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We investigate two research questions using a recent statewide transition from paper to computer-based testing: first, the extent to which test mode effects found in prior studies can be eliminated; and second, the degree to which online and paper assessments offer different information about underlying student ability. We first find very small mode effects for a more recent transition in Massachusetts. Second, we investigate the predictive evidence of validity for paper and online tests for predictions of future test scores and grades. We generally find minimal differences for the extent to which scores on paper tests can differentially predict future online versus paper test scores. Finally, online and paper test scores are similarly predictive of future grade point average. We conclude that the online test penalty can vary substantially by test and that extreme care should be taken when administering online tests to some students and paper tests to others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article refers to: RETRACTED ARTICLE: Nathan John and David Deuel, Disability in Mission: The Church's Hidden Treasure. (Peabody, Publishers Massachusetts: John Hendrickson, 2019). 167 pp. Paper, $19.95. We, the Author, Editors and Publisher of Journal of Disability & Religion, have retracted the following book review: Sunil Kathramalla (2021) Nathan John and David Deuel, Disability in Mission: The Church's Hidden Treasure. (Peabody, Publishers Massachusetts: John Hendrickson, 2019). 167 pp. Paper, $19.95., Journal of Disability & Religion, DOI: 10.1080/23312521.2021.1901639 The book review was mistakenly published as a duplicate of the below book reviews by the same author, and the author has agreed to retract. Kathramalla, S. (2020), John, Nathan and Deuel, David, eds. Disability in Mission: The Church's Hidden Treasure. Peabody, Massachusetts: John Hendrickson, 2019. 167 pp. International Review of Mission, 109: 144–145. Kathramalla, S. (2019), Disability in Mission: The Church's Hidden Treasure. Asian American Theological Forum, 8. We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions. The retracted book review will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as "Retracted." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to derive minimization algorithms based on the Nesterov accelerated gradient flow [Y. Nesterov, Gradient methods for minimizing composite objective function. Core discussion paper, (2007). Available at ; Y. Nesterov, A method of solving a convex programming problem with convergence rate $ \mathcal {O}(1/k^2) $ O (1 / k 2). In Doklady Akademii Nauk, Vol. 269, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1983, pp. 543–547; Y. Nesterov, Introductory Lectures on Convex Optimization: A basic course, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Massachusetts, 2004.] to compute the ground state of nonlinear Schrödinger equations, which can potentially include a fractional laplacian term. A comparison is developed with standard gradient flow formulations showing that the Nesterov accelerated gradient flow has some interesting properties but at the same time finds also some limitations due to the nature of the problem. A few simulations are finally reported to understand the behaviour of the algorithms and open the path to further complicate questions that require more advanced studies concerning the application of the Nesterov accelerated gradient flow to nonlinear Schrödinger equations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bisphenol A (BPA) is widely used as a color developer in thermal paper. Thermal paper is ubiquitous in daily life due to its use in cash register receipts, so opportunities for human contact abound. For this study, 10 blank cash register receipts were obtained from businesses in suburban Boston. BPA was extracted and analysis of concentration was performed using gas chromatograph/flame ionization detector. In some receipts, BPA was not detected but in others it was as high as 19 mg for a 12-inch long receipt, which is in line with concentrations indicated in patents. This study is intended to highlight the potential for human exposure to BPA as well as the ease with which exposure may be reduced through the use of BPA-free thermal paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents several abstracts of research on specimen mineralogy that were presented at the 30th Rochester Mineralogical Symposium. "Mineralogy of the Kimberlites From New York State," by M. Lupulescu; "Mineralogy of the Hiddenite and Emerald Vein Assemblage, Hiddenite, North Carolina," M. A. Wise, A. J. Anderson and R. L. Isaac; "Diopside From the Atwater Quarry Area, Westfield, Massachusetts," by W. Shelton, G. W. Robinson, D. Burgess and D. Levine.

The article presents titles and abstracts of papers submitted at a meeting held in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1938. The paper "The Sequent Occupance of a Boston Suburban Community," presented by Edward A. Ackerman focuses on areas surrounding the Boston metropolitan district. The proximity of a large city market, plots of level land and fertile soil determine the existence of these suburban fanning communities. The article "The Recession of Victoria Falls," by Wallace W. Atwood. The world famous falls on the Zainbesi have had a strange and remarkable history in recession. The gorge is serpentine with many curious off-shoots, and located on the floor of a broad and much older flat-bottomed valley. Today the water tumbles over a ledge, fully a mile in length, and into a very narrow chasm 350 ft. deep.

