The custom of the country: Alistair Cooke and race in America: a selected edition of Letter from America, 1946-2003

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University.The Custom of the Country: Alistair Cooke and Race in America is a selected, annotated edition of 142 installments of Alistair Cooke's BBC broadcast, Letter from America, on race and the struggle for civil rights in the United States. Alistair Cooke (1908-2004), English-born American journalist, produced a variety of works over a seventy-year career, almost all about American politics, society, and culture. Besides writing numerous books, he was for 25 years American correspondent for the Manchester Guardian newspaper (later The Guardian). From 1946 to 2004 he wrote and recorded a weekly 2,100-word commentary, Letter from America, broadcast to the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth - a total of 2,869 broadcasts. Over the decades, the relation of white and black was a frequent concern of Letter from America. The Custom of the Country records events from Harry Truman's efforts to advance civil rights, through the Brown v. Board of Education decision, battles over segregation and passage of civil rights laws, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the riots of the 1960s, school busing and Affirmative Action, up to and beyond the O.J. Simpson case. The letters include profiles of such figures as Joe Louis, George Wallace, Lyndon Johnson, Duke Ellington, Marian Anderson, J. William Fulbright, and Jesse Jackson. They explore changes in the language of race and in black and white society. The texts also reveal the process of change (and lack of change) in the views of one immigrant over more than half a century. The Custom of the Country is an accurate edition of scripts as near as possible to the words as Cooke wrote and spoke them. The edition, spanning the years 1946-2003, was compiled from manuscripts and transcripts in the Alistair Cooke collection at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, and at the BBC Written Archives Centre in Reading, England. Available versions were consulted and compared in the preparation of the text. In addition to the introduction, which contains specific references to the texts, footnotes report key variant readings, along with historical and biographical background, as well as extensive cross-referencing of topics and events

Sentiment analysis of COP9-related tweets: a comparative study of pre-trained models and traditional techniques

IntroductionSentiment analysis has become a crucial area of research in natural language processing in recent years. The study aims to compare the performance of various sentiment analysis techniques, including lexicon-based, machine learning, Bi-LSTM, BERT, and GPT-3 approaches, using two commonly used datasets, IMDB reviews and Sentiment140. The objective is to identify the best-performing technique for an exemplar dataset, tweets associated with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Ninth Conference of the Parties in 2021 (COP9).MethodsA two-stage evaluation was conducted. In the first stage, various techniques were compared on standard sentiment analysis datasets using standard evaluation metrics such as accuracy, F1-score, and precision. In the second stage, the best-performing techniques from the first stage were applied to partially annotated COP9 conference-related tweets.ResultsIn the first stage, BERT achieved the highest F1-scores (0.9380 for IMDB and 0.8114 for Sentiment 140), followed by GPT-3 (0.9119 and 0.7913) and Bi-LSTM (0.8971 and 0.7778). In the second stage, GPT-3 performed the best for sentiment analysis on partially annotated COP9 conference-related tweets, with an F1-score of 0.8812.DiscussionThe study demonstrates the effectiveness of pre-trained models like BERT and GPT-3 for sentiment analysis tasks, outperforming traditional techniques on standard datasets. Moreover, the better performance of GPT-3 on the partially annotated COP9 tweets highlights its ability to generalize well to domain-specific data with limited annotations. This provides researchers and practitioners with a viable option of using pre-trained models for sentiment analysis in scenarios with limited or no annotated data across different domains

Tableau de l'histoire moderne depuis la chute de l'Empire d'Occident, jusqu'a la paix de Westphalie

Sign.: a12, b10, A-R12, S6.Antep.Port. con viñeta

Tableau de l'histoire moderne depuis la chute de l'Empire d'Occident, jusqu'a la paix de Westphalie

Sign.: A-Y12, Z8.Antep.Port. con viñeta

The effect of an emergency department clinical “triggers” program based on abnormal vital signs

AbstractObjectiveTo determine the effect of a clinical triggers program in the Emergency Department (ED) setting that utilized predetermined abnormal vital signs to activate a rapid assessment by an emergency physician led multidisciplinary team.MethodsA retrospective, separate sample, pre-post intervention study following implementation of an ED triggers program. Abnormal vital sign criteria that warranted a trigger response included: heart rate <40 or >130 beats/min, respiratory rate <8 or >30 respirations/min, systolic blood pressure <90 mm Hg, or oxygen saturation <90% on room air. The primary outcome investigated was time to physician evaluation with secondary outcomes being the time to disposition decision and time to first critical therapeutic intervention.ResultsThe median time to physician evaluation was reduced by 25% from 28 min to 21 min (P<0.05). The median time to disposition decision was decreased by 12% from 154 minutes to 135 minutes (P<0.05). The median time to first intervention was 46 min and 43 min (P=0.33) in the before and after groups, which did not represent a statistically significant difference.ConclusionsIn our model, the implementation of an ED triggers program resulted in a modest decreased time to physician evaluation and disposition decision but not time to intervention

