Population-based Research in South Wales: The MRC Pneumoconiosis Research Unit and the MRC Epidemiology Unit

©The Trustee of the Wellcome Trust, London, 2002. First published by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, 2002. All volumes are freely available online at: www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/wellcome_witnesses/Annotated and edited A4 transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 23 March 1999, with extracts from a Witness Seminar on the MRC Pneumoconious Unit held on 9 November 1994. Introduction by Professor George Davey Smith.Annotated and edited A4 transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 23 March 1999, with extracts from a Witness Seminar on the MRC Pneumoconious Unit held on 9 November 1994. Introduction by Professor George Davey Smith.Annotated and edited A4 transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 23 March 1999, with extracts from a Witness Seminar on the MRC Pneumoconious Unit held on 9 November 1994. Introduction by Professor George Davey Smith.Annotated and edited A4 transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 23 March 1999, with extracts from a Witness Seminar on the MRC Pneumoconious Unit held on 9 November 1994. Introduction by Professor George Davey Smith.Annotated and edited A4 transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 23 March 1999, with extracts from a Witness Seminar on the MRC Pneumoconious Unit held on 9 November 1994. Introduction by Professor George Davey Smith.Annotated and edited A4 transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 23 March 1999, with extracts from a Witness Seminar on the MRC Pneumoconious Unit held on 9 November 1994. Introduction by Professor George Davey Smith.Population-based research in south Wales was initially to investigate occupational lung disease in miners. Archie Cochrane, the renowned epidemiologist, and his clinical and environmental studies group at the Pneumoconiosis Research Unit at Llandough Hospital, Cardiff, conducted respiratory and blood pressure surveys of workers in the Welsh valleys. In 1960 the epidemiological studies were separated from pneumoconiosis research and detailed studies began in the new Epidemiological Research Unit (South Wales) in Cardiff on glaucoma, dust diseases in flax, asbestos, steel and slate workers, with later work on iron deficiency anaemia, environmental lead, migraine, asthma, and two high-profile trials showing improved survival following a heart attack with regular use of aspirin and with consumption of a diet rich in oily fish. Statisticians and field workers made important contributions to both randomized controlled trials and observational studies at the unit over five decades. Selections from archived interviews with former members of both units appear as well as a section on the impact on data analysis from steadily increasing computational capacity. Contributors include: the late Dr David Bainton, Sir Christopher Booth, Dr Michael Burr, the late Dr Jeffrey Chapman, Professor Sir Richard Doll (Chair), Dr Peter Elwood, the late Dr Joan Faulkner, Dr Philip D’Arcy Hart, Dr Julian Tudor Hart, Mr Nick Henderson, the late Dr Sheila Howarth, Mrs Janie Hughes, Dr Philip Hugh-Jones, Mrs Marion Jones, Professor Stewart Kilpatrick, the late Dr Bill Miall, Dr Shaun Murphy, Dr Andy Ness, Professor John Pemberton, Professor George Davey Smith, Dr Selwyn St Leger, Dr Stephen Stansfeld, Professor David Strachan, Mr Peter Sweetnam, Dr Hugh Thomas, Mrs Mary Thomas, Dr David Tyrrell, Professor Owen Wade, Professor Estlin Waters, Dr Jean Weddell, Mrs Sheila Wright and Dr John Yarnell. Ness A R, Reynolds L A, Tansey E M. (eds) (2002) Population-based Research in South Wales: The MRC Pneumoconiosis Research Unit and the MRC Epidemiology Unit, Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, vol. 13. London: The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL.The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL is funded by the Wellcome Trust, which is a registered charity, no. 210183

