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Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) is a challenging task due to the complex structures and variations present in handwritten text. In recent years, the application of gated mechanisms, such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, has brought significant advancements to HTR systems. This paper presents an overview of HTR using a gated mechanism and highlights its novelty and advantages. The gated mechanism enables the model to capture long-term dependencies, retain relevant context, handle variable length sequences, mitigate error propagation, and adapt to contextual variations. The pipeline involves preprocessing the handwritten text images, extracting features, modeling the sequential dependencies using the gated mechanism, and decoding the output into readable text. The training process utilizes annotated datasets and optimization techniques to minimize transcription discrepancies. HTR using a gated mechanism has found applications in digitizing historical documents, automatic form processing, and real-time transcription. The results show improved accuracy and robustness compared to traditional HTR approaches. The advancements in HTR using a gated mechanism open up new possibilities for effectively recognizing and transcribing handwritten text in various domains. This research does a better job than the most recent iteration of the HTR system when compared to five different handwritten datasets (Washington, Saint Gall, RIMES, Bentham and IAM). Smartphones and robots are examples of low-cost computing devices that can benefit from this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has demonstrated children in out-of-home care have experienced trauma and a significant proportion are in need of behavioral health services (e.g. Casaneuva et al., NSCAW II baseline report: Child well-being, US Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC, 2011). Accessing services requires interagency coordination between child welfare and behavioral health professionals; however, challenges to coordination and collaboration may result in lack of service utilization for many youth (Hanson et al. 2016). Utilizing a mixed methodological approach, this paper describes the results of a study conducted five years after full state-wide implementation of processes designed to promote the use of evidence-based practices to inform decision-making for youth dually served by the child welfare and behavioral health systems. Outcomes from the study were used to develop strategies to address programmatic concerns and reinforce implementation supports. Study findings may aid organizations seeking to reinforce data-informed practices and employ strategies for addressing barriers at the worker and agency level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pioneering work of Getis and Ord on local spatial statistics has a counterpart in spatial econometrics in treating spatial heterogeneity. This can be approached from a continuous or a discrete perspective. In a discrete perspective, referred to as spatial regimes, the coefficients vary by discrete subregions of the data. Whereas the estimation of spatial regime regressions is well understood, the delineation of the regimes themselves remains a topic of active interest. Generally speaking, two broad classes of methods can be distinguished, one in which the delineation is carried out separately from the coefficient estimation and one where the two are tightly integrated. Tightly integrated approaches are referred to as endogenous spatial regimes. A number of different methods have been suggested in the literature, including finite mixture models, GWR-based methods, and penalized regression. One drawback of regime delineation is that the results do not necessarily satisfy a spatial contiguity constraint, i.e., observations are grouped despite not being spatially connected. In this paper, we outline a heuristic to determine the spatial regimes endogenously, as an extension of the well-known SKATER algorithm for spatially constrained clustering. This guarantees that the resulting regimes consist of contiguous observations. We outline the method and apply it in the context of the determination of housing submarkets, which is represented by rich literature in applied spatial econometrics. We use a well-known Kaggle data set as the empirical example, which contains observations on house sales in King County, Washington. We compare the estimation of a hedonic house price model using the endogenous spatial regimes approach to a range of more traditional methods, including pooled regression, the use of administrative districts, data-driven regimes based on a-spatial and spatial clustering of explanatory variables, and finite mixture regression. We evaluate the results in terms of fit and assess the trade-offs between the spatial and a-spatial approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neighborhood parks are important venues to support moderate-to-vigorous (MVPA) activity. There has been a noticeable increase promoting physical activity among youth in neighborhood parks. This paper aims to assess the association between park use and MVPA among low-income youth in a large urban area. We recruited a cohort of 434 youth participants during the COVID pandemic years (2020–2022) from low-income households in Washington, D.C. We collected multiple data components: accelerometry, survey, and electronic health record data. We explored the bivariate relationship between the accelerometer-measured daily MVPA time outcome and survey-based park use measures. A mixed-effect model was fitted to adjust the effect estimate for participant-level