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Identifying sources of error in cross-national questionnaires: Application of an error source typology to cognitive interview data
This article evaluates a Cross National Error Source Typology that was developed as a tool for making cross-national questionnaire design more effective. Cross-national questionnaire design has a number of potential error sources that are either not present or are less common in single nation studies. Tools that help to identify these error sources better inform the survey researcher when improving a source questionnaire that serves as the basis for translation. This article outlines the theoretical and practical development of the typology and evaluates an attempt to apply it to cross-national cognitive interviewing findings from the European Social Survey
Does Antiretroviral Treatment Reduce Case Fatality Among HIV-Positive Patients with Tuberculosis in Malawi?
SETTING: Thyolo district, Malawi. OBJECTIVES: To report on 1) case fatality among human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positive tuberculosis (TB) patients while on anti-tuberculosis treatment and 2) whether antiretroviral treatment (ART) initiated during the continuation phase of TB treatment reduces case fatality. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort analysis. METHODS: Comparative analysis of treatment outcomes for TB patients registered between January and December 2004. RESULTS: Of 983 newly registered TB patients receiving diagnostic HIV testing, 658 (67%) were HIV-positive. A total of 132 (20%) patients died during the 8-month course of anti-tuberculosis treatment, of whom 82 (62%) died within the first 2 months of treatment when ART was not provided (cumulative incidence 3.0, 95%CI 2.5-3.6 per 100 person-years). A total of 576 TB patients started the continuation phase of anti-tuberculosis treatment, 180 (31%) of whom were started on ART. The case-fatality rate per 100 person-years was not significantly different for patients on ART (1.0, 95%CI 0.6-1.7) and those without ART (1.2, 95%CI 0.9-1.7, adjusted hazard ratio 0.86, 95%CI 0.4-1.6, P = 0.6) CONCLUSIONS: ART provided in the continuation phase of TB treatment does not have a significant impact on reducing case fatality. Reasons for this and possible measures to reduce high case fatality in the initial phase of TB treatment are discussed
Pathways for Nutrient Loss to Water; Slurry and Fertilizer Spreading
End of project reportThere are almost 150,000 farms in Ireland and these contribute substantial quantities of N and P to inland and coastal waters. Some of these nutrients are carried from wet soils by overland flow and by leaching from dry soils. Farm practice can reduce the loss from farms by judicious management of nutrients. Improvements are required to diminish export of nutrients without impairing operations on the farm. Literature regarding nutrient loss from agriculture was reviewed in this project and maps were prepared to predict best slurry spreading times around Ireland. Two further maps were prepared to show slurry storage requirement on farms
Collecting Texts in Endangered Languages: The Chickasaw Narrative Bootcamp
While data collection early in the Americanist tradition included texts as part of the Boasian triad, later developments in the generative tradition moved away from narratives. With a resurgence of attention to texts in both linguistic theory and language documentation, the literature on methodologies is growing (i.e., Chelliah 2001, Chafe 1980, Burton & Matthewson 2015). We outline our approach to collecting Chickasaw texts in what we call a ‘narrative bootcamp.’ Chickasaw is a severely threatened language and no longer in common daily use. Facilitating narrative collection with elder fluent speakers is an important goal, as is the cultivation of second language speakers and the training of linguists and tribal language professionals. Our bootcamps meet these goals. Moreover, we show many positive outcomes to this approach, including a positive sense of language use and ‘fun’ voiced by the elders, the corpus expansion that occurs by collecting and processing narratives onsite in the workshop, and field methods training for novices. Importantly, we find the sparking of personal recollections facilitates the collection of heretofore unrecorded narrative genres in Chickasaw. This approach offers an especially fruitful way to build and expand a text corpus for small communities of highly endangered languages.National Foreign Language Resource Cente
Theory and Simulation of the diffusion of kinks on dislocations in bcc metals
Isolated kinks on thermally fluctuating (1/2) screw, edge and
(1/2) edge dislocations in bcc iron are simulated under zero stress
conditions using molecular dynamics (MD). Kinks are seen to perform stochastic
motion in a potential landscape that depends on the dislocation character and
geometry, and their motion provides fresh insight into the coupling of
dislocations to a heat bath. The kink formation energy, migration barrier and
friction parameter are deduced from the simulations. A discrete
Frenkel-Kontorova-Langevin (FKL) model is able to reproduce the coarse grained
data from MD at a fraction of the computational cost, without assuming an a
priori temperature dependence beyond the fluctuation-dissipation theorem.
