Combating the ‘Social Evil’: Masculinity and Moral Reform in Portland, 1912-1914

This article examines the role of prostitution in Portland in 1912-14, and the unsuccessful efforts of a Progressive-inspired Citizens’ Committee to wipe it out.More broadly, however, it analyzes changing social and gender roles and the specifically masculinist rhetoric with which the Citizens’ Committee— especially its two leaders, Rt. Rev. Robert Codman, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maine, and Dr. Frederic H. Gerrish, dean of Maine’s medical community — made sense of those changes. For Codman, Gerrish, and other Anglo-American men of their generation, the campaign against the “social evil” became a template upon which to project their anxieties about the social transformation of Portland, and the lives of its young men and women, on the eve of World War I. Howard M. Solomon is Scholar-in-Residence of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Collection of the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine, and Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Southern Maine. Solomon received his Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University in 1969. He taught social history and the history of sexuality at NYU and Tufts, from which he retired as Emeritus Professor of History in 2004. He has published on early modern France as well as the history of stereotyping. This essay is part of a long-term examination of LGBT communities in Maine. For his scholarly work and public presentations on stereotyping and sexuality, he was awarded Equality Maine’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. Solomon lives in Bowdoinham

Anomalous transport in disordered exclusion processes with coupled particles

We consider one-dimensional asymmetric exclusion processes with a simple attractive interaction, where the distance between consecutive particles is not allowed to exceed a certain limit and investigate the consequences of this coupling on the transport properties in the presence of random-force type disorder by means of a phenomenological random trap picture. In the phase-separated steady state of the model defined on a finite ring, the properties of the density profile are studied and the exponent governing the decay of the current with the system size in the biased phase is derived. In case all consecutive particles are coupled with each other and form a closed string, the current is found to be enhanced compared to the model without coupling, while if groups of consecutive particles form finite strings, the current is reduced. The motion of a semi-infinite string entering an initially empty lattice is also studied. Here, the diffusion of the head of the string is found to be anomalous, and two phases can be distinguished, which are characterised by different functional dependences of the diffusion exponent on the bias. The obtained results are checked by numerical simulation.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figure

Diversity at the Ballot Box: Electoral Politics and Maine\u27s Minority Communities, Post-WWII to the Present

As this year’s Sampson Center exhibition makes clear the powerful desire to find historical inevitability in the advance toward equal opportunity for all Americans has become far more nuanced by the sometimes discomforting reminders that advances at the ballot box are neither as clear-cut nor as unconditional as we once hoped. The ancient antipathies of racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia are not so easily elided by political campaigns and elections. The pace of social consensus requires a degree of patience and continuing attention that tries the very fabric of American life while we attempt to comprehend the consequences of change wrought by our heightened understanding of the implications of diversity in American life. Table of Contents: Introduction (Selma Botman, USM President) Quiet Revolution: A Tally of Black Victories (Bob Greene, for the African American Collection) Is It Good for the Jews? Is it Good for Everyone? Maine Jewry between Civic Idealism and the Politics of Reality (Abraham J. Peck, Scholar-in-Residence for the Judaica Collection) From the Closet to the Ballot-Box: Electoral Politics and Maine’s LGBT Citizens, 1970s to the Present (Howard M. Solomon, Scholar-in-Residence for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Collection)https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/event_catalog/1003/thumbnail.jp

What determines auditory similarity? The effect of stimulus group and methodology.

Two experiments on the internal representation of auditory stimuli compared the pairwise and grouping methodologies as means of deriving similarity judgements. A total of 45 undergraduate students participated in each experiment, judging the similarity of short auditory stimuli, using one of the methodologies. The experiments support and extend Bonebright's (1996) findings, using a further 60 stimuli. Results from both methodologies highlight the importance of category information and acoustic features, such as root mean square (RMS) power and pitch, in similarity judgements. Results showed that the grouping task is a viable alternative to the pairwise task with N > 20 sounds whilst highlighting subtle differences, such as cluster tightness, between the different task results. The grouping task is more likely to yield category information as underlying similarity judgements

Liberating Visions: Religion and the Challenge of Change in Maine,1820 to the Present

Liberating Visions: Religion and the Challenge of Change in Maine, 1820 to the Present. Each of the Sampson Center’s three scholars has crafted an original essay related to one of the Sampson Center collections—African-American, Judaic, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender—thereby reflecting on how religious institutions have fostered minority identity and have framed social and cultural transformation. Table of Contents: Religion and Transformation (Joseph S. Wood, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs) Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine Programming (Susie Bock, Director, Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine and Head, USM Special Collections) The African American Collection “There’s a Blessing in Pressing:” Change in Maine’s African American Churches (Maureen Elgersman Lee, Associate Professor of History and Faculty Scholar for USM’s African American Collection) The Judaica Collection “Orthodox and Yet thoroughly Liberal:” Jews and Judaism in Maine Between Tradition and Change (Abraham J. Peck, Director, Academic Council for Post-Holocaust Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Studies and Scholar-in-residence for USM’s Judaica Collection) The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Collection Coming Out, Going In: Spirituality and Religion in Maine’s LGBT Communities (Howard M. Solomon, Adjunct Professor of History and Scholar-in-Residence for USM’s LGBT Collection)https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/event_catalog/1001/thumbnail.jp

A new foundational crisis in mathematics, is it really happening?

