Book Review: What is Good Grammar?

Book review of: Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century (New York: Viking, 2014)

New Zealand : Mumps Outbreak

The purpose of this Health Brief is to discuss the outbreak of mumps in New Zealand during the summer of 2017. The year saw more cases than the past sixteen years combined. The reason that New Zealand, a high-income country that generally does not struggle with communicable diseases, may be experiencing this outbreak is low vaccination rates in the 1990’s. It appears that there was a decline in coverage for the MMR immunization at this time due to several factors. These include a transition in the timing of the second dose of MMR, a change from four years to eleven years, and widespread concern that the immunization would cause autism in children, which has since been disproven. Pacific Islanders have also consistently had lower vaccination rates than other populations and have also been hit hardest by the mumps outbreak. Coverage for MMR has been increasing each year, so another outbreak of this magnitude should be preventable

(WP 2017-02) The Great Recession and Public Education

We examine the impact of the Great Recession on K-12 education finance and employment and generate five key results. First, nearly 300,000 school employees lost their jobs. Second, schools that were heavily dependent financially on state governments were particularly vulnerable to the recession. Third local revenues from the property tax actually increased during the recession, primarily because millage rates rose in response to declining property values. Fourth, inequality in school spending rose sharply during the Great Recession. Fifth, the federal government’s efforts to shield education from some of the worst effects of the recession achieved their major goal

Pap Test Follow-up Pattern Among American Indian Women in Arizona

Objective: To quantify the loss to follow-up rate after abnormal Pap test results at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center, an Indian Health Service regional facility, and identify barriers to follow-up from the patients’ point of view. Materials and Methods: Patient records were used to identify women who had abnormal Pap tests in 2002 and to document the status of their follow-up care. Women who had no clinical record of follow-up were contacted by telephone to arrange a follow-up appointment and to request participation in a structured qualitative interview to identify barriers to follow-up at the individual, family, community, and health care system levels. Structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 15 women. Results: Of the 930 women with abnormal Pap test results in 2002, 11.1% received follow-up care at PIMC in accordance with the recommended time frame stipulated inclinical protocols; 74.6% received follow-up care at PIMC, but not in accordance with protocols; 2.6% were followed-up at another facility, 1% had moved out of the area, 3.5% were never treated, and we were unable to contact 6.6%. Most of the barriers to follow-up were related to communicating the need for follow-up and providing access to care within a time frame appropriate for clinical care. Conclusion: While these findings place an important additional responsibility and burden on the health care system serving American Indian women, our research outreach efforts suggest that given the availability of appropriate resources, these barriers can be overcome

Ocular biomaterials and the anterior eye

Hydrogels, water swollen polymer matrices, have been utilised in many biomedical applications, as there is the potential to manipulate the properties for a given application by changing the chemical structure of the constituent monomers The eye provides an excellent site to examne the interaction between a synthetic material and a complex biological fluid without invasive surgery. There is a need for the development of new synthetic hydrogels for use in the anterior eye, Three applications of hydrogels in the eye were considered in this thesis. For some patients, the only hope of any visual improvement lies in the use of an artificial cornea, or keratoprosthesis, Preliminary investigations of a series of simple homogeneous hydrogel copolymers revealed that the mechanical properties required to withstand surgery and in eye stresses, were not achieved This lead to work on the development of semi-interpenetrating polymer networks based on the aforementioned copolymers, Manufacture of the device and cell response were also studied. Lasers have been employed in ocular surgery to correct refractive defects. If an irregular surface is ablated, an irregular surface is obtained. A hydrogel system was investigated that could be applied to the eye prior to ablation to create a smooth surface. Factors that may influence ablation rate were explored, Soft contact lenses can be used as a probe to study the interaction between synthetic materials and the biological constituents of tears. This has lead to the development of many sensitive analytical techniques for protein and lipid deposition, one of which is fluorescence spectrophotometry. Various commercially available soft contact lenses were worn for different periods of time and then analysed for protein and lipid deposition using fluorescence spectrophotometry, The influence of water content, degree of ionicity and the lens material on the level and type of deposition was investigated

Comparing to ingroup and outgroup members: Do we assimilate, contrast, or neither?

Previous work studying social comparisons suggests that people are likely to assimilate to ingroup members (e.g. Ledgerwood & Chaiken, 2007) but can also contrast from ingroup members if outgroup members are present (Blanton, Miller, & Dye, 2002). The present research built upon these findings by including a no-comparison control group to test for true contrast and assimilation effects. Across two studies, women primed with a gender-math stereotype received false feedback about their performance on a math task; and in some conditions, they learned of the performance of ostensible male and/or female co-participants. Relative to a no-comparison control, we did not see evidence of ingroup assimilation in either study. However, in both studies, we found that participants were likely to contrast their self-evaluations away from downward targets, regardless of group membership. This suggests that self-enhancement motivations may be stronger than the drive for ingroup assimilation

Race relations in colonial Queensland: A history of exclusion, exploitation, and extermination

No abstract availabl