Annotation and the Ancient Greek Hero: Past, Present, and Future

My presentation will discuss the significance of annotation in the context of the highly successful HarvardX MOOC CB 22.1x The Ancient Greek Hero, which has been given twice, once in the spring of 2013, and once in the fall of 2013, and for which a third version is in preparation. I will discuss how annotation has been a source of knowledge about the interpretation of Homeric poetry, the primary vehicle for the study of the ancient Greek hero, since the death of Alexander the Great, and how the massive preservation of ancient annotations in medieval manuscripts of the Homeric _Iliad_ (including two at the Escorial in Madrid) and their digitization by a team of scholars and undergraduates is a vital educational project. More particularly, and in this same historical vein, I will discuss the way in which digital annotation has been a vital part of the HarvardX MOOC on the Ancient Greek Hero both as a tool for readers — becoming good readers of ancient texts is a central goal of this MOOC — and as a tool for self-assessment. I will also discuss how a new generation of federated annotation tools being developed by Daniel Cebrián Robles and Philip Desenne that feature tagging ontologies and the annotation of images promises to enhance the educational effectiveness of the next iteration of this MOOC.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

‘Next-Generation’ surveillance: an epidemiologists’ perspective on the use of molecular information in food safety and animal health decision-making

Advances in the availability and affordability of molecular and genomic data are transforming human health care. Surveillance aimed at supporting and improving food safety and animal health is likely to undergo a similar transformation. We propose a definition of ‘molecular surveillance’ in this context and argue that molecular data are an adjunct to rather than a substitute for sound epidemiological study and surveillance design. Specific considerations with regard to sample collection are raised, as is the importance of the relation between the molecular clock speed of genetic markers and the spatiotemporal scale of the surveillance activity, which can be control- or strategy-focused. Development of standards for study design and assessment of molecular surveillance system attributes is needed, together with development of an interdisciplinary skills base covering both molecular and epidemiological principles

Connecting Foster Care Services and Training to Attachment Theory

Is foster care services and training adequately providing what is needed for the foster care families to care for the children both physically and emotionally? Is it supporting the research and knowledge that is known about attachment theory? This study asked Foster Care Workers, in a public and private setting in the Minnesota Twin Cities Area, if in their opinion their agency does just that. The respondents were asked seventeen Likert Scale questions and three open-ended questions to get a sense of their satisfaction with the services and training they are able to give their family and if it is not satisfactory, what gets in the way. Six workers responded to the survey, three from each agency. Overall the workers from both the public and the private agencies were satisfied with the services and training that their agencies provide. When looked at individually, the average of the responses, the workers at the public agency disagree that they include foster parents in on planning for the foster children and that they do a good job of informing the foster parents of the child’s attachment history. The averaged responses of the private agency disagreed that the foster care parents take advantage of the trainings. One of the open ended questions might have shed light on barriers that get in the way of foster parents accessing not only trainings, but possibly other services. Social Workers who work in the field of foster care can take note to these concerns. Some of the literature found that foster parents had the desire to be included and help the children in their care more than just physically. Including the foster parents in on the history, especially attachment history, and in on the planning, both present and future, will help them understand and fulfill the needs of the children placed with them. When the foster parents have understanding and investment this might change the way they look at situations, parent the child, and seek out support and services. This might also help with placement disruption, which as the literature shows can continue the cycle of insecure attachment

Book Review: Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects: American Women Collectors and the Making of Culture 1800-1940

Review of Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects: American Women Collectors and the Making of Culture 1800-1940 by Dianne Sachko Macleo

Connecting Foster Care Services and Training to Attachment Theory

Is foster care services and training adequately providing what is needed for the foster care families to care for the children both physically and emotionally? Is it supporting the research and knowledge that is known about attachment theory? This study asked Foster Care Workers, in a public and private setting in the Minnesota Twin Cities Area, if in their opinion their agency does just that. The respondents were asked seventeen Likert Scale questions and three open-ended questions to get a sense of their satisfaction with the services and training they are able to give their family and if it is not satisfactory, what gets in the way. Six workers responded to the survey, three from each agency. Overall the workers from both the public and the private agencies were satisfied with the services and training that their agencies provide. When looked at individually, the average of the responses, the workers at the public agency disagree that they include foster parents in on planning for the foster children and that they do a good job of informing the foster parents of the child’s attachment history. The averaged responses of the private agency disagreed that the foster care parents take advantage of the trainings. One of the open ended questions might have shed light on barriers that get in the way of foster parents accessing not only trainings, but possibly other services. Social Workers who work in the field of foster care can take note to these concerns. Some of the literature found that foster parents had the desire to be included and help the children in their care more than just physically. Including the foster parents in on the history, especially attachment history, and in on the planning, both present and future, will help them understand and fulfill the needs of the children placed with them. When the foster parents have understanding and investment this might change the way they look at situations, parent the child, and seek out support and services. This might also help with placement disruption, which as the literature shows can continue the cycle of insecure attachment

