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This article presents abstracts of papers to be presented at the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the American Society of Primatologists, scheduled from August 18-22, 1993 in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. A paper studies the proximate mechanisms regulating reproductive success in female Marmosets. Another paper focuses on the causes , risks and consequences of dispersal in male Savannah Baboons in Amboseli National Park. Heterochrony and sexual dimorphism in the skull of the Liberian Chimpanzee are explored in yet another paper.

This article presents abstracts of papers presented at the twelfth annual meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, which was held at the Hotel Sheraton-Plaza in Boston, Massachusetts on November 9-12, 1972. The paper presented by J.C. Jackson and F.K. Graham of the University of Wisconsin cites threshold intensity effects on two orienting response components. Sokolovian theory suggests that the orienting response should be large near psychophysical threshold, fall to a minimum around 10-20 decibels and then rise again until it is depressed by competition with the defense reflex.

Introduction Collabo RATE is a brief patient survey focused on shared decision making. This paper aims to (i) provide insight on facilitators and challenges to implementing a real-time patient survey and (ii) evaluate Collabo RATE scores and response rates across multiple clinical settings with varied patient populations. Method All adult patients at three United States primary care practices were eligible to complete Collabo RATE post-visit. To inform key learnings, we aggregated all mentions of unanticipated decisions, problems and administration errors from field notes and email communications. Mixed-effects logistic regression evaluated the impact of site, clinician, patient age and patient gender on the Collabo RATE score. Results While Collabo RATE score increased only slightly with increasing patient age ( OR 1.018, 95% CI 1.014-1.021), female patient gender was associated with significantly higher Collabo RATE scores ( OR 1.224, 95% CI 1.073-1.397). Clinician also predicts Collabo RATE score (random effect variance 0.146). Site-specific factors such as clinical workflow and checkout procedures play a key role in successful in-clinic implementation and are significantly related to Collabo RATE scores, with Site 3 scoring significantly higher than Site 1 ( OR 1.759, 95% CI 1.216 to 2.545) or Site 2 (z=−2.71, 95% CI −1.114 to −0.178). Discussion This study demonstrates that Collabo RATE can be used in diverse primary care settings. A clinic's workflow plays a crucial role in implementation. Patient experience measurement risks becoming a burden to both patients and administrators. Episodic use of short measurement tools could reduce this burden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an abstract of the study `Declining ovarian function during the latter half of the reproductive lifespan,' by M.T. O'Rourke and P.T. Ellison. Patterns of ovarian endocrine decline among women in Boston, Massachusetts; Follicular and luteal phase estradiol in different age groups; Declining oocyte quality with age.

Many studies have reported large variations in age- and sex-adjusted rates of hospitalizations across small geographic areas. These variations have often been attributed to differences in medical practice style which are not reflected in differences in health care outcomes. There is, however, another potentially important source of variation that has not been examined much in the literature: geographic differences in the age–sex adjusted size of the pool of patients who present with the disease and are candidates for hospitalization. Previous studies of small area variations in hospitalization rates have only used data on hospitalizations. Thus, it has not been possible to distinguish the extent to which differences in hospitalization rates are due to (i) differences in the chance that patients diagnosed with a disease are admitted to a hospital, which we refer to as the ‘practice style effect,’ versus (ii) geographic differences in the total amount of diagnosed disease, which we refer to as the ‘disease effect.’ Elementary methods for estimating the relative strength of the two effects directly from the data can be misleading, since equal amounts of variability in each effect result in unequal impacts on hospitalization rates. In this paper we describe a model-based approach for estimating the relative importance of the practice style effect and the disease effect in explaining variations in hospitalization rates. The key to our approach is the use of data on both inpatient and outpatient visits. We use 1997 Medicare data for two respiratory medical conditions across 71 small areas in Massachusetts: chronic bronchitis and emphysema, and bacterial pneumonia. Based on a Poisson model for the process generating hospitalizations and outpatient visits, we use a Bayesian framework and Gibbs sampling to compute and compare the correlation between the number of people hospitalized and each of these two sources of variation. Our results show that for the two conditions, disease rate variation explains at least as much of the variation in hospitalization rates as does practice style variation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Aim This study compares the magnitude and trajectory of vegetation and ecosystem function dynamics associated with the direct impact of hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae Annand; HWA) infestation vs. the indirect consequences of HWA-induced damage in the form of salvage and pre-emptive logging of hemlock [Tsuga canadensis (L.) Carriere] forests. Location The study was conducted within an area extending from southern Connecticut up to and including the Connecticut River lowlands west to the Berkshire Plateau in central Massaschusetts, USA. Methods Overstorey and understorey vegetation and ecosystem function parameters such as decomposition and nitrogen cycling were examined in logged and unlogged portions of ten hemlock stands varying in HWA damage intensity. Results Intensive hemlock logging generated more rapid and pronounced microenvironment and vegetation changes than chronic HWA damage. Black birch (Betula lenta L.) seedling densities and percent cover of brambles (Rubus L. spp.), sedges (Carex L. spp.) and hay-scented fern (Dennstaedtia punctilobula Michx.) were significantly higher in recent harvests vs. HWA-damaged and undamaged sites. High black birch sapling densities (>7000 ha-1 ) were common in the older harvests but not in adjacent, HWA-damaged portions of these sites. Undamaged sites had 20% more forest floor mass than HWA-damaged sites and double the mass of older cuts. Mass loss rates of cellulose paper suggest that conditions were more favourable for decomposition in the damaged and older logged sites. Recently cut sites had significantly larger inorganic N pools than undamaged forests, although total net nitrogen (N) mineralization rates were not significantly different among treatments. Nitrification rates of 0.2 kg ha-1 day-1 measured in the oldest cuts were three times greater than in HWA-damaged sites and over 200 times greater than in undamaged hemlock sites. However, resin bag capture in the... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Aim The United States (US) and other affluent countries consume vast quantities of global natural resources, but contribute proportionately less to the extraction of many raw materials. This imbalance is due, in part, to domestic policies intended to protect the environment. Ironically, developed nations are often better equipped to extract resources in an environmentally prudent manner than the major suppliers. Thus, although citizens of affluent countries may imagine that preservationist domestic policies are conserving resources and protecting nature, heavy consumption rates necessitate resource extraction elsewhere and oftentimes under weak environmental oversight. A major consequence of this ‘illusion of natural resource preservation’ is greater global environmental degradation than would arise if consumption were reduced and a large portion of production was shared by affluent countries. This paper considers some implications of the consumption, management and conservation of forests and wood at a local and global scale. Location We focus on Massachusetts, the eighth most forested state in the USA (by area), the third most densely populated, and an affluent region with consumption rates that are among the highest in the country. Methods Estimates of wood production and consumption are generated, and comparisons are made with other commonly used materials (e.g. steel, concrete, aluminium). Results A comparison of the feasibility and environmental impact of various strategies for dealing with rising wood demand suggests that the US should strive to: (1) reduce per capita consumption of wood and its substitutes, (2) recycle forest products more effectively, (3) protect extensive areas of intensively managed and unmanaged forests and (4) promote sound forest management where the environmental consequences are mild. Forestry and the sustainable generation of wood in Massachusetts would allow preservation of primary forests elsewhere in... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Study of the interaction of mental health and justice systems tends to focus on the ways that the respective realms inadvertently 'capture' each other's target populations. There has been little research into a system-level analysis that can answer questions about how styles, organising principles and institutional values of one system relate to and are sometimes incorporated by the other. This paper reconsiders juvenile de-institutionalisation in Massachusetts to document the emergence of a mental health ethos in the state's juvenile justice system of community-based treatment. The emergence of this ethos superficially bears out an influential thesis in the sociology of punishment that penal practice has now become charactised by an amoral actuarialism. A more sophisticated criminological awareness of developments in mental health and the sociology of medicine would show how a mental health ethos might instead be understood to challenge the actuarial thesis, by providing a framework that reconciles the traditional aims of retribution and rehabilitation in punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: School health service programs underwent rapid changes to meet the health needs of today's students. These needs stem largely from: a) increased number of students with special health care needs attending school, b) increased stress and time pressure on families, c) rapid restructuring of the health care system serving children, and d) recognition that schools provide opportunities to identify students with health risks. This paper describes seven components of a statewide Massachusetts plan to develop school health services by: a) setting standards, b) reviewing and revising statutes and regulations, c) promoting credentialing of school health personnel, d) providing continuing education on subjects pertinent to school health, e) exploring reimbursement systems and new funding sources, including funds from the tobacco settlement, f) exploring new models of care, and g) implementing data systems. The plan focuses on developing school nurse-managed school health services within a public health model. (J Sch Health. 