Accurately segmenting roads is challenging due to substantial intra-class variations, indistinct inter-class distinctions, and occlusions caused by shadows, trees, and buildings. To address these challenges, it is crucial to simultaneously pay attention to important texture details and perceive global geometric context information. Recent research has shown that CNN-Transformer hybrid structures outperform using CNN or Transformer alone. CNN excels at extracting local detail features and Transformer naturally has the ability to perceive global context information. In this paper, we propose a dual-branch network module called ConSwin, which combines the advantages of ResNet and Swin Transformer for better road information extraction. Taking ConSwin as the basic encoding module, we build an hourglass-shaped network with an encoder-decoder structure. In order to better transfer texture and structural detail information between the encoder and decoder, we also design two novel connection blocks. We conduct comparative experiments on the Massachusetts and CHN6-CUG datasets, and the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of overall accuracy, IOU, and F1 metrics. Other experiments verify the effectiveness of our method, while visualization results demonstrate its ability to obtain better road representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to use eye-tracking emulation software to understand and forecast the human responses to signage and directional cues in Massachusetts, USA. Using eye-tracking emulation software, this study measured the unconscious visual responses people are projected to have to designs and layouts in new built environments, focusing on what makes streets most walkable. The study found differences between the way the brain takes in conventional automobile-oriented residential developments versus new urbanist layouts, with the former lacking key fixation points. The study's discoveries explain why new urbanist layouts promote walking effortlessly and conventional automobile-oriented residential developments cannot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School closings in response to COVID-19 reduced the opportunity for students to engage in all learning including career and technical education (CTE). As a result of the COVID-19 disruption student opportunities for work-based learning and completion of hours required for professional certification was severely reduced. The absence of these experiences had the potential to create disruptions in the skill and experience accumulation for youth and their transition to the labor market. Prior research demonstrated that CTE training and certifications in high school improve earnings and employment outcomes for students, particularly those from marginalized communities. This paper uses administrative data from Massachusetts to investigate whether COVID-19 disruptions differentially influenced outcomes for CTE students relative to non-CTE students. We find graduation rates fell for all students, but students in specialized CTE high schools experienced smaller declines. These smaller differences were apparent for CTE students from lower-income families and those with disabilities. In contrast, students in large cities where the influence of COVID-19 was elevated fared less well, even among CTE participants. In contrast to educational attainment, graduating seniors continued earning industry credentials comparably to pre-COVID-19 rates. This work illuminates how the pandemic disrupted youth transitions to adulthood, particularly in marginalized communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that "The Journal of Experimental Science" hosts a series of papers from presentations given at the Nano Science and Technology Institute (NSTI) Nanotech Conference and Trade Show held in Boston, Massachusetts. The authors of the papers were invited to contribute to the Journal.

Background/Purpose: A growing body of evidence suggests that people who are arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol are more likely to screen positive for psychiatric disorders than the general population. Additionally, psychiatric comorbidity has been shown to increase vulnerability to criminal re-offense. However, DUI programs face many barriers to screening for psychiatric disorders. This paper evaluates the sensitivity and specificity of a screening tool developed for these programs, the Computerized Assessment and Referral System (CARS) Screener. Methods: We used data from 381 DUI offenders in Massachusetts, as well as a secondary data source, the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication (NCS-R: N = 9,282) to examine the accuracy of the CARS Screener when compared to full assessment. Results: Based on both sets of analyses, we found that the CARS Screener offers a sensitive and specific method to screen for many psychiatric disorders. Specifically, the CARS Screener has a high sensitivity and specificity for bipolar disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, depressive disorders, generalized anxiety disorder, alcohol and drug use disorders, gambling disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks, and social phobia. Conclusion: The CARS Screener appears to be an effective tool that will help DUI programs better understand and address the mental health issues facing their clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obtaining near real-time road features is very important in emergent situations like flood and geological disaster cases. Remote sensing images with very high spatial resolution usually have many details in land use and land cover, which complicate the detection and extraction of road features. In this paper, we propose a deep residual deconvolutional network (Deep ResDCLnet), to extract road features from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) images. This proposed network is based on the deep neural network from SegNet architecture, the rich skip connection in a residual bottleneck, and the direct relationship among intermediate feature maps from the pixel deconvolution algorithm. It can improve the performance of a supervised learning model by differentiating and extracting complex road features on aerial photographs and UAV imagery. The proposed network is evaluated with the standard public Massachusetts road dataset and the UAV dataset collected alongside Yangtze River, and is compared with four state-of-art network architectures. The results show that the Deep ResDCLnet outperforms all four networks in terms of extraction accuracy, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the network in road extraction from very high spatial resolution imagery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the experience of the librarians at the Simmons College Libraries in Boston, Massachusetts as they integrated active learning strategies into the library instruction program for first year students. Library tour; Game of library jeopardy; Participation in the research process during workshops; Measurement of the success of the program through anecdotal evidence and reviews of student's research paper bibliographies.

