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The purpose of this article is to uncover the political factors associated with greater income parity for black men, black women, and white women relative to white men in the American states. Variables are constructed for federal, state, and local government employment, state electoral competition, federal procurement, black state legislators, and women state legislators along with a number of socioeconomic factors. It is discovered that the political variables carry less weight than the socioeconomic ones. These findings raise questions about the future prospects for increased earnings parity for minorities and women as previous federal efforts to eliminate racial and gender discrimination appear to have been weakened and state political factors have little relationship with greater income equality.

It is well known that conduction in YBa2Cu3O7 (YBCO) is by means of copper "planes" and "chains," where planes and chains describe the degree of bonding between copper and oxygen. Changes of conductivity versus temperature have been used to show that conduction in YBCO in the normal state is 3-dimensional, while conduction approaching the onset of the superconducting state is first 2-dimensional and then 3-dimensional. We have found another method to monitor this 2-to-3 transition. Using square samples, and measuring the voltage at each corner caused by a current applied to the opposite corners, one can find the conductivities along the x-axis and the y-axis. The ratio of these conductivities is unity for homogeneous samples in the normal state. However, in transition to the superconducting state, the ratio of conductivities changes. We examine this change as a function of sample purity, sample history, and exposure to an external magnetic field. Our data are consistent with data reported in the literature, and they suggest the existence of another state change deep in the superconducting state, which is only observable with the application of a magnetic field., Measurements were also carried out to correlate the anisotropy with sample porosity. Measurements of normal state resistivity, critical temperature, and critical current characterize the sample's porosity, and these data affect the anisotropy in the superconducting state in a manner directly proportional to the porosity., (C)1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers

To gain insight into how people select life insurance policies, we conducted a controlled experiment to see how consumers with varying levels of expertise make choices among life insurance policies when provided relevant information presented in an easy-to-use format. We found that those with greater product class knowledge engage in qualitatively and quantitatively different decision processes than those with less knowledge, and therefore are likely to reach different decisions. Specifically, experts are statistically more likely to engage in pairwise/multiple comparisons and to evoke a greater number of choice criteria. There is directional support that they search for more information as well. For all participants, the number of information searches far exceeded the number of elimination and choice criteria evoked. © 1998 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Some of the early settlers of New England brought with them the works and thought of European geographers, notably Ptolemy, Munster, Cluver, Carpenter, and Varenius. Beginning in the 1600s the work of British geographers Gordon and Salmon and Guthrie and Pinkerton was acknowledged, preceding that of Jedidiah Morse, “Father of American Geography.” Morse led the way for a large number of geography texts written by Americans, emphasizing North America and characterized by Varenius's special geography. Early collegiate developments in New England geography were led by Harvard and Yale universities, the College of Rhode Island (later renamed Brown University), and Dartmouth College. The 20 or so normal schools throughout New England, introduced in the middle 1800s, constituted a nursery for geographic education. Also noted are more recent college and university geography departments established throughout the region, including notably Clark University. The founding of societies and associations in New England also furthered the cause of geography.

Postmodern assumptions employed by some organizational theorists recognize that “administrators' greater power lies not in their ability to control resources but in their ability to manipulate symbols-the ceremonies, rituals, images, and language of the organization” (Graham and David 9). Thus, even a genre that is often considered neutral and objective, such as meeting minutes, can become a tool Of managerial control. This article presents data from an ethnographic case study that describes how an administrator in a theater organization manipulated language by using the minutes from a board of directors meeting to influence board members to vote to disband the organization.

Wynkyn de Worde published c. 1495 the first printed edition of John Trevisa's English translation of an influential work of science composed by Bartholomew the Englishman in Latin in the thirteenth century, De Proprietatibus Rerum (DPR). The design of de Worde's book, the use of Latin in the rubrics, and the visual vocabulary of the illustrations bring readers of English into the circle of learning. First, the plan of organization of Bartholomew's encyclopedic work is analyzed and both that structure and the expository style of the work are related to memorial reading and use as a textbook. Next, the widespread use of DPR in Latin and vernacular languages is reviewed, the suggestion that certain of its books seem to have been used more than others is made, and the reliance of English readers, such as Roger Thorney, who commissoned de Worde's edition, on de Worde for learned books printed in their provincial tongue is pointed out. Finally, through comparison with certain manuscript and other printed editions, the methods de Worde used to make the book readable are explained, the layout is shown to support the idea of system, and the function of the pictures as visual texts carrying scientific ideas is demonstrated. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 1998.

