. Chapter Four introduces the research part as it discusses the corpus and principles of its division into subcorpora, the research model and applied methodology, and presents the discourse community and communicative purposes. Each of the four chapters constituting the research part deals with the Move and Step analysis of one of four subgenres of the death notice: informative (Chapter Five), farewell (Chapter Six), condolence (Chapter Seven), and anniversary (Chapter Eight); their lexico-structural analysis is illustrated with numerous excerpts from the respective sub-corpora. The Conclusion summarizes the research, and provides implications for future projects. The research has shown that the death notice is a highly conventionalized genre, deeply rooted in American culture and funeral tradition. While presenting biographies of the deceased (always in a positive way, according to the classical rule de mortuis nihil nisi bene), the American death notice emphasizes those specific periods and aspects of their lives (education, professional, political or military career, private life), accomplishments and traits that are valued and respected, and should be imitated by other members of the community. A notice usually contains a lengthy hierarchical list of relatives, both the predeceased and survivors. Each subgenre can be characterized by a specific set of communicative purposes, which are accomplished by a sequence of moves and steps. The commonest subgenre, the informative notice, continues the oldest traditions of the genre by informing the community about a person’s death (optionally its circumstances) and the date and place of the funeral and other services. The style and content of the farewell notice and the condolence notice depend on authorship: highly conventionalized formal institutional notices contrast with more original and intimate private ones. Their authors, whether representatives of an institution or relatives, friends, colleagues, etc., express their loss and grief, praise lives and deeds of the deceased, emphasize their importance for the authors or institution, and, in the case of the condolence notice, they offer their sympathy. The anniversary notice, the rarest subgenre, commemorates the anniversary of decedent’s birth or death, and frequently reminds the community about never-ending love and remembrance of its authors. A significant number of farewell and anniversary notices are addressed to the deceased themselves, the ‘virtual readers,’ which affects their structure and style. The register analysis displays a high level of intertextuality: non-professional obituarists tend to use conventional and stereotypical lexicon, phrases and structures, or even templates (they may copy or imitate other texts and study models provided in obituary manuals). There is no substantial evidence that the Internet has affected the genre: only few texts include hyperlinks that direct to the memorial sites at Legacy.com, where particular groups of the dead are commemorated (e.g. war veterans, university graduates, breast cancer victims)

The social construction of lung cancer: an analysis of representations of lung cancer in UK media

Lung cancer is a commonly occurring cancer in the United Kingdom. However, little attention has been directed at understanding meanings in relation to the disease, and how these are socially constructed. This thesis examines representations of lung cancer in media stories to explore how the disease is constructed and with what effects.Drawing on a social constructionist approach, media stories are understood as public places or sites in which meanings about the world are produced and reproduced through language and discourse. Media portrayals of lung cancer are examined for their content and how they may function to construct meanings and knowledge about lung cancer and people who develop the disease. Media portrayals of breast cancer are used to compare and contrast how the two diseases are portrayed in order to identify differences that may have implications for the construction of meanings.The analysis identifies that media stories draw heavily on discourses that associate lung cancer with death and smoking. It is suggested that stories also draw on wider cultural discourses in which health and dying are constructed as moral issues. As a consequence, lung cancer is constructed as a potentially blameworthy death and thereby unworthy of public attention and support. In contrast, media stories about breast cancer draw on discourses that associate the disease with survival and factors that suggest women as ‘at risk’ rather than the cause of the disease. As a consequence, breast cancer is constructed as an indiscriminate threat and, as such, worthy of public attention.The thesis argues that media representations are illustrative of the social processes and conditions involved in the production and sustenance of lung cancer stigma

Front-Line Physicians' Satisfaction with Information Systems in Hospitals

Day-to-day operations management in hospital units is difficult due to continuously varying situations, several actors involved and a vast number of information systems in use. The aim of this study was to describe front-line physicians' satisfaction with existing information systems needed to support the day-to-day operations management in hospitals. A cross-sectional survey was used and data chosen with stratified random sampling were collected in nine hospitals. Data were analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistical methods. The response rate was 65 % (n = 111). The physicians reported that information systems support their decision making to some extent, but they do not improve access to information nor are they tailored for physicians. The respondents also reported that they need to use several information systems to support decision making and that they would prefer one information system to access important information. Improved information access would better support physicians' decision making and has the potential to improve the quality of decisions and speed up the decision making process.Peer reviewe

THE EVOLUTION OF IN VITRO FERTILIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES: A CLOSER LOOK AT MEDIA COVERAGE

