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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.

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 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]

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.

Objective. A health care proxy is an advance directive that allows an individual to indicate in writing who can act on his behalf when he lacks the capacity to make health care decisions, and what limitations he is placing on this authority. Of great interest in medical settings, health care proxies are beginning to receive more attention in psychiatric settings. Are these proxies useful when applied to psychiatric treatment decisions? This paper examines health care proxies in Massachusetts and their potential use for decisions about psychiatric interventions at one Massachusetts state hospital. Method. A point in time study of a state hospital's entire census was done by reviewing all patients' records for demographic, diagnostic, and legal data, and for the presence and content of the state required health care proxy form. Results. Of the 161 patients in the hospital, 71 (44%) had full guardians and were ineligible to complete their own proxies. Of the remaining 90 patients, 53 (33% of the total population) had a proxy form in their chart, but 34 (21%) of these patients refused to sign them. Of the 19 (12%) signed proxies, 16 (10%) of the patients were deemed competent to have executed meaningful health care proxies. Conclusions. This preliminary analysis reveals that only 10% of a state hospital population had meaningful health care proxies. Further outcome studies are needed to determine if the process of offering health care proxies and the presence of properly executed proxies are meaningful and beneficial to chronically ill psychiatric patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the “connection”between higher education and economic development in Massachusetts, a state whose renowned academic institutions have fueled the rise of a premier high technology industrial district. But in the aftermath to the abrupt demise of the “Massachusetts Miracle”, the state higher education system sought to develop a new mandate for public service in the 90s keyed to upgrading the state‘s industrial base and coordinating with labor market needs. These growing involvements in manifestly vocational endeavors seem to reflect a major shift in the models that articulate the higher education-economic development “connection” in Massachusetts. Thus, it appears that the elite model of the “world-class” research university sparking numerous industry spin-offs has been joined by newer diffusion-oriented models of academic outreach that extend out from the community colleges into the workplace and even into the K-12 schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on archaeology while focusing on a documentation of the life of Henry David Thoreau, an American naturalist and philosopher who described a visit to Estabrook Woods in Concord, Massachusetts. Archaeological investigations in Estabrook Woods; Purpose of the paper; Conclusion of the article.

Reports that a specific rule of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Harvard University prohibits researchers from being involved in other research projects with the university once their research findings are commercialized for financial gains. Revelation that from 2004 the American Society of Clinical Oncology will not accept research papers or abstracts on clinical trial results; Discussion of the debate on ways to handle conflicts of interest; Percentage increase in the number of university-linked start-up companies between 1994 and 1999.

States the Eugene Mallove, former chief science writer in the news office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has requested a scientific misconduct inquiry at the university's Plasma Fusion Center over claimed data manipulation and a perceived attack against cold fusion. Robert Parker, head of the fusion center, is author of the disputed paper.