A Search for Early Optical Emission from Short and Long Duration Gamma-ray Bursts

Gamma-ray bursts of short duration may harbor vital clues to the range of phenomena producing bursts. However, recent progress from the observation of optical counterparts has not benefitted the study of short bursts. We have searched for early optical emission from six gamma-ray bursts using the ROTSE-I telephoto array. Three of these events were of short duration, including GRB 980527 which is among the brightest short bursts yet observed. The data consist of unfiltered CCD optical images taken in response to BATSE triggers delivered via the GCN. For the first time, we have analyzed the entire 16 degree by 16 degree field covered for five of these bursts. In addition, we discuss a search for the optical counterpart to GRB 000201, a well-localized long burst. Single image sensitivities range from 13th to 14th magnitude around 10 s after the initial burst detection, and 14 - 15.8 one hour later. No new optical counterparts were discovered in this analysis suggesting short burst optical and gamma-ray fluxes are uncorrelated.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, subm. to ApJ Let

Changes in preterm birth and stillbirth during COVID-19 lockdowns in 26 countries.

Preterm birth (PTB) is the leading cause of infant mortality worldwide. Changes in PTB rates, ranging from -90% to +30%, were reported in many countries following early COVID-19 pandemic response measures ('lockdowns'). It is unclear whether this variation reflects real differences in lockdown impacts, or perhaps differences in stillbirth rates and/or study designs. Here we present interrupted time series and meta-analyses using harmonized data from 52 million births in 26 countries, 18 of which had representative population-based data, with overall PTB rates ranging from 6% to 12% and stillbirth ranging from 2.5 to 10.5 per 1,000 births. We show small reductions in PTB in the first (odds ratio 0.96, 95% confidence interval 0.95-0.98, P value <0.0001), second (0.96, 0.92-0.99, 0.03) and third (0.97, 0.94-1.00, 0.09) months of lockdown, but not in the fourth month of lockdown (0.99, 0.96-1.01, 0.34), although there were some between-country differences after the first month. For high-income countries in this study, we did not observe an association between lockdown and stillbirths in the second (1.00, 0.88-1.14, 0.98), third (0.99, 0.88-1.12, 0.89) and fourth (1.01, 0.87-1.18, 0.86) months of lockdown, although we have imprecise estimates due to stillbirths being a relatively rare event. We did, however, find evidence of increased risk of stillbirth in the first month of lockdown in high-income countries (1.14, 1.02-1.29, 0.02) and, in Brazil, we found evidence for an association between lockdown and stillbirth in the second (1.09, 1.03-1.15, 0.002), third (1.10, 1.03-1.17, 0.003) and fourth (1.12, 1.05-1.19, <0.001) months of lockdown. With an estimated 14.8 million PTB annually worldwide, the modest reductions observed during early pandemic lockdowns translate into large numbers of PTB averted globally and warrant further research into causal pathways

Changes in preterm birth and stillbirth during COVID-19 lockdowns in 26 countries.

Preterm birth (PTB) is the leading cause of infant mortality worldwide. Changes in PTB rates, ranging from -90% to +30%, were reported in many countries following early COVID-19 pandemic response measures ('lockdowns'). It is unclear whether this variation reflects real differences in lockdown impacts, or perhaps differences in stillbirth rates and/or study designs. Here we present interrupted time series and meta-analyses using harmonized data from 52 million births in 26 countries, 18 of which had representative population-based data, with overall PTB rates ranging from 6% to 12% and stillbirth ranging from 2.5 to 10.5 per 1,000 births. We show small reductions in PTB in the first (odds ratio 0.96, 95% confidence interval 0.95-0.98, P value <0.0001), second (0.96, 0.92-0.99, 0.03) and third (0.97, 0.94-1.00, 0.09) months of lockdown, but not in the fourth month of lockdown (0.99, 0.96-1.01, 0.34), although there were some between-country differences after the first month. For high-income countries in this study, we did not observe an association between lockdown and stillbirths in the second (1.00, 0.88-1.14, 0.98), third (0.99, 0.88-1.12, 0.89) and fourth (1.01, 0.87-1.18, 0.86) months of lockdown, although we have imprecise estimates due to stillbirths being a relatively rare event. We did, however, find evidence of increased risk of stillbirth in the first month of lockdown in high-income countries (1.14, 1.02-1.29, 0.02) and, in Brazil, we found evidence for an association between lockdown and stillbirth in the second (1.09, 1.03-1.15, 0.002), third (1.10, 1.03-1.17, 0.003) and fourth (1.12, 1.05-1.19, <0.001) months of lockdown. With an estimated 14.8 million PTB annually worldwide, the modest reductions observed during early pandemic lockdowns translate into large numbers of PTB averted globally and warrant further research into causal pathways

Roundtable on the ethics of making publicly available historical data 'more' public through linkage and database construction

Over recent decades there has been a burgeoning of individual-level population data available from historical records, including censuses, and birth, death and marriage registers. These can be linked to other historical material to form rich prosopographical demographic datasets; that is, individual life and family histories synthesised from a variety of sources for an entire population to enable the study of that population. The creation and analysis of these datasets raises ethical issues around individual and familial privacy. Although the data included are often technically publicly available, their linkage and inclusion in databases gives them a public profile they were unlikely to have in their former homes of archives, registers or libraries. The speakers will discuss what responsibilities researchers have in linking and analysing historical data on individuals and families, what rights current individuals and families have over the use of their ancestral histories, and what safeguards, if any, should be put in place. The speakers are key researchers on the 'Founders and Survivors' project, a multi-university, multi-disciplinary study tracing and analysing the life courses and genealogies of Tasmania's population from convict colonisation to World War One and beyond.PARADISEC (Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures), Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories, Ethnographic E-Research Project and Sydney Object Repositories for Research and Teaching