Analytic results reveal that discreteness effects play an essential r\^ole in
thermally activated dislocation glide, revealing the existence of a crucial
intermediate length scale between molecular and dislocation dynamics. The model
is used to investigate dislocation motion under the vanishingly small stress
levels found in the evolution of dislocation microstructures in irradiated
materials
Multicentre observational cohort study of NSAIDs as risk factors for postoperative adverse events in gastrointestinal surgery
Introduction: Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are recommended as postoperative analgesia by the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery Society. Recent studies have raised concerns that NSAID administration following colorectal anastomosis may be associated with increased risk of anastomotic leak. This multicentre study aims to determine NSAIDs' safety profile following gastrointestinal resection. Methods and analysis: This prospective, multicentre cohort study will be performed over a 2-week period utilising a collaborative methodology. Consecutive adults undergoing open or laparoscopic, elective or emergency gastrointestinal resection will be included. The primary end point will be the 30-day morbidity, assessed using the Clavien-Dindo classification. This study will be disseminated through medical student networks, with an anticipated recruitment of at least 900 patients. The study will be powered to detect a 10% increase in complication rates with NSAID use. Ethics and dissemination: Following the Research Ethics Committee Chairperson's review, a formal waiver was received. This study will be registered as a clinical audit or service evaluation at each participating hospital. Dissemination will take place through previously described novel research collaborative networks
Trace- and pseudo-products: restriction-like semigroups with a band of projections
We ascertain conditions and structures on categories and semigroups which
admit the construction of pseudo-products and trace products respectively,
making their connection as precise as possible. This topic is modelled on the
ESN Theorem and its generalization to ample semigroups. Unlike some other
variants of ESN, it is self-dual (two-sided), and the condition of commuting
projections is relaxed. The condition that projections form a band (are closed
under multiplication) is shown to be a very natural one. One-sided reducts are
considered, and compared to (generalized) D-semigroups. Finally the special
case when the category is a groupoid is examined.Comment: 17 pages. After referee comments. Proof of Th. 3.2 corrected,
subsection 5.2 added, 2 new references, minor amendments. Proof of Lem.
4.3(ii) and paragraph on D-semigroups amende
Photometric and proper motion study of neglected open cluster NGC 2215
Optical UBVRI photometric measurements using the Faulkes Telescope North were
taken in early 2011 and combined with 2MASS JHK and WISE infrared
photometry as well as UCAC4 proper motion data in order to estimate the main
parameters of the galactic open cluster NGC 2215 of which large uncertainty
exists in the current literature. Fitting a King model we estimate a core
radius of 1.120.04 (0.240.01pc) and a limiting radius of
0.5 (0.940.11pc) for the cluster. The results of isochrone
fits indicates an age of with a distance of
pc, a metallicity of dex and a reddening of
. A proportion of the work in this study was undertaken by
Australian and Canadian upper secondary school students involved in the Space
to Grow astronomy education project, and is the first scientific publication to
have utilized our star cluster photometry curriculum materials.Comment: 10 pages, 9 Figures, 3 Table
Museum DNA reveals the demographic history of the endangered Seychelles warbler
The importance of evolutionary conservation – how understanding evolutionary forces can help guide conservation decisions – is widely recognized. However, the historical demography of many endangered species is unknown, despite the fact that this can have important implications for contemporary ecological processes and for extinction risk. Here, we reconstruct the population history of the Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis) – an ecological model species. By the 1960s, this species was on the brink of extinction, but its previous history is unknown. We used DNA samples from contemporary and museum specimens spanning 140 years to reconstruct bottleneck history. We found a 25% reduction in genetic diversity between museum and contemporary populations, and strong genetic structure. Simulations indicate that the Seychelles warbler was bottlenecked from a large population, with an ancestral Ne of several thousands falling to <50 within the last century. Such a rapid decline, due to anthropogenic factors, has important implications for extinction risk in the Seychelles warbler, and our results will inform conservation practices. Reconstructing the population history of this species also allows us to better understand patterns of genetic diversity, inbreeding and promiscuity in the contemporary populations. Our approaches can be applied across species to test ecological hypotheses and inform conservation
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