The Massachusetts experience of health care reform before the Affordable Care Act of 2010 reveals a moral economy of care in which expanded access was met by neoliberal demands for accountability and cost control. Publicly subsidized health insurance programs in the U.S. are deeply concerned with managing and regulating low-income residents’ access to and coverage for medications. By focusing our attention on the new forms of social relations invoked by specific techniques of governing, analyses of accountability can help us understand the ways in which subjectivities are shaped through their encounters with overarching social and economic structures. This paper presents qualitative findings from a four-year, prospective study that combined two waves of survey and chart-based data collection with four qualitative methods. Medicaid patients are made accountable to their medication regimens as they must track their supply and obtain refills promptly; regular blood tests carried out by health care providers verify their adherence. Both patients and their physicians are subject to cost savings measures such as changing lists of covered medications. Finally, patients struggle to pay ever-increasing out-of-pocket costs for their medications, expenses which may keep patients from taking their medications as prescribed. The fraught relationship between trust, accountability, and verification finds emphatic expression in the moral economy of health care, where the vulnerability of the sick and their hope for a cure confront policies designed to hold down costs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

ObjctivesSelf-rated health (SRH) is an important indicator of overall health, predicting morbidity and mortality. This paper investigates what individuals incorporate into their self-assessments of health and how acculturation plays a part in this assessment. The relationship of acculturation to SRH and whether it moderates the association between indicators of health and SRH is also examined. DesignThe paper is based on data from adults in the Boston Puerto Rican Health Study, living in the greater Boston area (n=1357) mean age 57.2 (SD = 7.6). We used multiple regression analysis and testing for moderation effects. ResultsThe strongest predictors of poor SRH were the number of existing medical conditions, functional problems, allostatic load and depressive symptoms. Poor SRH was also associated with being female, fewer years of education, heavy alcohol use, smoking, poverty, and low emotional support. More acculturated Puerto Rican adults rated their health more positively, which corresponded to better indicators of physical and psychological health. Additionally, acculturation moderated the association between some indicators of morbidity (functional status and depressive symptoms) and SRH.Self-assessments of overall health integrate diverse indicators, including psychological symptoms, functional status and objective health indicators such as chronic conditions and allostatic load. However, adults' assessments of overall health differed by acculturation, which moderated the association between health indicators and SRH. The data suggest that when in poor health, those less acculturated may understate the severity of their health problems when rating their overall health, thus SRH might thus conceal disparities. Using SRH can have implications for assessing health disparities in this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban restructuring policies have uprooted residents and dismantled communities. Previous studies focus on housing redevelopment that minimizes the fraction of housing units left for poor residents and on interviewing residents only once the redevelopment has been announced. By contrast, this paper examines how residents over time experienced the HOPE VI redevelopment of the Orchard Park public housing project in Boston, which sought to preserve a low-income community. Using official records and a unique set of interviews with residents before and after redevelopment, we find marked declines in crime and increased residential satisfaction, which are attributed to changes in tenant composition. The redevelopment process reduced the total number of public housing units yet maintained the vast majority of housing for poor families while creating a new social mix. The findings suggest that to more fully capture the impacts of restructuring, existing theory must be expanded to consider who is displaced and how poverty is deconcentrated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores changes to the educational policy-making arena through case study analysis of a Massachusetts law passed in 2012 that limits seniority-based job protections for public K-12 teachers. I use data from interviews with policy stakeholders, observations of public meetings, and policy artifacts to explore struggles over democratic engagement in what unfolded as a highly undemocratic policy development process. Using the policy cycle framework, I explore the ways that political pressure and political discourses shaped the policy development process through various contexts of political struggle. Ultimately, I argue that the case is indicative of what I am calling ‘neo-democratic’ decision-making, in which high-level interest group conflict leads to narrow forms of democratic engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses an intractable problem: how to energy-upgrade the existing residential housing stock on a large scale, potentially saving up to 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions? The paper focuses on the USA, with a case study in Worcester, Massachusetts. To address this problem we conceptualise the residential housing stock as a socio-technical system, with as main elements technology, professional knowledge and know-how, formal institutions, markets and the key actors within each. The analysis demonstrates the interconnectedness of the elements and sub-elements of the system, the need to affect change in all of them, identifies homeowners (consumers) and local authorities as the most difficult to change, and suggests that both technological and social innovation – including grassroots activism and multistakeholder collaboration – is needed. We conceptualise housing retrofitting projects as small-scale niche experiments and as grassroots innovations. In this paper we describe an experiment in Worcester, Massachusetts, in which the vision of the project – as community development – was produced by a coalition (WoHEC) of many local actors. This project illustrates both the potentials of our proposed framework in