Fertility control, shared nurturing, and dual exploitation: the lives of enslaved mothers in the antebellum United States

Slaveholders believed women could both labour and care for their children simultaneously, and they routinely exploited enslaved mothers as both workers and as reproducers. Using Stephanie Camp’s conceptualization of enslaved women’s bodies as sites of resistance, this article argues that despite slavery’s arduousness motherhood provided a place of refuge for enslaved women to enjoy their children and the camaraderie of their peers. However, women sometimes lamented bringing enslaved children into the world and strove not to do so, especially when pregnancy resulted from sexual assault. Slavery’s unique burdens meant many women participated in shared and more communal forms of mothering than their white counterparts

Multilingualism, Language Trouble, and Linguistic Infelicity in Early Modern English Writing, 1550-1642

Early modern intercultural exchange is characterized by the need to find a common language. Depictions of that exchange for an English audience tend to translate that improvised, ad hoc work in ways that downplay the uncertainty and promote the image of the triumphant English traveler or translator. Evidence of these extemporaneous exchanges nonetheless remains visible in early modern writing. In “Multilingualism, Language Trouble, and Linguistic Infelicity in Early Modern English Writing, 1550-1642,” I argue that these linguistic workarounds are linked to writers’ imaginings of their role in international exchange and the formation of an English proto-national identity. This dissertation looks at how “language trouble,” my term for how the possibility of perfect communication goes awry, is depicted in a variety of genres. Chapter 1, “Language as Travail: Language Trouble in Depictions of Early Modern Emissaries,” focuses on emissaries (unofficial ambassadors who cast themselves as advocates for England’s political interests abroad) and the ways their accounts erase the possibility of failure in multilingual communication. By comparing letters, published first-person accounts, and staged depictions of historical events, I examine how the complications of documented situations were packaged for an English public’s consumption. I argue that fictional accounts (such as If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody and The Travels of the Three English Brothers) present a fantasy of perfect communication in which English Protestant interests triumph; published narratives and private communication, instead, work to diminish the possibility of miscommunication. Chapter 2, “Language as Workaround: Multilingualism in Travel Narratives,” examines prose narratives of “merchant venturers”: traders, captains, sailors, and others who participated in transnational mercantile economies. This chapter takes up one genre of text written by many different types of authors to illustrate the variety of potential failures in linguistic workarounds, both those experienced and those avoided, with which early modern venturers were preoccupied. No one narrative emerges as the genre’s standard, indicating how situational and contingent these workarounds were. Chapter 3, “Language as Labor: Learning, Language Manuals, and Multilingual Discourse,” turns to multilingual dictionaries and language manuals to more fully address questions of imperfection and sufficiency that previous chapters raise. Early modern dictionary compositors were distinctly aware of the impossibility of creating the perfect dictionary, and developed discourses emphasizing sufficiency to assuage the readers that their product would provide a good enough framework for the level of learning at which it was advertised. Finally, Chapter 4, “Language as Performance: The Pleasures of Failure and the Role of Understanders on the English Stage,” looks at the ways in which linguistic infelicity depicted on the early modern stage indicates social or national boundary-crossing. Plays such as Jonson’s Volpone, Shakespeare’s Love’s Labours Lost, and Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside show how the humor to which that linguistic infelicity regularly gave rise demonstrates the limits of social mobility. By examining linguistic infelicity by genre as well as by subject, I argue that there is no one framework by which to examine early modern language trouble: multilingual communication is heterogenous, messy, and resistant to easy categorization.PHDEnglish Language & LiteratureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149974/1/eshearer_1.pd

Relationship between costs and clinical benefits of new cancer medicines in Australia, France, the UK, and the US

