How to start a piece of writing?

What makes a good first sentence? 

Probably not a question. There are famous opening sentences... "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times"... and I am very influenced by the start of a book or paper as it sets the tone and my attitude towards what I'm about to read. Am I feeling good about this paper? Shall I settle in for a good read for does it seem irritating and waffly from the start? 

A least favourite opening sentence for scientific papers is something generic that says nothing, e.g. "Mathematical modelling is a useful tool". It feels lazy and is so general you have no idea what the paper is about. Is this paper about models? Useful in what way? This kind of opening seem weak. 

I like the opening sentences of Molly Franke - a researcher I knew when I was in Harvard. Looking at her website, her most recent senior author paper starts like this:

"Despite the recent improvements in the treatment of multidrug- or rifampicin-resistant and resistant tuberculosis (MDR/RR-TB), not all patients experience treatment success"

Is it unconventional to start a paper with despite? Nevertheless, I think it's a good first sentence because you know immediately that the paper is about TB, drug resistant TB, and treatment failure. Gets straight to the point. 

I don't know fiction books/non-fiction books/writing. I will look at examples later. 

How quickly do premature babies grow?

Our lovely Zaki was due on 12 February 2018, but my waters broke on 11 January and he popped out on 12th January 2018 - a calendar month early!

We were all worried that he was healthy, as there are so many stats and complications of being born early.  The guidance states that premature babies' weights should be tracked against their corrected age,  which is the chronological age minus weeks born premature, on standard term growth charts. 

Well, how did Zaki do? Here is his weight for the first month, until 15 February, against a backdrop of the WHO percentiles for expected growth. 

Wow, Zaki! A month after he was born, he had increased his weight by more than 50%! This chart is for chronological age, NOT corrected age. 

So should we be using corrected age, or chornological age? Well, we can compare to Oren, Zaki's older brother. 

By day 50, Zaki was already approaching Oren's trajectory. They are remarkably similar by 150 days chronological age: 

Zaki's on the chronological trajectory from about day 50. By 70 days he had more than doubled his birth weight. The key difference in growth between them was in the first 30 days. Around 2 weeks old, Zaki was gaining an average of 70g a day. 

 

5 days in Vienna

 Oren, Zaki and I had chosen what we wanted to do beforehand, so on arriving we headed straight for the RiesenRad - Zaki’s choice.

The next day we went to Oren’s choice, Haus Der Meeres. 

They both enjoyed having their fingers nibbled and Zaki loved the cheeky baby monkey who kept jumping on his mum. 

Tea with or without powdered milk?

 

Night 1: living the dream

 I think I had expected the sleeper cabin to be a bit more spacious but once we had stuffed all our bags and selves in, it was lovely.

Leon and I got complementary fizzy wine ‘trocken’ and the kids a juice. We spilled the wine and water everywhere, obviously. 

There was an assistant on hand to fold down the beds.

As Zaki’s under 6, he didn’t get his own bed, so he was in with me, which was a bit squished. We fashioned some extra room with the suitcase that was wedged in beside us.

Oren in his top bunk:

It was very nice to wake up to the German countryside rushing past and the kids were very happy. 

We had ordered fruhstuck the night before. Zaki invented a chocolate burger which was Nutella and salami in a roll. Surprisingly nice, sweet and salty. 

Day 1 part 1: Bristol to London

 Points failure at West Ealing threatened to delay our first journey but we ended up perfectly on time into Paddington.

Eurostar is only 2 hours from London to Brussels. We arrived in Brussels at 4’o’clock and had 3.5 hours in Brussels Midi. Not much to do or many places to sit. 

Had some frietjes met…

And waited for the platform announcement.

Route planning for the summer

Our routes for our train trip to Romania, Bosnia and Croatia.

 

 

Journey details plus costs for 4 people plus sleepers for night trains: 

2 August 

09:00 Bristol > 10:44 London Paddington (£162.10 return) 

Paddington > St Pancras 

1301 St Pancras > 16:06 Brussels Midi (£192.00) 

19:32 Brussels Midi > 09:14 Vienna (£290.98) 

8 August 

19:42 Wien Hbf > 08:19 Cluj Napoca (1934.36 Lei ~ £334 return) 

11 August 

21:00 Cluj Napoca > 08:21 

Wien Hbf 

24 August 

18:47 Rijeka > 08:37 Stuttgart Hbf (€230.60 ~ £200)

25 August 

10:52 Stuttgart Hbf > 14:05 Paris Gare de l’Est (£211.05) 

16:13 Paris Gare du Nord > 17:35 London St-Pancras (£390.00) 

19:02 London Paddington > 20:37 Bristol Temple Meads 

 Total cost = £1780.13

Modelling and World AIDS day 2018

It's been such a long time since I added anything to this site that I forgot how to do it.

