Exploring appropriation as a creative practice

During the 1960s and 1970s, Ed Ruscha produced a series of 16 small, self-published books that became a catalyst for how artists could approach the book form. This reputation has grown through the subsequent decades, and his influence on book artists remains strong to this day to the extent that his books have been, and continue to be, appropriated across the world by successive generations of artists. Writing from a practitioner perspective, I will begin by looking at how Ruscha has become so influential to generations of book artists. I will look at what influenced him, and how he may possibly have appropriated the work of others. I will then focus in on the community of book artists who reference Ruscha’s books in their practice. The research of Ruscha’s books is embodied in each of these individual outcomes, but I will show that it is through the collective act and the bringing together of all of these books, through the community, that the work/s gain currency, strengthening both the Ruscha books and those that have come after

Click, swipe, download, share

Keynote talk at the Beyond the Book symposium, Devon Guild of Craftsmen, Exeter University, Exeter, UK, 15th May 2014. Symposium ran alongside and exhibition of the same name, and both set out to examine the book as physical form as well as a container of ideas and concepts. A household object - the conventional book has only recently been rivalled by the computer screen and electronic text. Exploring this transition, through a variety of formats, from photographs to sculptures, installations and jewellery. The special qualities of the book object are deconstructed and described by these artists who all share an interest in history and memory, language and narrative

What helps to support people affected by Adverse Childhood Experiences? A review of evidence

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) include physical, sexual or emotional abuse; neglect; domestic violence in the home; homelessness or living in care; parental mental health problems or substance abuse; and parents who are absent through imprisonment, separation or death. We sought to understand how people affected by ACEs can best be supported by conducting a review of evidence. The review involved three components: a qualitative synthesis of UK views studies; a systematic review of reviews which measured the effectiveness of interventions to support people affected by ACEs; and a stakeholder workshop with young people with lived experience of ACEs. The review was commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care

Precision public health – A critical review of the opportunities and obstacles

The term ‘precision public health’ (PPH) refers to a new approach in public health which involves the use of novel data sources and/or computer science-driven methods of data analysis to predict risk or outcomes, in order to improve how interventions are targeted or tailored, with the aim of making them more individualised and therefore more effective and cost-effective than methods currently in use. These data may include, for example, information from social media or devices, genomic or clinical data, and information from healthcare services. In this critical review, which was conducted between March and October 2019, we outline key assumptions underpinning the PPH approach and identify potential challenges in its application. We adopted a pragmatic, non-systematic review methodology to examine: (i) the general principles underlying PPH; (ii) the validity of claims made about PPH in empirical studies and commentaries; and (iii) the potential opportunities and challenges of adopting a PPH approach through examining two case studies: health checks and community-based interventions. Non-empirical studies (commentaries and think-pieces) were included in this review because PPH represents an emerging approach and many of the ideas around the potential of PPH are only described in such studies Commentary studies emphasise that precision can be achieved in targeting interventions towards narrow social profiles of people through the incorporation of data reflecting micro-level day-to-day insights into the lives of individuals. Structured analysis of commentary studies shows that (i) the PPH field may be highly influenced by commentary and non-systematic review pieces that lack transparent methods but make claims about the potential of PPH; (ii) commentators on PPH often attempt to provide evidence for claims but the link between the evidence and the claim is often unsubstantiated when critically examined; and (iii) many of the assumptions underlying PPH are not supported by empirical evidence suggesting that there needs to be a measured approach to adopting PPH approaches. Claims around the effectiveness of PPH and around PPH being an advance on current public health approaches tended not to be supported by empirical evidence. As a relatively new concept therefore, there is limited direct empirical evidence showing PPH to be effective, and the theoretical arguments in its favour are often not well supported by evidence. The more ambitious claims made for PPH in the literature often rest on questionable readings of the evidence – for example, citing the possibility of identifying subgroups of the population through better targeting as though this automatically promises greater effectiveness among interventions targeting those subgroups. In practice, it seems that PPH is less a radically new paradigm and more a range of incremental improvements to public health interventions. Hypothetical case studies outlining the potential of a PPH approach applied to health checks and community-based interventions indicate several ways in which new data or tools could be productively used to inform the design and implementation of public health interventions. Current evidence suggests the impact of these is likely to be fairly modest, although further focused research (e.g. exploring the utility of strategies for targeting or involving communities using PPH) may merit further exploration and evaluation. Defining PPH is contentious and our findings reflect the difficulty in assessing and operationalising the broad ambition of using emerging data and technologies to better understand profiles, predict risk and outcomes, and act upon this evidence. Future work in this area should seek to introduce more focus around the concept of PPH, including being clearer about the goals and breaking down the concept into a series of components that can each be evaluated. The bulk of the work presented here took place between March and October 2019. There is scope for further analysis to understand the potential of PPH in the future, as the number of studies adopting a PPH approach grows. This larger pool of studies may also lend itself to more systematic approaches to reviewing the evidence, particularly if there is an interest in evaluating a particular component or principle of PPH. In addition, the evidence examined in this report predates the COVID-19 global pandemic, and many of the measures taken to mitigate the spread of the pandemic may provide a further source of evidence and data to understand the potential role of PPH in public health decision-making

