Girls on Forms: Apprenticing Young Women in Seventeenth-Century London

The 1650s saw an influx of young women to skilled apprenticeships in London's companies. Apprenticed to women through the names of their husbands, they practiced seamstry and millinery in a wide range of guilds. The preprinted forms by which these girls were indentured demonstrate the means by which a long-established city institution both made room for women, incorporating them into the culture of company, and kept them marginal. A series of print and manuscript adaptations marked out girls' forms, paying particular attention to the rules around marriage, and resulting, by the late seventeenth century, in a new trend towards non-sex-specific forms. This article argues that record keeping was both symbolically and concretely important for women's work and that the material culture and context of these print objects can shed a new light on gender roles at a key juncture in the histories of work, contracts, and the city.</p

Monitoring symptoms at home: What methods would cancer patients be comfortable using?

PURPOSE: This study aimed to determine which methods of remote symptom assessment cancer outpatients would be comfortable using, including those involving information technology, and whether this varied with age and gender. METHODS: A questionnaire survey of 477 outpatients attending the Edinburgh Cancer Centre in Edinburgh, UK. RESULTS: Most patients reported that they would not feel comfortable using methods involving technology such as a secure website, email, mobile phone text message, or a computer voice on the telephone but that they would be more comfortable using more traditional methods such as a paper questionnaire, speaking to a nurse on the telephone, or giving information in person. CONCLUSIONS: The uptake of new, potentially cost-effective technology-based methods of monitoring patients' symptoms at home might be limited by patients' initial discomfort with the idea of using them. It will be important to develop methods of addressing this potential barrier (such as detailed explanation and supervised practice) if these methods are to be successfully implemented

Spatial estimation of actual evapotranspiration over irrigated turfgrass using sUAS thermal and multispectral imagery and TSEB model

Green urban areas are increasingly affected by water scarcity and climate change. The combination of warmer temperatures and increasing drought poses substantial challenges for water management of urban landscapes in the western U.S. A key component for water management, actual evapotranspiration (ETa) for landscape trees and turfgrass in arid regions is poorly documented as most rigorous evapotranspiration (ET) studies have focused on natural or agricultural areas. ET is a complex and non-linear process, and especially difficult to measure and estimate in urban landscapes due to the large spatial variability in land cover/land use and relatively small areas occupied by turfgrass in urban areas. Therefore, to understand water consumption processes in these landscapes, efforts using standard measurement techniques, such as the eddy covariance (EC) method as well as ET remote sensing-based modeling are necessary. While previous studies have evaluated the performance of the remote sensing-based two-source energy balance (TSEB) in natural and agricultural landscapes, the validation of this model in urban turfgrass remains unknown. In this study, EC flux measurements and hourly flux footprint models were used to validate the energy fluxes from the TSEB model in green urban areas at golf course near Roy, Utah, USA. High-spatial resolution multispectral and thermal imagery data at 5.4 cm were acquired from small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) to model hourly ETa. A protocol to measure and estimate leaf area index (LAI) in turfgrass was developed using an empirical relationship between spectral vegetation indices (SVI) and observed LAI, which was used as an input variable within the TSEB model. In addition, factors such as sUAS flight time, shadows, and thermal band calibration were assessed for the creation of TSEB model inputs. The TSEB model was executed for five datasets collected in 2021 and 2022, and its performance was compared against EC measurements. For ETa to be useful for irrigation scheduling, an extrapolation technique based on incident solar radiation was used to compute daily ETa from the hourly remotely-sensed UAS ET. A daily flux footprint and measured ETa were used to validate the daily extrapolation technique. Results showed that the average of corrected daily ETa values in summer ranged from about 4.6 mm to 5.9 mm in 2021 and 2022. The Near Infrared (NIR) and Red Edge-based SVI derived from sUAS imagery were strongly related to LAI in turfgrass, with the highest coefficient of determination (R2) (0.76–0.84) and the lowest root mean square error (RMSE) (0.5–0.6). The TSEB’s latent and sensible heat flux retrievals were accurate with an RMSE 50 W m−2 and 35 W m−2 respectively compared to EC closed energy balance. The expected RMSE of the upscaled TSEB daily ETa estimates across the turfgrass is below 0.6 mm  day−1, thus yielding an error of 10% of the daily total. This study highlights the ability of the TSEB model using sUAS imagery to estimate the spatial variation of daily ETa for an urban turfgrass surface, which is useful for landscape irrigation management under drought conditions.Peer reviewe

The Leeds Evaluation of Efficacy of Detoxification Study (LEEDS) prisons project: a randomised controlled trial comparing dihydrocodeine and buprenorphine for opiate detoxification

