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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.

Transgender patients are at elevated risk of intimate partner violence (IPV), but national guidelines do not recommend routine screening for this population. This paper explores the feasibility and effectiveness of routine IPV screening of transgender patients in a primary care setting by describing an existing screening program and identifying factors associated with referral and engagement in IPV-related care for transgender patients. An IPV "referral cascade" was created for 1,947 transgender primary care patients at an urban community health center who were screened for IPV between January 1, 2014 to May 31, 2016: (a) Of those screening positive, how many were referred? (b) Of those referred, how many engaged in IPV-specific care within 3 months? Logistic regression identified demographic correlates of referral and engagement. Of the 1,947 transgender patients screened for IPV, 227 screened positive. 110/227 (48.5%) were referred to either internal or external IPV-related services. Of those referred to on-site services, 65/103 (63.1%) had an IPV-related appointment within 3 months of a positive screen. IPV referral was associated with being assigned male at birth (AMAB) versus assigned female at birth (AFAB) (AOR = 2.69, 95% CI 1.52, 4.75) and with nonbinary, rather than binary, gender identity (AOR = 2.07, 95%CI 1.09, 3.73). Engagement in IPV-related services was not associated with any measured demographic characteristics. Similar to published rates for cisgender women, half of transgender patients with positive IPV screens received referrals and two-thirds of those referred engaged in IPV-specific care. These findings support routine IPV screening and referral for transgender patients in primary care settings. Provider training should focus on how to ensure referrals are made for all transgender patients who screen positive for IPV, regardless of gender identity, to ensure the benefits of screening accrue equally for all patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Questions the historical and biographical significance of the papers Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote as a divinity student at Crozer Theological Seminary and as a doctoral student at Boston University. Instances of plagiarism; Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Projects; Evidence of King's effort to construct an identity as a theologian and preacher; Desire to stress social and political implications of theological training.

Describes the course `Drugs in the Nervous System' aimed at getting college students to think critically and creatively about science. Course at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts; Project-based, student-centered approach; Focus on students exploring primary literature; Development of variety of skills for scientific work.

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]

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.

THE YEAR 2000 MARKED THE TWENTY-FIFTH MEETING of the Boston University Conference on Language Development, now one of the largest and most important annual events in the various sub-fields of linguistics and psychology concerned with language learning. For three days during early November, researchers and educators who study how children and adults acquire language converged on the campus of Boston University, as they have every year since 1976, as guests of the BU Program in Applied Linguistics. Several hundred strong, they argued, compared data, swapped ideas, and provoked each other to keep on probing into the many intriguing mysteries of how humans learn to talk. In recognition of the conference's birthday, Margaret Thomas presented this overview of the first quarter-century of the BUCLD. [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 article announces that Holyoke Machine Co. has added 8000 square feet to its plant at Holyoke, Massachusetts. It notes that the move aims to increase production of super calender rolls up to 350 inches face width and weighing up to 35 tons. It mentions that the addition will enable the company to boosts its production of the rolls by 50 percent. It reports that the renovation of some 5000 square feet of floor space at the plant is underway to facilitate more efficient flow of materials. It states that the renovation is scheduled for completion by September 1.

Reports on the Marketing Science Institute's publication of a catalog which describes over 250 research papers on all aspects of strategic marketing. Cost of the catalog; Contact information.

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]

