Viral infections, neonatal mortality and the mystery of the Athenian Agora: An interview with Professor of Anthropology Maria Liston
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Although excavated almost 80 years ago, the infants' 'bone well' of the Athenian Agora in Athens, Greece and its contents were never thoroughly evaluated and published, until only recently, when a re-analysis of the whole excavation findings was performed. The well dates back to the third quarter of the 2nd century BC and contained at least 449 infants. The project, which explored the causes of neonatal mortality, found that one-third of infants' deaths were attributed to neonatal meningitis, based on the presence of bone disposition on the endocranial surface of the studied skulls. Despite the non-specific differential diagnostic approach of this pathophysiological finding in neonates, the determination of the causes of neonatal mortality in the Athenian Agora is really an impressive scientific attempt and can be a valuable lesson to all neonatal and peadiatric health professionals. According to Professor Maria Liston, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who was the principal investigator of the skeletons from the infants' 'bone well' of the Athenian Agora, neonatal meningitis was the most frequently detected cause of neonatal mortality. Viral diseases unquestionably contributed to neonatal mortality, she adds and highlights that further research is required in collaboration with physicians for the better understanding and interpretation of various archaeological findings related to neonatal mortality. In the context of the 3rd Workshop on Paediatric Virology, which will be held in October 7th, 2017 in Athens, Greece, Professor Liston will reveal the role of neonatal and paediatric viral infections in the Hellenic antiquity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.010 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.018 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".