Since my last post in 2015 I've done a few things. Written a paper or two. Had a baby.

I joined the Mathematics Today editorial board in 2017 and had the opportunity to contribute an article on modelling and the AIDS epidemic for the 30th anniversary of World AIDS day.

Here it is:
https://ima.org.uk/10941/urban-maths-world-aids-day-2018/

As I don't know much about HIV modelling, I asked if I could interview Graham Medley who developed one of the early HIV models. It was fascinating speaking to Graham and reading papers from thirty years ago when the epidemic was still growing and much less was known about the epidemic drivers.

If I write another perspectives article then I'll write it about John Edmunds and contact patterns.

Ada Lovelace day - women in science survey

Today is Ada Lovelace day! A day dedicated to Ada Lovelace and women in science.

 For #AdaLovelaceDay Bristol asked us to tweet what we were doing at work, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to test out a hypothesis I've had for a while: that a lot of female scientists have parents who are also scientists.

The thinking behind this hypothesis was that a scientist parent could make up for a failings elsewhere, like at school. A quick survey of my co-workers revealed that there were also quite a few female scientists with no scientist parents but they had been to an all girls school. So an alternative hypothesis was that female scientists are more likely to have been to a single sex school.

 Not knowing any better, I used survey monkey to set up a quick survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XJX2LR5.

 I sent it to a few friends, who sent it to a few people, and then as people were responding, I sent it to my department at Bristol.

 At 10pm this evening we have 310 responses!

 As usual, the results are not straightforward! Part of the problem was that the vast majority (86%) of respondents were female, so there was not much power in the results.

 However, I'm afraid to say that my principle hypothesis does not appear supported at all!

BUT, interestingly, when you looks at the responses by job, there is a hint of a pattern:

It looks like the likelihood of a scientist parent increases with (academic) seniority. For single sex schools, there also might be a gender difference, although we need more men to get a significant result:

The cycle of transmission between badgers and cattle

My new office in Bristol is round the corner from the BBC studios and yesterday I got to visit to talk about some work on bovine TB transmission between cattle and badgers. Thanks Farming Today! I thought they did a great job! http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05vwpw4

Here's the paper I was talking about.

The Parliamentary and Scientific Committee Discussion meeting: BADGERS!

This evening I attended the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee meeting on badgers and bovine TB. Lined up to talk were Adam Quinney, Vice President of the NFU, Christl Donnelly and Rosie Woodroffe. I heard it was a good turn out for these meetings, and there were quite a few MPs and peers there (although I think a few were kept away by the terrorism bill in the commons). 

Adam Quinney claimed he was not going to talk about the science, but then preceded to talk about the science as he understands it. Over dinner the question was asked about cattle herds in hotspot areas that did not have TB. What were they doing differently? Adam Quinney responded that in the Southwest, in fact 80% of commercial size farms had had TB in the past 5 years. Interesting statistic, and it made me realise that it's important to have the numbers and statistics at my fingertips if the debate is going to be accurate. I'll check it tomorrow. 

Vaccination was presented as almost an ultimate solution and explained in terms of measles and rinderpest. I'm extremely sceptical about the benefits of vaccination at a population scale - we haven't seen it work in humans so why should we in cattle and badgers? Given that Adam Quinney said that in some areas 50% of badgers are infected, so why don't we see a reduction in infective pressure, if vaccination would be likely to work? Christl cited the evidence of badgers cubs being protected when the adults in a social group are vaccinated. Will have to think about that. 

A good question from Stephen Mosley MP: given that vaccination is a way off, what would you do tomorrow to control spread? No one seemed to have an answer. 

Ian Boyd, Chief Scientific Advisor to Defra said the solution would be 25 years off. I thought that was pessimistic, after all it's only 8 years since the 2001 FMD epidemic that saw the massive jump in cattle cases. I would think that a good solution would be able to control the disease within 10 years. 

On an unrelated note, I was given the pregnancy menu option for dinner: no red wine vinegar on my salad?? That seems unnecessary!!