Will your article be found? Authors choose a confusing variety of words to describe dental survival analyses

OBJECTIVES: Identify the words and phrases that authors used to describe time-to-event outcomes of dental treatments in patients.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A systematic handsearch of 50 dental journals with the highest Citation Index for 2008 identified articles reporting dental treatment with time-to-event statistics (included "case" articles, n = 95), without time-to-event statistics (active "control" articles, n = 91), and all other articles (passive "control" articles n = 6796). The included and active controls were read, identifying 43 English words across the title, aim and abstract, indicating that outcomes were studied over time. Once identified, these words were sought within the 6796 passive controls. Words were divided into six groups. Differences in use of words were analyzed with Pearson's chi-square across these six groups, and the three locations (title, aim, and abstract).

RESULTS: In the abstracts, included articles used group 1 (statistical technique) and group 2 (statistical terms) more frequently than the active and passive controls (group 1: 35%, 2%, 0.37%, P < 0.001 and group 2: 31%, 1%, 0.06%, P < 0.001). The included and active controls used group 3 (quasi-statistical) equally, but significantly more often than the passive controls (82%, 78%, 3.21%, P < 0.001). In the aims, use of target words was similar for included and active controls, but less frequent for groups 1-4 in the passive controls (P < 0.001). In the title, group 2 (statistical techniques) and groups 3-5 (outcomes) were similar for included and active controls, but groups 2 and 3 were less frequent in the passive controls (P < 0.001). Significantly more included articles used group 6 words (stating the study duration) (54%, 30%, P = 0.001).

CONCLUSION: All included articles used time-to-event analyses, but two-thirds did not include words to highlight this in the abstract. There is great variation in the words authors used to describe dental time-to-event outcomes. Electronic identification of such articles would be inconsistent, with low sensitivity and specificity. Authors should improve the reporting quality. Journals should allow sufficient space in abstracts to summarize research, and not impose unrealistic word limits. Readers should be mindful of these problems when searching for relevant articles. Additional research is required in this field.

US Patent: Method of manufacture of a composite concrete article

A method of manufacturing a composite concrete article comprising forming a textile structure, removing material from regions of the textile structure to create voids in the textile structure and incorporating the textile structure into a body of wet uncured concrete such that the concrete flows into the voids created in the textile structure, embedding the textile structure into the concrete, whereby the textile structure defines at least a portion of a surface of the cured concrete article.

Bouyid v Belgium: The “minimum level of severity” and Human Dignity's Role in Article 3 ECHR

The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights recently delivered an important judgment on Article 3 ECHR in the case of Bouyid v Belgium. In Bouyid, the Grand Chamber was called upon to consider whether slaps inflicted on a minor and an adult in police custody were in breach of Article 3 ECHR, which provides that ‘No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’. Overruling the Chamber judgment in the case, the Grand Chamber ruled by 14 votes to 3 that there had been a substantive violation of Article 3 in that the applicants had been subjected to degrading treatment by members of the Belgian police; it found that there had been a breach of the investigative duty under Article 3 also. In this comment, I focus on the fundamental basis of disagreement between the majority of the Grand Chamber and those who found themselves in dissent, on the question of whether there had been a substantive breach of Article 3. The crux of the disagreement lay in the understanding and application of the test of ‘minimum level of severity’, which the ECtHR has established as decisive of whether a particular form of ill-treatment crosses the Article 3 threshold, seen also in light of Article 3’s absolute character, which makes it non-displaceable – that is, immune to trade-offs of the type applicable in relation to qualified rights such as privacy and freedom of expression. I consider the way the majority of the Grand Chamber unpacked and applied the concept of dignity – or ‘human dignity’ – towards finding a substantive breach of Article 3, and briefly distil some of the principles underpinning the understanding of human dignity emerging in the Court’s analysis.

Award for the Best Cornell Quarterly Article in 2002

[Excerpt] I am pleased to announce that the following article has been named Cornell Quarterly article of the year for 2002 (it appeared in the August 2002 issue): "Assessing the Profitability of Premium Players," by Anthony Lucas, Jim Kilby, and Jocelina Santos

Overproduction of the english definitive article by portuguese learners: a cross-sectional study

The English article system is actually so complex that it presents many challenges for most non-native learners of English. The main difficulty of Portuguese learners, despite the numerous similarities between the two article systems, is noticeable in a marked tendency to produce the definite article where native speakers of English would not use it. This article reports the results of a cross-sectional study which examined the English definite article overproduction by a group of 12 Portuguese EFL learners with at least seven years of English instruction. The prediction is that these learners will exhibit evidence of transferring L1 features to their interlanguage when they overuse the definite article. The data were collected by means of a gap-filling task and a composition. The results found, as predicted, that these learners overused the in generic contexts. It is argued that this overuse is directly tied to and can be explained by transfer to somewhere and conceptual transfer principles.