Some more on the history of present-tense -s, do and zero: West Oxfordshire, 1837

This paper analyses the present indicative third-person singular markers in a diary kept by a servant from West Oxfordshire in 1837. There are three present-tense markers present in the diary: periphrastic auxiliary verb do, -s, and zero. However, all affirmative declarative do forms are found to be emphatic, so I deduce that periphrastic do was not present. Zero occurs at the surprisingly high rate of 21%. I examine the possibility that zero was the result of hypercorrection (perhaps due to misapplied schooling, or perhaps due to dialect contact as the diarist left West Oxfordshire and took up employment in London), but this is rejected because -s and zero patterns in the same way as in other southern data, based on an analysis of pronoun v. NP subjects, auxiliary v. full-verb have, non-categorical NPPR, and non-categorical Early Modern subjunctive zero. Presumably, these regular patternings would not be present were the zeroes due to an over-applied rule. I hypothesise that as periphrastic do and older -th became abandoned, an empty morpheme slot emerged, which later became filled with generalised -s. It is this temporarily empty morpheme slot, I suggest, which accounts for the 21% zeroes

Lived experience codesign of self-harm interventions: a scoping review.

OBJECTIVES: This study aims to map existing literature describing how people with lived experience of self-harm have engaged in codesigning self-harm interventions, understand barriers and facilitators to this engagement, and how the meaningfulness of codesign has been evaluated. DESIGN: Scoping review by Joanna Briggs Institute methodology. A protocol was published online (http://dx.doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/P52UD). DATA SOURCES: PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, PROSPERO, ClinicalTrials.gov and relevant websites were searched on 24 December 2022 (repeated 4 November 2023). ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: We included studies where individuals with lived experience of self-harm (first-hand or caregiver) have codesigned self-harm interventions. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Results were screened at title and abstract level, then full-text level by two researchers independently. Prespecified data were extracted, charted and sorted into themes. RESULTS: We included 22 codesigned interventions across mobile health, educational settings, prisons and emergency departments. Involvement varied from designing content to multistage involvement in planning, delivery and dissemination. Included papers described the contribution of 159 female, 39 male and 21 transgender or gender diverse codesigners. Few studies included contributors from a minoritised ethnic or LGBTQIA+ group. Six studies evaluated how meaningfully people with lived experience were engaged in codesign: by documenting the impact of contributions on intervention design or through postdesign reflections. Barriers included difficulties recruiting inclusively, making time for meaningful engagement in stretched services and safeguarding concerns for codesigners. Explicit processes for ensuring safety and well-being, flexible schedules, and adequate funding facilitated codesign. CONCLUSIONS: To realise the potential of codesign to improve self-harm interventions, people with lived experience must be representative of those who use services. This requires processes that reassure potential contributors and referrers that codesigners will be safeguarded, remunerated, and their contributions used and valued

A Multilingual Approach to the History of Standard English

This paper focuses on three developmental stages in the history of English which are apparent from a multilingual perspective but which are currently omitted from textbooks: the late medieval mixed-language business system, the fifteenth century tip-point when the switchover to English was imminent, and the subsequent shift to Proto-Standard English. I survey recent work which shows a disruption phase in the last few decades of the fourteenth century in both Anglo-Norman and mixed-language writing. Starting with this disruption phase around the 1370s and continuing to the tip-point to monolingual English around the 1480s (the dating is not concrete, it varies from archive to archive, but roughly fits these parameters), I argue that the intervening century constitutes a period of transition from Medieval Latin to Proto-Standard English

On the East India Company vocabulary of St Helena in the late 17th and early 18th century

This article considers vocabulary occurring in the St Helena Consultations, which record court proceedings from St Helena, South Atlantic, from the late 1600s onwards, administrated by the British East India Company. As the island was settled ab initio by East India Company settlers, soldiers and their slaves, the input languages are, to some extent, recoverable. The purpose of the East India Company was trade, resulting in much of the vocabulary recorded in the early years being to do with global commerce. Along with settler’s idiolectal Englishes, administrative practices developed elsewhere in the East India Company’s domain transferred non-English vocabulary to St Helena, resulting in an early World English lexicon.Academy of Finland (via University of Tampere) (258434

Predictive performance of the competing risk model in screening for preeclampsia.

