Some Thoughts on Autumn Song

In late 1998, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery, Sydney, Autumn Song, a twenty-three minute video by John Conomos, was shown for the first time. This work explores the theme of ‘threat’ meted out to John Conomos by his parents, when in his childhood he was thought to be indolent. The core of this threat was that Conomos would become a member of the do-nothing culturati, like his geographically distant Uncle Manoli “who never left the Greek island of Kythera” (Conomos “Artists Statement” 2). Yet for John Conomos’ parents, an immigrant family working-to-do-well operating an Australian milk bar, issuing the “Uncle Manoli” threat was always more about the engagement of memory than the calling to notice of a tangible and present reality. At the time, threats of becoming an “Uncle Manoli” provoked in the young John Conomos a distant narrative more than it did the prospect of a mimetic eventuality on reaching adulthood: Autumn Song implies that this response has changed. To negotiate its contents Conomos sets out Autumn Song in four sections following the introduction. These are: “I am at home, nowhere, in no house and in no country”; “The limits of my language”; “Nonsense...is the sense of all senses”; and “The writer, daytime insomniac”. The following thoughts on Conomos’ work are also set out under four sub-headings addressing the works’ concerns, but they do so differently

‘It’s like equality now; it’s not as if it’s the old days’: an investigation into gender identity development and football participation of adolescent girls

This article explores the influence participating in football has on the development of adolescent girls’ gender identity, an area which currently lacks academic attention. Data were taken from an ethnographic study with a group of adolescent girls and boys and compared to Jeanes’ research. A social constructionist framework was deployed with links to both critical theory and feminist literature. Qualitative and participatory methods were used to fully engage with the complex issue of gender identity. The girls within this study were aware of the normative gender expectations linked to ‘being a female’ but did not find this restrictive. The girls moved between many changing identities and organised their ‘web of selves’ accordingly. The apparent need to measure success by the parameters of male standards created a barrier to girls’ identity development

A roadmap of problem frames research

It has been a decade since Michael Jackson introduced problem frames to the software engineering community. Since then, he has published further work addressing problem frames as well as presenting several keynote addresses. Other authors have researched problem frames, have written about their experiences and have expressed their opinions. It was not until 2004 that an opportunity presented itself for researchers in the field to gather as a community. The first International Workshop on Advances and Applications of Problem Frames (IWAAPF'04) was held at the International Conference on Software Engineering in Edinburgh on 24th May 2004. This event attracted over 30 participants: Jackson delivered a keynote address, researchers presented their work and an expert panel discussed the challenges of problem frames. Featuring in this special issue are two extended papers from the workshop, an invited contribution from Jackson in which he positions problem frames in the context of the software engineering discipline, and this article, where we provide a review of the literature

OpenSAFELY: a platform for analysing electronic health records designed for reproducible research

Electronic health records (EHRs) and other administrative health data are increasingly used in research to generate evidence on the effectiveness, safety, and utilisation of medical products and services, and to inform public health guidance and policy. Reproducibility is a fundamental step for research credibility and promotes trust in evidence generated from EHRs. At present, ensuring research using EHRs is reproducible can be challenging for researchers. Research software platforms can provide technical solutions to enhance the reproducibility of research conducted using EHRs. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed the secure, transparent, analytic open-source software platform OpenSAFELY designed with reproducible research in mind. OpenSAFELY mitigates common barriers to reproducible research by: standardising key workflows around data preparation; removing barriers to code-sharing in secure analysis environments; enforcing public sharing of programming code and codelists; ensuring the same computational environment is used everywhere; integrating new and existing tools that encourage and enable the use of reproducible working practices; and providing an audit trail for all code that is run against the real data to increase transparency. This paper describes OpenSAFELY’s reproducibility-by-design approach in detail

Genetic variance in fitness indicates rapid contemporary adaptive evolution in wild animals

Funding: Hoge Veluwe great tits: the NIOO-KNAW, ERC, and numerous funding agencies; Wytham great tits: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, ERC, and the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).The rate of adaptive evolution, the contribution of selection to genetic changes that increase mean fitness, is determined by the additive genetic variance in individual relative fitness. To date, there are few robust estimates of this parameter for natural populations, and it is therefore unclear whether adaptive evolution can play a meaningful role in short-term population dynamics. We developed and applied quantitative genetic methods to long-term datasets from 19 wild bird and mammal populations and found that, while estimates vary between populations, additive genetic variance in relative fitness is often substantial and, on average, twice that of previous estimates. We show that these rates of contemporary adaptive evolution can affect population dynamics and hence that natural selection has the potential to partly mitigate effects of current environmental change.PostprintPeer reviewe