Origins of ‘the gap’: perspectives on the historical demography of aboriginal victorians

Australia enjoys ninth place out of 190 countries on the United Nations Life Expectancy Index. Aboriginal Australians—as a fourth-world people within a first-world society—rank in the bottom half of the Index, just below Guatemala and Bangladesh. Progress on closing ‘the gap’ in health and wellbeing has been slow, despite initial rapid gains in infant mortality. The barriers are inter-generational trauma, inherited disadvantage, poverty and systemic racism. This paper reports on the Koori Health Research Database, a cradle-to-grave dataset of Aboriginal Victorians from the 1840s. It finds that population recovery after the nadir reached at the end of the nineteenth century, was hindered by high acquired secondary infertility among women vulnerable to sexual abuse, violence and sexually transmitted infections. Improvements in survival and the health transition were ‘blocked’ by barriers to land acquisition and full citizenship, as has happened in New Zealand. The dramatic recovery of the population of people now identifying as Aboriginal in Victoria has come from out-marriage.Funding for this project was provided by the Australian Research Council (McCalman; Land and Life: Aborigines, Convicts and Immigrants in Victoria, 1835–1985; DP110102368), the Swedish Research Council (Axelsson, Kukutai, Kippen; Indigenous Health in Transition: a Longitudinal Study of Colonisation, State and the Health of Indigenous Peoples in Sweden, Australia and New Zealand, 1850– 2000; 2012–5490) and the Australian National Data Service (Kippen, McCalman, Silcot; Founders and Survivors: Genealogical Connections; AP20

Building a life course dataset from Australian convict records Founders & Survivors: Australian life courses in historical context 1803-1920

Founders & Survivors is a multi-university and public collaborative project that is building a transnational and intergenerational dataset of life courses generated from the UNESCO recognised convict records of Tasmania. This chapter outlines the technical history of the project: Mass digitization and archiving online of over 100,000 images, manual scholarly transcription and the building of a prosopography database. This comprises a relational genealogy database integrated with an XML (BaseX) source database. Individual life histories are compiled dynamically from diverse sources, linked by a combination of machine matching and human judgment, and managed by an independent link management module. Using Google Docs over 50 online volunteers crowdsourced the convict genealogies and coded the data. Manual linkage and scholarly verification remained essential for the collation of prosopographical data and manual coding was necessary for statistical analysis

Media reporting of the suicide phenomenon in Taiwan: a content analysis

Abstract: Suicide mortality has become the tenth most common cause of death in many countries, especially in developing countries such as Taiwan. There are a number of cultural influences on suicide behaviour which vary significantly across countries, but a common consideration is the linking of the way suicide is reported in the media with subsequent suicide attempts, although the regulations and policy regarding media reporting vary markedly. This paper looks at observations of media reporting of suicide and parasuicide in Taiwan by analysing 131 reports of suicide or parasuicide published in the China Times newspaper over a 12-month period. It discusses the findings in relation to guidelines for media reporting of suicide and compares them with the way suicide tends to be reported in countries which are much more circumspect in their presentation of this issue. Newspaper reporting of suicide behaviour may not reflect the actual occurrence. Some types of suicide, including celebrity suicide, murdersuicide, suicide for special reasons, suicide using particular methods and successful suicides in socially unacceptable circumstances seem more likely to gain publicity. This paper argues that whilst some aspects of the detail of reporting should be curtailed in order to prevent copycat suicides, and to moderate cultural perspectives of suicide, other aspects can bring to light injustices and inequities which are culturally embedded in societies and are a primary influence on the suicide rates. The very limited reporting of suicide found mainly in Western countries is often compared favourably with the more extensive reporting in places like Taiwan, as shown in this paper. However, it may be that more balanced reporting on both sides would assist in reducing worldwide suicide statistics

Risk to researchers in qualitative research on sensitive topics : issues and strategies

Traditionally, risk assessments in research have been limited to examining the risks to the research participants. Although doing so is appropriate and important, there is growing recognition that undertaking research can pose risks to researchers as well. A grounded theory study involving a range of researchers who had undertaken qualitative health research on a sensitive topic was completed. Analysis of the in-depth, face-to-face unstructured individual interviews with 30 Australian public health researchers provided evidence that researchers do confront a number of physical and emotional risks when undertaking research. Training, preparation, and supervision must be taken into account so that the risk to researchers can be minimized. Researchers need to consider occupational health and safety issues in designing research projects that deal with physical and emotional risks. Recommendations for professional supervision, policy development, and minimum training standards for researchers are provided

Researching sensitive topics : qualitative research as emotion work

There is a growing awareness that undertaking qualitative research is an embodied experience and that researchers may be emotionally affected by the work that they do. Despite the interest in the emotional nature of qualitative research, there is very little empirical evidence about the researchers' experiences of undertaking qualitative research. A grounded theory analysis of one-on-one interviews with thirty public health researchers working on a qualitative project provided both theoretical and empirical evidence that qualitative researchers undertake emotion work throughout their research projects. The findings provide examples of researchers doing emotion work in their research projects; highlight some of the consequences of emotion work and offer some suggestions for researcher self-care