Tall Girls Research Articles

Safety and Efficacy of Bilateral Epiphysiodesis Surgery to Reduce Final Height in Extremely Tall Adolescents: A Follow-Up Study

Introduction: Treatment options in patients with extreme tall stature are limited. Bilateral epiphysiodesis has emerged as a possible treatment method aiming to reduce final height. However, there is still insufficient data on long-term safety and final height outcome. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the efficacy and safety of bilateral epiphysiodesis to reduce final adult height in tall adolescents. Methods: The study population consisted of 72 patients with extreme tall stature who were followed at the Pediatric Endocrine Clinic at the Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm (Sweden), and subsequently underwent bilateral epiphysiodesis around the knees (girls n = 45, boys n = 27). Results: When compared to the final height prediction at time of surgery, the procedure significantly reduced the achieved final height by a mean of 3.6 cm ± 0.4 cm in girls (p p r = −0.63, p r = −0.44, p Conclusion: This study suggests that bilateral epiphysiodesis is an efficient and safe method to reduce final height in extremely tall adolescent girls and boys. The achieved height reduction was higher in boys and when performed at an earlier bone age. Importantly, no serious side effects were reported. However, a continued follow-up is still warranted to detect any potential rare complications.

Anatomical and Morphological Features of the Pelvic Structure of Tall Female Students

The article presents the results of a study of identification of the characteristics of the bone of the pelvis at the female students of high growth. The aim of the article is the description and analysis of the identified morphological and anatomical and anthropological features of the pelvis of the girls. The methods of the study were pelviometry, anthropometry, method of indices, analysis and statistical processing of the results. The dimensions of the female pelvis, the basis of all professional activities of a midwife as an important subject of pregnancy and birth. Therefore, of particular interest is a comprehensive study of special values of morphological and anthropological indicators, the variability of shapes and size of the pelvis in young women, especially in youth and the first reproductive years, among which is dominated by a female students. As a result of our research in the whole group we obtained the mean value of the index of pelvic bones – 40,53±0,84 cm, indicating a sufficient level of maturity and readiness. In the studied group of students is dominated by tall girl having indicators is not wide or normal and the narrow pelvis – 76,67%. Also noteworthy is the fact that almost every third girl are more or І-III degree of narrowing of the pelvis on the background of its morpho-anthropometric changes, which is quite common among modern girls. It is established that the external dimensions of the pelvis are in close correlation with other dimensions of a woman's body where leading role belongs to the length and body weight. The results of the study indicate that among students of high growth are dominated by those that are shoulder-width apart (35,50±0,86 cm) longer than the width of the pelvis (32,12±0,43 cm). This shows android and not gynecolgy type of construction of the torso of the body, which is not typical for girls. The practical significance of the conducted research consists in the identification of certain violations of reproductive health among this group of students of high growth. It is established that in the future, having identified numerous changes in the structure and shape of the bony pelvis, most of them can have problems during pregnancy and childbirth. The results of the study indicate that among students with high growth are dominated by those that have a shoulder width greater than the width of the pelvis. This shows android and not genecide type of build of the trunk of the body, is not typical for girls. The absolute predominance of different options narrow basins indicates that among modern girls undergoing certain morphological changes in their bodies. Further research will focus on studying the peculiarities of the menstrual cycle in this group.

The Critical Significance of T. S. Eliot's Mystical-Erotic Integration

Abstract: T. S. Eliot's sexual and spiritual development is interconnected with his poetry and quest for a holistic philosophy shaped by Christian theology. Using the mystical-erotic dialectic as a poetic, "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service," "Little Gidding," and "How the Tall Girls Breasts Are" are analyzed to demonstrate his evolution from conflicted materialist to ascetic oblate to sacramental participant. This final movement was catalyzed by and can be read through the Orthodox doctrine of theosis that authorizes mystical-erotic integration. Concluding with a comparative analysis with Song of Songs, this study seeks to raise critical awareness and appreciation of Eliot's erotic poetry.

