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"The final decades of the Ottoman Empire and the period of the French mandate in Syria and Lebanon coincided with a critical period of transformation in agricultural technologies and administration. Chemical fertilizers and mechanized equipment inspired model farms while government officials and technocratic elites pursued new land tenure, credit-lending, and tax collection policies to maximize revenue. These policies transformed rural communities and environments and were central to projects of reform and colonial control--as well as to resistance of that control. States of Cultivation examines the processes and effects of agrarian transformation over more than a century as Ottoman, Syrian, Lebanese, and French officials grappled with these new technologies, albeit with different end goals. Elizabeth Williams investigates the increasingly fragmented natures produced by these contrasting priorities and the results of their intersection with regional environmental limits. Not only did post-World War I policies realign the economic space of the mandate states, but they shaped an agricultural legacy that continued to impact Syria and Lebanon post-independence. With this book, Williams offers the first comprehensive account of the shared technocratic ideals that animated these policies and the divergent imperial goals that not only reshaped the region's agrarian institutions, but produced representations of the region with repercussions well beyond the mandate's end."

Diplomatic Players: the People Within and Without the Embassy -- Travel, Intelligencing, and the Skills of Information Management -- Diplomatic Letter-books: Writing, Copying, and Keeping Letters -- Writing Reputations: Copying Henry Unton's Letter-books -- Beyond the Embassy: Preservation, Consultation, and the Afterlife of Letters -- Abundance and Access: Letters in the Digital Archive.

"A new account of Elizabethan diplomacy with an original archival foundation, this book examines the world of letters underlying diplomacy and political administration by exploring a material text never before studied in its own right: the diplomatic letter-book. Author Elizabeth R. Williamson argues that a new focus on the central activity of information gathering allows us to situate diplomacy in its natural context as one of several intertwined areas of crown service, and as one of the several sites of production of political information under Elizabeth I. Close attention to the material features of these letter-books elucidates the environment in which they were produced, copied, and kept, and exposes the shared skills and practices of diplomatic activity, domestic governance, and early modern archiving. This archaeological exploration of epistolary and archival culture establishes a métier of state actor that participates in – even defines – a notably early modern growth in administration and information management. Extending this discussion to our own conditions of access, a new parallel is drawn across two ages of information obsession as Williamson argues that the digital has a natural place in this textual history that we can no longer ignore. This study makes significant contributions to epistolary culture, diplomatic history, and early modern studies more widely, by showing that understanding Elizabethan diplomacy takes us far beyond any single ambassador or agent defined as such: it is a way into an entire administrative landscape and political culture."--

Background: Online social networking might facilitate the establishment of social contacts for people with psychosis, who are often socially isolated by the symptoms and consequences of their disorder. Aims: We carried out a systematic review exploring available evidence on the use of online social networking in people with psychosis. Methods: The review was conducted following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Included studies examined the use of the online social networking by people with an a priori diagnosis of psychosis (inclusive of bipolar disorder). Data from included studies were extracted and narratively synthesised. Results: A total of 11 studies, published between 2005 and 2013, reported data on online social networking in people with psychosis. People with psychosis seem to spend more time in chat rooms or playing online games than control groups. The use of other online tools, such as Facebook or communication through e-mail, is lower or the same than controls. Online social networking was used by patients with psychosis for establishing new relationships, maintaining relationships/reconnecting with people and online peer support. Conclusion: Online social networking, in the form of forums or online chats, could play a role in strategies aimed at enhancing social networks and reduce the risk of isolation in this population.

ABSTRACTObjectivesHandling missing information is an important methodological challenge in electronic health records research, with the reasons for missingness dictating how missing data should be handled. While there is extensive literature on methodological approaches to handling missing data, there is relatively little research with patients or clinicians investigating why information may be unrecorded in the medical records. A patient and public involvement event was held, embedded with a wider EHR event (UCL Festival of Digital Science - March 2016), to explore unrecorded information from a patient and researcher point of view with a view to developing further research in this area.
ApproachCo-chaired by an academic and lay chair, members of the Farr Patient and Public Involvement Forum, academics, students and the general public attended workshop held during the Festival of Digital Health. A brief exercise was used to demonstrate the impact of missing data. Participants then worked in small facilitated groups to discuss situations where information about them (or people they knew) had not been recorded, the reasons why this information was not recorded and what the impact (or potential impact) was on the patient. A standardised data form was used by facilitators to record participants' conversations. The data forms were summarised into Excel and a brief thematic analysis was conducted. A written evaluation of the workshop was also completed by participants and included in the analysis.
ResultsThe evaluation was overwhelming positive about embedding PPI workshop within an event with a wider remit, from both researchers and patient and public representatives. Preliminary findings on reasons for missingness included change of address or provider (both general practice and secondary care), individual clinician approaches to recording data, process of computerisation of medical notes, early stages of disease not reported to GP and unwillingness to disclose more sensitive information such as sexually transmitted disease. Discussion also included reasons for misrepresented or other errors with data. Further findings from the framework analysis will be presented.
ConclusionThis exploratory workshop showed that patient and public involvement events can be embedded successfully within events aimed at professionals. Preliminary findings suggest that reasons for missingness often related to features of the provider or clinician as well as the patient.