terms of grassroots innovations and socio-technical experiments and its limitations: learning among stakeholders is often slow and ineffective. More research is needed to refine the conceptual framework and to make it applicable to both grassroots innovations and municipal projects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A number of nations are actively exploring the option of a hydrogen economy to help address some of the energy issues facing the world today. One method of hydrogen generation under consideration in several countries is through the use of nuclear power. The American Nuclear Society Embedded Topical Meeting on Safety and Technology of Nuclear Hydrogen Production, Control, and Management (ST-NH2) held in Boston, Massachusetts, in June 2007 included a panel session entitled "An International Overview of Nuclear Hydrogen Production Programs." Speakers in this session highlighted some of the similarities and differences in national approaches, including technologies being targeted and strategies being planned for moving to a hydrogen economy. This paper summarizes the papers presented by the seven speakers on the panel and highlights some of the key similarities and differences discussed in the session. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers an interpretation of the 43 painted emblems found in a small panelled closet at Hawstead Hall in Suffolk, Virginia and was removed and transferred to Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1612. The paper first analyses the 43 painted emblems based on sources from both within and beyond the emblem tradition. It then combines the analysis to offer a renewed perspective upon the function of the room where it was placed. The paper also suggests that the images in the emblems encouraged meditation upon discrepancies and oppositions between appearance and reality, between outward surfaces and inward natures.

The Boston Change Process Study Group (BCPSG) has consistently and incisively explicated child development literature in its relationship to a theory of change in adult psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. This paper assesses some central aspects of their work. We highlight several themes that we believe are relevant to the issues that the BCPSG has raised. As a main point we note the manner in which the BCPSG bifurcates theoretical models. We maintain that this type of bifurcation is not justified by the data they cite. After summarizing their assumptions, we examine some of the empirical evidence that they mention and contend that this evidence can be interpreted in several different ways. We try to show that the infant research they cite supports a contemporary Freudian position as well the position advocated by the BCPSG. We offer a model that we believe reflects greater continuity in theoretical and clinical concepts. In this paper we also offer a critique of a clinical case the BCPSG has stated illustrates their theoretical-clinical principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic studies of HIV/AIDS interventions are important for providing cost-effective care. This paper presents a costeffectiveness study of a three-arm clinical trial conducted at Tufts University School of Medicine/New England Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts that treated 50 patients with AIDS wasting from March 1998 through January 2001. This study compared the costs and impacts of a nutritional counseling intervention alone (NC arm), the nutrition intervention with oxandrolone (OX arm), and the nutrition intervention with progressive resistance training (PRTarm) for the treatment of AIDS wasting. The cost of each intervention was derived for both the three-month clinical trial and a six-month estimated community model (ECM), its projected adaptation to community-based medical care. The cost determination involved obtaining and multiplying unit economic costs and quantities expended of each resource within each study arm. The ECM average cost per client in the cost-effectiveness analysis incorporated both institutional and societal perspectives. The costeffectiveness analysis compared the cost of each intervention to its quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gain (Zeckhauser and Shepard, 1976). From a societal perspective, for the NC arm, the cost per client totaled $983 for the actual and $596 under the ECM. For the OX arm, the cost per client totaled $3,772 for the actual study and $3,385 under the ECM. For the PRT arm, the cost per client totaled $3,189 for the actual study and $2,987 under the ECM. Under the societal perspective the cost per QALY was $55,000 (range: $51,000 to $83,000) for the NC arm, $151,000 (range: $149,000 to $171,000) for the OX arm, and $65,000 (range: $44,000 to $104,000) for the PRTarm. When using only an institutional perspective, the cost per QALY was $45,000 (range: $42,000-$64,000) for the NC arm, $147,000 (range: $147,000 to $163,000) for the OX arm, and $31,000 ($21,000 to $44,000) for the PRTarm. This paper shows that cost and cost-effectiveness analyses can be adapted to a community setting by combining information from community practice and costs with data from a randomized trial. Compared to other AIDS treatments, such as highly active antiretroviral therapies, all three interventions were affordable, but their cost-effectiveness was intermediate. Oxandrolone was the least cost effective of the interventions, even compared to nutrition alone, as it included similar or somewhat greater costs for less of an increase in quality of life. PRT was the most cost-effective treatment for AIDS wasting, particularly from an institutional perspective. Third party payers should consider coverage of PRT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been demonstrated that engagement and retention are key components for the delivery of successful health care for HI V-positive individuals. Many social workers are often frustrated with the difficulty in forming and maintaining sup- port groups; however, some providers have greater success. This paper illustrates and discusses an innovative support group for HI V-positive women in central Massachusetts. The purpose of this paper is to describe the context, formation, and functioning of the group,followed by a deconstruction analysis. In addition, the paper will build on this innovative method of support group work by suggesting ad- ditional women-engaging themes, activities, and tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a conceptual critique of 'smart growth', an increasingly popular urban redevelopment strategy, as an economic