NovelTM Datasets for English-Language Fiction, 1700-2009

This report describes a collection of 210,305 volumes of fiction that researchers are encouraged to borrow for their own work. Alternately, readers can simply browse the report as a description of English-language fiction in HathiTrust Digital Library. For instance, how does the proportion of fiction written by British authors or by women change across time? We also divide nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction into seven subsets with different emphases (for instance, one where men and women are represented equally, and one composed of only the most prominent and widely-held books). Comparing the pictures produced by these different samples allows us to assess the fragility of recent quantitative arguments about literary history. Preprint version of an article to appear in the Journal of Cultural Analytics

First Records of the Fish Assemblage on Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, Spokane County, Washington, 2013

We present the first documentation of the fish assemblage on Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge (TNWR) in Spokane County, Washington. Using various methods, we collected fishes inhabiting the wetlands of TNWR in 2013. A total of 15,921 fish was collected, and included, recorded by relative abundance (RA); brook stickleback (RA = 81%), pumpkinseed (RA = 18%), speckled dace (RA = <1%), redside shiner (RA = <1%), and brown bullhead (RA = <1%). This paper describes the 2013 fish assemblage at Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge

Enhancing Lay Counselor Capacity to Improve Patient Outcomes with Multimedia Technology

Multimedia technologies offer powerful tools to increase capacity of health workers to deliver standardized, effective, and engaging antiretroviral medication adherence counseling. Masivukeni—is an innovative multimedia-based, computer-driven, lay counselor-delivered intervention designed to help people living with HIV in resource-limited settings achieve optimal adherence. This pilot study examined medication adherence and key psychosocial outcomes among 55 non-adherent South African HIV+ patients, on antiretroviral therapy (ART) for at least 6 months, who were randomized to receive either Masivukeni or standard of care (SOC) counseling for ART non-adherence. At baseline, there were no significant differences between the SOC and Masivukeni groups on any outcome variables. At post-intervention (approximately 5–6 weeks after baseline), -clinic-based pill count adherence data available for 20 participants (10 per intervention arm) showed a 10 % improvement for—participants and a decrease of 8 % for SOC participants. Masivukeni participants reported significantly more positive attitudes towards disclosure and medication social support, less social rejection, and better clinic–patient relationships than did SOC participants. Masivukeni shows promise to promote optimal adherence and provides preliminary evidence that multimedia, computer-based technology can help lay counselors offer better adherence counseling than standard approaches

Extracorporeal immune therapy with immobilized agonistic anti-Fas antibodies leads to transient reduction of circulating neutrophil numbers and limits tissue damage after hemorrhagic shock/resuscitation in a porcine model

Background: Hemorrhagic shock/resuscitation is associated with aberrant neutrophil activation and organ failure. This experimental porcine study was done to evaluate the effects of Fas-directed extracorporeal immune therapy with a leukocyte inhibition module (LIM) on hemodynamics, neutrophil tissue infiltration, and tissue damage after hemorrhagic shock/resuscitation. Methods: In a prospective controlled double-armed animal trial 24 Munich Mini Pigs (30.3 +/- 3.3 kg) were rapidly haemorrhaged to reach a mean arterial pressure (MAP) of 35 +/- 5 mmHg, maintained hypotensive for 45 minutes, and then were resuscitated with Ringer's solution to baseline MAP. With beginning of resuscitation 12 pigs underwent extracorporeal immune therapy for 3 hours (LIM group) and 12 pigs were resuscitated according to standard medical care (SMC). Haemodynamics, haematologic, metabolic, and organ specific damage parameters were monitored. Neutrophil infiltration was analyzed histologically after 48 and 72 hours. Lipid peroxidation, and apoptosis were specifically determined in lung, bowel, and liver. Results: In the LIM group, neutrophil counts were reduced versus SMC during extracorporeal immune therapy. After 72 hours, the haemodynamic parameters MAP and cardiac output (CO) were significantly better in the LIM group. Histological analyses showed reduction of shock-related neutrophil tissue infiltration in the LIM group, especially in the lungs. Lower amounts of apoptotic cells and lipid peroxidation were found in organs after LIM treatment. Conclusions: Transient Fas-directed extracorporeal immune therapy may protect from posthemorrhagic neutrophil tissue infiltration and tissue damage

Book Reviews and the Consolidation of Genre

Some literary scholars have claimed that predictive models can measure the strength of the boundaries that separate different cultural categories—genres, for instance, or market segments. But interpreting textual models as evidence about the strength of a cultural distinction has seemed a questionable move to many readers. We use book reviews to test this inference. Are the similarities between fictional texts purely verbal phenomena, or do they reflect social categories that are also legible (although expressed differently) in readers' responses to those texts? We find that the subject and genre categories most strongly marked in fictional texts are also the categories most strongly marked in reviews of fiction. The correlation is strong; r > .8

Masivukeni: Development of a Multimedia Based Antiretroviral Therapy Adherence Intervention for Counselors and Patients in South Africa

Effective medical treatment for HIV/AIDS requires patients’ optimal adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART). In resource-constrained settings, lack of adequate standardized counseling for patients on ART remains a significant barrier to adherence. Masivukeni (“Let’s Wake Up” in Xhosa) is an innovative multimedia-based intervention designed to help people living with HIV in resource-limited settings achieve and maintain high levels of ART adherence. Adapted from a couples-based intervention tested in the United States (US), Masivukeni was developed through community-based participatory research with US and South African partners and informed by Ewart’s Social Action Theory. Innovative computer-based multimedia strategies were used to translate a labor- and training-intensive intervention into one that could be readily and widely used by lay counselors with relatively little training with low-literacy patients. In this paper, we describe the foundations of this new intervention, the process of its development, and the evidence of its high acceptability and feasibility