Analysis of Flouting Maxim in the Tall Girl Movie

The aim of study deals with flouting maxim in a movie entitled Tall Girl. People in conversation can run smoothly if they follow the cooperative principle. Grice (1975) stated that a cooperative principle in which at the stage at when it occurs by receiving the purpose or direction exchange in which you are engaged. There are four maxims that make up the cooperative principle namely maxim of quality, maxim of quantity, maxim of relevance, maxim of manner. However, not all conversation runs smoothly, sometimes people are uncooperative while conveying the information, this case known as flouting maxim. This study discusses maxim that was flouted by the characters in the Tall Girl movie. This study focuses on analyzing the types of flouting maxim and the reason why the characters flouted the maxims in the Tall Girl movie. There are two theories used to analyze the data in this research. First, the theory of cooperative principle was proposed by Grice (1975) to analyze the type of floating maxim and the second theory from Leech (1983) to analyze the reason for the flouting maxim. The researcher used a descriptive qualitative method to describe the data to answer the problem of the study. The result of the study shows that there are 10 data of floating maxim in Tall Girl Movie.
 The aim of study deals with flouting maxim in a movie entitled Tall Girl. People in conversation can run smoothly if they follow the cooperative principle. Grice (1975) stated that a cooperative principle in which at the stage at when it occurs by receiving the purpose or direction exchange in which you are engaged. There are four maxims that make up the cooperative principle namely maxim of quality, maxim of quantity, maxim of relevance, maxim of manner. However, not all conversation runs smoothly, sometimes people are uncooperative while conveying the information, this case known as flouting maxim. This study discusses maxim that was flouted by the characters in the Tall Girl movie. This study focuses on analyzing the types of flouting maxim and the reason why the characters flouted the maxims in the Tall Girl movie. There are two theories used to analyze the data in this research. First, the theory of cooperative principle was proposed by Grice (1975) to analyze the type of floating maxim and the second theory from Leech (1983) to analyze the reason for the flouting maxim. The researcher used a descriptive qualitative method to describe the data to answer the problem of the study. The result of the study shows that there are 10 data of floating maxim in Tall Girl Movie.

028 Fertility and ovarian function in high-dose estrogen-treated tall women

Introduction: High-dose estrogen treatment to reduce final height of tall girls may interfere with normal fertility. We evaluated fertility and ovarian function in tall women who did or did not receive such treatment in adolescence.

Features of the physical development of girls with different course of puberty and level of adaptive capabilities

The purpose of the study — to establish the features of the physical development of adolescent girls with the different course of puberty and to assess adaptive capabilities depending on the indicators of physical development and the course of puberty.Materials and methods: The examinations involved 57 girls aged 11 to 17 year who were divided into two groups depending on the presence of menstrual disorders. The first group included girls with physiological puberty. The second group consisted of girls with oligo­ or amenorrhea, and in isolated cases, with abnormal uterine bleeding, proio­ or polymenorrhea. The assessments included somatometric parameters, the results of the Ruffier test, the clinoortostatic test, cardiac morphometric indicators, and vascular reactivity according to Doppler ultrasound, the Kerdo index and Baevsky’s adaptive potential.Results and discussion. The significant frequency of tall and higher than average height was established as specific feature of girls regardless of the variant of puberty course (42.4 % with physiological and 42.8 % with pathological puberty). In general, the girls did not differ in height and body weight. In terms of Baevsky’s adaptive potential, 100 % of girls had a satisfactory adaptation level. The significant proportion of adolescent girls showed low exercise tolerance (63.7 % of girls with physiological and 50 % with pathological puberty). The high frequency of initial sympathy and the prevalence of normal vegetative support were recorded. Satisfactory and good results were more likely to be obtained by girls with puberty disorders. Girls with physiological puberty had a high incidence of hyperkinetic hemodynamic (37.5 % compared to 15.0 % in the second group, p < 0.05).The adaptive capabilities of girls with average height did not differ between groups with various puberty course. The tall girls of the first group had the higher frequency of the hyperkinetic type of hemodynamics, combined with best indices of vascular reactivity: two thirds of subjects demonstrated adequate increase in the diameter of the brachial artery in the sample with reactive hyperemia. In girls with menstrual dysfunction, the acceleration of growth was not accompanied by activation of the sympathoadrenal system, but they showed better results of exercise test. It could be assumed that presence of sexual hormones’ imbalance with testosterone prevalence, promotes these results and increases endurance of girls. However, the isolated Ruffier test does not fully reflect the satisfactory adaptation of an adolescent’s body. It is necessary to compare the results of the functional study of adolescent girls with the peculiarities of their hormonal status.Conclusions. A big proportion of girls with tall and higher than average height is the peculiarity of physical development of modern female adolescents. In the absence of pathology of puberty, the adaptive reactions of a body of an adolescent girl are characterized by increased exposure to the sympathoadrenal system. The use of Baevsky’s adaptive potential, calculated for adolescent patients, does not allow even screening to identify individuals at risk of stress or adaptation failure, which indicates the need to expand the scope of examination of adolescents using functional tests and calculation coefficients.