As cancer drug prices rise, it remains unclear whether the cost of new interventions is related to their beneficial impact for patients at a societal-level. Using data for 2003–2015 from the IQVIA MIDAS® dataset, the relationship between cancer drug costs and drug clinical benefits was studied in four countries with different approaches to drug pricing. Summary measures of drug clinical effects on overall survival, quality of life, and safety were obtained from a review of health technology assessments. Mean total drug costs for a full course of treatment were estimated using standard posology for each medicine and in each country. Regression analysis was used to test whether, at a societal-level, the cost of recently licensed drugs is related to their beneficial impact for patients. Across all eligible medicines, average treatment costs were lowest in France and Australia and highest in the UK and US. Compared with Australia, France, and the UK, cancer medicines were on average between 1.2 and 1.9 times more expensive in the US, where the average total per patient cost for treatment was $68,255.17. Costs for new cancer medicines are high and, at best, only weakly associated with drug clinical benefits. The strength of this relationship nevertheless varied across countries. Some new cancer drugs—particularly in the US—may be neither affordable nor clinically beneficial over existing treatments. While all countries can benefit from strategies that more robustly align price with therapeutic benefit in cancer drugs, the US stands out in its opportunity to improve both affordability and value in cancer drug treatment

Evaluating Global Health Partnerships: A Case Study of a Gavi HPV Vaccine Application Process in Uganda

Background: Global health partnerships have grown rapidly in number and scope, yet there has been less emphasis on their evaluation. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is one such public-private partnership; in Gavi-eligible countries partnerships are dynamic networks of immunization actors who work together to support all stages and aspects of Gavi support. This paper describes a conceptual framework – the partnership framework – and analytic approach for evaluating the perceptions of partnerships’ added value as well as the results from an application to one case in Uganda. Methods: We used a mixed-methods case study design embedded in the Gavi Full Country Evaluations (FCE) to test the partnership framework on Uganda’s human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine application partnership. Data from document review, interviews, and social network surveys enabled the testing of the relationships between partnership framework domains (context, structure, practices, performance, and outcomes). Topic guides were based on the framework domains and network surveys identified working together relationships, professional trust, and perceptions of the effectiveness, efficiency, and legitimacy of the partnership’s role in this process. Results: Data from seven in-depth interviews, 11 network surveys and document review were analyzed according to the partnership framework, confirming relationships between the framework domains. Trust was an important contributor to the perceived effectiveness of the process. The network was structured around the EPI program, who was considered the leader of this process. While the structure and composition of the network was largely viewed as supporting an effective and legitimate process, the absence of the Ministry of Education (MoE) may have had downstream consequences if this study’s results had not been shared with the Ministry of Health (MoH) and acted upon. The partnership was not perceived to have increased the efficiency of the process, perhaps as a result of unclear or absent guidelines around roles and responsibilities. Conclusion: The health and functioning of global health partnerships can be evaluated using the framework and approach presented here. Network theory and methods added value to the conceptual and analytic processes and we recommend applying this approach to other global health partnerships to ensure that they are meeting the complex challenges they were designed to address

Gambling harms in adult social care: developing an ‘introductory’ question to identify gambling harms among service users

Gambling harms are disproportionately experienced among disadvantaged groups and as such, adult social care (ASC) practitioners are well-placed to identify and support affected individuals. There exists no evidence-based ‘introductory’ question for practitioners to identify those at risk of gambling harms, which includes family and friends (‘affected others’). To develop an ‘introductory’ question for use in English ASC, we conducted a scoping review that identified fifteen potential questions. Questions were refined through expert panel review groups (n = 13), cognitive interviewing (n = 18), test–retest reliability checks (n = 20) and validity testing (n = 2,100) against gold-standard measures of problem gambling behaviour. The question development process produced two questions suitable for testing in local authority (LA) ASC departments. These were (i) ‘Do you feel you are affected by any gambling, either your own or someone else’s?’ and (ii) ‘If you or someone close to you gambles, do you feel it is causing you any worries?’ Each had good face validity, strong test–retest reliability, correlated highly with well-being measures and performed reasonably against validated measures of problem gambling. These two questions are currently being piloted by ASC practitioners in three English LAs to assess their feasibility for adoption in practice