and time-varying confounders. The overall average daily MVPA time is 16.0 min (SD = 12.7). The unadjusted bivariate relation between daily MVPA time and frequency of park visit is 1.3 min of daily MVPA time per one day with park visits (p < 0.0001). The model-adjusted estimate is 0.7 daily MVPA minutes for 1 day with park visit (p = 0.04). The duration of a typical park visit is not a significant predictor to daily MVPA time with or without adjustments. The initial COVID outbreak in 2020 resulted in a significant decline in daily MVPA time (− 4.7 min for 2020 versus 2022, p < 0.0001). Park visit frequency is a significant predictor to low-income youth's daily MVPA time with considerable absolute effect sizes compared with other barriers and facilitators. Promoting more frequent park use may be a useful means to improve low-income youth's MVPA outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The NoMA Business Improvement District (BID) is one of Washington DC's fastest developing areas and has one of the city's largest concentrations of unhoused tent camps, many of which are located in underpasses that provide bits of protection and privacy. These underpasses were created during DC's City Beautiful Movement and have been the site of neoliberal antihomeless strategies. In this paper I explore the production of space in the NoMA area and how property owners, business associations, and government actors sanitized public space for wealthy newcomers while excluding poor and unhoused residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, state-funded preschool is a critical component of both K-12 public education and the early childhood education and care system. In 2021, 44 states and the District of Columbia operated 63 school/center-based preschool programs serving over 1.3 million children. The vast majority of state-funded preschool programs require two adults in each classroom: typically, a lead teacher and an assistant teacher, with an expectation for team teaching. This paper examines the trends and variations in state policies that address the qualifications requirements, compensation, and professional development supports for preschool lead and assistant teachers in state-funded preschool programs that provide a foundation for supporting a culture of collective success and potential quality of the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hyperspectral image (HSI) super-resolution reconstruction has attracted much attention and been used widely in various study fields due to its low requirements on hardware in practice. However, most of the hyperspectral image super-resolution reconstruction studies apply one strategy for images with varying complexity of spatial information. This is not conducive to the improvement of Image processing efficiency and the extraction of complex details. Given the above, a new method named MSDESR (multilevel streams and detail enhancement) is proposed to reconstruct HSI by using partition reconstruction and detail enhancement. The MSDESR consists of a sub-map shunt block, a high-low-frequency information extraction with detail enhancement block, and a partition image reconstruction block. Firstly, the sub-map shunt block is designed to pre-classify hyperspectral images. The images are divided into complex and simple parts according to the spatial information distribution of the reconstructed sub-map. Secondly, the multiscale Retinex with detail enhancement algorithm is constructed to purify high-frequency noise-contaminated and enhance the image details by separating the samples into high- and low-frequency information. Finally, branching networks of different complexities are designed to reconstruct the images with high credibility and clear content. In this paper, datasets of QUST-1, Pavia University, Chikusei, the Washington DC Mal and XiongAn are applied in the experiments. The results show that MSDESR outperforms state-of-the-art CNN-based methods in terms of quantitative metrics, visual quality, and computational effort, with a 4.18% and 9.35% improvement in SRE and MPSNR metrics, and a 37% saving in FLOPs. Overall, the MSDESR performs well in hyperspectral image super-resolution reconstruction, which is time saving and preserves the details of spatial information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate forecasting of soil moisture (SM) is crucial for managing the irrigation demands effectively. The dynamics of SM is largely controlled by interaction between land and atmosphere. As an alternate to physics based models, the machine learning based tools have been shown to yield better accuracy in forecasting SM. However, the complexity in the process that controls SM at largely varying scale (from small size porous media to continental level climate) influence the forecast to have uncertainty. Hence, this paper aims at developing a modelling framework for forecasting daily SM up to 5 days lead time along with associated uncertainty. In this modeling, the uncertainty in initial point estimates of artificial neural network (ANN) parameters are re-estimated in a probabilistic framework using Particle filter. In order to reduce the high dimensionality of such problems, most sensitive parameters of the ANN model were identified through Sobol's sensitivity analysis. The SM and weather data collected from the R.J. Cook Agronomy Farm experimental field near Pullman, Washington, USA were used to demonstrate the proposed method. The overall results of the models were highly encouraging in terms of having a Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency of more than 0.90 in calibration and validation. Further, the parametric uncertainty of ANN model parameters have helped