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The rise of the coal trades from the Tyne and the Wear were inescapable facts of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both intimately related to the growing domestic market for coal in London and the development of salt panning, glass making and sugar refining on both rivers. Historians have long explored these relationships in detail: Nef and Dietz examined the great growth in coal shipments from the north-east to the English capital, while Wrigley explored the reciprocal impact this could have on Newcastle's consumer economy. Yet more recently scholars have begun to question the prominence afforded to the coal trade and the ‘Tyne–Thames’ link within the region's historiography. In focusing upon north-east England's commercial relationship with London, some sight has been lost of the complexities of the region's economy and its trade with other areas. As a consequence of the coal trade's dominance within the regional historiography, ‘the monotony of … workaday traffic’ in fabrics and foodstuffs, which has served as the basis for the study of other ports, has been neglected in relation to much of the north-east. Peter Wright addresses this in the preceding chapter. This chapter does not seek to dismiss the strong links between north-eastern England and London or the impact the latter had upon the region's economic and cultural development, but instead aims to contextualise this relationship within a wider geographical setting. This chapter will examine the nature and extent of Scottish trade with north-eastern England over the course of regal and political union between 1580 and 1750. It will consider how industrial similarities between the Tyne, Wear and Forth affected the trade between them, both across the border and along the east coast, and how this related to wider networks of domestic and overseas commerce. This is particularly important as Scotland has hitherto occupied a limited position within north-east England's historiography, being the supplier of border reevers and invading armies. Some attention has been given to Scottish economic migration to the Tyne in the form of keelmen and colliers, whereas studies of those crossing the border to trade have largely been restricted to the western borders or individual trades, such as those in cattle or linen. Instead, this chapter refocuses attention on the eastern borders and Scottish trade in its entirety.

The Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39) is a disease specific measure of health status which covers eight dimensions of ill-health, and contains 39 questions. The development of the question...

Objectives: to briefly outline the development and validation of the Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39) and then to provide evidence for the use of the measure as either a profile of health status scores or a single index figure. Design: the PDQ-39 was administered in two surveys: a postal survey of patients registered with local branches of the Parkinson's Disease Society of Great Britain (n = 405) and a survey of patients attending neurology clinics for treatment for Parkinson's disease (n = 146). Data from the eight dimensions of the PDQ-39 were factor-analysed. This produced a single factor on the data from both surveys. Outcome measures: the eight dimensions of the PDQ-39 and the new single index score—the Parkinson's disease summary index (PDSI), together with clinical assessments (the Columbia rating scale and the Hoehn and Yahr staging score). Results: in the postal survey 227 patients returned questionnaires (58.2%). All 146 patients approached in the clinic sample agreed to take part. Higher-order principal-components factor analysis was undertaken on the eight dimensions of the PDQ-39 and produced one factor on both datasets. Consequently it was decided that the scores of the eight domains could be summed to produce a single index figure. The psychometric properties of this index were explored using reliability tests and tests of construct validity. The newly derived single index was found to be both internally reliable and valid. Discussion: data from the PDQ-39 can be presented either in profile form or as a single index figure. The profile should be of value in studies aimed at determining the impact of treatment regimes upon particular aspects of functioning and well-being in patients with Parkinson's disease, while the PDSI will provide a summary score of the impact of the illness on functioning and well-being and will be of use in the evaluation of the overall effect of different treatments. Furthermore, the PDSI reduces the number of statistical comparisons and hence the role of chance when exploring data from the PDQ-39.

The trigeminal artery provides a transient connection between the developing anterior and posterior cerebral circulations in early embryonic life, but occasionally persists. Its persistence is often a

This paper presents and compares methods for discrimination between speech from a broadcast audio device - like a television, radio, or GPS receiver - and live speech in the same acoustic environment. A solution to this discrimination problem has direct application wherever the audio from such a device interferes with voice recognition, verification, or transcription tasks. The methods and theory applied also have potential applications in multimedia and speaker segmentation, as well as in speaker verification. This paper presents a new use of the cepstral mean as an estimator of the linear time-invariant response of a “speaker” - either broadcast or live - over a relatively long time window. The problem is framed in terms of traditional speaker verification, but with two classes of speakers. This method is tested on five different data sets and the results compared for different feature sets, training methods, and window lengths.

Objective To assess the validity and responsiveness of a questionnaire to assess health-related quality of life in Parkinson's disease (PD)--the 39-item Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39)--and to report problems experienced by patients by means of the questionnaire. Methods Patients completed the PDQ-39 and the SF-36 at baseline and 4 months later. At the same assessments, neurologists rated patients with Hoehn and Yahr and Columbia Scales. Results Evidence for validity of the new questionnaire was observed by agreement of scores with clinical scales at both assessments. Evidence for responsiveness of scales assessing physical function, particularly mobility and activities of daily living, was observed from significant paired t tests for differences between scores at baseline and follow-up, and correlations with patients' retrospective judgments and changes in the SF-36 summary scores. However, there were no significant associations with changes in neurologists' clinical scores. Patients most frequently reported problems of physical function in the PDQ-39. Scores for several dimensions of the PDQ-39 were significantly more favorable than those reported by nonclinic samples of patients with PD. Conclusions The PDQ-39 has validity for use among patients attending neurological clinics for treatment of PD. There is also some evidence of responsiveness. The questionnaire identifies problems that are important to patients and that appear to be more commonly experienced by nonclinic attenders.

The purpose of this paper was to document the impact of Parkinson's disease (PD) upon patients using both a generic health status measure (the Short-form 36 health survey questionnaire, SF-36) and a disease-specific measure (the 39-item Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire, PDQ-39). Comparing the results of the SF-36 in this population with a similar aged group selected randomly from two general practices it was evident that the disease has considerable impact on general levels of functioning and well-being. Furthermore, other areas not contained on the SF-36 were found to be relevant to PD patients. It is suggested that the disease-specific measure will be of value, ideally alongside a generic measure, in studies aimed at determining the impact of a treatment regimen upon PD patients, or to monitor the long-term progress of cohorts of patients with PD. The paper highlights the need for careful consideration of measures for evaluation.

Parkinson's disease is a common degenerative neurological condition. A number of general health status measures exist but these may not address areas salient to specific diseases. We report here the development and validation of a short 39 item health status questionnaire for use in Parkinson's disease. Questionnaire items, generated from in-depth interviews with people with Parkinson's disease, were developed into a 65 item questionnaire. Data from a postal survey using the 65 item questionnaire were statistically analysed to produce a shorter questionnaire with 39 items and eight scales addressing different dimensions of Parkinson's disease. A second postal survey was conducted in order to assess the reliability and validity of the new 39 item questionnaire. The final questionnaire, referred to here as the 39 item Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39), proved to have satisfactory internal and test-retest reliability, and construct validity in relation to other measures, reported by respondents with Parkinson's disease.

Understanding how amplitude modulations are used for speech recognition is essential for improving speech signal processing techniques. Previous studies using vocoding or incoherent modulation filtering indicated that slow amplitude modulations are essential for speech recognition [e.g., Drullman (1994), Shannon (1995)]. Each method had limitations that constrain our understanding of how speech is decoded. These methods did not account for a product model which has the modulating signal multiply the carrier signal in speech or used modulation filtering which retained inherent carrier components. Coherent modulation filtering [C. & Atlas (2009)] is a modulation filtering method that uses a product model with more effective modulation filtering. The purpose of this study was to establish differences in speech recognition performance with coherent versus incoherent modulation filtering and assess the importance of slow amplitude modulations in speech recognition while preserving the carrier signal. Subjects ...