Marinello One Acts: Victoria Station; Words, Words, Words

Victoria Station by Harold Pinter and Words, Words, Words by David Ives presented at John Carroll University in October 2005.https://collected.jcu.edu/plays/1034/thumbnail.jp

The Dumb Waiter; Riders to the Sea

The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter, and Riders to the Sea by John M. Synge were presented the John Carroll University\u27s Little Theatre Society in October of 1983. A review of the performances appeared on page 8 of The Carroll News, October 26, 1983.https://collected.jcu.edu/plays/1095/thumbnail.jp

The University of Salford Sound of Laughter project

What follows is a report of the University of Salford’s Sound of Laughter Project (2018). This pilot study was set up as an initial attempt to ascertain whether it is possible to discern any meaning from the different laughter sounds that audiences might make during a stand-up comedy show. The experiment also aimed to discover whether comedians can recognise variations in the properties of laughter responses made during the act of public joking. Further, the study aimed to establish whether performers can discern these different audience laughter sounds in real time and use them as identifiable ‘cues’ to check the efficacy (or otherwise) of their comic communication. This combined report on the pilot study has been prepared by a group of researchers at the University of Salford, all of which were involved in different stages of the experiment and whose initials are appended to each relevant section of the report. Keywords: Audience laughter; stand-up comedy; joking; psychoacoustics, audience respons

Biomass Productivity-Based Mapping of Global Land Degradation Hotspots

Land degradation is a global problem affecting negatively the livelihoods and food security of billions of people, especially farmers and pastoralists in the developing countries. Eradicating extreme poverty without adequately addressing land degradation is highly unlikely. Given the importance and magnitude of the problem, there have been recurring efforts by the international community to identify the extent and severity of land degradation in global scale. As discussed in this paper, many previous studies were challenged by lack of appropriate data or shortcomings of their methodological approaches. In this paper, using global level remotely sensed vegetation index data, we identify the hotspots of land degradation in the world across major land cover types. In doing so, we use the long-term trend of inter-annual vegetation index as an indicator of biomass production decline or improvement. Besides the elimination of technical factors, confounding the relationship between the indicator and the biomass production of the land, we apply a methodology which accounts for masking effects of both inter-annual rainfall variation and atmospheric fertilization. We also delineate the areas where chemical fertilization could be hiding the inherent land degradation processes. Our findings show that land degradation hotpots cover about 29% of global land area and are happening in all agro-ecologies and land cover types. Land degradation is especially massive in grasslands. About 3.2 billion people reside in these degrading areas. However, the number of people affected by land degradation is likely to be higher as more people depend on the continuous flow of ecosystem goods and services from these affected areas. As we note in the paper, this figure, although, does not include all possible areas with degraded lands, it identifies those areas where land degradation is most acute and requires priority actions in both in-depth research and management measures to combat land degradation. Our findings indicate that, in fact, land improvement has also occurred in about 2.7% of global land area during the last three decades, providing a support that with appropriate actions land degradation trend could be reversed, and that the efforts to address land degradation need to be substantially increased, at least by a factor, to attain the vision of Zero Net Land Degradation. We also identify concrete aspects in which these results should be interpreted with caution, the limitations of this work and the key areas for future research

The Changing Landscape for Stroke\ua0Prevention in AF: Findings From the GLORIA-AF Registry Phase 2

Background GLORIA-AF (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation) is a prospective, global registry program describing antithrombotic treatment patterns in patients with newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation at risk of stroke. Phase 2 began when dabigatran, the first non\u2013vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant (NOAC), became available. Objectives This study sought to describe phase 2 baseline data and compare these with the pre-NOAC era collected during phase 1. Methods During phase 2, 15,641 consenting patients were enrolled (November 2011 to December 2014); 15,092 were eligible. This pre-specified cross-sectional analysis describes eligible patients\u2019 baseline characteristics. Atrial fibrillation disease characteristics, medical outcomes, and concomitant diseases and medications were collected. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results Of the total patients, 45.5% were female; median age was 71 (interquartile range: 64, 78) years. Patients were from Europe (47.1%), North America (22.5%), Asia (20.3%), Latin America (6.0%), and the Middle East/Africa (4.0%). Most had high stroke risk (CHA2DS2-VASc [Congestive heart failure, Hypertension, Age  6575 years, Diabetes mellitus, previous Stroke, Vascular disease, Age 65 to 74 years, Sex category] score  652; 86.1%); 13.9% had moderate risk (CHA2DS2-VASc = 1). Overall, 79.9% received oral anticoagulants, of whom 47.6% received NOAC and 32.3% vitamin K antagonists (VKA); 12.1% received antiplatelet agents; 7.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. For comparison, the proportion of phase 1 patients (of N = 1,063 all eligible) prescribed VKA was 32.8%, acetylsalicylic acid 41.7%, and no therapy 20.2%. In Europe in phase 2, treatment with NOAC was more common than VKA (52.3% and 37.8%, respectively); 6.0% of patients received antiplatelet treatment; and 3.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. In North America, 52.1%, 26.2%, and 14.0% of patients received NOAC, VKA, and antiplatelet drugs, respectively; 7.5% received no antithrombotic treatment. NOAC use was less common in Asia (27.7%), where 27.5% of patients received VKA, 25.0% antiplatelet drugs, and 19.8% no antithrombotic treatment. Conclusions The baseline data from GLORIA-AF phase 2 demonstrate that in newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation patients, NOAC have been highly adopted into practice, becoming more frequently prescribed than VKA in Europe and North America. Worldwide, however, a large proportion of patients remain undertreated, particularly in Asia and North America. (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation [GLORIA-AF]; NCT01468701

Un discurso de agradecimiento

No puedo decir que en mi familia hubiera una robusta tradición literaria. Mi madre disfrutaba leyendo las novelas de A. J. Cronin y Arnold Bennett y a mi padre (que salía de casa a las siete de la mañana y regresaba a las siete de la noche de su trabajo como sastre a destajo) le gustaban las novelas del oeste, pero en la casa había pocos libros. Esto se debía, por supuesto, a que dependíamos por completo de las bibliotecas. Nadie podía permitirse el comprar libros

Un oficio serio y fascinante

Con envidiable sencillez, sentido del humor y modestia no impostada, el gran dramaturgo y escritor inglés Harold Pinter, premio Nobel de literatura en 2005, desgrana en este texto gran parte de los guiones que ha escrito �ninguno original�, nos acerca a su experiencia como guionista, y muestra algunos de los recursos y entresijos del trabajo �tantas veces menospreciado� de adaptar al cine obras ya escritas