Bleeding Passports: The Ideology of Woman's Heart in the Fiction of Hawthorne, Freeman and Cooke

"For its own sake, if it will do no more, the world should throw open all its avenues to the passport of a woman's bleeding heart." This is the only resolution to women's wrongs that Miles Coverdale, the narrator of Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance, can offer. Hawthorne's ambivalent response to the ideology of woman's heart is more complex than Coverdale's but it remains fundamentally conservative, like the response of another New England writer, Rose Terry Cooke. Hawthorne and Cooke share ideological assumptions about gender subverted by Mary Wilkins Freeman, a third New England writer whose works still have not received the recognition they merit."For its own sake, if it will do no more, the world should throw open all its avenues to the passport of a woman’s bleeding heart.” Voilà la seule solution aux défauts des femmes que peut offrir Miles Coverdale, le narrateur dans le roman The Blithedale Romance de Hawthorne. La réaction ambivalente de Hawthorne à l’égard de la sentimentalité raisonnée des femmes est plus complexe que celle de Coverdale mais elle demeure essentiellement conservatrice, tout comme celle de Rose Terry Cooke, une autre auteure de la Nouvelle-Angleterre. En fait, Hawthorne et Cooke partagent les mêmes suppositions que réfute une troisième auteure de la Nouvelle-Angleterre, Mary Wilkins, dont l’oeuvre n'a toujours pas reçu la reconnaissance qu’elle mérite

Vitamin A Status of Women and Children in Yaoundé and Douala, Cameroon, is Unchanged One Year after Initiation of a National Vitamin A Oil Fortification Program.

Vitamin A (VA) fortification of cooking oil is considered a cost-effective strategy for increasing VA status, but few large-scale programs have been evaluated. We conducted representative surveys in Yaoundé and Douala, Cameroon, 2 years before and 1 year after the introduction of a mandatory national program to fortify cooking oil with VA. In each survey, 10 different households were selected within each of the same 30 clusters (n = ~300). Malaria infection and plasma indicators of inflammation and VA (retinol-binding protein, pRBP) status were assessed among women aged 15-49 years and children aged 12-59 months, and casual breast milk samples were collected for VA and fat measurements. Refined oil intake was measured by a food frequency questionnaire, and VA was measured in household oil samples post-fortification. Pre-fortification, low inflammation-adjusted pRBP was common among children (33% <0.83 µmol/L), but not women (2% <0.78 µmol/L). Refined cooking oil was consumed by >80% of participants in the past week. Post-fortification, only 44% of oil samples were fortified, but fortified samples contained VA concentrations close to the target values. Controlling for age, inflammation, and other covariates, there was no difference in the mean pRBP, mean breast milk VA, prevalence of low pRBP, or prevalence of low milk VA between the pre- and post-fortification surveys. The frequency of refined oil intake was not associated with VA status indicators post-fortification. In sum, after a year of cooking oil fortification with VA, we did not detect evidence of increased plasma RBP or milk VA among urban women and preschool children, possibly because less than half of the refined oil was fortified. The enforcement of norms should be strengthened, and the program should be evaluated in other regions where the prevalence of VA deficiency was greater pre-fortification

Anonymized Video Analysis Methods and Systems

Methods and systems for anonymized video analysis are described. In one embodiment, a first silhouette image of a person in a living unit may be accessed. The first silhouette image may be based on a first video signal recorded by a first video camera. A second silhouette image of the person in the living unit may be accessed. The second silhouette image may be of a different view of the person than the first silhouette image. The second silhouette image may be based on a second video signal recorded by a second video camera. A three-dimensional model of the person in voxel space may be generated based on the first silhouette image, the second silhouette image, and viewing conditions of the first video camera and the second video camera. In some embodiments, information on falls, gait parameters, and other movements of the person living unit are determined. Additional methods and systems are disclosed

Identifying quality improvement intervention publications - A comparison of electronic search strategies

Abstract Background The evidence base for quality improvement (QI) interventions is expanding rapidly. The diversity of the initiatives and the inconsistency in labeling these as QI interventions makes it challenging for researchers, policymakers, and QI practitioners to access the literature systematically and to identify relevant publications. Methods We evaluated search strategies developed for MEDLINE (Ovid) and PubMed based on free text words, Medical subject headings (MeSH), QI intervention components, continuous quality improvement (CQI) methods, and combinations of the strategies. Three sets of pertinent QI intervention publications were used for validation. Two independent expert reviewers screened publications for relevance. We compared the yield, recall rate, and precision of the search strategies for the identification of QI publications and for a subset of empirical studies on effects of QI interventions. Results The search yields ranged from 2,221 to 216,167 publications. Mean recall rates for reference publications ranged from 5% to 53% for strategies with yields of 50,000 publications or fewer. The 'best case' strategy, a simple text word search with high face validity ('quality' AND 'improv*' AND 'intervention*') identified 44%, 24%, and 62% of influential intervention articles selected by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) experts, a set of exemplar articles provided by members of the Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence (SQUIRE) group, and a sample from the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organization of Care Group (EPOC) register of studies, respectively. We applied the search strategy to a PubMed search for articles published in 10 pertinent journals in a three-year period which retrieved 183 publications. Among these, 67% were deemed relevant to QI by at least one of two independent raters. Forty percent were classified as empirical studies reporting on a QI intervention. Conclusions The presented search terms and operating characteristics can be used to guide the identification of QI intervention publications. Even with extensive iterative development, we achieved only moderate recall rates of reference publications. Consensus development on QI reporting and initiatives to develop QI-relevant MeSH terms are urgently needed

Initial adherence of EPEC, EHEC and VTEC to host cells

Initial adherence to host cells is the first step of the infection of enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC), enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) and verotoxigenic Escherichia coli (VTEC) strains. The importance of this step in the infection resides in the fact that (1) adherence is the first contact between bacteria and intestinal cells without which the other steps cannot occur and (2) adherence is the basis of host specificity for a lot of pathogens. This review describes the initial adhesins of the EPEC, EHEC and VTEC strains. During the last few years, several new adhesins and putative colonisation factors have been described, especially in EHEC strains. Only a few adhesins (BfpA, AF/R1, AF/R2, Ral, F18 adhesins) appear to be host and pathotype specific. The others are found in more than one species and/or pathotype (EPEC, EHEC, VTEC). Initial adherence of EPEC, EHEC and VTEC strains to host cells is probably mediated by multiple mechanisms

Shared heritability and functional enrichment across six solid cancers

Correction: Nature Communications 10 (2019): art. 4386 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12095-8Quantifying the genetic correlation between cancers can provide important insights into the mechanisms driving cancer etiology. Using genome-wide association study summary statistics across six cancer types based on a total of 296,215 cases and 301,319 controls of European ancestry, here we estimate the pair-wise genetic correlations between breast, colorectal, head/neck, lung, ovary and prostate cancer, and between cancers and 38 other diseases. We observed statistically significant genetic correlations between lung and head/neck cancer (r(g) = 0.57, p = 4.6 x 10(-8)), breast and ovarian cancer (r(g) = 0.24, p = 7 x 10(-5)), breast and lung cancer (r(g) = 0.18, p = 1.5 x 10(-6)) and breast and colorectal cancer (r(g) = 0.15, p = 1.1 x 10(-4)). We also found that multiple cancers are genetically correlated with non-cancer traits including smoking, psychiatric diseases and metabolic characteristics. Functional enrichment analysis revealed a significant excess contribution of conserved and regulatory regions to cancer heritability. Our comprehensive analysis of cross-cancer heritability suggests that solid tumors arising across tissues share in part a common germline genetic basis.Peer reviewe