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Building extraction aims to extract building pixels from remote sensing imagery, which plays a significant role in urban planning, dynamic urban monitoring, and many other applications. UNet3+ is widely applied in building extraction from remote sensing images. However, it still faces issues such as low segmentation accuracy, imprecise boundary delineation, and the complexity of network models. Therefore, based on the UNet3+ model, this paper proposes a 3D Joint Attention (3DJA) module that effectively enhances the correlation between local and global features, obtaining more accurate object semantic information and enhancing feature representation. The 3DJA module models semantic interdependence in the vertical and horizontal dimensions to obtain feature map spatial encoding information, as well as in the channel dimensions to increase the correlation between dependent channel graphs. In addition, a bottleneck module is constructed to reduce the number of network parameters and improve model training efficiency. Many experiments are conducted on publicly accessible WHU,INRIA and Massachusetts building dataset, and the benchmarks, BOMSC-Net, CVNet, SCA-Net, SPCL-Net, ACMFNet, MFCF-Net models are selected for comparison with the 3DJA-UNet3+ model proposed in this paper. The experimental results show that 3DJA-UNet3+ achieves competitive results in three evaluation indicators: overall accuracy, mean intersection over union, and F1-score. The code will be available at https://github.com/EnjiLi/3DJA-UNet3Plus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces a series of articles on the philosophy of science, presented at the 1998 World Congress of Philosophy in Boston, Massachusetts.

The article previews the joint 2006 annual meetings of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society and the Association for the Study of Food and Society that will be held on June 7 to 11, 2006 in Boston, Massachusetts. It includes information on the meetings' theme, issues that will be addressed at various meetings, sightseeing suggestions, papers scheduled for discussion and procedures in submitting them, and giving out of awards for best student papers.

Attempts to clear the misinterpretation on the study done by Kirshen and Fennessey (KF) devoted to Climatic Change and Water Resources Planning Criteria. Water supply system of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority; Total system demand of the KF study; Description on the KF scenario.

The article discusses how student Neil Ganem from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts conducted his study aimed at dividing cancer cells successfully. Ganem used a microscope equipped with an incubator and watched thousands of cancer cells grow and divide. He then examined cells with multiple poles and follow the fate their daughter cells, which he said to get motion-sickness in the process. Ganem also investigated whether extra centrosomes contribute to cells' instability.

The article focuses on metastasis of cancer cells from tumors. The author, Antoine Karnoub, is a postdoctoral fellow in Robert Weinberg's laboratory at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. According to Robert Weinberg, owner of the laboratory, for cancer research, one has to understand how a tumor invades other tissues and metastasizes. Weinberg says that in 30% of patients with breast cancer, there are many micrometastases in their bone marrow at the time of diagnosis, but half of them never develop metastatic disease. In his study, Karnoub noticed that mesenchymal stem cells facilitated metastasis of cancer cells from tumors.

The article focuses on the development of methods for making very sensitive measurements of biological molecules and nanoparticles by Scott Manalis and his group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Manali said that they wanted to develop methods for label-free detection that could be as sensitive as fluorescence. After three years, they came up with a vacuum-packaged resonator that could weigh individual nanoparticles, single bacteria and protein monolayers.

The purpose of this article is to add to the collective body of knowledge on student behavior and attitudes relative to the adoption of digital textbooks. The article summarizes an ongoing research project that examines past, current and evolving behavior in the classroom related to digital textbooks and school. It includes students, faculty and administrative attitudes behaviors and perceptions. This research was undertaken at the Sawyer Business School of Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts. Student attitudes and behavior toward their use of digital textbooks (eTextbooks) in higher education was examined in an ongoing longitudinal study over two years at Sawyer Business School, Suffolk University. Students in the class were divided into six teams. Five of the teams were assigned an eTextbook device and the sixth team was given a paper textbook for use through the semester. The digital technologies examined were: Amazon Kindle, Sony eReader Touch, Apple iPad, enTourage eDGe, and CourseSmart. Student attitudes and behaviors were examined pre and post class by survey each semester, and during the semesters through quizzes, journals and classroom discussion. Differential learning was measured between the six teams. Student attitudes and behaviors are becoming more receptive to and accepting of using digital textbooks each year. There was no significant difference in learning between the eTextbook devices teams or between them and the paper textbook team. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boston's "Big Dig" construction project resulted in the excavation of multiple archaeological sites dating from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, including the Great House/Three Cranes Tavern in Charlestown, Massachusetts (USA). An otherwise unremarkable pit below the tavern foundation contained bones originally identified as a cat skeleton, which has subsequently been reidentified as a dog. This paper discusses site context, osteological evidence for the dog's reclassification, and the shifts in cultural meaning this may indicate. Employing an osteobiographical approach, it draws together points of connection between the modern skeletal assessment, a series of 1980s excavations, and the motivations of eighteenth-century tavern inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a set of papers featured in the December 1999 issue of "Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry," which analyzed narratives of caregivers of elders with dementia in Boston, Massachusetts. Methods shared across the papers; Multidimensional framework for ethnicity; Directions for future research.