2002;72(7):278-281) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public health researchers and practitioners have begun to recognize the dynamic nature of disability, promote the health of people with disabilities, and develop strategies to prevent secondary conditions among them. To understand the epidemiology of secondary conditions, the authors developed the Massachusetts Survey of Secondary Conditions, a longitudinal study of adults with major disabilities ( n =656) based on a conceptual framework linking disability, mediating factors, and health outcomes. This paper reports baseline data on the number of secondary conditions experienced by survey respondents. Respondents experienced a mean of 5.3 of 17 secondary conditions. More numerous secondary conditions were associated with fair or poor general health and number of days unable to do routine activities. Factors amenable to public health interventions included difficulty with weight and exercise maintenance, tobacco and marijuana use, and experiencing assault. Disability should be a focus in all public health research, policy, and programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous analyses of the Massachusetts Miracle and the subsequent evolution of employment in the area have centered in part on sectoral explanations. In this paper these explanations are evaluated with the use of a sectoral-based VAR model of the Boston economy, developed to identify local and national sectoral shocks. The relative importance of these shocks is estimated both for the overall sample and at several turning points in aggregate Boston employment, the latter using historical decompostions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative of the United Nations Children's Fund and the Worm Health Organization dramatically raises breastfeeding rates when implemented. To date, only 27 of the 16,000 Baby-Friendly hospitals worldwide are located in the United States. Barriers to becoming Baby-Friendly in the United States include the strength of the infant formula industry, suboptimal clinician knowledge, and the need to implement significant change throughout an institution. This paper describes how Boston Medical Center, an inner-city teaching hospital in Boston with approximately 1800 births per year, overcame numerous obstacles and, in December 1999, became the first Baby-Friendly hospital in Massachusetts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper describes an evaluation of a crime prevention initiative which was targeted at older local authority tenants in areas of the city where crime was of particular local concern. Our evaluation suggests that it was successful in addressing both crime and fear of crime. Respondents indicated that they were very satisfied with the service and felt safer as a result of it. Moreover, recorded burglary statistics revealed a marked reduction. It is thus argued that it is possible to reduce the risk and fear of crime among older people without having a detrimental effect on their quality of life. Indeed it appears that most respondents were happy to remain in the area and did not see residential care as necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from an intensive study of Boston's antebellum black community to demonstrate how sustained social activism is embedded in the formal and informal institutions of the community. The social networks of cooperative institutions were primary factors in this community's ability to mobilize and sustain protest actions and to call attention to social injustice. This examination of antebellum black Boston indicates that the issue of slavery was crucial to social activism. This suggests that the presence of a salient issue which links the everyday lives of participants with a public issue may be an important factor in building a social movement based in a poor, relatively powerless community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clark psychology in the post&shyHallian era has attracted little attention from scholars. The only general account, Carl Murchison's ‘Recollections of a Magic Decade at Clark’ (1959), is both partisan and limited in scope. This paper examines the ‘second cycle’ of the Clark department in a period of unusual productivity in research, publication and graduate training from the mid-twenties to the mid-thirties, as well as the internal tensions and constraints that led the department to self-destruct in 1936 and lose its scholarly leadership and professional visibility until the post-World War II era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A first cooperative research program in the developmental psychology was established in the Clark questionnaire studies. The program was not meant to be free­standing but to elaborate an evolutionary conception of child development synthesized from findings of several scientific fields. The short­lived program had some serious faults, but an examination of its research papers suggests that it produced some worthwhile work. The child­study researchers gathered information about children's social and emotional reactions in everyday settings; one or two of their studies were replicated; they found pattern and order; they elaborated a meaningful social­biological view of child development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies the institutional character of pre-1920 psychology at Clark University with founding President G. Stanley Hall's active ‘patronage’ of ‘outsiders,’ argues that the origins of this institutional character can be found in Hall's own personal character and temperament, and traces the influence of this institutional character through much of the psychology done at Clark before 1920. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on a speech given at the twenty-second annual convention of the Massachusetts League for Nursing, Boston, USA, on 24 September 1975. The author looks at the changing trends in nursing education in the USA, the importance of agreement on the level of entry into nursing and the need for a clear conceptual educational model. The Lehman College nursing programme is used as a prototype for such a model and its curriculum and the role of its nursing graduates as primary care practitioners are discussed and evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite more than 30 years of public health programs to reduce tobacco use, smoking is still the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. In response to this continuing epidemic, voters in California (1988), Massachusetts (1992), Arizona (1994), and Oregon (19%) approved ballot initiatives that established state- wide tobacco control programs funded by cigarette excise tax revenues. Evaluating these innovative public health interventions is important, both to improve existing programs and to guide other states in developing and implementing similar interventions. In this paper we describe the methods being used to evaluate the statewide anti-tobacco campaigns in California and Massachusetts, and review the findings of process and outcome evaluations of both programs. Our review suggests that both programs have had a substantial impact on the public `s health by reducing cigarette consumption and stimulating the development of policies to reduce environmental tobacco smoke exposure. However, it does not appear that either program has reduced smoking initiation among adolescents. Our evaluation suggests three problems in pm gram implementation that future anti-tobacco campaigns must avoid in order to produce long-term, sustained effects: (1) the gradual erosion of program funding by the state legislatures and governors; (2) the lack of a consistent, supportive constituency within state government and (3) inconsistency in campaign themes, messages, and programs. We conclude by offering recommendations to correct these problems so that state- wide cigarette-tax -funded anti-tobacco campaigns can realize their potential to become one of the most effective public health interventions available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents proceedings of the Annual meeting of the Phycological Society of America at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, held between June 17-22, 1973. All sessions of the program at which contributed papers were presented are joint sessions of the Phycological Society of America and the Phycological Section of the Botanical Society of America. Various topics were covered in different sessions. Session one was on Taxonomy and Morphology while sessions two was on Physiology and Biochemistry.

Sentencing guidelines legislation is currently under consideration by the Massachusetts legislature. This paper discusses the process used by the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission in formulating the sentencing guidelines legislation. The conceptual model and key substantive considerations associated with the sentencing guidelines are summarized, with special attention to two salient issues - intermediate sanctions and mandatory sentencing and their relationship to the sentencing guidelines. The paper concludes with a discussion of the reactions to the guidelines legislation and the prospects for passage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the XVI International Symposium on Respiratory Psychophysiology organized by the International Society for the Advancement of Respiratory Psychophysiology (ISARP) to be held from October 13-15, 1997 at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The 1997 Conference Committee of ISARP invites submissions to its 4th Annual Meeting, the first meeting of the international symposium to be held in the United States. The full program will include workshops, clinical sessions, invited addresses, symposia, structured panels and papers communicating original research findings from either basic or clinical investigations relevant to the psychology of breathing and the psychophysiology of respiration.

This article announces the Thirtieth Annual Meeting Society for Psychophysiological Research from October 17-21, 1990 to be held at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel and Towers in Boston, Massachusetts. Information regarding submission of papers may be obtained from the 1990 program chairman: Gregory A. Miller, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, 603 East Daniel Street, Champaign Illinois 61820.

This article presents information on the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research that will be held in Boston, Massachusetts, at the Sheraton-Plaza Hotel, Copley Square from November 9th through 12th, 1972. Information regarding submission of papers and deadline for abstracts may be obtained from Barry M. Shmavonian, Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, Henry Avenue, Philadelphia.