development policy. It seeks to do this in two ways. First, an argument is made for how the smart growth movement is linked to more broad discourses of economic development. Second, through an urban political ecology analysis, it is suggested that smart growth, through the lens of the environment, reveals an uneven distribution of benefits among people affected by smart growth developments. This is because smart growth itself is embedded in a particular historical construction of environment. To explore these issues the author focuses on the Blackstone River and Canal, the site of a new smart growth development, in New England's third largest city of Worcester, Massachusetts. The Blackstone case presented here is exemplary in that it so clearly reflects the evolution of regional capitalist development, including the current one. Moreover, these periods, once past, are not relegated to the dustbins of history; rather they inform the next round of development. The case study below will thus reveal how these histories have, circuitously, played a role in the rationalization for the redevelopment of the canal as a smart growth project as well as elucidate the implications for the winners and losers of smart growth. The paper concludes with some thoughts on how we might, in practical terms, unlock the progressive potential of this development paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines some instructional practices concerning the non-optimal uses of video, films and other mass media in the K–12 classroom. Based on a six-year process of observing and interviewing teachers regularly in two school districts in Massachusetts, USA, this paper presents a typology of seven common patterns of non-optimal media use, instructional practices that diminish or weaken the value of film and video viewing as a learning tool. A telephone survey was conducted with a purposive sample of 130 middle-school and high-school teachers to provide additional evidence concerning teacher perceptions of the frequency of their colleagues' non-optimal use of video. Teachers in the USA report that their colleagues frequently use media for non-educational purposes, including to fill time, to keep students quiet, as a break from learning, or as a reward for good behavior. The implications of non-optimal media use are considered in light of renewed interest in integrating media literacy into K–12 instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1998, when University College Northampton (UCN) selected WebBoard as its campus-wide virtual learning environment (VLE) and encouraged its adoption, e-learning became a central feature of the French Department's learning and teaching strategy. By September 2003, all the campus-focused modules in French had become VLE-resourced. In April 2004, we conducted a paper-based survey to measure our students' views on (1) ‘e-novation’ in general; and (2) computer-assisted language testing (CALT) in particular, with a view to (1) evaluating the French Department's e-ffectiveness; and (2) making student-informed decisions for 2004–2005. This paper concerns itself, initially, with the origins of e-learning in our French Department, the latter's evolving range of web-based learning offerings as well as the educational principles underpinning our e-learning strategy. It then presents selected results of our investigation and offers some tentative conclusions with regard to ‘e-ffectiveness’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predominant approaches to teen pregnancy focus on decreasing numbers of teen mothers, babies born to them, and state dollars spent to support their families. This overshadows the structural violence interwoven into daily existence for these young parents. This paper argues for the increased use of participatory visual methods to compliment traditional research methods in shifting notions of what counts as evidence in response to teen pregnancy and parenting. We present the methods and results from a body mapping workshop as part of ‘Hear Our Stories: Diasporic Youth for Sexual Rights and Justice’, a project that examines structural barriers faced by young parenting Latinas and seeks to develop relevant messaging and programming to support and engage youth. Body mapping, as an engaging, innovative participatory visual methodology, involves young parenting women and other marginalised populations in drawing out a deeper understanding of sexual health inequities. Our findings highlight the ways body mapping elicitsbodies as evidenceto understand young motherhood and wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the extent adult day care services and adult protective services overlap in meeting the needs of chronically ill adults. Utilizing content analysis and a case study approach, the problems and progress of five patients admitted to an adult day care program in western Massachusetts are examined in relationship to admission criteria for both programs. Analysis reveals a need for a range of day care models. The paper also cites duplication of effort by health and social service programs in case management responsibilities and proposes a "responsibility sharing" service coordination model which may benefit communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America in Cambridge, Massachusetts was founded in 1943 when Radcliffe College, Cambridge, accepted the Woman's Rights Collection (WRC) . The WRC documents several woman's suffrage organizations and includes the papers of Maud Wood Park and other women active in the women rights movement. But it does not end with 1920, the year the federal suffrage amendment was ratified, and it includes the library's first labor collection, papers of Frances Perkins, U.S. Secretary of Labor, 1933-45, and the first woman in the Cabinet. Thus despite the emphasis on suffrage and women's political and legal rights, labor issues, from the beginning have been an integral part of the Schlesinger Library. At about the time the WRC arrived at Radcliffe, president Wilbur K. Jordan and Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, of the Harvard University's history department decided to make it the centerpiece of a growing research library on women, rather than a static memorial to the suffrage movement. Soon after, in December 1945, another major labor collection arrived, the papers of Leonora O'Reilly. O'Reilly's papers make up one major series in the micropublication, "The Papers of the Women's Trade Union League and Its Principal Leaders," a project sponsored by the Schlesinger Library, edited by Edward T. James, and published by Research Publications Inc. in 1981.