Greenways are important landscape ecology strategies. Landscape ecology and greenway planning were central to Julius Fábos's professional life and scholarship. This essay is a memorial to the late Julius Fábos (1932–2022), a Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. It traces Julius early upbringings in Hungary before and during World War II, his academic career in the United States, and his contributions to the Iberian Greenway Planning movement. Although Julius Fábos's work was conducted primarily in Northeastern United States, it spread worldwide due to his unparalleled vision, leadership, and joie de vivre. Iberian landscape planning benefited greatly from Julius Fábos recurrent visits to Southern Europe, and indirectly from having students study with him at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. After a thirty-five year teaching career, he launched a series of conferences aimed at disseminating knowledge on ecological thinking. The 7th Fábos Conference on Landscape and Greenway Planning took place 30 June–3 July 2022 in Budapest, Hungary. Julius Fábos's successful academic career offers many opportunities for inspiration and self-reflection, especially in the post-pandemic uncertain times of today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents objectives of the symposium on tautomers and biology, which is going to be held in Boston, Massachusetts in August 2010. Tautomerism modifies the structure activity relationship of enzyme and substrate and affects enzyme mechanism. Various aspects of tautomerism including calculations of tautomeric equilibrium constant and its use in molecular docking would be discussed at the symposia.

As third-generation solar cells, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) can show bifacial harvesting capabilities by utilizing transparent conducting oxides as a counter electrode. Herein, the electrolyte is considered a critical layer from the optical perspective. In this paper, an attempt to estimate the optical properties of Iodine-based electrolytes, typically used in dye-sensitized solar cells, is demonstrated. The refractive index for electrolyte as an effective medium is calculated to be 1.4535 ± 0.005 for an effective thin film of 33.4 ± 0.5 μm thickness, using the near-infrared Fabry–Perot resonances. The extinction (absorption and scattering) and dispersion spectra for the prepared electrolyte were fitted using Lorentz–Dude (LD) model. Finally, the utility of the extracted optical parameters was examined through a finite difference time domain solver, Massachusetts Institute for Technology Electromagnetic Equation Propagation. The simulated optical transmission spectrum perfectly agreed with the measured spectrum with less than 0.1% root–mean–square error. The demonstrated attempt to accurately estimate the refractive index of electrolyte used in DSSCs fabrication may impacted theoreticians who are interested with the optoelectronic modelling of such electrochemical cells, as well as those dealing with optoelectronic devices informatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical analysis of program evaluation in contemporary urban agriculture. Drawing on data from an exploratory study designed at the request of and in collaboration with urban agriculture practitioners in Massachusetts, it describes both their critiques of extant practices of program evaluation and their visions for alternative ways of telling the story of their work. Related, it explores practitioners' interest in building capacity for policy advocacy, working collectively to create transformative social change, and, related, establishing new kinds of relationships with state and philanthropic funders. Building on scholarship that has observed that urban agriculture is characterized by an internal contradiction—i.e., its simultaneous orientation to "neoliberal" (social service) and "radical" (social justice) agendas (McClintock in Local Environ 19:147–171, 2014)—this analysis calls attention, especially, to the complex role of metrics, which may not only entrench neoliberalism in UA organizations, but also provide a mechanism for challenging its assumptions and advancing the radical project of food justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006, the Massachusetts legislature passed a landmark health care reform bill (the Reform) that has served as a model for the national health care reform. By aiming to provide 'access to affordable, quality, accountable health care,' the goals of this reform were to reduce the number of uninsured Massachusetts residents while containing the growth of health care costs and improving the quality of health care services. The current paper examines the impact of the Reform on the quality of care in addition to hospital costs simultaneously from a perspective of efficiency analysis. We develop an integer-valued non-radial Russell data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, which is unit variant and calculate the hospitals' efficiency directly. However, the proposed integer-valued model is non-linear. The current paper thus transforms this model into a parametric integer linear programming. We develop a method to derive its optimal solutions. We then use the new DEA model to calculate and compare the efficiency scores of hospitals in Massachusetts and Connecticut pre- and post-Reform. The analysis shows that the Reform has achieved its cost containment and quality improvement goals at the same time. These analyses provide potentially useful information to hospital regulators and government regulators, especially in light of the national interest on health care legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a method to quantify the goodness-of-fit of a land change projection along a gradient of an explanatory variable, by classifying pixels as one of four types: null successes, false alarms, hits, and misses. The method shows: (1) how the correctness and error of a land change projection are distributed along the gradient of an explanatory variable, (2) how the gradient of the explanatory variable relates to the stationarity of the land transition processes, and (3) how to use the insights from the previous two points to search for additional explanatory variables. The paper illustrates the method through a case study that applies the model Geomod in Central Massachusetts, USA. Results reveal that the model predicts more than the observed amount of change on flat slopes and less than the observed amount of change on steep slopes. One reason for these types of errors is that the land change process during the calibration interval is different than the process during the prediction interval with respect to slope. The method allows modelers to use the validation step as a diagnostic tool to search for potentially influential missing variables and to gain insight into land transition processes. The technique is designed to be applicable to a variety of types of land change models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The March/May 2004 special issue of the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics presents papers presented at the Maastricht, the Netherlands-Cambridge, Massachusetts Symposium 2002. The Limburg Institute of Financial Economics, the Netherlands hosted this third symposium, which was attended by 43 participants. In all, eleven papers were presented, with nine being selected for publication in this special issue of the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. Of these nine articles, research teams based in the United States write four, another four are from Europe, and one is from the Far East. That means that the special issue of the journal is becoming increasingly international in scope, which underlines the growing quality of research in real estate finance and economics outside of the United States.