Land conservation efforts throughout the United States sustain ecological benefits while generating wealth in the housing market through capitalization of amenities. This paper estimates the benefits of conservation that are capitalized into proximate home values and quantifies how those benefits are distributed across demographic groups. Using detailed property and household-level data from Massachusetts, we estimate that new land conservation led to $62 million in new housing wealth equity. However, houses owned by low-income or Black or Hispanic households are less likely to be located near protected areas, and hence, these populations are less likely to benefit financially. Direct study of the distribution of this new wealth from capitalized conservation is highly unequal, with the richest quartile of households receiving 43%, White households receiving 91%, and the richest White households receiving 40%, which is nearly 140% more than would be expected under equal distribution. We extend our analysis using census data for the entire United States and observe parallel patterns. We estimate that recent land conservation generated $9.8 billion in wealth through the housing market and that wealthier and White households benefited disproportionately. These findings suggest regressive and racially disparate incidence of the wealth benefits of land conservation policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supply-side interventions such as prescription drug monitoring programs, "pill mill" laws, and dispensing limits have done little to quell the burgeoning opioid crisis. An increasingly popular demand-side alternative to these measures – now adopted by 38 jurisdictions in the USA and 7 provinces in Canada — is court-mandated involuntary commitment and treatment. In Massachusetts, for example, Part I, Chapter 123, Section 35 of the state's General Laws allows physicians, spouses, relatives, and police officers to petition a court to involuntarily commit and treat a person whose alcohol or drug abuse poses a likelihood of serious harm. This paper explores the ethical underpinnings of this law as a case study for others. First, we highlight the procedural and substantive standards of Section 35 and evaluate the application of the law in practice, including the frequency with which it has been invoked and outcomes. We then use this background to inform an ethical critique of the law. Specifically, we argue that the infringement of autonomy and privacy associated with involuntary intervention under Section 35 is not currently justified on the grounds of a lack of evidenced benefits and a risk of significant of harm. Further ethical concerns also arise from a lack of standard of care provided under the Section 35 pathway. Based on this analysis, we advance four recommendations for change to mitigate these ethical shortcomings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kampmann C. E. (1996) Feedback loop gains and system behavior Proceedings of the 1996 International System Dynamics Conference. System Dynamics Society, Boston, MA, USA In the past two decades, there has been a steady growth of analytical tools that can help the system dynamicist understand and test the behavior of large models. Without such tools, we must resort to simulation experiments and intuition developed from simple, low-order, systems. While this traditional approach has served us well, there is always the danger that we overlook important mechanisms in larger systems or falsely attribute behavior patterns to particular structures. Among these new analytical tools, eigenvalue elasticity analysis (EEA) has received the most attention, perhaps because it rests on a consistent and comprehensive theoretical foundation. The approach involves decomposing system outcomes into characteristic behavior modes, each characterized by an eigenvalue of the linearized system matrix, and then examining how each eigenvalue or behavior mode is affected by small changes in the parameters of the system. The eigenvalue elasticity of a parameter change is a dimensionless number, defined as the fractional change in the eigenvalue resulting from a fractional infinitesimal change in that parameter. Parameters or structural links or loops in the model that have large elasticities are then interpreted as playing a dominant role in that behavior mode. EEA was first used by Nathan Forrester in his doctoral dissertation from 1982. However, it did not receive much attention in the field until the 1996 International System Dynamics Conference, where Christian Kampmann presented a rigorous analysis of the topology of feedback loop structures and how eigenvalue elasticities are related to the strength of individual feedback loops. Since then, an entire strand of research has been devoted to the development and application of EEA, where Kampmann's conference paper remains a seminal reference. Yet until now, the paper has never been published, and researchers have had to rely on private circulation of various drafts of the paper. With this archival publication, we wish to remedy this deficiency in the hope that the work will inspire others to continue developing EEA and further the high standards of analytical rigor that Kampmann's paper represents. Abstract Linking feedback loops and system behavior is part of the foundation of system dynamics, yet the lack of formal tools has so far prevented a systematic application of the concept, except for very simple systems. Having such tools at their disposal would be a great help to analysts in understanding large, complicated simulation models. The paper applies tools from graph theory formally linking individual feedback loop strengths to the system eigenvalues. The significance of a link or a loop gain and an eigenvalue can be expressed in the eigenvalue elasticity, i.e., the relative change of an eigenvalue resulting from a relative change in the gain. The elasticities of individual links and loops may be found through simple matrix operations on the linearized system. Even though the number of feedback loops can grow rapidly with system size, reaching astronomical proportions even for modest systems, a central result of the paper is that one may restrict attention to an independent subset which typically grows only linearly and at most as the square of system size. An algorithm for finding an independent loop set is presented, along with suggestions for how to augment it to select loops with large elasticities. For illustration, the method is applied to a well-known system: the simple long-wave model. Because this model exhibits highly nonlinear behavior, it sheds light on the usefulness of linear methods to nonlinear system. The analysis leads to a more thorough and deeper understanding of the system and sheds new light on conventional wisdom regarding the role of many of the system's feedback loops. Copyright © 2012 System Dynamics Society [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an introduction to the special section related to International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'97), published in the August 1998 issue of the journal "IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering." Authors say that ICSE was held in Boston Massachusetts, in the week of May 17-23, 1997. The main goal of the conference was to meet needs and expectations of a large variety of attendees. The program committee of the conference was involved in a comprehensive reviewing process of papers submitted. At the end of this process, three papers were selected for publication. In the first paper, "Evaluating Testing Methods by Delivered Reliability," researchers discuss a method for evaluating the effectiveness of testing, based on a measure of the program reliability after testing. The second paper "Analyzing Partially Implemented Real-Time System," presents a technique for analyzing partially-implemented real-time systems. The third paper "Communication Metrics for Software Development," discusses results of comprehensive experiment whose goal was to evaluate the effectiveness of a set of communication metrics.

Linguistic identity of migrant communities is highly related to cultural practices. Given that social and individual identity emerges through social interaction and discursive practices where the role of linguistic processes is fundamental, this paper analyses how Portuguese migrants and their descendants negotiate and contest their cultural and linguistic identity while struggling to maintain their language and traditions in Eastern Massachusetts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the paper "Test-Based Accountability: The Promises and the Perils," by Tom Loveless. Effects of standards on student achievement; Impact of exit exams on students at risk of failing; Factors that make a difference in establishing and maintaining accountability, based on experiences in Massachusetts.