The article reconsiders the position of the foundations of mathematics after the discovery of HoTT. Discussion that this discovery has generated in the community of mathematicians, philosophers and computer scientists might indicate a new crisis in the foundation of mathematics. By examining the mathematical facts behind HoTT and their relation with the existing foundations, we conclude that the present crisis is not one. We reiterate a pluralist vision of the foundations of mathematics. The article contains a short survey of the mathematical and historical background needed to understand the main tenets of the foundational issues.Comment: Final versio

Consumer behaviour in tourism: Concepts, influences and opportunities

Although consumer behaviour (CB) is one of the most researched areas in the field of tourism, few extensive reviews of the body of knowledge in this area exist. This review article examines what we argue are the key concepts, external influences and opportune research contexts in contemporary tourism CB research. Using a narrative review, we examine the CB literature published in three major tourism journals from 2000 to 2012. Of 519 articles identified and reviewed, 191 are included in this article. We examine the development of and scope for future research on nine key concepts, including decision-making, values, motivations, self-concept and personality, expectations, attitudes, perceptions, satisfaction, trust and loyalty. We then examine three important external influences on tourism behaviour, technology, Generation Y and the rise in concern over ethical consumption. Finally, we identify and discuss five research contexts that represent major areas for future scholarship: group and joint decision-making, under-researched segments, cross-cultural issues in emerging markets, emotions and consumer misbehaviour. Our examination of key research gaps is concluded by arguing that the hedonic and affective aspects of CB research in tourism must be brought to bear on the wider CB and marketing literature

National culture and tourist destination choice in the UK and Venezuela: an exploratory and preliminary study

National culture determines consumer attitudes and behaviour. While this holds true for tourism consumption, little research has sought to better understand the effect of culture on tourist destination choice. The geographical scope of analysis has also been restricted. This study employs the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions framework to conduct an exploratory, qualitative evaluation of the influence of the tourist cultural background on destination choice. It focuses on the UK and Venezuela, the two countries with significant cultural differences and forecast growth in outbound tourism. The study shows the distinct role of culture in tourist preferences for destination choice and structure of travel groups. The effect of culture is also recorded in how tourists research destinations prior to visit and perceive travel risks, thus ultimately influencing their motivation to travel. Recommendations are developed on how to integrate knowledge on the cultural background of tourists into tourism management and policy-making practices

Meta-analysis of the relationship between alcohol consumption and coronary heart disease and mortality in type 2 diabetic patients

Aims/hypothesis: This systematic review examines the relationship between alcohol consumption and long-term complications of type 2 diabetes. Meta-analyses could only be performed for total mortality, mortality from CHD, and CHD incidence, because the availability of articles on other complications was too limited. Materials and methods: A PubMed search through to September 2005 was performed and the reference lists of relevant articles examined. Among the relevant articles there were six cohort studies reporting on the risk of total mortality and/or fatal and/or incident CHD in alcohol non-consumers and in at least two groups of alcohol consumers. Results: Statistical pooling showed lower risks in alcohol consumers than in non-consumers (the reference category). The relative risk (RR) of total mortality was 0.64 (95% CI 0.49-0.82) in the <6 g/day category. In the higher alcohol consumption categories (6 to <18, and ≥18 g/day), the RRs of total mortality were not significant. Risks of fatal and total CHD were significantly lower in all three categories of alcohol consumers (<6, 6 to <18 and ≥18 g/day) than in non-consumers, with RRs ranging from 0.34 to 0.75. Conclusions/interpretation: This meta-analysis shows that, as with findings in the general population, moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a lower risk of mortality and CHD in type 2 diabetic populations. © Springer-Verlag 2006.

Abstract Reasoning and Friendship in High Functioning Preadolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders

To investigate the relationship between cognitive and social functioning, 20 Israeli individuals with HFASD aged 8–12 and 22 age, maternal education, and receptive vocabulary–matched preadolescents with typical development (TYP) came to the lab with a close friend. Measures of abstract reasoning, friendship quality, and dyadic interaction during a play session were obtained. As hypothesized, individuals with HFASD were significantly impaired in abstract reasoning, and there were significant group differences in friend and observer reports of friendship quality. There also was consistency in reports between friends. Two factors—“relationship appearance” and “relationship quality” described positive aspects of the relationships. Disability status and age related to relationship appearance. Proband abstract reasoning was related to relationship quality