A formal semantic analysis of the tough-construction is provided building on the well-known observation that events play a central role. A close look at the semantic characteristics of the class of tough-predicates and the syntactic and semantic properties of nonfinite clauses reveals the link between these pieces, expanding on recent advances in the semantics of clauses (Moulton in Natural selection and the syntax of clausal complementation, PhD thesis, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 2009). Building on Salzmann (Reconstruction and resumption in indirect A′-dependencies: On the syntax of prolepsis and relativization in (Swiss) German and beyond, de Gruyter, Berlin 2017b), a formal semantic and syntactic analysis of prolepsis is provided to explain the antecedent gap chain in the tough-construction. In total, this paper offers a description and explanation of (i) the class of tough-predicates; (ii) the properties of the nonfinite clause that appears in the tough-construction; (iii) why no other predicates or clauses are permitted in the construction; (iv) the many properties of the antecedent gap chain in the tough-construction, primarily the fact that the chain is "weakly" unbounded; and (v) the semantic contribution of prolepsis as it applies in the tough-construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engagement in HIV care and a high level of antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence for people living with HIV is crucial to treatment success and can minimize the population burden of the disease. Despite this, there is a critical gap in HIV prevention science around the development of interventions for serodiscordant male couples. This paper reports on the results of a randomized controlled trial to assess the efficacy of Stronger Together, a dyadic counseling intervention aimed at increasing engagement in and optimizing HIV care among serodiscordant male couples in Atlanta, GA, Boston, MA, and Chicago, IL. Between 2014 and 2017, 159 male serodiscordant couples (total N = 318) in Atlanta, GA, Boston, MA, and Chicago, IL were enrolled and equally randomized to either the Stronger Together intervention arm (a three-session dyadic intervention involving HIV testing and adherence counseling) or a standard of care (SOC) control arm. Couples completed individual study assessments via an audio computer assisted self-interviewing (ACASI) system at baseline, 6, 12 and 18 months. Primary outcomes included being prescribed and currently taking ART, and fewer missed doses of ART in the past 30 days; because the trial was not powered to examine viral suppression, we examined this as an exploratory outcome. Longitudinal data analysis was by an intention-to-treat approach. Participants ages ranged from 18 to 69 (mean = 35.9), and are predominantly white (77.5%), and college educated (68.4% earned a college degree or higher). Participants randomized to the Stronger Together arm had a significantly greater odds of being prescribed and currently taking ART over time than those in the SOC arm (at 12 months OR 2.75, 95%CI 1.35–4.67, p-value 0.020, and at 18 months OR 2.91, 95%CI 1.61–4.88, p-value 0.013). Similarly, those in the Stronger Together arm had a significantly lower odds of missing a dose of ART in the past 30 days over time compared to those in the SOC arm (at 12 months OR 0.28, 95%CI 0.09–0.81, p-value 0.019, and at 18 months OR 0.25, 95%CI 0.07–0.82, p-value 0.023). Among male couples in serodiscordant relationships, the Stronger Together intervention resulted in significantly improved HIV treatment outcomes at both 12 and 18 months of follow-up. This trial is the first to date to demonstrate evidence of efficacy for a dyadic counseling intervention and has the potential to fill a critical gap in secondary HIV prevention interventions for serodiscordant male couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to describe the baseline characteristics of Live Well (intervention to prevent weight gain in recent immigrant mother-child dyads from Brazil, Haiti, and Latin America) participants, and to explore self-reported changes in diet and physical activity post-immigration. Baseline data from 383 mothers were used for this study. Dyads attended a measurement day where they completed self-administered surveys collecting information about socio-demographics, diet, physical activity, other psychosocial variables, and height and weight. Haitian mothers' socio-demographic profile differed significantly from that of Brazilians' and Latinas': they have been in the US for a shorter period of time, have higher rates of unemployment, are less likely to be married, more likely to have ≥3 children, more likely to be obese, and have immigrated for family or other reasons. In multivariate models, self-reported changes in diet and physical activity since migrating to the US were significantly associated with BMI with non-linear relationships identified. Future research is needed to understand how diet and physical activity change while acculturating to the US and explore the adoption of both healthy and unhealthy dietary changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While statistics related to occupational injuries exist at state and national levels, there are notable difficulties with using these to understand non-fatal injuries trends in agriculture, forestry, and commercial fishing. This paper describes the development and testing of a crosswalk between ICD-10-CM external cause of injury codes (E-codes) for agriculture, forestry, and fishing (AFF) and the Occupational Injury and Illness Classification System (OIICS). By using this crosswalk, researchers can efficiently process hospitalization data and quickly assemble relevant cases of AFF