Hyperlexia in a 4-year-old boy with Autistic Spectrum Disorder

This paper presents a case study of a 4-year-old boy with Autistic Spectrum Disorder and a mental age of approximately 1:5 who demonstrates precocious oral-reading behaviour in the absence of spontaneous speech. Tests of reading regular and irregular words, pseudowords, homographic heterophones, single sentences and texts were carried out. Performance on a variety of reading tasks suggests the ability to use grapheme–phoneme correspondences and whole word reading for decoding single words. In addition, successful reading of some homographic heterophones and semantic paraphrasing of texts suggests a level of lexical, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic development far beyond his mental or chronological age. The realisation of highly developed reading ability is paradoxical in the context of profound impairment in cognitive development and an absence of spoken language

An Observational Analysis of Meal Patterns in Overweight and Obese Pregnancy

Background Nutrient intakes are known to be poorer among pregnant women with raised body mass index (BMI) than those with a healthy BMI. While meal patterns have the potential to influence obstetric, metabolic and anthropometric measures for mother and infant, limited data exists regarding meal patterns among pregnant women with raised BMI. Aim To identify categories of meal patterns among pregnant women with overweight and obesity and determine whether patterns change with advancing gestation. To determine if maternal meal patterns are associated with dietary intakes and pregnancy outcomes. Methods Prospective, observational analysis of pregnant women (n = 143) (BMI 25–39.9 kg/m2). Meal pattern data were analysed from 3-day food diaries at 16 and 28 weeks’ gestation. Outcomes include maternal blood glucose, insulin resistance, gestational diabetes, gestational weight gain and infant anthropometry. Results Three meal pattern categories were identified: ‘main meal dominant’ (3 main eating occasions + 0–3 snacks), ‘large meal dominant’ (≤ 2 main eating occasions + \u3c 2 snacks), and ‘snack dominant’ (3 main eating occasions + \u3e 3 snacks and ≤2main + ≥ 2 snacks). A main meal–dominant pattern prevailed at 16 weeks’ (85.3%) and a snack-dominant pattern at 28 weeks’ (68.5%). Dietary glycaemic index was lower among the main meal versus large meal–dominant pattern at 28 weeks (P = 0.018). Infant birth weight (kg) and macrosomia were highest among participants with a large meal–dominant pattern at 28 weeks (P = 0.030 and P = 0.008, respectively). Conclusion Women with raised BMI changed eating patterns as pregnancy progressed, moving from main meal–dominant to snack-dominant patterns. Large meal–dominant meal patterns in later pregnancy were associated with higher glycaemic index and greater prevalence of macrosomia

Five-Year Follow Up of a Low Glycaemic Index Dietary Randomised Controlled Trial in Pregnancy—No Long-Term Maternal Effects of a Dietary Intervention

Objective: To determine whether a dietary intervention in pregnancy had a lasting effect on maternal outcomes of diet, HbA1c and weight retention 5 years post-intervention; and to establish whether modifiable maternal behaviours were associated with these outcomes. Design: Randomised control trial of low glycaemic index (GI) diet in pregnancy with longitudinal follow up to 5 years post-intervention. Setting: Dublin, Ireland (2007–2016). Population: In all, 403 women of 759 (53.1%) were followed up at 5 years. A total of 370 (intervention n = 188; control n = 182) were included in this analysis. Methods: Fasting glucose was measured at 13 and 28 weeks’ gestation and HbA1c (mmol/mol) at 5-year follow up. Weight retention (kg) from early pregnancy to 5 years post-intervention was calculated. Dietary intakes, anthropometry, and lifestyle factors were measured in pregnancy and 5 years post-intervention. Multiple linear regression models, controlling for confounders, were used for analysis. Outcome: Maternal diet, HbA1c, and weight retention at 5 years post-intervention. Results: There was no difference between the intervention and control at 5 years post-intervention for any long-term maternal outcomes measured. HbA1c at 5 years post-intervention was associated with early-pregnancy fasting glucose (B 1.70, 95% CI 0.36–3.04) and parity ≥3 (B 1.04, 95% CI 0.09–1.99). Weight retention was associated with change in well-being from pregnancy to 5 years (B −0.06, 95% CI −0.11 to −0.02), gestational weight gain (B 0.19, 95% CI 0.00–0.38), and GI (B 0.26, 95% CI 0.06–0.46) at 5 years. Conclusions: The ROLO low-GI dietary intervention in pregnancy had no impact on maternal dietary intakes, HbA1c or body composition 5 years post-intervention. Maternal factors and lifestyle behaviours in pregnancy have long-term effects on glucose metabolism and weight retention up to 5 years later. Tweetable abstract: Pregnancy factors are associated with maternal glucose metabolism and weight retention 5 years later

Uncertainty analysis of the use of a retailer fidelity card scheme in the assessment of food additive intake

International audienceThe feasibility of using a retailer fidelity card scheme to estimate food additive intake has been investigated in an earlier study. Fidelity card survey information was combined with information provided by the retailer on levels of the food colour Sunset Yellow (E110) in the foods to estimate a daily exposure to the additive in the Swiss population. As with any dietary exposure method the fidelity card scheme is subject to uncertainties and in this paper the impact of uncertainties associated with input variables including amounts of food purchased, levels of E110 in food, proportion of food purchased at retailer, rate of fidelity card usage, proportion of foods consumed outside of home and bodyweights and with systematic uncertainties has been assessed using a qualitative, deterministic and probabilistic approach. An analysis of the sensitivity of the results to each of the probabilistic inputs was also undertaken. The analysis was able to identify the key factors responsible for uncertainty within the model and demonstrate how the application of some simple probabilistic approaches can be used to quantitatively assess uncertainty