Protocol for Determining Fertility While Breastfeeding and Not in Cycles

A protocol was developed and evaluated for nonovulating breastfeeding women to determine potential fertility with an electronic hormonal fertility monitor. The amount of required abstinence (i.e., days of potential fertility) through the first menstrual cycle indicated by the fertility monitor was significantly lower (17% of the total days) compared with the amount of abstinence (50% of the total days) indicated by the self-observation of cervical mucus

Ferdinand de Saussure's Unknown Bandes Dessinées

No abstract available

Library Cartoons: A Literature Review of Library-themed Cartoons, Caricatures, and Comics

To understand differing views of past events, historians, political science scholars, and sociologists have analyzed political and editorial cartoons with themes ranging from elections to fiscal policy to human rights. Yet scant research has been dedicated to cartoons with library themes. The author of this paper examines peer-reviewed literature on the subject of library cartoons, including historical background, analysis of recent themes, and arguments for promoting library-themed cartoons, caricatures, and comics. The author finds a significant gap in the literature on this topic and concludes that information professionals would benefit from a comprehensive content analysis of library-themed cartoons to enhance understanding of the significance of libraries during historic events, assess public perception of libraries, and identify trends over time

To leave or not to leave? Understanding determinants of farmers' choices to remain in or abandon agri-environmental schemes

Effectiveness of Agri-Environmental Schemes (AESs) as tools to enhance the rural environment can be achieved not only by increasing uptake rates, but also by avoiding participating farmers abandoning the scheme once they are in. For this reason, it is important to also consider what affects farmers\u2019 decisions to remain in the scheme rather than leave it at the end of the contractual obligation. However, up to now, there has been very little on this issue in the literature. The paper offers a contribution to this by revealing the role of determinants like the farmer\u2019s and farm structural characteristics, farmer\u2019s learning process, neighbourhood effect and the impact of changes in the policy design on the farmer\u2019s decision to remain in the scheme over a long time scale. This is examined in a long-standing scheme in the case study area, the Veneto Region of Italy. The paper uses duration analysis and is based on longitudinal panel-data of the entire population of 2000-2015 adopters. By using only data available in official regional records, it also provides regional policy-makers with an operational tool that is useful to analyse the impact of their AES design changes. The results of the duration models show that a larger farm size, a younger farmer age, the succession in the family farm, and the farmer\u2019s positive attitude towards the environment, trigger longer durations in AES. Similarly, the impact of the accumulation of the farmer\u2019s experience in the scheme management, as well as the neighbourhood effect increase the probability of remaining. Lastly, the changes in policy tailoring and targeting also have a positive impact on maintaining the farmer in the scheme. The paper concludes by noting that duration analysis can deliver useful results in order to guide policy-makers in the effort to steer higher levels of farmers\u2019 persistence in the scheme and provides some recommendations for a more mature agro-environmental policy design

Clinical microbiology study of diabetic foot ulcer in Iran; pathogens and antibacterial susceptibility

The aim of this study was to investigate microbial pathogens and their antibiotic susceptibility profile in infected diabetic foot ulcers in Iranian patients. This was a one-year cross sectional study on diabetic patients with infected diabetic foot ulcer at Shariati Teaching Hospital, Tehran, Iran. Grade of ulcer was determined by Wagner's criteria. Specimens were obtained from the base of ulcer, deep part of the wound or aspiration and were tested with gram staining and antibacterial susceptibility was determined with both disk diffusion and E-Test methods. Total of 546 pathogens were isolated from 165 ulcers of 149 patients. Gram positive aerobes including Enterococcal species and methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) (21.4 and 19.4%, respectively) were identified as the most common pathogens followed by Gram negative isolates including Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas-aeruginosa (12.6 and 5.4%, respectively). The majority of wounds were classified as Wagner grades 2 and 3 (15.7 and 75.7%). Appropriate empiric treatment to cover both these Gram positive and Gram negative pathogens is crucially important

Simon Hantaï: Round table discussion

Edited transcript of the round table discussion about the work of Simon Hantaï held at the French Institute, 3 June 2014 François Rouan, Isabelle Monod-Fontaine, Mick Finch, Philip Armstrong, Stuart Elliot, Andy Harper, Laura Lisbon and Daniel Sturgis. The round table discussed the work of the Hungarian painter Simon Hantaï (1922-2008) has gained increasing recognition in the last few years, particularly in terms of major retrospectives at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Villa Medici in Rome as well as an important exhibition at the Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York. After Hantaï moved to France in 1949, the series of paintings he made from the 1960s on – where processes of folding were materially at the heart of his practice – became a major and continuing influence on successive generations of French artists

Convolutional Neural Networks for Epileptic Seizure Prediction

Epilepsy is the most common neurological disorder and an accurate forecast of seizures would help to overcome the patient's uncertainty and helplessness. In this contribution, we present and discuss a novel methodology for the classification of intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) for seizure prediction. Contrary to previous approaches, we categorically refrain from an extraction of hand-crafted features and use a convolutional neural network (CNN) topology instead for both the determination of suitable signal characteristics and the binary classification of preictal and interictal segments. Three different models have been evaluated on public datasets with long-term recordings from four dogs and three patients. Overall, our findings demonstrate the general applicability. In this work we discuss the strengths and limitations of our methodology.Comment: accepted for MLESP 201

Efficacy of the Marquette Method of Natural Family Planning

Purpose: To determine the effectiveness of the Marquette Method (MM) of natural family planning (NFP) as a method of avoiding pregnancy. Study Design and Methods: This was a 12-month retrospective evaluation of the MM system of NFP. Two hundred and four women (mean age, 28.6 years) and their male partners (mean age, 30.3 years) who sought to learn a method for avoiding pregnancy with the MM from four clinical sites were taught to track their fertility by self-observation of cervical mucus, by use of an electronic monitor that measures urinary levels of estrone-3-glucuronide and luteinizing hormone, and by use of basal body temperature. All unintended pregnancies were evaluated by professional nurses as to whether they were intended or not. Pregnancy rates over 12 months of use were determined by survival analysis. Results: There were a total of 12 unintended pregnancies, only 1 with correct use. The 12-month “correct use” pregnancy rate was 0.6 (i.e., 99.4% effective) and the “typical use” (total pregnancy rate) was 10.6 (i.e., 89.4% effective) per 100 users. Clinical Implications: When used correctly, the MM system of NFP is an effective means of avoiding pregnancy. The efficacy of the MM system includes proper preparation of the professional nurse NFP teachers