injuries useful for epidemiological tracking. Methods: All 6810 ICD-10-CM E- codes were double-reviewed and tagged for AFF- relatedness. Those related to AFF were then coded into a crosswalk to OIICS. The crosswalk was tested on hospital data (inpatient, outpatient, and emergency department) from New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont using SAS9.3. Injury records were characterized by type of event, source of injury, and by general demographics using descriptive epidemiology. Results: Of the 6810 E-codes available in the ICD-10-CM scheme, 263 different E-codes were ultimately classified as 1 = true case, 2 = traumatic/acute and suspected AFF, or 3 = AFF and suspected traumatic/acute. The crosswalk mapping identified 9969 patient records either confirmed to be or suspected to be an AFF injury out of a total of 38,412,241 records in the datasets, combined. Of these, 963 were true cases of agricultural injury. The remaining 9006 were suspected AFF cases, where the E-code was not specific enough to assign certainty to the record's work-relatedness. For the true agricultural cases, the most frequent combinations presented were contact with agricultural/garden equipment (301), non-roadway incident involving off-road vehicle (222), and struck by cow or other bovine (150). For suspected agricultural cases, the majority (68.2%) represent animal-related injuries. Conclusions: The crosswalk provides a reproducible, low-cost, rapid means to identify and code AFF injuries from hospital data. The use of this crosswalk is best suited to identifying true agricultural cases; however, capturing suspected cases of agriculture, forestry, and fishing injury also provides valuable data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many health care providers, hospitals, and hospital systems have adopted new electronic health records (EHR) to streamline patient care and comply with government mandates. Commercial EHR vendors advertise improved efficiency, but few studies have been performed to validate these claims. Therefore, this study was performed to evaluate the effect of deploying a new EHR system on operating room efficiency and surgical case turnover time (TOT) at our institution. Data on TOT were collected after implementation of a new EHR (Epic) from June 2015 to May 2016, which replaced a legacy system of both paper and electronic records. These TOTs were compared to data from the same months in the preceding year. Mean TOT and standard deviations were calculated. The two-sample t-test was used to compare means by month and the F-test was used to compare standard deviations. There was a significant increase in TOT (63.0 vs. 53.0 min, p < 0.001) in the first month after implementation. This improved by the second month (59.0 vs. 53.0 min, p < 0.001), but the relative increase persisted until the end of the fifth month after which it remained around the pre-implementation baseline until the end of the study. The standard deviation significantly decreased after the fourth month post-implementation and persisted throughout the studied period. We found that implementation of an EHR led to a significant decrease in efficiency that persisted for five months. While EHRs have the potential to improve hospital workflow, caution is advised in the case of operating room implementation. While the mean TOT did not improve beyond the pre-implementation baseline, the standard deviation was significantly improved after the first four months. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elizabeth A. Stuart is a Professor in the Departments of Mental Health, Biostatistics, and Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Associate Dean for Education at the school. She is a renowned expert in the area of causal inference, including propensity score methods for observational data and the generalizability of randomized trial results, and is also a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. Prior to her appointment to the faculty at Johns Hopkins, Professor Stuart received her Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Smith College. In 2015, Professor Stuart was recognized at the International Conference on Health Policy Statistics with the Mid-Career Award from the Health Policy Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanomaterials exemplify a new class of emerging technologies that have significant economic and social value, pose uncertain health and environmental risks, and are entering the marketplace at a rapid pace. Effective regimes for regulating emerging technologies generate information about known or suspected hazards and draw on private sector expertise to guide managers' behavior toward risk reduction, even in the absence of clear evidence of harm. This paper considers the extent to which the federal Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) accomplishes those objectives. It offers the approach of the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Act (TURA) as a possible supplement to TSCA, filling gaps in agency knowledge and private sector capacities. TURA is notable for its focus on chemicals use and hazard and its emphasis on strengthening firms' internal management systems. Given the current deadlock in Congressional efforts to modernize federal laws such as TSCA, the role of state laws like TURA merit attention. Absent definitive information about risk, a governance strategy that generates information and focuses management attention on reducing hazards is worth considering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights the 2004 Quantitative Marketing and Economics conference at Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts. Sponsors of the convention; Keynote speakers; Presentation of technical papers.

