American Medical and Intellectual Reaction to African Health Issues, 1850-1960: From Racialism to Cross-Cultural Medicine

During recent decades, social scientists, particularly anthropologists, sociologists and medical historians, have looked increasingly at how social and cultural factors inform a society\u27s medical community and vice-versa. As Roger Cooter recently stated, ... medicine is a social phenomenon capable of being properly studied only when treated as a part of its social, political, economic and cultural totality. [1] In America, a steady flow of medical sociologists -- most notably Henry E. Sigerist in the 1940s, Talcott Parsons in the 1950s, David Mechanic in the 1960s and 1970s, and Vern and Bonnie Bullough in the 1980s -- contributed numerous empirical studies that revealed that the development of American medicine was shaped moreso by its social and cultural context than clinical discoveries.[2] These studies have demonstrated conclusively that the American health profession\u27s approaches to disease (etiology and therapy), the institutional structure of medical research and care, and public health care policy all have been deeply influenced by socioeconomic and cultural factors specific to historical epochs of evolving American society

Operational viewpoint of the X-29A digital flight control system

In the past few years many flight control systems have been implemented as full-authority, full-time digital systems. The digital design has allowed flight control systems to make use of many enhanced elements that are generally considered too complex to implement in an analog system. Examples of these elements are redundant information exchanged between channels to allow for continued operation after multiple failures and multiple variable gain schedules to optimize control of the aircraft throughout its flight envelope and in all flight modes. The introduction of the digital system for flight control also created the problem of obtaining information from the system in an understandable and useful format. This paper presents how the X-29A was dealt with during its operations at NASA Ames-Dryden Flight Research Facility. A brief description of the X-29A control system, a discussion of the tools developed to aid in daily operations, and the troubleshooting of the aircraft are included

"Almost-stable" matchings in the Hospitals / Residents problem with Couples

The Hospitals / Residents problem with Couples (hrc) models the allocation of intending junior doctors to hospitals where couples are allowed to submit joint preference lists over pairs of (typically geographically close) hospitals. It is known that a stable matching need not exist, so we consider min bp hrc, the problem of finding a matching that admits the minimum number of blocking pairs (i.e., is “as stable as possible”). We show that this problem is NP-hard and difficult to approximate even in the highly restricted case that each couple finds only one hospital pair acceptable. However if we further assume that the preference list of each single resident and hospital is of length at most 2, we give a polynomial-time algorithm for this case. We then present the first Integer Programming (IP) and Constraint Programming (CP) models for min bp hrc. Finally, we discuss an empirical evaluation of these models applied to randomly-generated instances of min bp hrc. We find that on average, the CP model is about 1.15 times faster than the IP model, and when presolving is applied to the CP model, it is on average 8.14 times faster. We further observe that the number of blocking pairs admitted by a solution is very small, i.e., usually at most 1, and never more than 2, for the (28,000) instances considered

Distinct regions of the Swi5 and Ace2 transcription factors are required for specific gene activation

Swi5 and Ace2 are cell cycle-regulated transcription factors that activate expression of early G1-specific genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Swi5 and Ace2 have zinc finger DNA-binding domains that are highly conserved, and the two proteins bind to the same DNA sequences in vitro. Despite this similarity in DNA binding, Swi5 and Ace2 activate different genes in vivo, with Swi5 activating the HO gene and Ace2 activating CTS1 expression. In this report we have used chimeric fusions between Swi5 and Ace2 to determine what regions of these proteins are necessary for promoter-specific activation of HO and CTS1. We have identified specific regions of Swi5 and Ace2 that are required for activation of HO and CTS1, respectively. The Swi5 protein binds HO promoter DNA cooperatively with the Pho2 homeodomain protein, and the HO specificity region of Swi5 identified in the chimeric analysis coincides with the region of Swi5 previously identified that interacts with Pho2 in vitro. Swi5 and Ace2 also activate expression of a number of other genes expressed in G1 phase of the cell cycle, including ASH1, CDC6, EGT2, PCL2, PCL9, RME1, and SIC1. Analysis of the Swi5/Ace2 chimeras shows that distinct regions of Swi5 and Ace2 contribute to the transcriptional activation of some of these other G1-regulated genes