Allis Rosenberg Wolfe's publication of five "Letters of a Lowell Mill Girl and Friends: 1845-1846," represents an important contribution to the study of the New England factory women. These letters, sent to the 22 year-old Harriet Hanson by her friends Maria and Lura Currier and H.E. Back and now in the Harriet Hanson Robinson papers in the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, are among the only surviving manuscript materials that document the perceptions of the Yankee mill women of the 1840's. The following remarks are designed to clarify and extend our understanding of the letters' contents, now that they have at last been made more accessible. Wolfe publishes perhaps two-thirds of the letters, an unfortunate if possibly necessary, for reasons of space editing of such rare documents. The portions retained are well chosen, but the general character of the letters is inevitably blurred. In short, all five letters in the Robinson papers must be seen as representing the complex experience of those mill women who went back and forth between factory town and rural community.

Text-to-speech options on augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices are limited. Often, several individuals in a group setting use the same synthetic voice. This lack of customization may limit technology adoption and social integration. This paper describes our efforts to generate personalized synthesis for users with profoundly limited speech motor control. Existing voice banking and voice conversion techniques rely on recordings of clearly articulated speech from the target talker, which cannot be obtained from this population. Our VocaliD approach extracts prosodic properties from the target talker's source function and applies these features to a surrogate talker's database, generating a synthetic voice with the vocal identity of the target talker and the clarity of the surrogate talker. Promising intelligibility results suggest areas of further development for improved personalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Diagnostic assessment, prognosis and treatment monitoring in patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) rest largely on behaviorally-based procedures. This approach can lead to misdiagnosis, inaccurate outcome prediction and inappropriate judgements regarding the effectiveness of treatment interventions. Concurrent transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) may provide a biological measure of conscious awareness, aid clinicians in clinical decision-making and provide a treatment alternative for DoC. Study: This paper reviews the use of TMS and fMRI in the assessment of patients with DoC and suggests potential applications for concurrent use of these procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Boston Greenway is an imposing urban regeneration programme in the centre of Boston, which is now free from the heavy road infrastucture of the early 1960s, and is considered against the backdrop of the planning system in the US. The paper focuses on the regulatory framework set forth by the Boston Zoning Code and the Greenway Guidelines in order to manage the process at its different stages, stressing relevant issues related to policy making and community involvement throughout. Despite general regulations and specific morphological rules, form and density issues prove unstable under market pressure, which is ultimately the engine shaping the Greenway. Discretion and transparency inflect the strategic approach in an original way in comparison to the European case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes activities at the Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics in the years 1963–1970, during which I was a participating member. Among them I and my collaborators conducted some of the earliest experiments in the development and application of GIS. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the role of place in the reform efforts of two teachers who established Miss White's Home School in Concord, Massachusetts (USA). Flora and Mary White rebelled against the prevailing industrial model of instruction in tax-supported schools where they taught. As a solution, they moved to Concord a nonconformist town with a literary and historical heritage where they founded a private day and boarding school within the child-centred ideals of progressive education. Their experience, and the link between school and town, highlight the significance of the writing of Edward Casey, Doreen Massey, and bell hooks on the role of place in the search for identity and the relationship between place and home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines web-based three-dimensional immersive technologies in the context of collaborative rationality combining Habermas' ideal speech conditions with insights from Dewey and complexity science to form the approach: diversity, interdependence, authentic dialogue. This provides a theoretical basis for examining the role of advanced web-based technologies in the collaborative planning process. The open neighbourhood approach and the program Second Life were employed to introduce immersive technology in a planning process by a Tufts University team working in collaboration with officials in the Town of Acton. The findings suggest that, designed correctly, web-based three-dimensional tools can foster collaboration and facilitate negotiated agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: In 2002, voters in Massachusetts and Colorado faced identical ballot initiatives to remove bilingual education