The article presents the program of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association to be held from August 26-29, 1968. It will be held in Boston, Massachusetts. The Program Committee, consisting of Chairman Philip M. Hauser, William J. Goode, Robin M. Williams. Jr., O.D. Duncan, and Gerhard E. Lenski is planning sessions on the central theme of "On the Gap Between Sociology and Social Policy". The session topics are as follows: 1) Plenary sessions: Sociology and the Negro Revolt, Sociology and Social Accounting; 2) Thematic Sessions: Conformity and Social Control, Law and the Administration of Criminal Justice, Socialization and Education, Population and Population Control, Sociology and Environmental Planning, The Polity and the Academy, Sociology and Social Development, Sociology and Systems Analysis, Sociology and Socialist Countries, 3) Regular Sessions: The New Sociometrics, Theory Building. In order to broaden member participation in the Annual Meeting, the 1968 Program Committee is planning a limited number of sessions utilizing a Seminar format. Papers contributed by members apart from those scheduled for organized sessions, will be screened and grouped under appropriate subject headings.

In this paper, we model the statistical properties of imaging exam durations using parametric probability distributions such as the Gaussian, Gamma, Weibull, lognormal, and log-logistic. We establish that in a majority of radiology procedures, the underlying distribution of exam durations is best modeled by a log-logistic distribution, while the Gaussian has the poorest fit among the candidates. Further, through illustrative examples, we show how business insights and workflow analytics can be significantly impacted by making the correct (log-logistic) versus incorrect (Gaussian) model choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Difference-in-difference (DD) methods are a common strategy for evaluating the effects of policies or programs that are instituted at a particular point in time, such as the implementation of a new law. The DD method compares changes over time in a group unaffected by the policy intervention to the changes over time in a group affected by the policy intervention, and attributes the 'difference-in-differences' to the effect of the policy. DD methods provide unbiased effect estimates if the trend over time would have been the same between the intervention and comparison groups in the absence of the intervention. However, a concern with DD models is that the program and intervention groups may differ in ways that would affect their trends over time, or their compositions may change over time. Propensity score methods are commonly used to handle this type of confounding in other non-experimental studies, but the particular considerations when using them in the context of a DD model have not been well investigated. In this paper, we describe the use of propensity scores in conjunction with DD models, in particular investigating a propensity score weighting strategy that weights the four groups (defined by time and intervention status) to be balanced on a set of characteristics. We discuss the conceptual issues associated with this approach, including the need for caution when selecting variables to include in the propensity score model, particularly given the multiple time point nature of the analysis. We illustrate the ideas and method with an application estimating the effects of a new payment and delivery system innovation (an accountable care organization model called the 'Alternative Quality Contract' (AQC) implemented by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts) on health plan enrollee out-of-pocket mental health service expenditures. We find no evidence that the AQC affected out-of-pocket mental health service expenditures of enrollees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates whether the implementation of the 2006 Massachusetts health reform law affected the decision of taxpayers to be self-employed, using both difference-in-differences and synthetic control methods on a panel of tax returns that spans 1999-2010. Though tenuous, our results suggest that the reform led to a decline in the rate of taxpayers earning a majority of income from self-employment. In addition, it appears to have had a positive impact on earning some self-employment income among joint filers and earning the majority of income from self-employment among older taxpayers, but these were offset by negative impacts on single filers and taxpayers age 35-49. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gas dispersion and explosion dynamics can be very complex. Blast effects in the far field are less sensitive to the local dynamics of an explosion event, and simplified techniques have been developed to roughly estimate the amount of fuel involved (i.e., energy released) in an explosion based on the observed damage in the far field. However, these simple techniques are not suitable to predict the complex explosion dynamics that occur in the near field. The phenomena that drive explosions and resulting damage in the near field are complex in nature, as they depend on non-linear interactions between multiple variables (e.g., ignition location, flame accelerations due to object interaction, fuel reactivity, geometry of the facility regarding confinement and interconnected rooms, vent areas, etc.). Furthermore, the damage created in the near field by overpressure development, blast wave reflections and focusing, pressure impulse, pressure piling, blast wind and ensuing drag forces, may be difficult to interpret using simple methods. The origin of an explosion may, in fact, differ from the intuitive epicenter determined from oversimplified assumptions and may lead to incorrect conclusions regarding the cause and origin or initiating events of the accident. State-of-the-art 3D modeling tools, such as FLACS, are typically required to understand and evaluate complex explosions. FLACS was specifically developed to predict the consequences associated with complex explosions, especially in the near field, and has been extensively validated against hundreds of full-scale experiments. Therefore, FLACS simulations can be used to investigate the chain of events of the explosion and provide a more complete understanding of the evidence, including near-field blast damage. This paper presents the findings of how FLACS was used to help determine the explosion origin in the explosion that occurred at an ink and paint manufacturing facility in Danvers, Massachusetts, on November 22, 2006. This paper is not intended to provide complete investigation findings and will only provide the necessary background material to follow the explosion origin analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to assess the frequency of depression symptoms among Brazilian immigrants living in Massachusetts, the second largest Brazilian immigrant population in the United States, and to