Moral Equality: Article of Faith

In the first part of this thesis I demonstrate that the best arguments we have for the equal moral worth of all human beings are incorrigibly defective. This is a problem because many people hold that equality between persons in the political, legal and social realms depends on and is justified by their equal value in the moral realm. I solve the problem in the second part of my thesis by developing an account of human worth which cuts the chain of dependency so that political, legal and social equality needn’t hang on moral equality. The result is an account of human value as neither equal nor unequal and which preserves and satisfies the spirit of moral and political egalitarianism. What is that spirit? That everyone matters and no-one more than any other

[Review of] W. Grant Dalstrom, David Lachar, and Leona E. Dahlstrom. MMPI Patterns of American Minorities

This anthology bobs out of the stormy sea of psychological research centered on minorities. The relationship between psychometrics and American minorities such as blacks, Native Americans, and Hispanics, is a long and troubled one. Prior to World War II standardized psychologic instruments were used mostly to assess and compare educational performance or temperament of whites and blacks or other racial minorities. But criticism emerged which questioned the reliability of such psychological tests. The tests seemed to find that, first, blacks and other minorities were inferior educational achievers compared to whites; and, second, severe psychosocial deficiencies of these minority group populations were the basis for their lower achievement. Since the Second World War the use of psychological tests or inventories has undergone explosive growth beyond the field of education. Psychological assessment instruments -- scales of symptom categories as their users view them -- have become a common fixture in the research and operations of mental health programs, penal institutions, and industrial personnel fields. One feature of this phenomenal growth in modern psychometrics has been the popularity of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), now considered internationally as one of the most objective and reliable personality tests

Stable matchings of teachers to schools

Several countries successfully use centralized matching schemes for school or higher education assignment, or for entry-level labour markets. In this paper we explore the computational aspects of a possible similar scheme for assigning teachers to schools. Our model is motivated by a particular characteristic of the education system in many countries where each teacher specializes in two subjects. We seek stable matchings, which ensure that no teacher and school have the incentive to deviate from their assignments. Indeed we propose two stability definitions depending on the precise format of schools' preferences. If the schools' ranking of applicants is independent of their subjects of specialism, we show that the problem of deciding whether a stable matching exists is NP-complete, even if there are only three subjects, unless there are master lists of applicants or of schools. By contrast, if the schools may order applicants differently in each of their specialization subjects, the problem of deciding whether a stable matching exists is NP-complete even in the presence of subject-specific master lists plus a master list of schools. Finally, we prove a strong inapproximability result for the problem of finding a matching with the minimum number of blocking pairs with respect to both stability definitions.Comment: 15 page

Work Related Musculoskeletal Pain and It’s Management

This is an ongoing project, your comments are welcome! [email protected] chapter reviews current best evidence in the identification and management of work related factors causing musculoskeletal pain and discomfort

Longitudinal assessment of age-related change in the dental pulp chamber and age estimation using dental radiographs

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on September 28, 2007)Vita.Thesis (Ph. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2007.This dissertation presents a new and practical method of adult age estimation with successful tests of its validity and repeatability. Six qualitative criteria evident in oral radiographs were developed from 37 subjects represented on three occasions each. Age was estimated from averaged criterion scores by reduced major axis (Model II) regression incorporating longitudinal information for prediction with cross-sectional data. Spearman correlation of scores to known age was r[subscript s] = 0.82, for 45 subjects aged 17 to 86 years in an independent test set. Mean error of estimated age was 0.08 years (SD 8.3 years). In contrast, longitudinal premolar pulp chamber sizes typically showed Pearson correlations to age of r [almost equal to] -0.50, with no pattern of association by premolar type, sex, or trend over time useful in age estimation. Eleven raters with experience in skeletal analysis ranging from student to professional showed the qualitative method to be independently repeatable using only a written rubric and graphic examples. Raters' scores had Spearman correlations to age of 0.70 [less than] r[subscript s] [less than] 0.85, and a mean error of 0.91 years (SD 13.7 years), in a sample of 20 subjects selected for approximately equal distribution by age and sex. Oral radiography is noninvasive, commonly available to archaeologists and routine in forensic identifications. This qualitative method is applicable in adults through age 90, and may be incorporated into existing protocols to advance assessment of population distribution and individual age.Includes bibliographical reference