Application of forward coastal sediment transport models in situations involving large temporal and spatial scales or topographically complex environments can be highly problematic since the distribution of hydrodynamic parameters is rarely adequately known. Where rocky topography is present, flow patterns may be altered and sediments trapped by topographic barriers. A frequently employed approach to these problems is the application of the statistical technique known as empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis. One limitation of EOF analysis of grain size and mineralogical data is that EOF is a purely geometric technique which does not allow incorporation of a priori knowledge we may have regarding the physical environment. In fact, there is no guarantee that a meaningful physical interpretation of the results of an EOF analysis actually exists. This is not true of geophysical inverse theory, which is capable of incorporating diverse forms of information and is not limited to purely geometric manipulations of data. We have formulated an inverse theoretical approach to study sediment transport which we call STI, short for source-transport inversion. STI relaxes the nonphysical assumption of orthogonal endmembers and can handle many forms of a priori information. STI has been developed initially in the context of modeling the sediment supply and dispersal system of Monterey Bay, California. Using the geographical distribution of heavy mineralogy data, significant sources are identified and sediments traced from those sources along transport pathways. Model results are encouraging both in terms of goodness of fit between model and data and in terms of the agreement of model results with the sediment sourcing and dispersal patterns inferred in previous studies. Model results indicate that beach sediments are primarily derived from the open coast north of the bay, that a littoral cell boundary exists in the center of the bay at Moss Landing, and that beach deposits produced by paleolittoral drift during a sea level low stand lie along the 100-m isobath. Copyright 1998 by the American Geophysical Union.

Despite reports that substance abuse among young Americans is on the decline, the problem among young male African Americans continues to be of major concern. School-based prevention strategies offer promising alternatives for reducing the risk factors for substance abuse among this group. The most successful of these programs appear to be those that include the entire school ecology as part of the prevention strategy and focus on the unique psychosocial development needs of these youth. in this article we discuss the prevalence of substance abuse among male African American youth, examine school correlates and risk factors, and review school-based prevention strategies that have shown varying degrees of effectiveness in addressing the substance abuse problems, directly through changing values, attitudes, and behaviors, and indirectly by reducing risk factors and strengthening protective mechanisms.

Traditional attentional assessment paradigms have often failed to separate factors relevant to components of attention from factors related to other cognitive-related processes or task-specific variance. This study attempted to evaluate various multidimensional assessment models of children's attentional functioning using a neuropsychological framework addressing multiple components of attention. A series of increasingly complex measurement models were proposed to explain 2nd graders' (n = 107) patterns of performance across multiple measures of hemispheric activation, verbal and nonverbal selective and sustained attention, and general ability. Evaluation of the latent structure produced by these measurement models using confirmatory factor analysis suggested that a multidimensional factor structure that incorporated components of attention involving levels of processing provided a better resolution of the latent structure of the data than those based on lateralized processes or a unidimensional attentional model.

This preliminary investigation considers undergraduate student perceptions with respect to their professional future. `No one warned me it would be like this,' and `These are the things that college never taught me,' are typical comments that are heard from the young workforce. This paper addresses future plans and predictions of students from two New England institutions of higher learning by utilizing a variety of strategies. Methods to elicit data include in-class activities and carefully designed questionnaires. These exercises have been designed to uncover images and themes concerning transition from college to the workplace. Issues include technical and communication skills, leadership roles, corporate politics, group dynamics, and gender diversity in the workplace.

The objective of this research is to automate the classification of the temporal behavior of storm cloud systems based on measurements derived from consecutive satellite images. The motivation behind this study is to develop improved descriptions of cloud dynamics which can be used in general circulation models for prediction of global climate change. Analysis was applied to the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) low resolution cloud top pressure database for the first six days in April, 1989. A total of 296 midlatitude storm cloud components were tracked between consecutive 3-hour time frames. For each pair of components, temporal correspondence events were classified as either 1.) direct, 2.) merge, 3.) split, or 4.) reject. The reject class, which was used primarily to categorize pairs of unrelated systems, included storm cloud system dissipation and creation as well. Statistical, neural network, and evolutionary techniques were developed for finding solutions to the storm cloud correspondence problem. Evolutionary techniques applied to the problem consisted of 1.) a constraint-handling hybrid evolutionary technique and 2.) a genetic local search algorithm. The results demonstrate the potential of evolutionary techniques to yield meteorologically-feasible solutions, given appropriate constraints, to the two-frame storm tracking problem. © 1998 SPIE. All rights reserved.

In this paper we have discussed different types of JDBC drivers under the context of a two-tier client/server model. However, it is entirely possible to use them to develop a multi-tier client/server application. The integration of web servers with database servers via the use of JAVA applets and JDBC drivers is useful for the teaching of database programming and web-based application development. The applet that we have developed, along with our experience of configuring the JDBC and JAVA environment, was used in a database course. Students built more complicated database/web applications on top of this sample applet. Future extension of our work may involve the following items: • the security implication of using JDBC drivers in a multiple, heterogeneous DBMS environment • the possible interaction of JDBC with firewalls and proxy servers • the evaluation of JDBC drivers under the context of real-world applications, especially their reliability and performance.