identify correlates of depression. A convenience sample of Brazilian immigrants aged 18 or older residing in Massachusetts was used. Data were collected from December 2013 to March 2014, in the Consulate General of Brazil in Boston and in three religious events, using a structure questionnaire and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Depression symptoms were observed in 35.3% of the respondents, with equal distribution by sex. Correlates of depression were low income, being single, poor English proficiency, and poor self-perception of health. These results suggest a need for community outreach, sensitization, and counseling, in Portuguese and adapted to the culture of Brazilian immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between acculturation and oral health in a study of Somali refugees. This cross-sectional survey included structured surveys and dental examinations of a convenience sample of 439 Somali adults living in Massachusetts. Associations between an acculturation scale and: (1) lifetime history of caries and (2) access to oral health services were calculated. In bivariate analyses, many individual questions in the scale were associated with outcomes. In multivariate analysis, speaking English (OR 0.5, CI 0.28-0.84) was associated with better access to, and utilization of, dental health services while reading American books and newspapers in English was associated with increased lifetime history of dental disease (OR 2.6, CI 1.1-6.0). As specific elements of acculturation have different relationships with oral health among Somali refugees, a summary acculturation scale may have limited utility. Ongoing efforts to remove language barriers may improve oral health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Home visiting programs for new families in the United States have traditionally served high-risk families. In contrast, universal home visiting models serve all families regardless of income, age, risk or other criteria. They offer an entry point into a system of care for children and families, with the potential to improve population health. This paper describes lessons learned from the first three years of implementing a universal home visiting model. Description Welcome Family is a universal home visiting program in Massachusetts that offers a one-time visit by a nurse to new mothers up to eight weeks postpartum. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) is piloting Welcome Family in four communities with the goal of expanding statewide. Assessment Welcome Family served over 3000 families in its first three years. Program performance measures provided a framework to examine successes and challenges related to outreach and enrollment, program operations, and linkages with community resources. Early challenges included increasing referrals to a new program and limited capacity to serve all women giving birth. Local implementing agencies tested innovative strategies and MDPH made program modifications, such as developing quarterly data reports and establishing a learning collaborative, to address identified challenges. Conclusion MDPH is committed to the success of Welcome Family and uses continuous quality improvement to maximize the impact of the program on families and the system of care in Massachusetts. Lessons learned from the Massachusetts pilot can inform other states' efforts to enhance their early childhood systems of care through expanding universal home visiting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on research investigating six middle school teachers without engineering degrees as they taught an engineering unit on the engineering design process. Videotaped classroom sessions and teacher interviews were analyzed to understand the subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge the teachers used and developed as they introduced the eight steps of the engineering design process (from content standards for the state of Massachusetts, USA). The teachers demonstrated wide-ranging knowledge of the engineering design process, and this paper describes two of the steps the teachers showed a more sophisticated understanding-constructing a prototype and redesigning. Examples from the teachers illustrate strengths that can be built upon as well as some areas for further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important to know how the results from a land change model vary based on both the pixel resolution of the maps and the precision of the independent variables because subjective decisions or default values frequently determine these two factors. This paper presents an approach to measure the variation in model accuracy that is triggered by alteration of the pixel resolution and the precision of the independent variable, which are bins of distance to previously built area for our case study. We illustrate the principles with an application of the Geomod land change model contained in the Idrisi GIS, applied to simulate the gain of built land in central Massachusetts, USA. Results reveal four general principles: (1) change in pixel resolution using the majority-takes-all rule can influence quantity error, (2) change in bin width of an independent variable does not influence the quantity error, (3) resolution and bin width interact so that bin width does not have an effect on error when bin widths are smaller than the pixel resolution, and (4) researchers are wise to examine the implications of their subjective decisions by plotting clearly how the resolution and bin size influence the mathematical relationships that the model uses. We have found no universal, hard, and fast rules that dictate how to decide on an appropriate pixel resolution and bin width, but our method demonstrates how these decisions can be influential. These insights can offer scientists guidance in how to prepare data in an appropriate manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development and implementation of the Boston Medical Center (BMC) Advanced Clinical Capacity for Engagement, Safety, and Services Project. In October 2002, the BMC Division of Psychiatry became the first such entity to open a Safe Haven shelter for people who are chronically homeless, struggling with severe mental illness, and actively substance abusing. The low-demand Safe Haven model targets the most difficult to reach population and serves as a “portal of entry” to the mental health and addiction service systems. In this paper, the process by which this blended funded, multi-level collaboration, consisting of a medical center, state, city, local, and community-based consumer organizations, was created and is maintained, as well as the clinical model of care is described. Lessons learned from creating the Safe Haven Shelter and the development and implementation of the consumer-informed evaluation are discussed as well as implications for future work with this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The d’Arbeloff Interactive Mathematics