Archiving primary data: solutions for long-term studies

The recent trend for journals to require open access to primary data included in publications has been embraced by many biologists, but has caused apprehension amongst researchers engaged in long-term ecological and evolutionary studies. A worldwide survey of 73 principal investigators (Pls) with long-term studies revealed positive attitudes towards sharing data with the agreement or involvement of the PI, and 93% of PIs have historically shared data. Only 8% were in favor of uncontrolled, open access to primary data while 63% expressed serious concern. We present here their viewpoint on an issue that can have non-trivial scientific consequences. We discuss potential costs of public data archiving and provide possible solutions to meet the needs of journals and researchers

Changes in medication safety indicators in England throughout the covid-19 pandemic using OpenSAFELY: population based, retrospective cohort study of 57 million patients using federated analytics

Objective: To implement complex, PINCER (pharmacist led information technology intervention) prescribing indicators, on a national scale with general practice data to describe the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on safe prescribing.Design: Population based, retrospective cohort study using federated analytics.Setting: Electronic general practice health record data from 56.8 million NHS patients by use of the OpenSAFELY platform, with the approval of the National Health Service (NHS) England.Participants: NHS patients (aged 18-120 years) who were alive and registered at a general practice that used TPP or EMIS computer systems and were recorded as at risk of at least one potentially hazardous PINCER indicator.Main outcome measure: Between 1 September 2019 and 1 September 2021, monthly trends and between practice variation for compliance with 13 PINCER indicators, as calculated on the first of every month, were reported. Prescriptions that do not adhere to these indicators are potentially hazardous and can cause gastrointestinal bleeds; are cautioned against in specific conditions (specifically heart failure, asthma, and chronic renal failure); or require blood test monitoring. The percentage for each indicator is formed of a numerator of patients deemed to be at risk of a potentially hazardous prescribing event and the denominator is of patients for which assessment of the indicator is clinically meaningful. Higher indicator percentages represent potentially poorer performance on medication safety.Results: The PINCER indicators were successfully implemented across general practice data for 56.8 million patient records from 6367 practices in OpenSAFELY. Hazardous prescribing remained largely unchanged during the covid-19 pandemic, with no evidence of increases in indicators of harm as captured by the PINCER indicators. The percentage of patients at risk of potentially hazardous prescribing, as defined by each PINCER indicator, at mean quarter 1 (Q1) 2020 (representing before the pandemic) ranged from 1.11% (age ≥65 years and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) to 36.20% (amiodarone and no thyroid function test), while Q1 2021 (representing after the pandemic) percentages ranged from 0.75% (age ≥65 years and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) to 39.23% (amiodarone and no thyroid function test). Transient delays occurred in blood test monitoring for some medications, particularly angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (where blood monitoring worsened from a mean of 5.16% in Q1 2020 to 12.14% in Q1 2021, and began to recover in June 2021). All indicators substantially recovered by September 2021. We identified 1 813 058 patients (3.1%) at risk of at least one potentially hazardous prescribing event.Conclusion: NHS data from general practices can be analysed at national scale to generate insights into service delivery. Potentially hazardous prescribing was largely unaffected by the covid-19 pandemic in primary care health records in England

Co-productive agility and four collaborative pathways to sustainability transformations

Co-production, the collaborative weaving of research and practice by diverse societal actors, is argued to play an important role in sustainability transformations. Yet, there is still poor understanding of how to navigate the tensions that emerge in these processes. Through analyzing 32 initiatives worldwide that co-produced knowledge and action to foster sustainable social-ecological relations, we conceptualize ‘co-productive agility’ as an emergent feature vital for turning tensions into transformations. Co-productive agility refers to the willingness and ability of diverse actors to iteratively engage in reflexive dialogues to grow shared ideas and actions that would not have been possible from the outset. It relies on embedding knowledge production within processes of change to constantly recognize, reposition, and navigate tensions and opportunities. Co-productive agility opens up multiple pathways to transformation through: (1) elevating marginalized agendas in ways that maintain their integrity and broaden struggles for justice; (2) questioning dominant agendas by engaging with power in ways that challenge assumptions, (3) navigating conflicting agendas to actively transform interlinked paradigms, practices, and structures; (4) exploring diverse agendas to foster learning and mutual respect for a plurality of perspectives. We explore six process considerations that vary by these four pathways and provide a framework to enable agility in sustainability transformations. We argue that research and practice spend too much time closing down debate over different agendas for change – thereby avoiding, suppressing, or polarizing tensions, and call for more efforts to facilitate better interactions among different agendas