The UN in the lab

We consider two alternatives to inaction for governments combating terrorism, which we term Defense and Prevention. Defense consists of investing in resources that reduce the impact of an attack, and generates a negative externality to other governments, making their countries a more attractive objective for terrorists. In contrast, Prevention, which consists of investing in resources that reduce the ability of the terrorist organization to mount an attack, creates a positive externality by reducing the overall threat of terrorism for all. This interaction is captured using a simple 3×3 “Nested Prisoner’s Dilemma” game, with a single Nash equilibrium where both countries choose Defense. Due to the structure of this interaction, countries can benefit from coordination of policy choices, and international institutions (such as the UN) can be utilized to facilitate coordination by implementing agreements to share the burden of Prevention. We introduce an institution that implements a burden-sharing policy for Prevention, and investigate experimentally whether subjects coordinate on a cooperative strategy more frequently under different levels of cost sharing. In all treatments, burden sharing leaves the Prisoner’s Dilemma structure and Nash equilibrium of the game unchanged. We compare three levels of burden sharing to a baseline in a between-subjects design, and find that burden sharing generates a non-linear effect on the choice of the efficient Prevention strategy and overall performance. Only an institution supporting a high level of mandatory burden sharing generates a significant improvement in the use of the Prevention strategy

Environmental Toxicology: The legacy of Silent Spring

The transcript of a Witness Seminar held by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, London, London, on 12 March 2002. First published by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, 2004.©The Trustee of the Wellcome Trust, London, 2004.All volumes are freely available online at: www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/wellcome_witnesses/Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 12 March 2002. Introduction by Dr John Clark, St Andrews.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 12 March 2002. Introduction by Dr John Clark, St Andrews.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 12 March 2002. Introduction by Dr John Clark, St Andrews.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 12 March 2002. Introduction by Dr John Clark, St Andrews.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 12 March 2002. Introduction by Dr John Clark, St Andrews.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 12 March 2002. Introduction by Dr John Clark, St Andrews.The period immediately following the Second World War brought great hopes of continuing benefits from widespread use of organo-chlorine and organophosphorus insecticides and other pesticides whilst the health risks of pre-war and other later practices were largely ignored. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) coincided with the adoption of a more cautious approach to the use of pesticides, and the ensuing decades have been characterized by continued identification of both natural and man-made hazards and consequent efforts to minimize risk. ‘Environmental toxicology’ has no firm boundaries, encompassing as it does such diverse areas as the health risks of passive smoking, asbestos, lead, radon, air-borne particles, and accidental release of toxic chemicals (‘chemical incidents’), some of which still await resolution. Chaired by Professor Tony Dayan, this Witness Seminar brought together many of those who helped shape understanding in this area – 40 years after the publication of Silent Spring. Christie D A, Tansey E M. (eds) (2004) Environmental toxicology: The legacy of Silent Spring, Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, vol. 19. London: The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL. ISBN 978 085484 0915The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL is funded by the Wellcome Trust, which is a registered charity, no. 210183

Econometrics: A bird's eye view

As a unified discipline, econometrics is still relatively young and has been transforming and expanding very rapidly over the past few decades. Major advances have taken place in the analysis of cross sectional data by means of semi-parametric and non-parametric techniques. Heterogeneity of economic relations across individuals, firms and industries is increasingly acknowledge and attempts have been made to take them into account either by integrating out their effects or by modeling the sources of heterogeneity when suitable panel data exists. The counterfactual considerations that underlie policy analysis and treatment evaluation have been given a more satisfactory foundation. New time series econometric techniques have been developed and employed extensively in the areas of macroeconometrics and finance. Non-linear econometric techniques are used increasingly in the analysis of cross section and time series observations. Applications of Bayesian techniques to econometric problems have been given new impetus largely thanks to advances in computer power and computational techniques. The use of Bayesian techniques have in turn provided the investigators with a unifying framework where the tasks and forecasting, decision making, model evaluation and learning can be considered as parts of the same interactive and iterative process; thus paving the way for establishing the foundation of the "real time econometrics". This paper attempts to provide an overview of some of these developments

False Discovery Rate Controlled Heterogeneous Treatment Effect Detection for Online Controlled Experiments