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.BACKGROUND: The established method of screening for preeclampsia (PE) is to identify risk factors from maternal demographic characteristics and medical history; in the presence of such factors the patient is classified as high-risk and in their absence as low-risk. However, the performance of such approach is poor. We developed a competing risks model which allows combination of maternal factors (age, weight, height, race, parity, personal and family history of PE, chronic hypertension, diabetes mellitus, systemic lupus erythematosus or antiphospholipid syndrome, method of conception and interpregnancy interval), with biomarkers to estimate the individual patient-specific risks of PE requiring delivery before any specified gestation. The performance of this approach is by far superior to that of the risk scoring systems. OBJECTIVE: To examine the predictive performance of the competing risks model in screening for PE by a combination of maternal factors, mean arterial pressure (MAP), uterine artery pulsatility index (PI), and serum placental growth factor (PLGF), referred to as the triple test, in a training dataset for development of the model and two validation studies. STUDY DESIGN: The data for this study were derived from three previously reported prospective non-intervention multicenter screening studies for PE in singleton pregnancies at 11+0 - 13+6 weeks' gestation. In all three studies, there was recording of maternal factors and biomarkers and ascertainment of outcome by appropriately trained personnel. The first study of 35,948 women, which was carried out between February 2010 and July 2014, was used to develop the competing risks model for prediction of PE and is therefore considered to be the training set. The two validation studies comprised of 8,775 and 16,451 women, respectively and they were carried out between February and September 2015 and between April and December 2016, respectively. Patient-specific risks of delivery with PE at 0.95, >0.90 and >0.80, respectively, demonstrating a very high discrimination between affected and unaffected pregnancies. Similarly, the calibration slopes were very close to 1.0 demonstrating a good agreement between the predicted risks and observed incidence of PE. In the prediction of early-PE and preterm-PE the observed incidence in the training set and one of the validation datasets was consistent with the predicted one. In the other validation dataset, which was specifically designed for evaluation of the model, the incidence was higher than predicted presumably because of better ascertainment of outcome. The incidence of all-PE was lower than predicted in all three datasets because at term many pregnancies deliver for reasons other than PE and therefore pregnancies considered to be at high-risk for PE that deliver for other reasons before they develop PE can be wrongly considered to be false positives. CONCLUSIONS: The competing risks model provides an effective and reproducible method for first-trimester prediction of early-PE and preterm-PE, as long as the various components of screening are carried out by appropriately trained and audited practitioners. Early prediction of preterm-PE is beneficial because treatment of the high-risk group with aspirin is highly effective in the prevention of the disease.Fetal Medicine Foundatio

Deconstructing Individual Differences in Long-Term Personality Disorder and Trait Change

Converging lines of evidence suggest that personality pathology comprises shared and unique impairments. We leveraged a large clinical sample (N = 505) and a person-centered statistical approach, ipsative change analysis, to decompose individuals’ multidimensional profiles at two time points into a metric that captures change in the elevation of the profile (i.e., impairment severity) and change in configuration of the dimensions in the profile (i.e., stylistic symptom presentation). Results demonstrated that both severity and style change were associated with overall pathology change, although the relative importance of these metrics was influenced by assessment method. Specifically, structured interview showed strong effects of severity change relative to style change, whereas self-report was less definitive. In addition, severity change was more strongly associated with change in psychosocial functioning. Results support earlier evidence of shared and unique factors in personality pathology while highlighting the influence of assessment method on models of pathology structure

Study protocol for the randomised controlled trial: combined multimarker screening and randomised patient treatment with ASpirin for evidence-based PREeclampsia prevention (ASPRE)

This is the final version of the article. Available from BMJ Publishing Group via the DOI in this record.INTRODUCTION: Pre-eclampsia (PE) affects 2-3% of all pregnancies and is a major cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. Prophylactic use of low-dose aspirin in women at risk for PE may substantially reduce the prevalence of the disease. Effective screening for PE requiring delivery before 37 weeks (preterm PE) can be provided by a combination of maternal factors, uterine artery Doppler, mean arterial pressure, maternal serum pregnancy-associated plasma protein A and placental growth factor at 11-13 weeks' gestation, with a detection rate of 75% at a false-positive rate of 10%. We present a protocol (V.6, date 25 January 2016) for the ASpirin for evidence-based PREeclampsia prevention (ASPRE) trial, which is a double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomised controlled trial (RCT) that uses an effective PE screening programme to determine whether low-dose aspirin given to women from 11 to 13 weeks' gestation will reduce the incidence of preterm PE. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: All eligible women attending for their first trimester scan will be invited to participate in the screening study for preterm PE. Those found to be at high risk of developing preterm PE will be invited to participate in the RCT. Further scans will be conducted for assessment of fetal growth and biomarkers. Pregnancy and neonatal outcomes will be collected and analysed. The first enrolment for the pilot study was in April 2014. As of April 2016, 26 670 women have been screened and 1760 recruited to the RCT. The study is registered on the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) registry. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ISRCTN13633058.This study is supported by grants from the European Union 7th Framework Programme—FP7-HEALTH-2013-INNOVATION-2 (ASPRE Project # 601852) and the Fetal Medicine Foundation (FMF) (Charity No: 1037116)

Bifidobacterium breve reduces apoptotic epithelial cell shedding in an exopolysaccharide and MyD88-dependent manner

Certain members of the microbiota genus Bifidobacterium are known to positively influence host well-being. Importantly, reduced bifidobacterial levels are associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients, who also have impaired epithelial barrier function, including elevated rates of apoptotic extrusion of small intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) from villi—a process termed ‘cell shedding’. Using a mouse model of pathological cell shedding, we show that mice receiving Bifidobacterium breve UCC2003 exhibit significantly reduced rates of small IEC shedding. Bifidobacterial-induced protection appears to be mediated by a specific bifidobacterial surface exopolysaccharide and interactions with host MyD88 resulting in downregulation of intrinsic and extrinsic apoptotic responses to protect epithelial cells under highly inflammatory conditions. Our results reveal an important and previously undescribed role for B. breve, in positively modulating epithelial cell shedding outcomes via bacterial- and host-dependent factors, supporting the notion that manipulation of the microbiota affects intestinal disease outcomes