John W. McCormack to John D. Feerick

Letter from Speaker John W. McCormack to John D. Feerick, regarding his scholarly article on the Vice President and presidential succession and inability.https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/twentyfifth_amendment_correspondence/1037/thumbnail.jp

Small town development opportunities : Stow, Massachusetts, 1985

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1985.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCHIncludes bibliographical references.by John W. McCormack.M.S

John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies Food Pantry Service Project

The faculty, staff, and students of the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies are very pleased and excited to partner with UMass Boston’s Office of Urban and Off-Campus Support Services U-ACCESS initiative to empower and support all UMass Boston students who are experiencing complex personal and social issues that might prevent their academic success. Members of the McCormack Graduate School community are “walking the talk” to serve underserved populations and to help remedy economic and social inequities “in our own backyard.” Through this service project, we hope to make a positive contribution to help alleviate food insecurity issues for our students in need

Policy Issues Facing Boston: 1984, A Summary

In the Fall of 1983 the John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs asked a number of experts in various fields from within and outside the University to prepare an analysis of the major policy issues facing the City of Boston in 1984. In December 1983, the Boston School Committee and City Council, in separate half-day seminars, came to the University for discussions on the issues identified. At the same time, the papers prepared were delivered to the transition teams of the Flynn Administration. This report briefly summarizes the major findings of the effort

Boston in Transition: A Financial Analysis

The new Mayor of Boston must earn the confidence of the taxpaying public in his financial leadership by employing credibility and candor in the management of city affairs. To begin the process of re-enfranchising Bostonians who have come to mistrust financial decisions seemingly determined by political calculations, the new Mayor must make an accurate disclosure of the City\u27s financial picture, rely on the commitment of the state to properly support its capital city and restore integrity and strong management controls to government operations. Recommendations for budget cuts, hiring freezes and adjustments in tax rates, when they are necessary, should only be made when accurate information and open debate so dictate. The Financial Analysis Research Group for the mayoral transition was assembled to provide an assessment of the City\u27s financial posture as of January, 1984; to evaluate the financial management aspects of agency operations; to determine the effectiveness of existing budgetary planning systems; and to provide the new Mayor with a pragmatic financial management plan to support his policies and philosophy

Cryptic diversity in the Mexican highlands: Thousands of UCE loci help illuminate phylogenetic relationships, species limits and divergence times of montane rattlesnakes (Viperidae: Crotalus )

With the continued adoption of genome‐scale data in evolutionary biology comes the challenge of adequately harnessing the information to make accurate phylogenetic inferences. Coalescent‐based methods of species tree inference have become common, and concatenation has been shown in simulation to perform well, particularly when levels of incomplete lineage sorting are low. However, simulation conditions are often overly simplistic, leaving empiricists with uncertainty regarding analytical tools. We use a large ultraconserved element data set (\u3e3,000 loci) from rattlesnakes of the Crotalus triseriatus group to delimit lineages and estimate species trees using concatenation and several coalescent‐based methods. Unpartitioned and partitioned maximum likelihood and Bayesian analysis of the concatenated matrix yield a topology identical to coalescent analysis of a subset of the data in bpp . ASTRAL analysis on a subset of the more variable loci also results in a tree consistent with concatenation and bpp , whereas the SVDquartets phylogeny differs at additional nodes. The size of the concatenated matrix has a strong effect on species tree inference using SVDquartets , warranting additional investigation on optimal data characteristics for this method. Species delimitation analyses suggest up to 16 unique lineages may be present within the C. triseriatus group, with divergences occurring during the Neogene and Quaternary. Network analyses suggest hybridization within the group is relatively rare. Altogether, our results reaffirm the Mexican highlands as a biodiversity hotspot and suggest that coalescent‐based species tree inference on data subsets can provide a strongly supported species tree consistent with concatenation of all loci with a large amount of missing data

Massachusetts Education Partnership: Policy, Leadership, Labor-Management Collaboration

The Massachusetts Education Partnership (MEP) is a collaborative endeavor on the part of four education-related organizations representing teachers, superintendents, and school committees and four research institutions. By working together, the Partnership aims to improve student achievement through labor-management collaboration and to foster the development of collaborative cultures in Massachusetts school districts. As of March 1, 2014, the MEP has trained labor and management leaders from 34 school districts in interest-based bargaining (IBB) and provided intensive facilitation to seven school districts where labor and management are working collaboratively on a program or issue of their choosing

MassResults – Building a more effective, accountable, and open state government

Through strategic plans, performance reports, and a program-based performance budget, the Patrick administration is using data to manage, making government more transparent and accountable. Working with the Executive Office of Administration & Finance, and partnering with the Commonwealth Performance, Accountability and Transparency office, the Collins Center at UMass Boston has been charged with implementing the MassResults program throughout the executive branch

Laparoscopic supracervical hysterectomy versus endometrial ablation for women with heavy menstrual bleeding (HEALTH) : a parallel-group, open-label, randomised controlled trial

UK National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment Programme. Acknowledgments We thank the women who participated in the HEALTH study. We also thank Angela Hyde (Vice Chair of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Women's Network until September, 2015, and co-applicant on the original grant application until October, 2016) for her contribution to the design of the participant facing documents and participation in trial meetings from the perspective of a patient, Jonathan Cook (statistician and co-applicant on the original grant application until April, 2014) for his contributions to the study design, Rebecca Bruce for her secretarial support and data management, members of the project management group for their ongoing advice and support of the trial, plus the independent members of the trial steering committee (Henry Kitchener [Chair], Patrick Chien, Barbara Farrell, and Isobel Montgomery) and data monitoring committee (Jane Norman [Chair], Peter O'Donovan, and Andy Vail), and the staff at the recruitment sites who facilitated recruitment, treatment, and follow-up of trial participants. The project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment Programme (project number 12/35/23). The Health Services Research Unit and the Health Economics Research Unit are funded by the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the UK Department of Health and Social Care.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Mitotic Evolution of Plasmodium falciparum Shows a Stable Core Genome but Recombination in Antigen Families

Malaria parasites elude eradication attempts both within the human host and across nations. At the individual level, parasites evade the host immune responses through antigenic variation. At the global level, parasites escape drug pressure through single nucleotide variants and gene copy amplification events conferring drug resistance. Despite their importance to global health, the rates at which these genomic alterations emerge have not been determined. We studied the complete genomes of different Plasmodium falciparum clones that had been propagated asexually over one year in the presence and absence of drug pressure. A combination of whole-genome microarray analysis and next-generation deep resequencing (totaling 14 terabases) revealed a stable core genome with only 38 novel single nucleotide variants appearing in seventeen evolved clones (avg. 5.4 per clone). In clones exposed to atovaquone, we found cytochrome b mutations as well as an amplification event encompassing the P. falciparum multidrug resistance associated protein (mrp1) on chromosome 1. We observed 18 large-scale (greater than 1 kb on average) deletions of telomere-proximal regions encoding multigene families, involved in immune evasion (9.5×10−6 structural variants per base pair per generation). Six of these deletions were associated with chromosomal crossovers generated during mitosis. We found only minor differences in rates between genetically distinct strains and between parasites cultured in the presence or absence of drug. Using these derived mutation rates for P. falciparum (1.0–9.7×10−9 mutations per base pair per generation), we can now model the frequency at which drug or immune resistance alleles will emerge under a well-defined set of assumptions. Further, the detection of mitotic recombination events in var gene families illustrates how multigene families can arise and change over time in P. falciparum. These results will help improve our understanding of how P. falciparum evolves to evade control efforts within both the individual hosts and large populations