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This paper uses a cross-sectional hedonic pricing model to investigate the relationship between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data releases and the prices of single-family residences within postal zip code areas situated in Omaha, Nebraska's Douglas County. The model employs demographic data from the 2000 Census, toxic chemical release data for the year 2000 from the EPA's TRI database, as well as other pollution variables for each of the zip code areas comprising Douglas County. The model also employs house-specific data supplied by the Douglas County Assessor's Office on dwelling characteristics for homes sold in Douglas County in the year 2000. The findings indicate that, when controlling for relevant socioeconomic variables, TRI pollutant releases are significant determinants of residential housing values. The results should be of interest to anyone in the real estate industry, including tax assessors, appraisers, mortgage lenders, and property owners.

Corticosteroids increase the susceptibility of AIDS patients to infection with Pneumocystis carinii (PC), and might therefore seem an odd choice as a treatment for patients with PC pneumonia. However, corticosteroids also reduce the effects of inflammation, and may therefore prevent some of the severe lung damage and death resulting from PC pneumonia. For this reason, a total of 225 patients with confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and 26 presumed cases were treated with antibiotics and randomly assigned to receive either adjunctive corticosteroid treatment or placebo treatment. Patients were also stratified for severity of disease on the basis of measurements of the oxygenation of arterial blood. The results revealed that patients receiving corticosteroids had significantly reduced risks of respiratory failure and death. However, respiratory failure and death were sufficiently rare among the patients with mild PC pneumonia that the trend did not achieve statistical significance in this group. The findings indicate that corticosteroid treatment should be included as a part of the therapy of AIDS patients with moderate or severe Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)

Solutions of differential equations describing soil water behavior frequently require a mathematical function for the soil water characteristics. Although spline interpolation provides a method to connect the data points, in many cases its use yields poor results. The mathematical representation of the soil water characteristic may also be shaped according to the imagination and judgment of the investigator. In such cases, some additional virtual data points are chosen through which the spline function passes exactly to yield a mathematical description of the entire curve consistent with the initially measured points. A computer program SWC-SPLINE written in Delphi 2 allows the investigator to easily mark and change the position of the assumed virtual data points interactively according to visual inspection.

On Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life, edited by N. J. ALLEN, W. S. F. PICKERING, and W. WATTS MILLER. London and New York: Routledge, 1998, xi + 224 pp. [...]

We live in a time of English translations. The Bible, Plato, The Talmud, Descartes, Spinoza, Hegel, Nietzsche -- the list grows rapidly -- these and many others have seen recent [...]

Reviewer: DONALD A. NIELSEN, SUNY, College at Oneonta The eccentricities of Mestrovic's previous writings on Durkheim are magnified in this effort to situate the French pioneer within his own fin [...]

This paper examines the problems of 'civil religion,' 'anomie,' and injustice in Athenian society as presented in Thucydides's narrative of the Peloponnesian war. Thucydides juxtaposes Pericles's funeral oration, as an embodiment of Athenian civil religion, with his description of Athenian demoralization and anomie during the subsequent plague. These concepts are linked to the problem of injustice in the Melian Dialogue, which describes Athenian imperial behavior toward this small island people. The paper shows how Thucydides links these ideas to the notion of Fortune in the ultimate collapse of the Athenian war effort. Thucydides is a pioneer in the systematic use of these sociological concepts and he is compared briefly to more recent sociologists, such as Durkheim, Merton, and Bellah., The concepts of 'civil religion' and 'anomie' are closely associated with the work of Emile Durkheim, although both have been subsequently developed in new directions by a host of writers, [...]