APOE plays a well established role in lipid metabolism. Animal model evidence suggests APOE may also be associated with adiposity, but this has not been thoroughly investigated in humans. We measured adiposity (BMI, truncal fat mass, waist circumference), physical activity (PA), cardiorespiratory fitness and APOE genotype (E2, E3, E4) in 292 8-year-old children from the Tasmanian Infant Health Survey (TIHS), an Australian population-based prospective birth cohort. Our aims were to examine the association of APOE with child adiposity, and to examine the interplay between this association and other measured factors. We found that APOE was associated with child lipid profiles. APOE was also associated with child adiposity measures. The association was E4 allele-specific, with adiposity lower in the E4-containing group (BMI: Mean difference -0.90 kg/m²; 95% confidence intervals (CI) -1.51, -0.28; p = 0.004). The association of APOE4 with lower BMI differed by fitness status (difference in effect p = 0.002), and was more evident among the less fit (mean difference -1.78 kg/m²; 95% CI -2.74, -0.83; p<0.001). Additionally, associations between BMI and lipids were only apparent in those of lower fitness who did not carry APOE4. Similar overall findings were observed when truncal fat mass and waist circumference were used as alternative adiposity measures. APOE4 and cardiorespitatory fitness could interact to influence child adiposity. In studies addressing the genetic determinants of childhood obesity, the context of child fitness should also be taken into account. ; The Tasmanian Infant Health Survey was funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), United States of America National Institutes of Health (grant 001 HD28979-01A1), Tasmanian State Government, Australian Rotary Health Research Fund, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Research Foundation, National Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Council of Australia, Community Organizations' support program of the Department of Human Services and Health, Zonta International, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and the Tasmanian Sanatoria After-Care Association. JE was supported by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Capacity Building Grant in Population Health.

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Leon, Yom-Tov, Johnson, Petticrew, Williamson, Lampos, Cox. What on-line searches tell us about public interest and potential impact on behaviour in response to minimum unit pricing of alcohol in Scotland. Addiction. 2021;116(8):2008-2015, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/add.15388. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley's version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited. ; Aims - To investigate whether the introduction of minimum unit pricing (MUP) in Scotland on 1 May 2018 was reflected in changes in the likelihood of alcohol-related queries submitted to an internet search engine, and in particular whether there was any evidence of increased interest in purchasing of alcohol from outside Scotland. Design - Observational study in which individual queries to the internet Bing search engine for 2018 in Scotland and England were captured and analysed. Fluctuations over time in the likelihood of specific topic searches were examined. The patterns seen in Scotland were contrasted with those in England. Setting - Scotland and England. Participants - People who used the Bing search engine during 2018. Measurements - Numbers of daily queries submitted to Bing in 2018 on eight alcohol-related topics expressed as a proportion of queries on that day on any topic. These daily likelihoods were smoothed using a 14-day moving average for Scotland and England separately. Findings - There were substantial peaks in queries about MUP itself, cheap sources of alcohol and online alcohol outlets at the time of introduction of MUP in May 2018 in Scotland, but not England. These were relatively short-lived. Queries related to intoxication and alcohol problems did not show a MUP peak, but were appreciably higher in Scotland than in England throughout 2018. Conclusions - Analysis of internet search engine queries appears to show that a fraction of people in Scotland may have considered circumventing minimum unit pricing in 2018 by looking for on-line alcohol retailers. The overall higher levels of queries related to alcohol problems in Scotland compared with England mirrors the corresponding differences in alcohol consumption and harms between the countries.