When the fingers do the talking: A study of group participation for different kinds of shareable surfaces

and other research outputs When the fingers do the talking: A study of group par-ticipation for different kinds of shareable surface

Trends in Down’s syndrome live births and antenatal diagnoses in England and Wales from 1989 to 2008: analysis of data from the National Down Syndrome Cytogenetic Register

Objectives To describe trends in the numbers of Down’s syndrome live births and antenatal diagnoses in England and Wales from 1989 to 2008

Playing with rusty nails: ‘Conceptual tinkering’ for ‘next’ practice

An important issue for the Educational Design Research (EDeR) community to continue to deal with is the scalable and sustainable implementation of its methods, findings and designs beyond the bounds of specific projects. Those engaged in EDeR specifically seek out concurrent problems of theory and problems of practice, but this should not be seen as sufficient for ensuring their work has impact beyond their current project. Just as with other forms of research, EDeR practitioners must still reach out to and connect with educational institutions and teachers who are dealing with many competing demands. This position paper offers a largely theoretical contribution to the discussion of the problem of implementation. It will introduce the concept of conceptual tinkering as an approach to engaging teachers in the skillsets and, more importantly, the mindsets of EDeR as an approach to educational improvement. Sketches and prototypes of tools to enable conceptual tinkering will be discussed

Emerging Opportunities in Library Services: Planning for the Future of Scholarly Publishing

In 2007, the Columbia University Libraries/Information Services (CUL/IS) established the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) to explore and provision new research support services for the university in all areas of scholarly communication, including online scholarly publishing. One of six organizations comprising the Digital Programs and Technology Services group within CUL/IS, CDRS assists faculty, students, staff, and university affiliates with their scholarly communication and digital research needs through a suite of services: publishing support, digital research repository, conference websites and video recording, research data management, and more. Nine of its 17 full-time employees belong to a production team comprising developers, designers, and project managers from diverse academic and professional backgrounds, only one of whom holds a master’s degree in library science. CDRS seeks publishing partnerships with a variety of on-campus groups and individuals and embraces partnerships with allied organizations such as scholarly presses and societies as well. A proponent of eliminating barriers to the progress of research, CDRS advocates for open access (OA) publishing models. This is exemplified by Tremor and Other Hyperkinetic Movements, the peer-reviewed, faculty-run OA journal now indexed in PubMed, which CDRS publishes. To help offset the OA journal publication costs, Tremor authors pay an article processing fee, although waivers and alternative methods of funding are available. In practice, CDRS’ approach to publishing support is business model–neutral, however,and OA is not a requirement for partnership. The journals program at CDRS has been successful, providing publishing support to 16 journals using the Open Journal Systems or WordPress platforms and interactive tools such as blogs and wikis in subject areas ranging from sciences to the humanities. A strategy for keeping this service sustainable and scalable has been the adoption of a tiered structure based on design and customization needs to control flow. Projects can take anywhere from one week for a barebones installation to over 17 weeks for the Premier service

Immortal-time bias in older vs younger age groups: a simulation study with application to a population-based cohort of patients with colon cancer

BACKGROUND: In observational studies, the risk of immortal-time bias (ITB) increases with the likelihood of early death, itself increasing with age. We investigated how age impacts the magnitude of ITB when estimating the effect of surgery on 1-year overall survival (OS) in patients with Stage IV colon cancer aged 50–74 and 75–84 in England. METHODS: Using simulations, we compared estimates from a time-fixed exposure model to three statistical methods addressing ITB: time-varying exposure, delayed entry and landmark methods. We then estimated the effect of surgery on OS using a population-based cohort of patients from the CORECT-R resource and conducted the analysis using the emulated target trial framework. RESULTS: In simulations, the magnitude of ITB was larger among older patients when their probability of early death increased or treatment was delayed. The bias was corrected using the methods addressing ITB. When applied to CORECT-R data, these methods yielded a smaller effect of surgery than the time-fixed exposure approach but effects were similar in both age groups. CONCLUSION: ITB must be addressed in all longitudinal studies, particularly, when investigating the effect of exposure on an outcome in different groups of people (e.g., age groups) with different distributions of exposure and outcomes

Health Economic Studies of Colorectal Cancer and the Contribution of a National Administrative Data Repository: a Systematic Review

Introduction: Several forces are contributing to an increase in the number of people living with and surviving colorectal cancer (CRC). However, due to the lack of available data, little is known about the implications of these forces. In recent years, the use of administrative records to inform research has been increasing. The aim of this paper is to investigate the potential contribution that administrative data could have on the health economic research of CRC. Methods: To achieve this aim, we conducted a systematic review of the health economic CRC literature published in the United Kingdom and Europe within the last decade (2009–2019). Results: Thirty-seven relevant studies were identified and divided into economic evaluations, cost of illness studies and cost consequence analyses. Conclusions: The use of administrative data, including cancer registry, screening and hospital records, within the health economic research of CRC is commonplace. However, we found that this data often come from regional databases, which reduces the generalisability of results. Further, administrative data appear less able to contribute towards understanding the wider and indirect costs associated with the disease. We explore several ways in which various sources of administrative data could enhance future research in this area

Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first farmers of central Anatolia

Anatolia was home to some of the earliest farming communities. It has been long debated whether a migration of farming groups introduced agriculture to central Anatolia. Here, we report the first genome-wide data from a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer and from seven Anatolian and Levantine early farmers. We find high genetic continuity (~80–90%) between the hunter-gatherers and early farmers of Anatolia and detect two distinct incoming ancestries: an early Iranian/Caucasus related one and a later one linked to the ancient Levant. Finally, we observe a genetic link between southern Europe and the Near East predating 15,000 years ago. Our results suggest a limited role of human migration in the emergence of agriculture in central Anatolia

The future of post-reproductive health: The role of the Internet, the Web, information provision and access

The World Wide Web celebrated its 25th birthday in 2014. In those 25 years, the Web has evolved from static websites (Web 1.0) to a highly complex dynamic system (Web 3.0) with health information processing one of the primary uses. Until now, the western biomedical paradigm has been effective in delivering healthcare, but this model is not positioned to tackle the complex challenges facing healthcare today. These challenges have arisen by increasing healthcare demands across the world, exacerbated by an ageing population, increased lifespan and chronic conditions. To meet these needs, a ‘biopsychosocial’ shift from reactive to proactive health is necessary with a patient-centric emphasis (personalised, preventative, participatory and predictive) that includes ‘gender-specific medicine’. The management of the menopause, part of post-reproductive health, requires a life-course approach as it provides a framework for achieving a women’s preferred health outcome. Surveys from www.menopausematters.co.uk have consistently shown that women do not feel informed enough to make decisions regarding Hormone Replacement Therapy and alternative therapies. Health professionals must meet this challenge. The recently published National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance on the diagnosis and management of the menopause highlights the need for tailored information provision. The Internet underpinned by the academic disciplines of Health Web Science and Medicine 2.0 has potential to facilitate this shift to biopsychosocial medicine and tailored information within a life-course framework. The concept of Health Web Observatories and their potential benefit to a life-course approach using tools such as www.managemymenopause.co.uk is discussed