quantifying the uncertainty in the SM forecast and found within acceptable limits. The proposed framework, in turn, helped providing useful information when the models are used in decision making supported with associated uncertainty information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines to what extent household surveys and censuses in low- and middle-income countries include disability questions and the types of questions under use. We found that only 31% of 734 datasets between 2009 and 2018 from 133 low- and middle-income countries have at least one disability-related question. Of the surveys reviewed, 15% of the datasets have functional difficulty questions that meet international standards, i.e. Washington Group short set or other functional difficulty questions. Meanwhile, the most asked disability question "Do you have a disability?" is problematic as it does not produce meaningful and internationally comparable data. We recommend the adoption of functional difficulty questions for all surveys and censuses to track the progress of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as well as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jorge Cervantes Castro, MD, FACS (Hon.2006) passed away on May 28, 2021, at the age of 83 years. He graduated from medical school at the National Autonomous Mexican University (UNAM) and did his residency in general and vascular surgery at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. After completing his surgical training, he returned to Mexico City and established his practice at the American British Cowdray Medical Center (ABC Hospital). He was a professor of surgery for hundreds of surgical residents for over 50 years, author of over 240 surgical papers and 52 book chapters, and member of the editorial board of seven medical journals. He is the author of four surgical training books, one on "Iatrogenia in surgery" and the others on vanguard techniques for laparoscopic surgery. For his Juris Doctor degree obtained from UNAM in 2016, his thesis was on the "Legal implications of the professional title of medical surgeon" in which he emphasizes the legal need to change the professional degree conferred to Mexican medical graduates. A global ambassador of surgery, he was an active member of over 30 surgical societies, including the American College of Surgeons (ACS), the International Federation of Societies of Endoscopic Surgeons (IFSES), the International Society of Surgery (ISS; Hon.2009), and president of the Mexican chapter of the Latin American Federation of Surgery (FELAC), of which he also became honorary fellow. Among other accomplishments, he was one of the founding members of the Mexican Society of General Surgery, president of the Mexican Board of Surgery, distinguished member of the Mexican Academy of Surgery, and member of the editorial board of the World Journal of Surgery (1995-2004). He is survived by his one true and lifelong love Lucero, his wife of 57+ years, and by his children Jorge, Lucero, Arturo, Ignacio, and Pablo, 13 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many practical problems, such as computer science, communications network, product design, system control, statistics and finance, etc.,can be formulated as a probabilistic constrained optimization problem (PCOP) which is challenging to solve since it is usually nonconvex and nonsmooth. Effective methods for the probabilistic constrained optimization problem mostly focus on approximation techniques, such as convex approximation, D.C. (difference of two convex functions) approximation, and so on. This paper aims at studying a smooth approximation approach. A smooth approximation to the probabilistic constraint function based on a sigmoid function is analyzed. Equivalence of PCOP and the corresponding approximation problem are shown under some appropriate assumptions. Sequential convex approximation (SCA) algorithm is implemented to solve the smooth approximation problem. Numerical results suggest that the smooth approximation approach proposed is effective for optimization problems with probabilistic constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geomorphological analysis of landslide processes in mountainous terrains with difficult access has benefited from virtual representation of topography through the use of high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) generated by use of light detecting and ranging. Generic models of overlay and interpolation take advantage of the high-resolution DEMs for volume calculation. However, the advantages and limitations of the models at regional scale have received scant attention. These challenges are magnified in landslide hazard zonation mapping projects at state or national level, where the models need to be implemented for large datasets. To address the above deficiency, this paper presents a means to estimate landslide volume production and distribution by taking full advantage of LiDAR and to standardize landslide volume calculation in a geographic information system (GIS). We implemented two generic landslide volume models by using Python scripts; this is a systematic methodology for modeling volume of shallow and deep-seated landslides. The models were tested in real and theoretical conditions to highlight advantages and limitations. At the same time, we explored how the interpolation model is affected by local altimetric variation. The results show that one of the models can be used to make first-order interpretations regarding volume of eroded debris for landslide deposits at a local or national scale, while the other can help to assess the sequence of landslide activity. Theoretical evaluations show that local altimetric variation of < 1 m could lead to errors of almost 17%. The approach is explored with examples from Sumas Mountain in Whatcom County, Washington, USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine whether women candidates are more likely to spur turnout in election years when gender-related issues are central to the national debate. We argue that having women on the ballot in a gendered electoral environment mobilizes specific groups of voters. Utilizing voter files in Pennsylvania and Washington for 2014 and the more gender focused 2018 election, we evaluate this potential mobilizing effect in both primary and general midterm elections. Our results show that both female and male voters were more likely to turn out in the 2018 midterm elections when a woman was on the ballot for the U.S. House of Representatives. In Pennsylvania, which tracks registrants' party affiliation, Democrats, members of third parties, and independents were particularly impacted by the presence of a female candidate. Moreover, in both states, a woman on the ballot was especially important for young people, a group that is traditionally less engaged. Utilizing a difference-in-difference approach, we confirm these results are not due to the endogenous selection of where women choose to run. These findings demonstrate that the mobilizing effect of women candidates is dependent on political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pest monitoring networks form the foundation of many integrated pest management programs in agroecosystems throughout the world. These monitoring networks tend to focus on widely dispersed and highly variable insect pest populations that can cause significant crop loss without intervention. By assessing the distribution and abundance of insects over growing seasons, pest monitoring networks help growers anticipate problems and use proactive rather than reactive management tactics; this promotes timely decision making that usually leads to more effective and cost-efficient pest management. There are several key considerations for developing and operating a successful pest monitoring network: (1) they can be costly and require a regular funding source; (2) the monitoring methods must be appropriate for the pest and adequately distributed (spatially and temporally) to locate infestations; (3) the monitoring data must be provided through timely communications that can be easily accessed by growers or other decision makers; (4) monitoring results should be explained so they can be easily interpreted; and (5) communications should include recommendations for next steps, such as guidance in identifying and scouting for the pest, cultural management approaches, and appropriate use of chemical controls. In this paper, we relate our experiences operating an insect pest monitoring network in potato crops grown in the Columbia Basin of Washington in the United States. We discuss our efforts to fund the program, operate more effectively, and continually improve the content of our communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eleven US States and the District of Columbia legally allow personal (i.e., recreational) cannabis use by adults, and an additional 22 states allow use of cannabis for medicinal purposes. Of these jurisdictions, only two do not have some form of legalized gambling available (https://www.casino.org/local/guide/). In contrast to this rapid increase in legally available marijuana is the limited knowledge about the intersection of cannabis use and gambling. This paper strives to define the current status of the relevant literatures and consider the implication for future gambling research. We describe the research literature on the prevalence of cannabis use and co-existing gambling problems and the effects of cannabis use on gambling-related cognitive functions and decision-making. We also discuss clinical considerations with treating problem gamblers with a cannabis use disorder. Finally, the potential implications for responsible gambling practices and policies and the most pressing gaps in the research literature are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dendritic cell (DC)-based immunotherapies have been created for a broad expanse of cancers, and DC vaccines prepared with Wilms' tumor protein 1 (WT1) peptides have shown great therapeutic efficacy in these diseases. In this paper, we report the results of a phase I/II study of a DC-based vaccination for advanced breast, ovarian, and gastric cancers, and we offer evidence that patients can be effectively vaccinated with autologous DCs pulsed with WT1 peptide. There were ten patients who took part in this clinical study; they were treated biweekly with a WT1 peptide-pulsed DC vaccination, with toxicity and clinical and immunological responses as the principal endpoints. All of the adverse events to DC vaccinations were tolerable under an adjuvant setting. The clinical response was stable disease in seven patients. Karnofsky Performance Scale scores were enhanced, and computed tomography scans revealed tumor shrinkage in three of seven patients. Human leukocyte antigen (HLA)/WT1-tetramer and cytoplasmic IFN-γ assays were used to examine the induction of a WT-1-specific immune response. The immunological responses to DC vaccination were significantly correlated with fewer myeloid-derived suppressor cells (P = 0.045) in the pretreated peripheral blood. These outcomes offered initial clinical evidence that the WT1 peptide-pulsed DC vaccination is a potential treatment for advanced cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to connect with families and influence treatment trajectories, outreach materials should address cultural perceptions of the condition, its causes, and post-diagnostic care. This paper describes the cultural adaptation and translation of the Autism Speaks First 100 Days Kit into Korean for the purpose of improving autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis, assessment, and interventions. The goal of this study is to describe a methodology for future cross-cultural adaptations and translations of outreach materials on ASD, using the Autism Speaks First 100 Days Kit as an exemplar. The research involved two stages of qualitative interviews: unstructured individual and group interviews with 19 Korean child health and education professionals in Queens, NY, followed by structured cultural consensus modeling interviews with 23 Korean mothers, with and without children with ASD, in Queens, NY and the greater Washington, DC area. We conclude that a systematic approach to cultural translation of outreach materials is feasible. Cultural consensus modeling yielded information about numerous barriers to care, had a demonstrable effect on the translation of the kit, and was efficient when employed with coherent segments of a relatively homogeneous population and focused on a single condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A primary goal of the paper is to provide an example of an evaluation design and analytic method that can be used to strengthen causal inference in nonexperimental prevention research. We used this method in a nonexperimental multisite study to evaluate short-term outcomes of a preventive intervention, and we accounted for effects of two types of selection bias: self-selection into the program and differential dropout. To provide context for our analytic approach, we present an overview of the counterfactual model (also known as Rubin's causal model or the potential outcomes model) and several methods derived from that model, including propensity score matching, the Heckman two-step approach, and full information maximum likelihood based on a bivariate probit model and its trivariate generalization. We provide an example using evaluation data from a community-based family intervention and a nonexperimental control group constructed from the Washington State biennial Healthy Youth Survey (HYS) risk behavior data (HYS n = 68,846; intervention n = 1,502). We identified significant effects of participant, program, and community attributes in self-selection into the program and program completion. Identification of specific selection effects is useful for developing recruitment and retention strategies, and failure to identify selection may lead to inaccurate estimation of outcomes and their public health impact. Counterfactual models allow us to evaluate interventions in uncontrolled settings and still maintain some confidence in the internal validity of our inferences; their application holds great promise for the field of prevention science as we scale up to community dissemination of preventive interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black fraternal organizations were created during a time in America when blacks experienced a high level of racial and social inequality via Jim Crow segregation. Although most black fraternal organizations were founded on Howard University campus in Washington, DC, there were others that were created and founded at predominately white institutions. The purpose and ideals of black fraternal organizations are to provide a social and academic support system for African-American college students. This paper will analyze the history of black fraternities and their impact on one's development of black masculinity and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at a meeting entitled "Mouse Genetics 2011," organized by the Genetics Society of America held in Washington, D.C. Is presented. Topics include the Verne Chapman Lecture, a keynote speech entitled "Mickey, Mendel, and the Medical Magic of Mouse Genetics," and the interface of human genetics and mouse models. It features Francis S. Collins, the U.S. National Institute of Health director, who delivers the keynote address.

In the paper, on the examples of a string and beam, resonance vibrations in linear elastic systems that result from nonlocal boundary conditions (even if external forces are lacking) are considered. Formulas of exact solutions of the corresponding boundary-value problems are presented. These formulas are used for evaluation of the solutions and for construction of plots. Computer algebra system Mathematica was used for derivation and analysis of the exact solutions and for development of software packages designed for evaluation of the derived formulas and solution visualization. The authors believe that results of this study can be used to explain the causes for the vibration of the Tacoma and Volgograd bridges in 1940 and 2010, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite well-known benefits of health care utilization for the effective management of chronic diseases, the underlying mechanism of understanding health care utilization in ethnic minority population has not been systematically explored. The purpose of this paper is to examine the predictive ability of a health care utilization model by analyzing the interplay between predisposing, enabling, and need factors. The sample consisted of hypertensive Korean American immigrants (KAIs) 40–64 years of age who participated in a self-help intervention for high blood pressure care (SHIP-HBP). Using structured questionnaires, data were collected from 445 KAIs at baseline and analyzed with path analysis. Insurance status and relevant medical history were not just strong direct effects but also carried the most total effect on the health care utilization of these patients. Life priorities, years of residence in the US and perceived income level exerted indirect effects through the participants’ insurance status. Our statistical analysis indicated a good fit for the proposed model ( x2 = 28.4, P = 0.29; NFI = 0.91; CFI = 0.99; RMSEA = 0.02). Overall, the model explained 18% of the variance in health care utilization of hypertensive KAIs. These findings strongly support a need to improve access to health care for KAIs by introducing a variety of community resources and building sustainable community infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a performance-based methodology for the assessment of seismic vulnerability and capacity of buildings. The vulnerability assessment methodology is based on the HAZUS methodology and the improved capacitydemand-diagram method. The spectral displacement ( S d) of performance points on a capacity curve is used to estimate the damage level of a building. The relationship between S d and peak ground acceleration (PGA) is established, and then a new vulnerability function is expressed in terms of PGA. Furthermore, the expected value of the seismic capacity index (SCev) is provided to estimate the seismic capacity of buildings based on the probability distribution of damage levels and the corresponding seismic capacity index. The results indicate that the proposed vulnerability methodology is able to assess seismic damage of a large number of building stock directly and quickly following an earthquake. The SCev provides an effective index to measure the seismic capacity of buildings and illustrate the relationship between the seismic capacity of buildings and seismic action. The estimated result is compared with damage surveys of the cities of Dujiangyan and Jiangyou in the M8.0 Wenchuan earthquake, revealing that the methodology is acceptable for seismic risk assessment and decision making. The primary reasons for discrepancies between the estimated results and the damage surveys are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the International Congress of Zoology held in Washington D.C. in 1963 as a portrait of American zoologists’ search for effective and rewarding relationships with both each other and the public. Organizers of the congress envisioned the congress as a last ditch effort to unify the disparate subdisciplines of zoology, overcome the barriers of specialization, and ward off the heady claims of more reductionist biologists. The problems zoologists faced as they worked to fulfill these ambitious goals illuminate some of the challenges faced by members of the naturalist tradition as they worked to establish disciplinary unity while seeking public support in the competitive world of twentieth century science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent calls for psychiatric services to focus upon psychosocial recovery for people with severe mental illness has led to a renewed interest in recovery communities. Hence, Community Connections (Washington DC) set up a Women’s Empowerment Center as an intentional recovery community. The aim of this paper is to qualitatively chronicle the development of this center to assess emerging challenges. Focus groups and participant observation were conducted regularly over a 16-month period. Analysis suggested three emerging challenges (i) concern regarding unmet practical and physical needs (ii) the struggle to establish internal rules and corrective mechanisms (iii) frustration regarding differential participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the impact of high-stakes gate-keeping assessments (of both K-12 students and new teachers) on teacher development of equitable teaching practices. Drawing from two studies of field experiences in Washington State—one of teacher interns and one of cooperating teachers—findings include that state level policies in response to NCLB may actually be decreasing teacher attention to closing the achievement gap. Further, the article explores how even progressive performance-based standards—when administered “globalistically”—are generally ineffective. After discussing university complicity in exacerbating the problem, the paper concludes with ways policymakers may shift their attention from creating complicated rubrics to promoting relationships that support pedagogical change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mary Ann Hall ran a high-class brothel in Washington, DC, from about 1840 until the 1870s. Located several blocks from the capitol building at 349 Maryland Avenue, it probably served wealthy, well-connected men in the national capital. During the Civil War, it was likely the largest brothel in the city. When Hall died in 1886, she left behind a valuable estate and was buried in Washington's Congressional Cemetery. Intensive background research uncovered documentary evidence that sheds light on this high-class brothel as well as on prostitution in general in Washington, DC, during the 19th century. Sources included census records, city directories, tax assessments, deeds, maps, historic photographs and prints, police precinct records, historic newspapers, and several unique 19th- century and contemporary publications on prostitution in general and Washington, DC, scandals. Especially enlightening sources were a series of newspaper articles detailing Mary Ann Hall's 1864 indictment for keeping a bawdy house and a collection of papers in the District of Columbia Archives documenting the legal battle among Hall's heirs for her estate. The latter includes a room-by-room inventory made in 1886 that reveals the contents of the house where Hall ran her brothel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]