Household and schooling rather than diet offset the adverse associations of height with school competence and emotional disturbance among Taiwanese girls.

Short stature may reflect health in early life and be an enduring disability. How birth weight, gender, household, elementary schooling and diet play a role in associations between stature and overall school competence (OSC) have been assessed. The 2001-2002 Nutrition and Health Survey in Taiwan (NAHSIT) for elementary schoolchildren (n 2274, 52·1 % boys) was linked to birth records. It provided sociodemographic, dietary quality, body compositional and school performance (as Scale for Assessing Emotional Disturbance, SAED; OSC as an SAED subscale) data. Lower birth weight was ≤15th percentile: 2850 g for boys and 2700 g for girls, and stature as z-scores for Taiwanese. Multivariable linear regression was used for relationships between OSC and stature. Trends in OSC by stature and school grade were assessed. The 2001-2002 NAHSIT for elementary schoolchildren. Totally, 2274 schoolchildren aged 6-13 years. Compared to normal height (-2< height for age z-score (HAZ) <2), shorter girls (HAZ ≤ -2) had a lower OSC (8·87 v. 10·5, P < 0·05) and taller girls (HAZ ≥ 2) had a better OSC (12·3 v. 10·5, P < 0·001). Maternal education and household income each contributed more than 5 % of OSC variance. OSC and HAZ among girls were positively associated and emotional disturbance negatively associated. Shortness-associated lower OSC underwent remediation with advancing school grade. Stature and OSC were not evidently related in boys. Shorter stature can compromise OSC among school girls. The major determinants in shorter girls are less household income and limited parental education.

Cheesecake

Cheesecake Anna Denejkina (bio) She was tall, but I don't remember her age. In fact, I don't know what age she was. All I know is she was tall, had black curly hair, long fingers, and wore tight jeans. It doesn't really matter what she looked like or how old she was or even her name, but what matters is that one morning she was walking to a cake shop near the beach in some suburb in Sydney's east. It was the day before Christmas. Half of her family met on Christmas Day, and the other, on this day in a house of one of her aunts somewhere by the beach in Sydney's east. Standing at the glass counter, the tall girl with long fingers scrutinized the display, thinking deeply about which cake to get for the faux-Christmas family lunch. She always did this; even at the bar in a club where the music was too loud to hear yelling in your ear, she would consider what she wanted, her arm on the bar, long fingers touching her chin, asking the bartender for options before ordering another sugar-free Red Bull with or without cheap vodka. And so she considered the cakes when another woman stopped at the glass counter. "What are you getting?" She asked the woman she didn't know as they both looked over the glass display, and they chatted about the cakes at the counter, considering out loud the pros and cons of each, describing their likes and dislikes, too rich, too dry, too big, too sweet. The girl with black curly hair told the woman-she-didn't-know that she was buying a cake for her family's lunch on that day. "But I'm also thinking about getting a slice of that cheesecake for the walk over." Her finger moved slightly from her chin to point in the direction of a baked slice of cake. "Though I feel guilty eating before I get to the lunch." "Just get the cheesecake," the woman she didn't know replied. The tall girl in tight jeans with long fingers and black curly hair looked away from the cakes in the glass counter and at the woman she didn't know. The woman was older, fifty, maybe sixty, and gaunt. A cream and red scarf was tied around her head, covering the baby hair regrowth that peered out at the sides above her temples. "Life's too short. Eat the cheesecake," the woman said again. [End Page 118] Anna Denejkina Anna Denejkina is a writer and academic based in Sydney, Australia. She is a Lecturer at Western Sydney University, and her research focuses on intergenerational trauma transmission. Her fiction, poetry, and journalism have been published in the United States and Australia. Copyright © 2022 Wayne State University Press

