Search

This study describes the quantitative aspects of metaphor in academic publications. In particular, we analyze the frequency of metaphor types and source domains in medical papers written by native and non-native speakers of English. The data have been collected from selected published articles on cancer and tissue engineering. The method combines a manual procedure with a semantic tagger and keyness statistics in Wmatrix software for metaphor identification. The results show that while the distribution of metaphor is relatively stable across tissue engineering and cancer articles written by native and non-native speakers, indirect metaphor is more often used than other types of metaphor. Moreover, the findings indicate that some metaphorical source domains are specifically used for a particular topic and that some are more frequently exploited by native speakers of English than by non-native speakers. This study has implications for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) pedagogy and the development of metaphorical awareness activities as it may set the ground for future corpus studies that analyze metaphor properties in academic registers.

The article offers various developments taking place in the field of medicine in Great Britain. It is reported that, a woman from the Republic of Ireland has won a court case at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) against the restrictive abortion legislation of Ireland, to go for abortion. The government of Great Britain, as reported, had issued a white paper in July 2010 indicating that it will bring a value-based pricing policy for medicines by the year 2014.

Background: Medicine is a high-status, high-skill occupation which has traditionally provided access to good quality jobs and relatively high salaries. In Ireland, historic underfunding combined with austerity-related cutbacks has negatively impacted job quality to the extent that hospital medical jobs have begun to resemble extreme jobs. Extreme jobs combine components of a good quality job-high pay, high job control, challenging demands, with those of a low-quality job-long working hours, heavy workloads. Deteriorating job quality and the normalisation of extreme working is driving doctor emigration from Ireland and deterring return.Methods: Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 40 Irish emigrant doctors in Australia who had emigrated from Ireland since 2008. Interviews were held in July-August 2018.Results: Respondents reflected on their experiences of working in the Irish health system, describing hospital workplaces that were understaffed, overstretched and within which extreme working had become normalised, particularly in relation to long working hours, fast working pace, doing more with less and fighting a climate of negativity. Drawing on Hirschman's work on exit, voice and loyalty (1970), the authors consider doctor emigration as exit and present respondent experiences of voice prior to emigration. Only 14/40 respondent emigrant doctors intend to return to work in Ireland.Discussion: The deterioration in medical job quality and the normalisation of extreme working is a key driver of doctor emigration from Ireland, and deterring return. Irish trained hospital doctors emigrate to access good quality jobs in Australia and are increasingly likely to remain abroad once they have secured them. To improve doctor retention, health systems and employers must mitigate a gainst the emergence of extreme work in healthcare. Employee voice (about working conditions, about patient safety, etc.) should be encouraged and used to inform health system improvement and to mitigate exit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1878, a meeting organised in Dublin by those in favour of repealing the contentious Contagious Diseases Acts ended in chaos and disruption. The acts themselves empowered police and doctors to forcibly detain and examine women (within specified geographical locations) suspected of being infected with venereal disease. The campaign to abolish the acts appeared to lack the widespread support that it had gathered in England, particularly in medical circles, and the disorderliness of the Dublin meeting seemed to confirm this. The Irish medical press, specifically the weekly Dublin Medical Press and Circular (D.M.P.C.) mirrored The Lancet's vilification of those who sought to abolish the acts. This article examines the D.M.P.C.'s campaign to extend the acts in Ireland and explores its influence within the context of the debate surrounding these controversial acts. Despite prolific representation of leading English medics among those who opposed the acts, the D.M.P.C. did not offer any outspoken testimony for the repeal of the C.D.A.s by an important figure in the Irish medical profession. This article examines the reasons for such a muted response by Irish doctors to the draconian legislation that directly involved the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Previous studies have shown decreases in cardiovascular mortality following the implementation of comprehensive smoking bans. It is not known whether cerebrovascular or respiratory mortality decreases post-ban. On March 29, 2004, the Republic of Ireland became the first country in the world to implement a national workplace smoking ban. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of this policy on all-cause and cause-specific, non-trauma mortality. Methods: A time-series epidemiologic assessment was conducted, utilizing Poisson regression to examine weekly age and gender-standardized rates for 215,878 non-trauma deaths in the Irish population, ages ≥35 years. The study period was from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2007, with a post-ban follow-up of 3.75 years. All models were adjusted for time trend, season, influenza, and smoking prevalence. Results: Following ban implementation, an immediate 13% decrease in all-cause mortality (RR: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.76–0.99), a 26% reduction in ischemic heart disease (IHD) (RR: 0.74; 95% CI: 0.63–0.88), a 32% reduction in stroke (RR: 0.68; 95% CI: 0.54–0.85), and a 38% reduction in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (RR: 0.62; 95% CI: 0.46–0.83) mortality was observed. Post-ban reductions in IHD, stroke, and COPD mortalities were seen in ages ≥65 years, but not in ages 35–64 years. COPD mortality reductions were found only in females (RR: 0.47; 95% CI: 0.32–0.70). Post-ban annual trend reductions were not detected for any smoking-related causes of death. Unadjusted estimates indicate that 3,726 (95% CI: 2,305–4,629) smoking-related deaths were likely prevented post-ban. Mortality decreases were primarily due to reductions in passive smoking. Conclusions: The national Irish smoking ban was associated with immediate reductions in early mortality. Importantly, post-ban risk differences did not change with a longer follow-up period. This study corroborates previous evidence for cardiovascular causes, and is the first to demonstrate reductions in cerebrovascular and respiratory causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Ireland introduced a comprehensive workplace smoke-free legislation in March, 2004. Smoking-related adverse birth outcomes have both health care and societal cost implications. The main aim of this study was to determine the impact of the Irish smoke-free legislation on small-for-gestationa- age (SGA) births. Methods and Findings: We developed a population-based birthweight (BW) percentile curve based on a recent study to compute SGA (BW <5th percentile) and very SGA (vSGA - BW<3rd percentile) for each gestational week. Monthly births born between January 1999 and December 2008 were analyzed linking with monthly maternal smoking rates from a large referral maternity university hospital. We ran individual control and CUSUM charts, with bootstrap simulations, to pinpoint the breakpoint for the impact of ban implementation ( = April 2004). Monthly SGA rates (%) before and after April 2004 was considered pre and post ban period births, respectively. Autocorrelation was tested using Durbin Watson (DW) statistic. Mixed models using a random intercept and a fixed effect were employed using SAS (v 9.2). A total of 588,997 singleton live-births born between January 1999 and December 2008 were analyzed. vSGA and SGA monthly rates declined from an average of 4.7% to 4.3% and from 6.9% to 6.6% before and after April 2004, respectively. No auto-correlation was detected (DW = ∼2). Adjusted mixed models indicated a significant decline in both vSGA and SGA rates immediately after the ban [(−5.3%; 95% CI −5.43% to −5.17%, p<0.0001) and (−0.45%; 95% CI: −0.7% to −0.19%, p<0.0007)], respectively. Significant gradual effects continued post the ban periods for vSGA and SGA rates, namely, −0.6% (p<0.0001) and −0.02% (p<0.0001), respectively. Conclusions: A significant reduction in small-for-gestational birth rates both immediately and sustained over the post-ban period, reinforces the mounting evidence of the positive health effect of a successful comprehensive smoke-free legislation in a vulnerable population group as pregnant women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers an update on pharmaceutical medicine from various periodicals. An article in a 2010 issue of "Drugs" reviews the principal forms of proarrhythmia and the methods that can be used to lessen the risk of proarrhythmia in the development of drugs and clinical practice. A review of methods used in long-term cost-effectiveness models of diabetes therapy was presented in a 2010 issue of "Pharmacoeconomics." A study which describes the pharmaeconomic assessment process in Ireland was published in a 2010 issue of "Pharmacoeconomics."

The article presents abstracts on medical topics which include high risk of acquiring multiple sclerosis, the common cases of vitamin D deficiency in multiple sclerosis patients in Ireland and the performance comparison of a matching-based approach for annualized relapse-rate of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients against statistical models.

Presents the autobiography of J.B. Lyons. Implications of the Medical Charities Act for dispensary districts in Ireland; Reason for entering medical school; Interest in neurology.