Project or d’AIMP is an initiative that seeks to enhance and ultimately transform the teaching and learning of introductory mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A result of this project is a suite of “mathlets,” a carefully developed set of dynamic computer applets for use in the university’s ordinary differential equations course. In this paper, we present the rationale for such computer innovations, the philosophy behind their design, as well as a discussion of their careful development and implementation. Survey results are reported which yielded positive student feedback and suggestions for improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the genesis of the MIT OpenCourseWare project from its initial strategic precursors in 1999 and 2000, through its launch in 2001 and its subsequent evolution. The story told here illuminates the interplay among institutional leadership, and strategic planning, and with university culture in launching major educational technology enterprises. It also shows how initiatives can evolve in unexpected ways, and can even surpass their initial goals. The paper concludes with an overview of challenges facing OpenCourseWare in moving from the end of its production ramp-up and towards sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses whether chemically dependent adolescents with comorbid learning disorders (LDs) derived less effective treatment results when compared to chemically dependent adolescents without LD and examines the moderating effects of prior treatments, treatment length, and treatment completion. Two hundred one adolescents were recruited between 1992 and 1993 from Massachusetts residential treatment centers and subsequently followed up 6 months after enrollment. Compared to chemically dependent teenagers without LD, those with LD were twice as likely to re-use substances at least once by follow-up. LD teenagers were more likely to attend Alcoholics/Narcotics Anonymous if they had prior admissions to treatment programs and longer treatment length. LD teenagers who completed treatment also experienced a greater decrease in current depression compared to LD teenagers not completing the treatment. This study is the first to consider outcomes of substance abuse treatment for adolescents with LD and contributes to the growing literature on comorbidity and substance abuse treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the effect of students’ background characteristics on the academic outcomes of their college roommates. It uses data from four classes of students at Wellesley College, where roommate assignment is credibly random, conditional on student responses to a housing preference form. In linear specifications, there are no peer effects on students’ grade point averages. There is some evidence that students’ SAT scores have nonlinear effect on their roommates’ achievement, but the results are not robust. We conclude that roommate peer effects might exist among small groups of students, but they are not a key determinant of students’ average academic outcomes at Wellesley College. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boston, like many other major cities, experienced a sudden increase in youth homicides during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Research evidence suggests that the recent epidemic of urban youth violence was intensely concentrated among criminally active young black males residing in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods rather than all young black males residing in disadvantaged black neighborhoods. Other researchers, however, suggest that there was a diffusion of guns and gun violence from youth involved in street crack markets to youth outside the drug trade who armed themselves primarily for self-protection against the armed criminally active youth. In this paper, criminal history data are analyzed to determine whether the criminal profile of Boston arrested youth gun offenders changed over time and micro-level data on youth gun assault incidents in Boston are examined to unravel whether there were noteworthy changes in the nature of these violent events over time. The results of these analyses suggest that the youth violence epidemic in Boston was highly concentrated among serious youth gun offenders rather than a diffusion of guns away from the street drug trade, gangs, and criminally active youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the theoretical foundations, empirical findings, and practical and philosophical implications of the Boston Area Diary Study (BADS), a study of the caring behavior of 44 participants over one calendar year. In particular, the paper presents an identification theory of care and discusses how it shaped the conceptualization, collection, and analysis of the data in a year-long diary study of daily voluntary assistance. The findings from the BADS (1) theoretically confirm the identification theory of care; (2) methodologically capture how individuals perceive and carry out caring behavior as a unity; and (3rpar; empirically document the existence of a moral citizenship in America that is substantially more vigorous than is implied by the usual indicators of civic and political citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst offers a unique graduate program. The program is demanding but collegial, with faculty and students working together to produce mutually authored articles, monographs, and books. Many students concentrate their doctoral dissertations on applied topics, that is, social policy and evaluation research. These students are trained in theory and methods of sociology; their graduate training is the same as all other students in the program. Graduates have been well placed in the academy and in other occupational sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relationship between proximity to electronic gambling machines or casino table games within gambling venues and the risk of being a person who experiences gambling problems among participants in a Massachusetts high-risk sample cohort study. The analysis employs data from Wave 2 through Wave 5 of the Massachusetts Gambling Impact Cohort (MAGIC) study conducted from 2015 to 2019. The Problem and Pathological Gambling Measure (PPGM) was employed to categorize participants as non-gamblers, recreational gamblers, at-risk gamblers, or problem/pathological gamblers. No significant relationship was found between the type of gambler and either table game or electronic gambling machine distance or density for either the wave prior to casino introduction or any of the waves subsequent to casino introduction. Results suggest that the Massachusetts population may be desensitized to some of the potential negative effects of casino proximity due to long-term exposure to casinos in neighboring jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social pillar of pavement sustainability is understudied compared to economic and environmental