Speech Act Classification and Request Strategy in “Tall Girl” Movie Directed by Nzingha Stewart

The research is aimed to find out the speech act classification and types of request strategy from a dialogue of the characters in Tall Girl movie. The method of this study is descriptive qualitative analysis. Data is taken out of all dialogues of the characters and is observed by using theories. In this analysis, the writers found the speech Act Classification and Types of Request Strategy in the Speech Act. The speech act is classified in declaration, representatives, directives, commissives, and expressive. Directives served the dominant form among the five types of illocutionary act mostly expressed their utterance. And as request strategy is typed in mood derivable, explicit performative, hedged performative, locution derivable, want statement, suggestive formula and preparatory. Mood derivable served the dominant form among the other types to deliver their willingness.&#x0D;

Birth weight, childhood body mass index and height and risks of endometriosis and adenomyosis

Background: Body size in adult life is likely associated with risks of endometriosis and adenomyosis, yet little is known about associations with body size earlier in life.Aim: To examine whether birth weight, childhood body mass index (BMI) and height are associated with risks of endometriosis and adenomyosis.Subjects and methods: From the Copenhagen School Health Records Register, 171,447 girls born 1930–1996, with measured weights and heights at ages 7–13 were included. Outcomes were obtained from health registers. Cox regressions were performed to estimate hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI).Results: During follow-up, 2149 endometriosis cases and 1410 adenomyosis cases were diagnosed. Childhood BMI was inversely associated with endometriosis (HR = 0.92 [95% CI: 0.88–0.96] per z-score at age 7). In contrast, childhood height was positively associated with endometriosis (HR = 1.09 [95% CI: 1.05–1.14] per z-score at age 7). Associations with childhood body size did not differ by endometriosis location. Childhood BMI and height had limited associations with adenomyosis. Birth weight was not associated with endometriosis or adenomyosis.Conclusion: Lean and tall girls are more often diagnosed with endometriosis, but not adenomyosis. These findings suggest that indicators of endometriosis risk are already apparent at early ages.

Indirect evidence for biological mortality bias in growth from two temporo-spatially distant samples of children

Biological mortality bias in growth is a challenge to the analysis and understanding of past populations. In this analysis, we address two interrelated aspects of the bias: its potential magnitude in terms of linear growth and the association between height and survivorship. A contemporary sample of 292 children, whose recumbent length was measured at autopsy in Cuyahoga County, USA, was used to quantify the magnitude of mortality bias. Differences between survivors and non-survivors were quantified using t-tests and Cohen's d for effect size. While survivors were consistently taller than non-survivors, the difference did not become significant until after 7 years of age. A historical sample of 656 girls, whose height and weight were measured at admission to a tuberculosis sanitarium, was used to examine the relationship between height, weight, and survivorship. The survivors and non-survivors were compared using t-tests and Cohen's d, and odds of survival were modeled with logistic regression. Surviving girls were consistently taller and heavier than non-surviving girls. However, while taller girls were more somewhat more likely to survive, survivorship was more strongly associated with heavier weight at admission. Taken together, these results suggest that while mortality bias in growth may exist, it may not be large enough to impact interpretations of past population growth patterns. It should be noted that this is the case only if mortality bias does not vary significantly between different populations and if it does not significantly affect dental development.

Linguistic Context in Verb Learning: Less is Sometimes More

ABSTRACTLinguistic contexts provide useful information about verb meanings by narrowing the space of candidate concepts. Intuitively, the more information, the better. For example, “the tall girl is fezzing,” as compared to “the girl is fezzing,” provides more information about which event, out of multiple candidate events, is being labeled; thus, we may expect it to better facilitate verb learning. However, we find evidence to the contrary: in a verb learning study, preschoolers (N = 60, mean age = 38 months) only performed above chance when the subject was an unmodified determiner phase, but not when it was modified (Experiment 1). Experiment 2 replicated this pattern with a different set of stimuli and a wider age range (N = 60, mean age = 45 months). Further, in Experiment 2, we looked at both learning outcomes—by evaluating pointing responses at Test, and also the learning process—by tracking eye gaze during Familiarization. The results suggest that children’s limited processing abilities are to blame for poor learning outcomes, but that a nuanced understanding of how processing affects learning is required.