Using automation to produce a ‘living map’ of the COVID-19 research literature

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life worldwide and presented unique challenges in the health evidencesynthesis space. The urgent nature of the pandemic required extreme rapidity for keeping track of research, andthis presented a unique opportunity for long-proposed automation systems to be deployed and evaluated. Wecompared the use of novel automation technologies with conventional manual screening; and Microsoft AcademicGraph (MAG) with the MEDLINE and Embase databases locating the emerging research evidence. We foundthat a new workflow involving machine learning to identify relevant research in MAG achieved a much higherrecall with lower manual effort than using conventional approaches

Cost-effectiveness of Microsoft Academic Graph with machine learning for automated study identification in a living map of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) research

BACKGROUND: Conventionally, searching for eligible articles to include in systematic reviews and maps of research has relied primarily on information specialists conducting Boolean searches of multiple databases and manually processing the results, including deduplication between these multiple sources. Searching one, comprehensive source, rather than multiple databases, could save time and resources. Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) is potentially such a source, containing a network graph structure which provides metadata that can be exploited in machine learning processes. Research is needed to establish the relative advantage of using MAG as a single source, compared with conventional searches of multiple databases. This study sought to establish whether: (a) MAG is sufficiently comprehensive to maintain our living map of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) research; and (b) eligible records can be identified with an acceptably high level of specificity. METHODS: We conducted a pragmatic, eight-arm cost-effectiveness analysis (simulation study) to assess the costs, recall and precision of our semi-automated MAG-enabled workflow versus conventional searches of MEDLINE and Embase (with and without machine learning classifiers, active learning and/or fixed screening targets) for maintaining a living map of COVID-19 research. Resource use data (time use) were collected from information specialists and other researchers involved in map production. RESULTS: MAG-enabled workflows dominated MEDLINE-Embase workflows in both the base case and sensitivity analyses. At one month (base case analysis) our MAG-enabled workflow with machine learning, active learning and fixed screening targets identified n=469 more new, eligible articles for inclusion in our living map – and cost £3,179 GBP ($5,691 AUD) less – than conventional MEDLINE-Embase searches without any automation or fixed screening targets. CONCLUSIONS: MAG-enabled continuous surveillance workflows have potential to revolutionise study identification methods for living maps, specialised registers, databases of research studies and/or collections of systematic reviews, by increasing their recall and coverage, whilst reducing production costs

The Bivariate Normal Copula

We collect well known and less known facts about the bivariate normal distribution and translate them into copula language. In addition, we prove a very general formula for the bivariate normal copula, we compute Gini's gamma, and we provide improved bounds and approximations on the diagonal.Comment: 24 page

Reliability of the Charcot-Marie-Tooth functional outcome measure

The CMT‐FOM is a 13‐item clinical outcome assessment (COA) that measures physical ability in adults with Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth disease (CMT). Test‐retest reliability, internal consistency and convergent validity have been established for the CMT‐FOM. This current study sought to establish inter‐rater reliability. Following an in‐person training of six international clinical evaluators we recruited 10 participants with genetically diagnosed CMT1A, (aged 18‐74 years, 6 female). Participants were evaluated using the CMT‐FOM over 2 days. Participants were given at least a 3 hour rest between evaluations, and were assessed twice each day. Following the provision of training by master trainers, all 13 items of the CMT‐FOM exhibited excellent inter‐rater reliability for raw scores (ICC1,1 0.825‐0.989) and z‐scores (ICC1,1 0.762‐0.969). Reliability of the CMT‐FOM total score was excellent (ICC1,1 0.983, 95% CI 0.958‐0.995). The CMT‐FOM is a reliable COA used by clinical evaluators internationally. The next steps are to establish further validation through psychometric evaluation of the CMT‐FOM in the Accelerate Clinical Trials in CMT (ACT‐CMT) study