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Many opiate users entering British prisons require prescribed medication to help them achieve abstinence. This commonly takes the form of a detoxification regime. Previously, a range of detoxification agents have been prescribed without a clear evidence base to recommend a drug of choice. There are few trials and very few in the prison setting. This study compares dihydrocodeine with buprenorphine.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Open label, pragmatic, randomised controlled trial in a large remand prison in the North of England. Ninety adult male prisoners requesting an opiate detoxification were randomised to receive either daily sublingual buprenorphine or daily oral dihydrocodeine, given in the context of routine care. All participants gave written, informed consent. Reducing regimens were within a standard regimen of not more than 20 days and were at the discretion of the prescribing doctor. Primary outcome was abstinence from illicit opiates as indicated by a urine test at five days post detoxification. Secondary outcomes were collected during the detoxification period and then at one, three and six months post detoxification. Analysis was undertaken using relative risk tests for categorical data and unpaired t-tests for continuous data.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>64% of those approached took part in the study. 63 men (70%) gave a urine sample at five days post detoxification. At the completion of detoxification, by intention to treat analysis, a higher proportion of people allocated to buprenorphine provided a urine sample negative for opiates (abstinent) compared with those who received dihydrocodeine (57% vs 35%, RR 1.61 CI 1.02–2.56). At the 1, 3 and 6 month follow-up points, there were no significant differences for urine samples negative for opiates between the two groups. Follow up rates were low for those participants who had subsequently been released into the community.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These findings would suggest that dihydrocodeine should not be routinely used for detoxification from opiates in the prison setting. The high relapse rate amongst those achieving abstinence would suggest the need for an increased emphasis upon opiate maintenance programmes in the prison setting.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN07752728</p

<scp>ReSurveyEurope</scp>: A database of resurveyed vegetation plots in Europe

AbstractAimsWe introduce ReSurveyEurope — a new data source of resurveyed vegetation plots in Europe, compiled by a collaborative network of vegetation scientists. We describe the scope of this initiative, provide an overview of currently available data, governance, data contribution rules, and accessibility. In addition, we outline further steps, including potential research questions.ResultsReSurveyEurope includes resurveyed vegetation plots from all habitats. Version 1.0 of ReSurveyEurope contains 283,135 observations (i.e., individual surveys of each plot) from 79,190 plots sampled in 449 independent resurvey projects. Of these, 62,139 (78%) are permanent plots, that is, marked in situ, or located with GPS, which allow for high spatial accuracy in resurvey. The remaining 17,051 (22%) plots are from studies in which plots from the initial survey could not be exactly relocated. Four data sets, which together account for 28,470 (36%) plots, provide only presence/absence information on plant species, while the remaining 50,720 (64%) plots contain abundance information (e.g., percentage cover or cover–abundance classes such as variants of the Braun‐Blanquet scale). The oldest plots were sampled in 1911 in the Swiss Alps, while most plots were sampled between 1950 and 2020.ConclusionsReSurveyEurope is a new resource to address a wide range of research questions on fine‐scale changes in European vegetation. The initiative is devoted to an inclusive and transparent governance and data usage approach, based on slightly adapted rules of the well‐established European Vegetation Archive (EVA). ReSurveyEurope data are ready for use, and proposals for analyses of the data set can be submitted at any time to the coordinators. Still, further data contributions are highly welcome.</jats:sec

Effect of remote ischaemic conditioning on clinical outcomes in patients with acute myocardial infarction (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI): a single-blind randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Remote ischaemic conditioning with transient ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm has been shown to reduce myocardial infarct size in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI). We investigated whether remote ischaemic conditioning could reduce the incidence of cardiac death and hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months. METHODS: We did an international investigator-initiated, prospective, single-blind, randomised controlled trial (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI) at 33 centres across the UK, Denmark, Spain, and Serbia. Patients (age >18 years) with suspected STEMI and who were eligible for PPCI were randomly allocated (1:1, stratified by centre with a permuted block method) to receive standard treatment (including a sham simulated remote ischaemic conditioning intervention at UK sites only) or remote ischaemic conditioning treatment (intermittent ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm through four cycles of 5-min inflation and 5-min deflation of an automated cuff device) before PPCI. Investigators responsible for data collection and outcome assessment were masked to treatment allocation. The primary combined endpoint was cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months in the intention-to-treat population. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02342522) and is completed. FINDINGS: Between Nov 6, 2013, and March 31, 2018, 5401 patients were randomly allocated to either the control group (n=2701) or the remote ischaemic conditioning group (n=2700). After exclusion of patients upon hospital arrival or loss to follow-up, 2569 patients in the control group and 2546 in the intervention group were included in the intention-to-treat analysis. At 12 months post-PPCI, the Kaplan-Meier-estimated frequencies of cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure (the primary endpoint) were 220 (8·6%) patients in the control group and 239 (9·4%) in the remote ischaemic conditioning group (hazard ratio 1·10 [95% CI 0·91-1·32], p=0·32 for intervention versus control). No important unexpected adverse events or side effects of remote ischaemic conditioning were observed. INTERPRETATION: Remote ischaemic conditioning does not improve clinical outcomes (cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure) at 12 months in patients with STEMI undergoing PPCI. FUNDING: British Heart Foundation, University College London Hospitals/University College London Biomedical Research Centre, Danish Innovation Foundation, Novo Nordisk Foundation, TrygFonden