Long-term follow-up after bilateral percutaneous epiphysiodesis around the knee to reduce excessive predicted final height

ContextPercutaneous epiphysiodesis (PE) around the knee to reduce predicted excessive final height. Studies until now included small numbers of patients and short follow-up periods.Objective and designThis Dutch multicentre, long-term, retrospective,...

Diffusion-Tensor Imaging of the Physes: A Possible Biomarker for Skeletal Growth-Experience with 151 Children.

Purpose To determine the changes of diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI) and tractography in the distal femur and proximal tibia related to age, sex, and height. Materials and Methods Following institutional review board approval, with waiver of consent and with HIPAA compliance, the authors retrospectively analyzed DTI images of the knee in 151 children, 73 girls (median age, 14.1 years; range, 6.5-17.8 years) and 78 boys (median age, 16.6 years; range, 6.9-17.9 years), studied from January 2013 to October 2014. At sagittal echo-planar DTI (20 directions, b values of 0 and 600 sec/mm2), regions of interest were placed in the tibial and femoral physes. Using a fractional anisotropy threshold of 0.15 and an angle threshold of 40°, the authors performed tractography and measured apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and tract length and volume. Changes related to age, sex, and height were evaluated by using fitted nonlinear polynomial functions on bootstrapped samples. Results Femoral tract volume and length increased and then decreased with age (P < .001); the peaks of femoral tract volume are consistent with the growth spurt, occurring earlier in girls (10.8 years) than in boys (13.0 years) (P < .001). Girls had smaller tract volumes in comparison to boys (P = .013). ADC peaks 2 years earlier than tract volume (girls at 9.3 years, boys at 11.0 years). Girls with greater than 50th percentile of height had longer tracts and greater tract volumes compared with girls with less than 50th percentile (P < .020). DTI parameters of boys do not correlate with percentile of height (P > .300). Conclusion DTI of the physis and metaphysis shows greater tract length and volumes in subjects who are at ages when the growth is fastest. ADC and tract length and volume have an earlier and smaller peak in girls than in boys. Femoral tract length and volume are larger in taller girls. © RSNA, 2017.

Regulation of bone growth via ligand-specific activation of estrogen receptor alpha.

Estrogens are well known for their capacity to promote bone maturation and at high doses to induce growth plate closure and thereby stop further growth. High-dose estrogen treatment has therefore been used to limit growth in extremely tall girls. However, recent data suggest that this treatment may have severe side effects, including increased risk of cancer and reduced fertility. We hypothesized that estrogenic effects in bone are mediated via ERα signaling. Twelve-week-old ovariectomized female C57BL/6 mice were subcutaneously injected for 4 weeks with E2 or selective ERα (PPT) or ERβ (DPN) agonists. After killing, tibia and femur lengths were measured, and growth plate morphology was analyzed. E2- and PPT-treated mice had shorter tibiae and femur bones when compared to vehicle-treated controls, whereas animals treated with DPN had similar bone lengths compared to controls. Growth plate height and hypertrophic zone height were reduced in animals treated with E2 or PPT but not in those treated with DPN, supporting that the effect was mediated via ERα. Moreover, PCNA staining revealed suppressed proliferation of chondrocytes in the tibia growth plate in PPT- or E2-treated mice compared to controls. Our data show that estrogenic effects on bone growth and growth plate maturation are mainly mediated via ERα. Our findings may have direct implications for the development of new and more selective treatment modalities of extreme tall stature using selective estrogen receptor modulators that may have low side effects than high-dose E2 treatment.