programs from the public schools. The measure passed in Massachusetts and failed in Colorado. This paper investigates the debates over the issue in these two states. It provides insight into how people reason with respect to minority politics. It also helps to make sense of the states’ divergent outcomes. Content analysis of letters-to-the-editor reveals that voters are motivated by ethnic competition and fiscal concerns, as existing theories would predict. Additionally, citizens debate which kinds of programs work best for English learners and take stands on how these youngsters can be successful in life. The inter-state comparison reveals that a major factor distinguishing the two statewide debates was ethnic paternalism, a logic often used by members of ethnic majorities to justify restrictive policy decisions on the basis of what they think is best for the affected population. The analysis shows that themes related to doing what is best for English learners were significantly more salient in Massachusetts than Colorado. This finding implies that where public debate over this issue is framed in terms of helping minority youth, the fate of bilingual education is not secure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Information about several papers discusses at the International COPD Genetics Consortium held in Boston, Massachusetts from July 13 to 14, 2010 is presented. Topics included the genomic technology and techniques for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The event featured several physicians including Wayne Anderson.

This paper deals with aging of a remarkable woman from Florida, Wilma E. Davis. After ministering in the Methodist church for over 30 years as the first ordained Methodist minister in the state of Florida, Davis retired and began a PhD program at Boston University at the age of 63. Davis completed her PhD at the age of 68. The pursuit of her education took her to the Middle East where she studied for a year at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem and participated in archaeological digs. Davis will forever remain an educational tribute to the vision and leadership she exhibited in everything she nobly undertook over the 102 years of her fruitful, intriguing, and fascinating life. [image omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Articulating the 'magic' of the child treatment process has confounded clinicians for years. The work of the Boston Change Process Study Group has contributed to the beginnings of our understandings and articulation of the nonverbally articulated processes in reatment: the 'something more'. The child papers under discussion are considered in light of the contributions of the BSG. This discussion focuses on emergent transformative moments in the dyadic, bidirectional and interactively regulated treatment process between child patient and adult analyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the motivations of men and women who entered into mass tort litigation against the Catholic Church, primarily the Archdiocese of Boston, which alleged clergy sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests. The study is based on in-depth interviews with adult survivors of sexual abuse (perpetrated against boys and girls), and with their attorneys and other legal advocates. We explore the challenges faced by survivor-litigants, as well as their accounts of the subjective experience and meaning of litigation. Our focus is on clarifying petitioners' multiple objectives and illuminating some of the unanticipated ways in which participation in the case offered possibilities for positive, even transformative, outcomes. The study contributes to our understanding of the course and effects of litigation from the perspective of the litigants, and has important implications for the theoretical literature on the transformation of disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recently developed laser spectroscopic instrument allows real-time continuous measurements of the stable isotopologues of carbon dioxide at ambient concentrations. This compact instrument offers sufficient precision (0.2 ‰ in 1 s, 0.02 ‰ in 60 s) and stability (drift in 1 h of<0.2 ‰), to allow isotopic studies on a variety of timescales and to study a variety of processes. During the development of the instrument, a prototype was set up to sample ambient air nearly continuously for more than 10 months, in a heterogeneous urban area northwest of Boston, MA. During this long sampling experiment, we continued to improve and modify the instrument and sampling system. In this paper, we present data collected during that long sampling experiment in order to demonstrate some of the possibilities provided by such real-time continuous monitoring. We have observed distinct isotopic signatures in CO2 variations from timescales of seconds to seasons. We also present a method of performing continuous Keeling regressions on a cascade of timescales and show some results in application of that method to the continuous sampling data set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on several papers on Object Perception, Attention, and Memory (OPAM) discussed at the Conference held in the Annual Meeting at Boston, Massachusetts. It discusses that the attention capture experiments deviate from the magnitude of capture effects. It states that the ability of human being to segregate objects from each other is a fundamental perceptual mechanism. The Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is a system which keep the visual information in short delays.