Since the inception of in vitro fertilization in the United States in 1981 the U.S. media have covered its advances, moral debates and oddities. The reproductive technology, which manually combines both egg and sperm to form an embryo outside of a woman's uterus, sparks the public's curiosity in many ways - ethically, legally, emotionally and scientifically. Infertility, the disease that IVF overpowers, affects one million women each year. But the media rarely write in-depth articles that give readers and viewers information about the evolution of IVF and the years of trials and error that doctors and patients endured to improve the technique. Nor has the press covered the cost of IVF. That information is important to potential patients and the medical field and the history of research and medical development. This series of three magazine articles fills the information gap and also looks at the media's response to that gap.Master of Art

Library Trends 55 (1) Summer 2006: Research Methods

In 1977 Dervin admonished the library and information science (LIS) professionals to stop measuring library activities and start looking at the people who use the library to determine how they use it, how they find information, and how the information helps them. I suggest that this article was a ???wake-up??? call, challenging our field to adopt new research methods that would allow us to learn more about our clients than about, for example, the number of items circulated. LIS researchers have responded to this call. Powell (1999) and McKechnie and colleagues (2002) have documented the increasing use of research methods adopted from other disciplines. Over the years, Library Trends has devoted several issues to research methods. This issue joins the earlier ones and provides information on a variety of traditional and ???not so traditional??? research methods. Before describing briefly each contribution, it is important to define ???research methods??? because as Williamson, Burstein, and McKemmish (2000) pointed out, research methods and data collection techniques are sometimes difficult to distinguish. For example, observation can be both a method and a data collection technique. These authors state ???a research method provides a design for undertaking research, which is underpinned by theoretical explanation of its value and use??? (p. 11). Data collection techniques are part of the method. For this volume of Library Trends, each author was invited to describe a particular research method and include examples of its use in LIS studies. Articles in this issue are arranged alphabetically by research method and include case study, content analysis, critical incident, discourse analysis, ethnography, evaluation research, life history, longitudinal design, meta-analysis, observation, observation of babies and toddlers, and systematic reviews.published or submitted for publicatio

Usability analysis of contending electronic health record systems

In this paper, we report measured usability of two leading EHR systems during procurement. A total of 18 users participated in paired-usability testing of three scenarios: ordering and managing medications by an outpatient physician, medicine administration by an inpatient nurse and scheduling of appointments by nursing staff. Data for audio, screen capture, satisfaction rating, task success and errors made was collected during testing. We found a clear difference between the systems for percentage of successfully completed tasks, two different satisfaction measures and perceived learnability when looking at the results over all scenarios. We conclude that usability should be evaluated during procurement and the difference in usability between systems could be revealed even with fewer measures than were used in our study. © 2019 American Psychological Association Inc. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Mortality in Professional Athletes: Examining Incidence, Predictors and Causes of Death

Objective: The overarching purpose of this dissertation was to provide an evidence-based portrayal of i) incidence, ii) predictors and iii) causes of death in athletes from Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and American Basketball Association, the National Football League and the National Hockey League. More specifically, this investigation highlighted i) mortality outcome differences of athletes between and within professional sport(s), ii) potential statistical artifacts that may be empowering biases of risk of certain lifespan predictors and iii) the challenges of contextualizing historical data to answer questions with relevance in the present where socio-contextual factors may be different. Methods: Data on player lifespan and biological and occupational variables were collected from publically available sources. A majority of the data were collected from wikipedia.org and sports-reference.com, which is a recognized sports archive of aggregated athlete records, and were cross-verified through rigorous web-based and sport encyclopedia archival searches. Several methodological approaches were used across seven studies, including descriptive and Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression survival analyses. Results: The key findings of this dissertation suggest that elite athletes generally have favourable lifespan outcomes, although numerous characteristics need to be taken into consideration, such as occupational (e.g., required energy system needed for participation) and biological (e.g., height) differences. As well, the leading causes of death in players from the four major sports in North America are similar to the leading causes of death in the age- and sex-matched controls from the Canadian and United States general population. Conclusions: Statistical limitations and biased reporting may skew public perception of the relationship between participation in high performance sport and lifespan. As such, there is inherent value in scientists critically examining the health outcomes of athletes and to make these data known to a broader audience, particularly as preconceived notions of health risks from sport participation vocalized through media often distort reality and can adversely affect sport participation rates. In summary, a comprehensive understanding of the implications of involvement in elite sport informs our broader understanding of general athlete health and helps to form evidence-based models of athlete development and care

Yale Medicine : Alumni Bulletin of the School of Medicine, Fall 1996- Fall 1998

This volume contains Yale medicine: alumni bulletin of the School of Medicine, v.31 (Fall 1996) through v.32 (Fall 1998). Prepared in cooperation with the alumni and development offices at the School of Medicine. Earlier volumes are called Yale School of Medicine alumni bulletins, dating from v.1 (1953) through v.13 (1965). Digitized with funding from the Arcadia fund, 2017.https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yale_med_alumni_newsletters/1013/thumbnail.jp