Abstract LB-375: Childhood body size at age 13 years and associations with ovarian cancer in adult life

Abstract Background: Among women, body mass index (BMI; kg/m2) and attained height are positively associated with ovarian cancer. Few studies have, however, investigated associations with childhood body size. As such, it remains largely unknown if it is body size development in early life or adult life that contributes to these associations. Therefore, we examined if childhood BMI and height at age 13 years were associated with ovarian cancer in adult life. Methods: Individuals were girls in the Copenhagen School Health Records Register who were born between 1930 and1989 and had available measures of height and weight at age 13 years. BMI and height z-scores were calculated from an internal age-specific reference. Via a personal identification number, individuals were followed up for ovarian cancer diagnosis by linkage to the Danish Cancer Registry. Cox proportional hazard regressions were performed and stratified by birth cohort. Results: Among the included 137,416 girls, 1048 cases of ovarian cancer occurred during 5.2 million person-years of follow-up with a median age of diagnosis of 57 years (range: 19-83 years). BMI tended to be non-linearly associated with ovarian cancer such that only the heaviest girls had positive associations with ovarian cancer. Compared with a 13-year-old girl of average-size (BMI z-score = 0, corresponding to a weight of 45 kg and a height of 157 cm), an equally tall girl who was at least 9 kg heavier (corresponding to a BMI z-score &amp;gt;1.28) had a hazard ratio (HR) for ovarian cancer of 1.33 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.08-1.63). In analyses adjusted for childhood height, the association was only marginally attenuated (HR = 1.30, 95% CI: 1.06-1.60). Childhood height was positively and statistically significantly associated with ovarian cancer. At age 13 years, per height z-score (corresponding to approximately 7 cm), the HR for ovarian cancer was 1.07 (95% CI: 1.01-1.14). Conclusion: Body size in early life was associated with ovarian malignancies later in life suggesting that childhood height and BMI might impact if women are later diagnosed with ovarian cancer. As ovarian cancers vary widely in their etiologies, associations with childhood body size may differ depending on the tumor type, which will be investigated. Citation Format: Julie Aarestrup, Michael Gamborg, Nicolas Wentzensen, Lian G. Ulrich, Thorkild IA Sørensen, Jennifer L. Baker. Childhood body size at age 13 years and associations with ovarian cancer in adult life. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-375.

Childhood body mass index and height and risk of histologic subtypes of endometrial cancer.

Background:Endometrial cancer risk factors include adult obesity and taller stature, but the influence of size earlier in life is incompletely understood. We examined whether childhood body mass index (BMI; kg m−2) and height were associated with histologic subtypes of endometrial cancer.Methods:From the Copenhagen School Health Records Register, 155 505 girls born 1930–1989 with measured weights and heights from 7 to 13 years were linked to health registers. BMI and height were transformed to age-specific z-scores. Hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals were estimated by Cox regressions.Results:A total of 1020 endometrial cancers were recorded. BMI was non-linearly associated with all endometrial cancers, oestrogen-dependent cancers and the subtype of endometrioid adenocarcinomas; associations were statistically significant and positive above a z-score=0 and non-significant below zero. Compared with a 7-year-old girl with a BMI z-score=0, an equally tall girl who was 3.6 kg heavier (BMI z-score=1.5) had a hazard ratio=1.53 (95% confidence interval: 1.29–1.82) for endometrioid adenocarcinoma. BMI was not associated with non-oestrogen-dependent cancers, except at the oldest childhood ages. Height at all ages was statistically significant and positively associated with all endometrial cancers, except non-oestrogen-dependent cancers. At 7 years, per ~5.2 cm (1 z-score), the risk of endometrioid adenocarcinoma was 1.18 (95% confidence interval: 1.09–1.28). Among non-users of unopposed oestrogens, associations between BMI and endometrioid adenocarcinoma strengthened, but no effects on height associations were observed.Conclusions:Endometrial carcinogenesis is linked to early-life body size, suggesting that childhood BMI and height may be useful indicators for the risk of later development of endometrial cancer and might aid in the early prevention of obesity-related endometrial cancers.