Problem: Over the past several decades, inclusionary zoning (IZ) has become an increasingly popular, but sometimes controversial, local means of producing affordable housing without direct public subsidy. The conversation about IZ has thus far largely ignored variations in the structure of IZ policies, although these variations can impact the amount of affordable housing produced and the effects of IZ on production and prices of market rate housing. Purpose: We provide a detailed comparison of the ways in which IZ programs have been structured in the San Francisco and Washington metropolitan areas and in suburban Boston. Methods: We create a unique dataset on IZ in these three regions by combining original data collected from several previous surveys. We use these data to compare the prevalence, structure, and affordable housing output of local IZ programs. Results and conclusions: In the San Francisco Bay Area, IZ programs tend to be mandatory and apply broadly across locations and structure types, while including cost offsets and alternatives to onsite construction. In the Washington, DC, area, most IZ programs are also mandatory, but have broader exemptions for small developments and low-density housing. IZ programs in the Boston suburbs exhibit the most heterogeneity. They are more likely to be voluntary and to apply only to a narrow range of developments, such as multifamily housing, or within certain zoning districts. The amount of affordable housing produced under IZ varies considerably, both within and across the regions. There is some evidence that IZ programs that grant density bonuses and exempt smaller projects produce more affordable housing. Takeaway for practice: Although variation in IZ program structures makes it hard to predict effectiveness, IZ's adaptability to local circumstances makes it a particularly attractive policy tool. IZ programs can easily be tailored to accommodate specific policy goals, housing market conditions, and residents' preferences, as well as variations in state or local regulatory and political environments. Research support: This article is adapted from a longer working paper written with financial support from the Center for Housing Policy, the research affiliate of the National Housing Conference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neil Brenner argues that contemporary scholarship often neglects the changing contexts of regionalism and thus overstates the possibilities for organizing new political responses to changing economic conditions. Drawing on Brenner's analysis, this paper examines the politics of regionalism in Greater Boston, a metropolitan area where state government plays the dominant role in policymaking. It examines how state elected officials have responded to the region's volatile economic context, and in particular how they have attempted to enhance the region's competitive advantage through tax cuts, deregulation and downsizing government. Their successes, however, have complicated efforts to reform local land use regulation, an issue increasingly seen as central to the region's economic future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual chat services represent an exciting way to provide patrons of medical libraries with instant reference help in an academic environment. The purpose of this article is to examine the implementation, marketing process, use, and development of a virtual reference service initiated at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and its three-campus libraries. In addition, this paper will discuss practical recommendations for the future improvement of the service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Redevelopment of urban sites is an ongoing concern for many communities in the industrial Northeast United States. While many mill sites still languish, examples of successful revitalization can be found. Most of these efforts require more than market conditions to make them viable. Partnerships between developers and the community and state are seen to be crucial. These public-private partnerships come in many forms, not always monetary. The detail and effectiveness of these partnerships often depend on the experience and expertise of developers and community professionals. Given that many of these communities have limited staff, agreements are often made quickly with a rather short-term perspective. This often leads to either side (most often the municipal side) not fully benefiting in terms of long-term impacts. Longitudinal studies to examine impacts over time are helping understand the complexities of these agreements and offer transferable lessons. This paper, a case study of public-private investment in an old mill complex located in Maynard, Massachusetts that was vacated in 1993, is intended to help communities consider those costs and benefits. It discusses the historical significance of the mill to the town, examines the rationale for investors to purchase the mill and their intentions in revitalizing the structures, describes the public-private agreements that were undertaken, analyzes the immediate impact of the resulting agreements, and examines the impact over the years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twice a year, the National Library of Medicine and Marine Biological Laboratory co-sponsor a fellowship in Biomedical Informatics for librarians, clinicians, and other health professionals in Woods Hole, MA. The fellowship is designed to inspire participants to become "agents of change" at their institution and to broaden their scope of knowledge for biomedical informatics. This paper discusses the field of biomedical informatics and explores the results of an informal survey from the librarians who participated in the fall session of 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EBSCO Publishing is an innovative company that has its roots in paper publishing. It now produces hundreds of online resources in a state-of-the-art facility located along the banks of the Ipswich River in Massachusetts. Considerable work occurs behind the scenes in Ipswich (and around the world) to produce the online databases in EBSCOhost that appear to the user at the click of a mouse. Jennifer Carroll toured the headquarters in Ipswich to learn about the processes that make these valuable resources available. Serials Review 2007; 33:145-148. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All right reserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]