pillars, making it difficult to integrate into life-cycle methodologies. While methods such as social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) exist, they usually focus on social governance rather than quantifying the impact of pavement investment decisions on communities. This study introduces a methodology to quantify the impact of road condition on vulnerable communities, specifically Environmental Justice (EJ) communities. The methodology calculates the impact of road condition on residents and analyzes fuel consumption (as an example impact) for road users during recurrent home-work trips as a function of pavement condition for EJ and non-EJ communities. It was found that EJ communities in Massachusetts are twice as likely to live near poor condition roads and consume twice as much excessive fuel during recurrent home-work trips. The proposed method is designed to integrate into existing life-cycle methods and represents a significant step towards integrating equity into pavement management decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voice disorders are associated with irregular vibrations of vocal folds. Based on the source filter theory of speech production, these irregular vibrations can be detected in a non-invasive way by analyzing the speech signal. In this paper we present a multiband approach for the detection of voice disorders given that the voice source generally interacts with the vocal tract in a non-linear way. In normal phonation, and assuming sustained phonation of a vowel, the lower frequencies of speech are heavily source dependent due to the low frequency glottal formant, while the higher frequencies are less dependent on the source signal. During abnormal phonation, this is still a valid, but turbulent noise of source, because of the irregular vibration, affects also higher frequencies. Motivated by such a model, we suggest a multiband approach based on a three-level discrete wavelet transformation (DWT) and in each band the fractal dimension (FD) of the estimated power spectrum is estimated. The experiments suggest that frequency band 1-1562 Hz, lower frequencies after level 3, exhibits a significant difference in the spectrum of a normal and pathological subject. With this band, a detection rate of 91.28 % is obtained with one feature, and the obtained result is higher than all other frequency bands. Moreover, an accuracy of 92.45 % and an area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 95.06 % is acquired when the FD of all levels is fused. Likewise, when the FD of all levels is combined with 22 Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (MDVP) parameters, an improvement of 2.26 % in accuracy and 1.45 % in AUC is observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the announcement of Baystate Hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts on the discovery of what is deemed to be the biggest case of research fraud in history. Chief academic officer, Hal Jenson said that it was during this process when they ask their IRB to look at 100 abstracts that were submitted that they uncovered two studies that did not have IRB approval. The coauthor on the studies was Scott Reuben and 21 published papers have been found to contain fake data from him.

Traumatized adolescents have pervasive problems with self-regulation and often have difficulties in language-based treatment models. This paper provides preliminary empirical support for the efficacy of Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment (SMART), a treatment model which targets somatic regulation as an avenue to behavioral and emotional regulation. A case vignette illustrates the intervention model. Outcomes are presented from a quasi-experimental pilot study employing a matched control design comparing the additive benefit of SMART intervention to treatment as usual (TAU) in two adolescent residential treatment sites, with a polyvictimized sample. There were significant reductions in domains targeted by SMART: Internalizing symptoms on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), and the Somatic Complaints and Anxious/Depressed subscales. In secondary analyses, a trend approaching significance was found on the Overarousal subscale of the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder-Reaction Index (PTSD-RI). This pilot study suggests the contribution somatic regulation can make to stabilization and skills building in complex trauma treatment for adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) births make up 1.6 % of births in the US, the impact of ART on subsequent infant and maternal health is not well understood. Clinical ART treatment records linked to population data would be a powerful tool to study long term outcomes among those treated or not by ART. This paper describes the development of a database intended to accomplish this task. We constructed the Massachusetts Outcomes Study of Assisted Reproductive Technology (MOSART) database by linking the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technologies Clinical Outcomes Reporting System (SART CORS) and the Massachusetts (MA) Pregnancy to Early Life Longitudinal (PELL) data systems for children born to MA resident women at MA hospitals between July 2004 and December 2008. PELL data representing 282,971 individual women and their 334,152 deliveries and 342,035 total births were linked with 48,578 cycles of ART treatment in SART CORS delivered to MA residents or women receiving treatment in MA clinics, representing 18,439 eligible women of whom 9,326 had 10,138 deliveries in this time period. A deterministic five phase linkage algorithm methodology was employed. Linkage results, accuracy, and concordance analyses were examined. We linked 9,092 (89.7 %) SART CORS outcome records to PELL delivery records overall, including 95.0 % among known MA residents treated in MA clinics; 70.8 % with full exact matches. There were minimal differences between matched and unmatched delivery records, except for unknown residency and out-of-state ART site. There was very low concordance of reported use of ART treatment between SART CORS and PELL (birth certificate) data. A total of 3.4 % of MA children (11,729) were identified from ART assisted pregnancies (6,556 singletons; 5,173 multiples). The MOSART linked database provides a strong basis for further longitudinal ART outcomes studies and supports the continued development of potentially powerful linked clinical-public health databases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the professional life of lead investigator Robert Langer of an academic laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It offers a day-in-the-life observation of Langer as he manages the laboratory and prepares for various activities throughout the day including the making of an educational video, offering editorial advice on a paper being considered for publication, and a lecture for those thinking about starting a biotechnology company.