Telephone delivered incentives for encouraging adherence to supervised methadone consumption (TIES): study protocol for a feasibility study for an RCT of clinical and cost effectiveness

The majority of people receiving treatment for their heroin addiction, are prescribed methadone; for which there is an extensive evidence base. When treatment starts, people take their daily dose of methadone under supervision at a community pharmacy. Supervision guarantees methadone is taken as directed by the individual for whom it has been prescribed, helps to ensure individuals take their correct dose every day, and safeguards against diversion and overdose. However, individuals often fail to attend the pharmacy to take their methadone. Each missed dose is of concern. If a patient misses their daily dose of methadone, they will start to experience opiate withdrawal and cravings and are more likely to use heroin. If they miss three days dose, there are concerns that they may lose tolerance to the drug and may be at risk of overdose when the next dose is taken. Hence there is an urgent need to develop effective interventions for medication adherence. Research suggests that incentive-based medication adherence interventions may be very effective, but there are few controlled trials and the provision of incentives requires time and organisational systems which can be challenging in pharmacies. The investigators have developed the technology to deliver incentives by mobile telephone. This cluster randomised trial will test the feasibility of conducting a future trial evaluating the clinical and cost effectiveness of using telephone delivered incentives (praise and modest financial rewards via text messaging) to encourage adherence with supervised consumption of methadone in community pharmacies. Three drug services (each with two or three community pharmacies supervising methadone consumption that will enrol 20 individuals, a total of 60 participants) will be recruited and randomly allocated to deliver either i) telephone delivered incentives, ii) telephone delivered reminders or iii) no telephone system. Acceptability, recruitment, follow-up, and suitable measures of clinical and cost effectiveness will be assessed. Findings from this feasibility study will be assessed against stated progression criteria and used to inform a future confirmatory trial of the clinical and cost effectiveness of telephone delivered incentives to encourage medication adherence. ISRCTN58958179 (retrospectively registered). [Abstract copyright: © 2019 Published by Elsevier Inc.

Earthquake swarms on transform faults

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of John Wiley & Sons for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Journal International 178 (2009): 1677-1690, doi:10.1111/j.1365-246X.2009.04214.x.Swarm-like earthquake sequences are commonly observed in a diverse range of geological settings including volcanic and geothermal regions as well as along transform plate boundaries. They typically lack a clear mainshock, cover an unusually large spatial area relative to their total seismic moment release, and fail to decay in time according to standard aftershock scaling laws. Swarms often result from a clear driving phenomenon, such as a magma intrusion, but most lack the necessary geophysical data to constrain their driving process. To identify the mechanisms that cause swarms on strike-slip faults, we use relative earthquake locations to quantify the spatial and temporal characteristics of swarms along Southern California and East Pacific Rise transform faults. Swarms in these regions exhibit distinctive characteristics, including a relatively narrow range of hypocentral migration velocities, on the order of a kilometre per hour. This rate corresponds to the rupture propagation velocity of shallow creep transients that are sometimes observed geodetically in conjunction with swarms, and is significantly faster than the earthquake migration rates typically associated with fluid diffusion. The uniformity of migration rates and low effective stress drops observed here suggest that shallow aseismic creep transients are the primary process driving swarms on strike-slip faults. Moreover, the migration rates are consistent with laboratory values of the rate-state friction parameter b (0.01) as long as the Salton Trough faults fail under hydrostatic conditions.The material presented here is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Science (OCE) grant #0548785

Recognize fruit damage from spotted wing Drosophila (SWD), Drosophila suzukii

A tool to help commercial fruit growers identify early damage caused by spotted wing Drosophila (SWD) on blueberries (Duke), raspberries (Malahat), strawberries (Seascape), cherries (Bing, Montmorency, and Rainier), and grapes (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay). Includes photos showing each fruit type a day or two after egg laying, 3 to 4 days later, and approximately 1 week after egg laying.Published December 2010. Reviewed February 2015. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalo