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Many life-influencing social networks are characterized by considerable informational isolation. People within a community are far more likely to share beliefs than people who are part of different communities. The spread of useful information across communities is impeded by echo chambers (far greater connectivity within than between communities) and filter bubbles (more influence of beliefs by connected neighbors within than between communities). We apply the tools of network analysis to organize our understanding of the spread of beliefs across modularized communities and to predict the effect of individual and group parameters on the dynamics and distribution of beliefs. In our Spread of Beliefs in Modularized Communities (SBMC) framework, a stochastic block model generates social networks with variable degrees of modularity, beliefs have different observable utilities, individuals change their beliefs on the basis of summed or average evidence (or intermediate decision rules), and parameterized stochasticity introduces randomness into decisions. SBMC simulations show surprising patterns; for example, increasing out-group connectivity does not always improve group performance, adding randomness to decisions can promote performance, and decision rules that sum rather than average evidence can improve group performance, as measured by the average utility of beliefs that the agents adopt. Overall, the results suggest that intermediate degrees of belief exploration are beneficial for the spread of useful beliefs in a community, and so parameters that pull in opposite directions on an explore–exploit continuum are usefully paired. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postsecondary entrance and placement tests provide critical information that shapes the trajectory of the transition from secondary to postsecondary education. Test accommodations can play an important role in reducing barriers that deaf students face during high-stakes testing. For deaf students, decisions about access and accommodations for standardized assessment typically involve an Individualized Education Program (IEP) team. Deaf students' access needs are not homogeneous, and decisions include a variety of factors including student characteristics, the content of the test, and test accommodations policies. In this article we share information about challenges that deaf students face and suggestions for ways to help to ensure that deaf students receive the accommodations that better allow them to show what they know and can do. These steps to improve accessibility can support equity in postsecondary pathways for deaf students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our lives are being measured in rapidly increasing ways and frequency. These measurements have beneficial and deleterious effects at both individual and social levels. Behavioral measurement technologies offer the promise of helping us to know ourselves better and to improve our well-being by using personalized feedback and gamification. At the same time, they present threats to our privacy, self-esteem, and motivation. At the societal level, the potential benefits of reducing bias and decision variability by using objective and transparent assessments are offset by threats of systematic, algorithmic bias from invalid or flawed measurements. Considerable technological progress, careful foresight, and continuous scrutiny will be needed so that the positive impacts of behavioral measurement technologies far outweigh the negative ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formal mathematical reasoning provides an illuminating test case for understanding how humans can think about things that they did not evolve to comprehend. People engage in algebraic reasoning by (1) creating new assemblies of perception and action routines that evolved originally for other purposes (reuse), (2) adapting those routines to better fit the formal requirements of mathematics (adaptation), and (3) designing cultural tools that mesh well with our perception-action routines to create cognitive systems capable of mathematical reasoning (invention). We describe evidence that a major component of proficiency at algebraic reasoning is Rigged Up Perception-Action Systems (RUPAS), via which originally demanding, strategically controlled cognitive tasks are converted into learned, automatically executed perception and action routines. Informed by RUPAS, we have designed, implemented, and partially assessed a computer-based algebra tutoring system called Graspable Math with an aim toward training learners to develop perception-action routines that are intuitive, efficient, and mathematically valid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two of the most popular psychotherapeutic approaches to treat depression are cognitivebehavioural therapy and psychodynamic psychotherapy, yet little consensus has been reached concerning which therapy is most beneficial for the treatment of depression. A review of the literature revealed that, while cognitive-behavioural therapy and psychodynamic psychotherapy are the most effective psychotherapeutic modalities for the treatment of depression, evidence suggests that neither of these modalities is superior to the other. Furthermore, multiple issues plague the studies investigating these treatments. Efficacy and effectiveness are often confounded, while rates of remission and response are often far less than might be expected from such highly regarded and widely used treatments. Severity of depression appears to moderate treatment outcomes, yet many studies overlook this, while the impact that the aetiology of a patient's depression has on treatment outcomes is largely ignored in the literature. Additionally, a majority of studies have focused on therapies of short duration, which often have poor followup results. Finally, mechanisms of change in the treatment of depression have been ignored to a large extent, but there is some evidence that non-specific therapeutic factors may be more important than specific therapeutic techniques in producing positive treatment outcomes. These issues need to be closely examined and resolved if researchers and clinicians are serious about optimising treatments, improving outcomes, and adequately addressing the serious problem of depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tropical Africa is known to be lagging far behind the rest of the world in its fertility transition. Many attempts have been made to specify the factors responsible for its resistance to fertility decline; however, no systemic explanation of the mechanisms sustaining its high fertility has been presented in cross-cultural perspective. In this article, we show how a set of anthropological factors provides both social and economic foundations for the preservation of high fertility in tropical Africa. Cross-cultural tests imply that the most important obstacles to tropical Africa’s fertility transition are (a) a high ideal family size, (b) a large potential to absorb increases in the female labor force participation rate without any substantial decreases in fertility due to ample child care readily available through extended family structures, (c) a large potential to increase fertility at the early stages of economic development through the abolition of postpartum sex taboos, and (d) a low potential for increases in birth spacing to contribute to fertility decline. In the last section, we discuss how the results obtained could be useful for policy recommendations aimed at accelerating the fertility decline in tropical Africa, and mitigating the forecasts of explosive population growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to gain an understanding of the determinants of clinical management of HIV disease in adults just prior to the introduction of comprehensive guidelines, we undertook the present study among members of the British Columbia Persons with AIDS Society (BCPWA). The aim of this study was to examine whether the heterogeneity of care for HIV-infected individuals decreases with physician knowledge of HIV/AIDS and the stability of the physician-patient relationship. Eligible participants had to be full members (i.e. HIV positive) of the society, residents of British Columbia, and had to have previously agreed for the BCPWA society to include unsolicited material with their monthly newsletter. Our analysis demonstrates that compliance with appropriate care was associated with a more stable physician-patient relationship and with the perception on the patient's part of a greater level of knowledge on the part of their physician. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To describe the core components of the Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre service model as the template agreed with the Australian Federal Government for national upscaling. The Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre model of early intervention has two main goals: to reduce the period of time between the onset of psychosis and the commencement of treatment and to bring about symptomatic recovery and restore the normal developmental trajectory as early as possible.Conclusions: The Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre comprises three elements of service provision for young people experiencing a first episode of psychosis: (i) early detection; (ii) acute care during and immediately following a crisis; (iii) recovery-focused continuing care, featuring multimodal interventions to enable the young person to maintain or regain their social, academic and/or career trajectory during the critical first 2-5 years following the onset of a psychotic illness. It does this via a combination of 16 core components, which provide a flexible, comprehensive, integrated service that is able to respond quickly, appropriately and consistently to the individual needs of the young person and their family. Innovative service reforms, such as Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre, that recognise the value of early intervention are crucial to reducing the impact of serious mental illness on young people and their families and, ultimately, on our society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam have presented a new theory of how collective action creates the structure and dynamics of societies. At issue is the behavior of social movements, organizations, states, political parties, and interest groups. They argue that all of these phenomena are produced by social actors (which may be individuals or groups) involved in strategic action. This allows Fligstein and McAdam to advance a unified theory of “strategic action fields.” This article takes issue with aspects of Fligstein and McAdam’s important contribution. We argue that that all organizations are not essentially the same; in addition to the location and interactions of their strategic actors, their dynamics are shaped and distinguished by differing values and norms, by the autonomy of institutions embedded in strategic action fields, and by the fractal relationships that nested fields have to broader principles of justice and social organization that span societies. We also criticize the view that social change can be conceptualized solely in terms of shifting configurations of actors in strategic action fields. Rather, any theory of social action must distinguish between periods of routine contention under the current institutions and norms and exceptional challenges to the social order that aim to transform those institutions and norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The concept of staging of disease in psychiatry has developed over the past years. A neglected component of this model pertains to people in the advanced stages of a mental illness, who remain symptomatic and functionally impaired despite treatment. These patients are often high service utilizers, receiving complex multimodal treatments where the balance of risk and benefit shifts perceptibly. In this paper, we argue the need to adopt ‘palliative’ models of care for some individuals, and consider changing the therapeutic goals to follow care pathways similar to those used in other chronic and refractory medical illnesses.Method: Data was sourced by a literature search using Medline and a hand search of scientific journals. Relevant articles were selected.Results: Clinical staging can help us better define subgroups of patients who will benefit from different goals and treatment. In the most advanced stage group, we find patients with persistent symptoms and treatment resistance. In these situations, it may be preferable to follow some of the principles of palliative care, which include the setting of attainable goals, reduction of side-effects, limited symptom control, targeting identified psychological and social problems, and attempting to attain the best quality of life for these patients and their families.Conclusions: It is in the interest of those in the advanced phases of a disorder that clinicians acknowledge the limitations of treatment and actively attempt to plan treatment utilizing alternate models. It is essential to be clear that such approaches do not equate to the abandonment of care, but rather to the reconceptualizing of feasible and personalized treatment goals, a rebalancing of the risks and benefits of intervention, the management of illness behaviour, and the approaches that allow the patient to live gainfully within their limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How does the physical structure of an arithmetic expression affect the computational processes engaged in by reasoners? In handwritten arithmetic expressions containing both multiplications and additions, terms that are multiplied are often placed physically closer together than terms that are added. Three experiments evaluate the role such physical factors play in how reasoners construct solutions to simple compound arithmetic expressions (such as '2 + 3 × 4'). Two kinds of influence are found: First, reasoners incorporate the physical size of the expression into numerical responses, tending to give larger responses to more widely spaced problems. Second, reasoners use spatial information as a cue to hierarchical expression structure: More narrowly spaced subproblems within an expression tend to be solved first and tend to be multiplied. Although spatial relationships besides order are entirely formally irrelevant to expression semantics, reasoners systematically use these relationships to support their success with various formal properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Human papillomavirus (HPV)-related anal cancer incidence is rising in men who have sex with men (MSM). Effective screening strategies exist, but many patients are lost to follow-up (LTF). We studied factors impacting screening compliance to recommended annual screening visits. Retrospective chart review identified MSM with anal dysplasia. MSM were grouped as regular screeners (regular to follow-up [RF]) (≥ visit/year), lost to follow-up (LTF) (>1 year since previous screening) and LTF who then returned for screening (lost came back [LCB]). From June 2007 to March 2008, subjects completed a questionnaire in-person at the time of screening or via telephone (LTF). Questionnaires were completed after anal dysplasia diagnosis. One hundred and ninety-five MSM were enrolled (96 RF, 50 LTF and 49 LCB). RF were compliant for 4.8 years; LTF were lost for 2.3 years. LCB were previously lost for 5.6 years before returning. Mean knowledge score of screening procedures was larger in RF versus LTF (P < 0.001). MSM with more sexual partners in the past six months were more likely to be LCB versus LTF (P = 0.05). RF were more likely to describe their HPV diagnosis as upsetting' (P = 0.003). RF were more likely driven by physical symptoms versus LTF (P = 0.002). MSM with high-grade intraepithelial lesions (HSIL) were more likely to be RF versus those with low-grade intraepithelial lesions P = 0.001. Positive predictors for screening compliance include an upsetting experience during the HPV diagnosis, physical symptoms driving the initial visit and HSIL. Engaging patients in a firm, salient approach may facilitate follow-up compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attempts to forecast or remedy state failure would benefit from a clearer view of the multiple pathways that can lead states to fail. This paper delineates five pathways: escalating ethnic conflicts, state predation, regional guerrilla rebellion, democratic collapse, and succession/reform crises in authoritarian states. Each of these five pathways involves changes in the legitimacy and effectiveness of regimes; state failures follow upon the loss of both legitimacy and effectiveness. Examples are provided and guidelines are offered for efforts to avert failure in fragile states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just as neurons interconnect in networks that create structured thoughts beyond the ken of any individual neuron, so people spontaneously organize themselves into groups to create emergent organizations that no individual may intend, comprehend, or even perceive. Recent technological advances have provided us with unprecedented opportunities for conducting controlled laboratory experiments on human collective behavior. We describe two experimental paradigms in which we attempt to build predictive bridges between the beliefs, goals, and cognitive capacities of individuals and patterns of behavior at the group level, showing how the members of a group dynamically allocate themselves to resources and how innovations diffuse through a social network. Agent-based computational models have provided useful explanatory and predictive accounts. Together, the models and experiments point to tradeoffs between exploration and exploitation—that is, compromises between individuals using their own innovations and using innovations obtained from their peers—and the emergence of group-level organizations such as population waves, bandwagon effects, and spontaneous specialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions whether implication analysis, an approach to statistical sociology described by Stanley Lieberson and Joel Horwich elsewhere in this journal, is a novel approach to sociology. The author reframes Lieberson and Horwich's criticism of statistical methods in sociology as a condemnation of scholarly research based on weak data. Questions are also raised about the use of science as an example for sociology. The author suggests that an investigation of the relationship between experimental psychology and predictive approaches to sociology could improve the credibility of that field.

We propose an agent-based model of group foraging, EPICURE, for patchily distributed resources. Each agent makes probabilistic movement decisions in a gridworld through a linear combination of current perceptual information and a reinforcement history. EPICURE captures the empirical results from several foraging conditions in previous works, and it leads to a reevaluation of findings from those papers. In particular, human foragers show contingent usage of information, initially using social information to discover resource pools before private sampling information has been established. We describe a series of simulations that test the sources of resource undermatching often found in group foraging experiments. After testing the effects of foragers' starting locations, travel costs, the number of foragers, and the size of uniform food distributions, we discuss a novel hypothesis for undermatching. Spatial constraints lead to inadequate individual and group information sampling and cause group undermatching. The foraging group size, food rate, spatial distribution of food, and resulting forager reinforcement histories interact to produce undermatching, and occasionally overmatching, to resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author critiques "Remaking Modernity: Politics, History & Sociology." He focuses on the introductory and concluding essays by the editors of this volume which are "normative," according to the reviewer. His main criticism of "Remaking Modernity" is the perceived idea of historical progress in many of the included essays. He takes the book's contributors to task for not fully analizing the problematics of historical sociology. The author argues that the book primarily features the work of modern sociologists who write about modernity.

This commentary focuses on the article The Poverty of Deductivism, by Philip Gorski. This article makes many excellent points regarding comparative historical studies. Gorski points out that the standard model of scientific explanation developed by Carl Hempel, which rests on the identification of covering laws that yield deductive explanations of what must happen given certain initial conditions and a certain environment, is inapplicable to historical studies. Gorski is correct to claim that refutation of logical claims based on universal laws is not and cannot be the basis of scientific work and research progress in historical sociology. But Gorski is incorrect to say that rational-deductive approaches cannot be applied in historical sociology, or that social science is fundamentally different than natural science, or that social science is nothing but history and can never be anything more. Rational-deductive analyses based on formal principles of economics, public choice theory, organizational theory, and mathematical demography have every bit as much role in historical sociology as the formal principles of physics,chemistry,and probability have in the natural sciences of geology and cosmology and evolutionary biology.

Two cases of prison reform in the 1990s had widely divergent results. New Mexico privatized several prisons and these prisons were quickly beset by multiple riots. New York's publicly run Rikers Island prison, by contrast, adopted reforms that ended many years of riots and violence. Prevailing theories of prison riots cannot account for these divergent outcomes. A state-centered theory of social order explains both cases, showing how prison administrators and state and national governments can create the conditions under which social order breaks down or is restored. This analysis has implications for forging social order in other hierarchical institutions, such as schools, that are responsible for the welfare of their dependent clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate over the "Rise of the West" has generally been over which factor or factors— cultural, geoographic, or material—in European history led Europe to diverge from the World's pre-industrial civilizations. This article aims to shift the terms of the debate by arguing that there were no causal factors that made Europe's industrialization inevitable or even likely. Rather, most of Europe would not and could not move toward industrialization any more than China or India or Japan. Rather, a very accidental combination of events in the late seventeenth century placed England on a peculiar path, leading to industrialization and constitutional democracy. These accidents included the compromise between the Anglican Church and Dissenters, and between Crown and Parliament, in the settlements of 1689; the adoption of Newtonian science as part of the cosmology of the Anglican Church and its spread to craftsmen and entrepreneurs throughout Britain; and the opportunity to apply the idea of the vacuum and mechanics to solve a particular technical problem: pumping water out of deep mine shafts in or near coal mines. Without these particular accidents of history, there is no reason to believe that Europe would have ever been more advanced than the leading Asian civilizations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

District nurses in Barnsley, UK, have for many years used a patient classification system based on 'Criteria for Care', whose value in practical man-agement terms has established itself into the rou-tine of the information system used. This is a descendant of FIP, now known as TCCS (Total Care Community System). 'Criteria for Care' was, however, hospital based and an independent valid-ity check was required for community use. This was carried out in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where research produced a system for patient classification, workload analysis and skillmix analy-sis which was generated by nurses and acted both as a validity check and further development of the system used in Barnsley. The management information matrix, which is the outcome of this paper, is generated from practitioners using guidelines agreed by them, and yields management information of a directly prac-tical value. The system presented is now implemented and uses data updated daily, if required, to pro-duce a spreadsheet covering team workload index, a workload profile, and measures of pres-sure of work on each nurse, patient acuity [1], and a quality of care index. From this it is possible to adjust skillmix and staffing levels to create equity of pressure across teams and to match nursing skillmix to patient classification in the light of a quality index from each team. From a GP attachment and a team perspec-tive this information can be utilized in conjunction with contract monitoring data in order to review district nursing activity. This will enable workloads to be reviewed and could facilitate integrated team working within the practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation and management of vessel injuries proximate penetrating wounds is controversial, especially when the injuries are subtle a not limb threatening. A gunshot wound near the superficial femoral artery thought to have caused an intimal injury, which was complicated by throml formation in the adjacent vein. Diagnostic methods and treatment options discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the divergence of East and West in the early modern world. What separated the West, first England, later Europe and the U.S., from the rest of the world was a qualitative jump in the rate of innovation. Much of Western economic growth has not been mere rationalization of existing production--that is, a more efficient allocation of available inputs among known production processes, in order to produce known goods and services--but the development of untried processes and the production of formerly unknown products. The West did not overtake the East merely by becoming more efficient at making bridles and stirrups, but by developing steam engines. To put it another way, the West leapt ahead not by relentlessly pursuing the path of calculable efficiency, but by taking unknown risks on novelty. Innovation was not only overwhelmingly important, it was widely dispersed. Concurrent innovations in agriculture, transport, manufacturing, financing, machining, education, and marketing, rather than a few major inventions, were responsible for the transformation of the West.

Neither technical inability nor population/resource imbalances prevented China from developing mechanized cotton-spinning. However, restrictions on the deployment of female labor outside the home, promulgated by Confucian ethics and enforced by the state as part of social control, prevented widespread adoption of machinery requiring extra-household use of female labor. Under such conditions--which did not obtain in Europe, where female wage labor had long been used for service outside of natal households--factory production could not compete with household production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the role of rationality in collective action. Participation is hardly the most vexing problem. What is of greatest concern is how a given population goes from a situation of no action to generating enough collective action to cross over that threshold above which collective action is established at low cost and is therefore readily produced. The idea that those most inclined to sacrifice may take great risks in acting, and that others who are slightly more risk averse will wait and judge from the state's response and probability of others demonstrating whether or not to join, suggests that information processing is indeed part of the dynamics of collective action sequences. If it is possible to dismiss large and persistent social movements and rebellions as actions by people who reinforced each other's delusions, then they are not far from retreating to a theory of the madness of crowds, then they are not throwing the rational theory out with the bath of bad information. Individuals' social experience and community relationships may create far greater propensities to altruism through the acquired identification of group benefits with personal benefits. That is, because the isolation of individuals rarely will have significant effects on others.

An examination of the free rider problem in revolutionary action suggests that this problem can be, and historically has been, overcome by drawing on norms of solidarity developed in preexisting groups, which gain individuals' commitment by providing commonly needed public goods. A simple model of rational action by groups, based on considerations of individual solidarity and cross-group interactions, then predicts many of the well-known macrofeatures of revolutions in different kinds of societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determines the effects of categorization on color perception. Influence of experience and expectations on perception; Use of colored alphanumeric symbols as materials; Creation of lower level perception.

Examines the similarity involving attributes and relations. Relations of similarity judgments and difference judgments; Consideration of relational similarity and attributional similarity; Reinforcement of the distinction between attributes and relations.

A 72-year-old male presented to a local hospital with a 2-day history of significant abdominal and back pain. The attending physician noted that the patient had a 10 cm abdominal aortic aneurysm, and a CT scan of the abdomen was obtained. In addition to the aneurysm, the CT scan showed a horseshoe kidney. The patient had a creatinine level of 2.5. He had bilateral common femoral aneurysms but no history of symptomatic coronary artery disease or stroke. The patient had undergone a presumably curative pneumonectomy for very early bronchogenic carcinoma many years earlier.Following the CT scan, which did not show any evidence of fluid outside the aneurysmal lumen, the patient was emergently referred to Oregon Health Sciences University by the helicopter system and arrived at the medical center about midnight. Examination revealed that the abdomen was tender and the aneurysm was quite painful. The patient described having moderate pain at rest. He did not display any signs of peritoneal irritation. Vital signs were stable. A repeat CT scan was obtained rapidly in the emergency room and again showed no evidence of fluid outside the lumen of the aneurysm. The patient then underwent aortography. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]