RANSOM, THE EQUILIBRISTThe Collected Poems of John Crowe Ransom.Edited by Ben Mazer

The Collected Poems of John Crowe Ransom, meticulously edited by Ben Mazer, is a tangible pleasure as well as an intellectual one: the tome's heft adds to its gravitas, and its breadth is meant for opening wide on a table and gleaning at leisure what is gathered there. (An additional benefit is layout: the longer lines, such as the heptameters, which I have been used to seeing folded and cramped, have room to luxuriate in their full sprawl.) Imprinted on the loden-green cloth cover are three gold spires of wheat; this is, after all, a poet's full harvest. It is a library book, in the best sense. It certainly stands in contrast to the volume that I have been carrying with me for two decades, from house to house, continent to continent, a used 1955 Vintage paperback, Poems and Essays, with its garish cover (yellow, pink, orange, and black) and crumbly, jaundiced pages, and which came already marked up in blue ballpoint. (At the top of the page of one of Ransom's trademark elegies, the anonymous annotator has printed ‘Death’, and underlined it twice.) I had acquired the book in my twenties when I lived in the basement of John Crowe Ransom's niece in Atlanta, and finally put together the name with a brace of poems from my high-school textbook which had particularly struck me: ‘Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter’, and ‘Parting without a Sequel’. To those touchstones I gradually added to my personal anthology of favourites ‘The Tall Girl’, ‘Emily Hardcastle, Spinster’, ‘Here Lies a Lady’, ‘Blue Girls’, ‘Piazza Piece’, and ‘Janet Waking’. Other poems frankly puzzled me: was I supposed to know who this Conrad was? Here, the anonymous annotator was no help. In addition, the archaisms were thought-provoking, especially since the prevalent advice to poets, then as well as now, especially for ‘formalists’, was to steer clear of anything outside average contemporary speech. It was the essays as well that struck me: brilliant essays on Hardy and Shakespeare, spoken in the voice of an ideal and beloved professor. Living in John Crowe Ransom's niece's basement does not have the literary cachet of living in John Crowe Ransom's attic, where two of the most important American poets and critics of the age, Robert Lowell and Randall Jarrell, were roommates, but I liked to think it put me at just a couple of removes.

Hey Little Sister, Who's the Only One? Modulating Informativeness in the Resolution of Privative Ambiguity.

We present two eye-tracking experiments on the interpretation of sentences like "The tall girl is (not) the only one that …," which are ambiguous between the anaphoric (the only girl that …) and the exophoric interpretation (the only individual that …). These interpretations differ in informativeness: in a positive context, the exophoric (strong) reading entails the anaphoric (weak), while in a negative context the entailment pattern is reversed and the anaphoric reading is the strongest one. We tested whether adults rely on considerations about informativeness in solving the ambiguity. The results show that participants interpreted one exophorically in both positive and negative contexts. Given these findings, we cast doubts on the idea that Informativeness plays a role in ambiguity resolution and proposes a Principle of Maximal Exploitation: When a context is provided, adults extend their domain of evaluation to include the whole scenario, independently from truth-conditional considerations about informativity and strength.

Hyperandrogenism secondary to topical testosterone exposure

Topical testosterone gels are now a widely used method of testosterone replacement therapy and have been shown to be convenient and effective[1]. The unintentional transfer of testosterone gel to children or partners by skin contact is a rare but significant adverse effect[2]. A 3-year-old well girl was referred for assessment of precocious puberty. Pubic hair had been first noted by her mother 9 months earlier. Examination revealed a tall girl (>99.9th centile) with no breast development but Tanner stage III pubic hair and cliteromegaly. Testosterone levels were elevated at 2.5nmol/l, as was her Androstenedione level at 1.1nmol/l. 17 OH P was normal and tumour markers were negative. Urine steroid profile was quantitatively normal but there was a modest increase in androgen metabolites. Bone age was advanced by 16 months. Ultrasound and MRI imaging of her ovaries and adrenals did not reveal a source of androgen production. Upon further direct questioning, her father revealed he was using topical testosterone replacement therapy. Her father was advised of measures to reduce secondary exposure. Her repeat testosterone level fell to <0.7 nmol/l upon retesting 4 months later and the cliteromegaly resolved. At follow up a further six months later, testosterone level had risen to 2.5nmol/l. Switching to the use of IM preparations was encouraged. Follow-up testing after these measures were adopted revealed normal undetectable testosterone levels (<0.7nmol/l). Once daily application of testosterone gels to the skin results in relatively stable and physiological testosterone levels in most users[3]. It is often favoured above the other methods of delivery of testosterone as it is painless, discrete and convenient to use. Even small quantities of transferred testosterone may result in clinical signs of hyperandrogenism. When reviewing children with evidence of virilization, we must remember to question parents about the potential for exogenous androgen exposure.