Online controlled experiments (a.k.a. A/B testing) have been used as the mantra for data-driven decision making on feature changing and product shipping in many Internet companies. However, it is still a great challenge to systematically measure how every code or feature change impacts millions of users with great heterogeneity (e.g. countries, ages, devices). The most commonly used A/B testing framework in many companies is based on Average Treatment Effect (ATE), which cannot detect the heterogeneity of treatment effect on users with different characteristics. In this paper, we propose statistical methods that can systematically and accurately identify Heterogeneous Treatment Effect (HTE) of any user cohort of interest (e.g. mobile device type, country), and determine which factors (e.g. age, gender) of users contribute to the heterogeneity of the treatment effect in an A/B test. By applying these methods on both simulation data and real-world experimentation data, we show how they work robustly with controlled low False Discover Rate (FDR), and at the same time, provides us with useful insights about the heterogeneity of identified user groups. We have deployed a toolkit based on these methods, and have used it to measure the Heterogeneous Treatment Effect of many A/B tests at Snap

Benchtop Centrifuge for Materials Science

The Benchtop Centrifuge was designed to serve for research purposes within theMechanical Engineering Department at Santa Clara University. The prototype has been completely assembled and is functioning to the desired specifications of applying up to 1000 g’s of force for over 4 hours. The current uses are anticipated for separation of particles within materials for material processing and testing. The overall systemdesign has been adapted froma legacy project within the University. Various tests were conducted in order to ensure safety and usability of the system. Through Abaqus analysis and drop-test experiments, it was found enclosure itself can withstand an impact from a bucket at max-speed. The a SolidWorks analysis, the natural frequency of the enclosure was found to be 104.46 Hz, which translates to a rotational speed of 6267.6 RPM; this is well above what the system will be operating at. The team hopes that future students and faculty will be able to expand their current research through the use of this system

The ACS Survey Of Globular Clusters. V. Generating A Comprehensive Star Catalog For Each Cluster

The ACS Survey of Globular Clusters has used Hubble Space Telescope's Wide-Field Channel to obtain uniform imaging of 65 of the nearest globular clusters to provide an extensive homogeneous data set for a broad range of scientific investigations. The survey goals required not only a uniform observing strategy, but also a uniform reduction strategy. To this end, we designed a sophisticated software program to process the cluster data in an automated way. The program identifies stars simultaneously in the multiple dithered exposures for each cluster and measures them using the best available point-spread function models. We describe here in detail the program's rationale, algorithms, and output. The routine was also designed to perform artificial-star tests, and we ran a standard set of similar to 10(5) tests for each cluster in the survey. The catalog described here will be exploited in a number of upcoming papers and will eventually be made available to the public via the World Wide Web.Astronom

Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine: Volume 1

Annotated and edited transcript of four Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey First published by the Wellcome Trust, 1997. ©The Trustee of the Wellcome Trust, London, 1997.In Volume One (Occasional Publication no. 4, 1997).All volumes are freely available online at: www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/wellcome_witnesses/Annotated and edited transcript of four Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Annotated and edited transcript of four Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Annotated and edited transcript of four Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Annotated and edited transcript of four Witness Seminars. Introduction by E M Tansey.Four Witness Seminar transcripts of meetings held between 1993 and 1996: ‘Technology Transfer in Britain: The case of Monoclonal Antibodies’ (E M Tansey and P P Catterall, eds); ‘Self and Non-Self: A History of Autoimmunity’ (E M Tansey, S V Willhoft and D A Christie, eds); ‘Endogenous Opiates’ (E M Tansey and D A Christie, eds); ‘The Committee on Safety of Drugs’ (E M Tansey and L A Reynolds, eds). Introduction by E M Tansey, ‘What is a Witness Seminar’, separate index for each meeting. Tansey E M, Catterall P P, Christie D A, Willhoft S V, Reynolds L A. (eds) (1997) Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, volume 1. London: The Wellcome Trust.The Wellcome Trust is a registered charity, no. 210183