The Walled-up Wife Speaks Out: The Balkan “Legend of the Walled-up Wife” and Carmen Sylva’s Meister Manole

Carmen Sylva’s autobiographical adaptation of the Balkan folktale of “The Walled-up Wife” as the drama Meister Manole (1892) projects a political sensibility about women’s lives in the nineteenth century. Well known as a writer, but also as Queen Elisabeth of Romania (1843–1916), Sylva inserts the topic of her own infertility into the story of a pregnant woman immured as a construction sacrifice. The body sacrificed for the common good in the tale parallels Sylva’s own experience when a courtly scandal results in her exile. In drawing on these experiences and using the “trivial” folkloric foundation for her drama, Sylva’s female characters speak out in a way they were unable to in real life

epidemix-An interactive multi-model application for teaching and visualizing infectious disease transmission

Mathematical models of disease transmission are used to improve our understanding of patterns of infection and to identify factors influencing them. During recent public and animal health crises, such as pandemic influenza, Ebola, Zika, foot-and-mouth disease, models have made important contributions in addressing policy questions, especially through the assessment of the trajectory and scale of outbreaks, and the evaluation of control interventions. However, their mathematical formulation means that they may appear as a “black box” to those without the appropriate mathematical background. This may lead to a negative perception of their utility for guiding policy, and generate expectations, which are not in line with what these models can deliver. It is therefore important for policymakers, as well as public health and animal health professionals and researchers who collaborate with modelers and use results generated by these models for policy development or research purpose, to understand the key concepts and assumptions underlying these models. The software application epidemix (http://shinyapps.rvc.ac.uk) presented here aims to make mathematical models of disease transmission accessible to a wider audience of users. By developing a visual interface for a suite of eight models, users can develop an understanding of the impact of various modelling assumptions – especially mixing patterns – on the trajectory of an epidemic and the impact of control interventions, without having to directly deal with the complexity of mathematical equations and programming languages. Models are compartmental or individual-based, deterministic or stochastic, and assume homogeneous or heterogeneous-mixing patterns (with the probability of transmission depending on the underlying structure of contact networks, or the spatial distribution of hosts). This application is intended to be used by scientists teaching mathematical modelling short courses to non-specialists – including policy makers, public and animal health professionals and students – and wishing to develop hands-on practicals illustrating key concepts of disease dynamics and control

Impact of brain-death-induced transient myocardial dysfunction on long-term health of heart transplant recipients

Despite the many years that brain-dead donors have been a source for heart transplants, some uncertainty remains as to the impact of brain-death on the long-term outcome of the heart transplant recipients. Cardiac dysfunction may occur in up to 42% of adults with brain death, affecting a highly significant proportion of hearts that are transplanted[1,2]. Records of 246 donor hearts matched to recipients at UNMC between 2010 and 2017 were examined to determine long-term effect of brain-death-induced transient myocardial dysfunction (BDIMC). Data was also assessed to determine correlation between donor characteristics of age, gender, and cause of death and exhibition of BDIMC in donor hearts. It was found that 1-year and 5-year survival rates of recipients of donor hearts with BDIMC within the sample were on average lower than those seen in recipients of non-BDIMC donor hearts. While this result was not statistically significant (p = 0.18), the trend demonstrated in the data merits additional study into the effects of BDIMC in larger and more diverse sample sizes. No association between BDIMC and donor characteristics was found. Conclusions made by further study may aid health care workers in selection of hearts with highest survival rates for those in need. References include: Dujardin KS, McCully RB, Wijdicks EF, et al. Myocardial dysfunction associated with brain death: clinical, echocardiographic, and pathologic features. J Heart Lung Transplant. 2001;20(3):350-357. doi:10.1016/s1053-2498(00)00193-52. Fyfe, B., et al. (1996). Heart TransplantationAssociated Perioperative Ischemic Myocardial Injury. Circulation 93(6): 1133-1140.https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/surp2020/1022/thumbnail.jp