 mortality, as previously hypothesised. Third, gender preference as an explanation for excess mortality among girls during the neonatal period is often over simplified. While studies have provided clear evidence of gender preference, most do not indicate whether, or how, the variables representing gender preference explain excess mortality in statistical models.10,13–15 This data set provided evidence of gender preference for boys, but did not show that differences in newborn care practices or care-seeking behaviours impacted the overall relationship between sex of the newborn and mortality during the late neonatal period. Instead, these data demonstrated how a small subpopulation of high-risk girls impacted the risk of mortality for the entire group. These findings more clearly define the role that gender preference plays in divergent sex-specific patterns of neonatal mortality, and provide insight into how to more specifically target interventions in this study population. In populations in which girls are unexpectedly found to be at greater risk of mortality, determining the underlying causes is essential to understanding how to best improve survival in the neonatal period and beyond.
Biologically, boys are at approximately 20% greater risk of mortality than girls during the neonatal period; however, in South Asia some studies have shown girls to be at greater risk of mortality during this time period. This inversion of risk has been explained in the literature by the existence of gender preference and differential care-seeking favouring boys in these populations, but has not been tested in statistical models. This study investigates the biological and environmental factors that might statistically explain the observed sex differences in early and late neonatal mortality in rural Southern Nepal.
Consistent with biological expectations, this study found that boys were at higher risk than girls of early neonatal mortality, but that there was an inversion of risk between the early and late neonatal periods putting girls at increased risk of late neonatal mortality. While exploratory analyses showed differences in newborn care practices and care-seeking favouring boys, these differences did not explain the excess mortality among girls during the late neonatal period in multivariate regression models. Instead, we found the most important factors influencing the inversion of risk during the late neonatal period were ethnicity and prior sibling composition. Girls born to families with only prior living girls were driving the increased risk, and this was especially true within the Madeshi ethnic group. Thus, this study showed that excess mortality among girls was not linked to overarching gender preference within the population, but was linked to a specific group of high-risk girls.
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Contributors SR and JK made primary contributions to the design and conduct of this analysis, interpretation of the results and writing of this manuscript. SR had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analyses. JK, GLD, LCM and JMT contributed to the study design, conduct, analysis and interpretation of this and the parent trial results. SKK and SCL contributed to the study design, field conduct, quality control of the parent trial and interpretation of results. All authors have reviewed and approved the manuscript.
Funding This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (HD 44004, HD 38753); National Eye Institute Training Grant provided through Clinical Trials Training Program in Vision Research (EY 07127); the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (810–2054); Cooperative Agreements between JHU and the Office of Health and Nutrition, and US Agency for International Development (HRN-A-00-97-00015-00, GHS-A-00-03-000019-00). Procter and Gamble Company provided commodity support.
Ethics approval Committee for Human Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and by the Nepal Health Research Council. It was registered with http://www.clinicaltrials.gov (trial number: NCT00109616).Some months ago, I decided to embark on a journey of self-improvement that would result in my having become the world’s greatest living poet.
My plan – which consisted of writing a poem, spamming it to some poetry message boards and then waiting for the feedback to roll in – was a bad one. It turns out that in order to be taken seriously by online poetry communities, you need to participate actively in the community and give other people feedback. My feedback – one assumes – would be so withering that I don’t feel that it would be fair to do that to a bunch of hobbyists.
I’ve decided to take a different tack in my journey as a wordsmith, and I’ll need your help. I’ve decided that my real goal ought to be to master every type of poetry that there is. I figure that it’ll take me writing approximately … one of each. 
I’m going to work my way down, writing one of each type of poem. I’ll admit, I dread getting to the “E” section and having to write an Epic poem, but I have complete confidence in myself to complete this task without bailing on it (as bailing on things is something I never, ever do).
Where do you come in? I’d like your help workshopping these pieces! If you’re smart enough to read The Fraudsters’ Almanac, you’re surely smart enough to help me punch up a few poems! I’ve left the comments section open, so please – share your thoughts and suggestions with me.
That is what we look like, working on poetry together and enjoying wine and cheeses. You can have the cheese. I do not like it.
To kick things off, let’s do the first couple of forms off of the list. Exciting!
I’ve seen some variance in what is expected from an official ABC poem. I’m going to diverge from what the poetry forms website that I listed above says, because their definition seems like less fun that some other definitions. I was going to make an “already been chewed” poetry joke here, but I’ve decided that I’m better than that. Anyway, here is my poem.
Boy, oh boy. This is off to a great start.
Couldn’t be more optimistic about my life as a poet!
Definitely on the right track, I think!
Even this ABC poem is going well, and I’m barely even trying.
Give me a minute, this