Determinants of Drug Injection Behavior: Economic Factors, HIV Injection Risk and Needle Exchange Programs

This study examines the effects of local cocaine and heroin prices, AIDS rates, and needle exchange programs on drug injection and needle sharing by adult male arrestees in 24 large U.S. cities during 1989 1995. Regressions that control for personal characteristics including income, fixed city and year effects, and city-specific trends indicate that needle exchange programs decrease both injection and sharing. Increases in previous year AIDS prevalence reduce injection by both sharers and non-sharers, leaving the proportion of injectors who share unchanged. Higher cocaine prices lead to less cocaine injection and more sharing, but heroin prices do not effect injection or sharing.

On the genesis of directional friction through bristle-like mediating elements

We propose an explanation of the genesis of directional dry friction, as emergent property of the oscillations produced in a bristle-like mediating element by the interaction with microscale fluctuations on the surface. Mathematically, we extend a convergence result by Mielke, for Prandtl-Tomlinson-like systems, considering also non-homothetic scalings of a wiggly potential. This allows us to apply the result to some simple mechanical models, that exemplify the interaction of a bristle with a surface having small fluctuations. We find that the resulting friction is the product of two factors: a geometric one, depending on the bristle angle and on the fluctuation profile, and a energetic one, proportional to the normal force exchanged between the bristle-like element and the surface. Finally, we apply our result to discuss the with the nap/against the nap asymmetry

SOCAP: Lessons learned in applying SIPE-2 to the military operations crisis action planning domain

This report describes work funded under the DARPA Planning and Scheduling Initiative that led to the development of SOCAP (System for Operations Crisis Action Planning). In particular, it describes lessons learned in applying SIPE-2, the underlying AI planning technology within SOCAP, to the domain of military operations deliberate and crisis action planning. SOCAP was demonstrated at the U.S. Central Command and at the Pentagon in early 1992. A more detailed report about the lessons learned is currently being prepared. This report was presented during one of the panel discussions on 'The Relevance of Scheduling to AI Planning Systems.

Fraternity Membership and Binge Drinking

This paper examines the relationship between membership in social fraternities and sororities and binge drinking among 18–24 year old full-time four-year college students who participated in the 1995 National College Health Risk Behavior Survey. To deal with unobserved heterogeneity in binge drinking incidence and frequency regressions, I enter as explanatory variables various measures of situational and overall alcohol use. When these are added, the fraternity membership coefficient is substantially reduced in size, but remains large and highly significant. This suggests that fraternity membership increases binge drinking. If not, it identifies a very specific mechanism underlying the decision to join a fraternity: members drink more intensely than non-members even while doing so in similar frequencies and situations and for similar lengths of time. Particularly notable is that behavior by underage students appears to drive the relationship.

Adolescent Drinking and High School Dropout

This paper estimates the effect of binge and frequent drinking by adolescents on subsequent high school dropout using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Young Adults. We estimate an instrumental variables model with an indicator of any past month alcohol use, which is by definition correlated with heavy drinking but should have minimal additional impact on educational outcomes, as the identifying instrument, and also control for a rich set of potentially confounding variables, including maternal characteristics and dropout risk factors measured before and during adolescence. In comparison, OLS provides conservative estimates of the causal impact of heavy drinking on dropping out, implying that binge or frequent drinking among 15 %uF81816 year old students lowers the probability of having graduated or being enrolled in high school four years later by at least 11 percent. Overidentification tests using two measures of maternal youthful alcohol use as additional instruments support our identification strategy.

The Road to Rebellion

In this essay, Dr. Erik J. Chaput and Russell DeSimone examine and contextualize the events surrounding the Dorr Rebellion of 1842 and the consequences that followed for those involved, primarily Providence attorney Thomas Wilson Dorr, who was the figurehead of one of the most significant constitutional reform efforts in antebellum American history. This essay, along with a collection of letters it accompanies on our Dorr Rebellion Letters project site, examines the momentous importance of the rebellion in terms of local Rhode Island history and national constitutional reform. The Dorr Rebellion Project http://library.providence.edu/dorr The Dorr Letters Project http://library.providence.edu:8080/xtf/index.htm

High School Alcohol Use and Young Adult Labor Market Outcomes

We estimate the relationship between 10th grade binge drinking in 1990 and labor market outcomes in 2000 among National Educational Longitudinal Survey respondents. For females, adolescent drinking and adult wages are unrelated, and negative employment effects disappear once academic achievement is held constant. For males, negative employment effects and, more strikingly, positive wage effects persist after controlling for achievement as well as background characteristics, educational attainment, and adult binge drinking and family and job characteristics. Accounting for illegal drug use and other problem behaviors in 10th grade eliminates the unemployment effect, but strengthens the wage effect. As the latter is not explicable by the health, income or social capital justifications that are often used for frequently observed positive correlations between adult alcohol use and earnings, we conjecture that binge drinking conveys unobserved social skills that are rewarded by employers.

Dorr Rebellion Project Selected Bibliography

An annotated and traditional bibliography of research materials utilized by Dr. Erik J. Chaput and Rhode Island scholar Russell J. DeSimone in creating the script for The Dorr Rebellion short-form documentary and other resources on the Dorr Rebellion Project website. For those resources which are open access, an access link has been provided within the document. Visit the Dorr Rebellion Project website for more information: http://library.providence.edu/dorr