Regular Member Research Articles

Accuracies and inaccuracies of the family history method: a multivariate approach

This paper reports on 1459 first-degree relatives of probands with schizophrenia or affective illness and matched community controls. We sought (i) to validate psychiatric diagnoses obtained by family history (FH) against those obtained by a best estimate (BE) procedure based on personal interview and (ii) to explore the factors influencing the accuracy of the FH report. We found relatively poor agreement between the FH and BE diagnoses, and the disagreements were influenced by numerous factors, including gender, psychiatric status of the informant or proband's diagnosis. When validated against a BE diagnosis, the overall accuracy of the FH method is relatively poor, and is furthermore subject to several biases. Therefore, substituting the FH method for BE diagnosis may be an important source of error in the investigation of familial/genetic factors in psychiatric disorders.

Enhancing Student Practicum Opportunities

An outbreak investigation practicum option for graduate students at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine has three goals of education, scientific investigation, and exposure to operations of public health agencies. Over a six-year period, 48 students performed 40 outbreak investigations in collaboration with adjunct faculty based in local public health agencies. An outbreak investigation practicum at Yale University had similar goals, but the rapid-response team approach there generally involved one regular faculty member and a team of graduate students. In either program, the level of faculty involvement necessary for outbreak investigations is sustainable only if the faculty value public health practice as part of the school's mission. Since public health students need to acquire many practical skills, a short outbreak investigation practicum experience should not be viewed in isolation, but rather should be one of a variety of practicum offerings available to students at schools of public health.

Shakespeare Goes to High School: Some Current Practices in the American Classroom

T TIS PROBABLY FAIR TO SAY THAT MOST regular readers of Shakespeare Quarterly are unfamiliar with the way Shakespeare is now being taught in the American secondary school. College and university teachers habitually deplore the failure of their high-school counterparts to teach college-bound students how to write, and in general professors tend to lament the death of learning in the public schools. It might also be said that many high-school teachers are ignorant of pedagogical practice in the university. High-school teachers once attended college, and college teachers high school, but neither group seems to remember much about its experience. And times and modes of instruction have changed so much that one's own experience is probably outdated. Regrettably, little commerce occurs between the secondary school and the university, at least as far as English is concerned, and this is so because there are very few thoroughfares to promote communication. I present this piece in the hope that some barriers can be broken down and intellectual traffic encouraged. The four teachers who here describe their pedagogical practices have all participated in the Teaching Shakespeare Institute sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Three of the four returned, after their initial term as participants, to serve as master teachers, or coordinators of exercises and discussions about pedagogical and extracurricular means of making Shakespeare accessible to students. As a regular faculty member and, with Peggy O'Brien, a coordinator of that institute over the past decade, I have come to know dozens of talented, curious, industrious, articulate high-school teachers. Attention to the experience and views of four of these teachers can not only enlarge awareness of how students encounter Shakespeare before they get to college but can also improve university instruction by giving entering students a clearer identity. It is clear from our work in the Folger program that energy, imagination, and talent are to be found in abundance in the high-school classroom. With help from the editor of this special teaching issue of SQ, I have devised a series of questions designed to illuminate the assumptions, choices, and practices governing the pedagogy of four superior high-school teachers of Shakespeare. The assemblage that follows is unscientific, impressionistic, tilted, partial, and, by the usual measures of scholarship, probably indefensible. To one who hated As You Like It in the tenth grade and loved Twelfth Night in the twelfth, it is also fascinating. Unscientific or not, this survey of responses opens a window onto the high-school class-

Enhancing Student Practicum Opportunities

An outbreak investigation practicum option for graduate students at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine has three goals of education, scientific investigation, and exposure to operations of public health agencies. Over a six-year period, 48 students performed 40 outbreak investigations in collaboration with adjunct faculty based in local public health agencies. An outbreak investigation practicum at Yale University had similar goals, but the rapid-response team approach there generally involved one regular faculty member and a team of graduate students. In either program, the level of faculty involvement necessary for outbreak investigations is sustainable only if the faculty value public health practice as part of the school's mission. Since public health students need to acquire many practical skills, a short outbreak investigation practicum experience should not be viewed in isolation, but rather should be one of a variety of practicum offerings available to students at schools of public health.

Linking an Easily Detectable Phenotype to the Folding of a Common Structural Motif: Selection of Rare Turn Mutations that Prevent the Folding of Rop

Rop is the simplest and most regular member of a family of proteins characterized by a bundle of four antiparallel helices. Rop is dimeric, each monomer being formed by two helices connected by a sharp bend. In this work we have extensively mutagenized three residues that form the connection between the two α-helices to ask whether the bend region contains any important folding information. The characterization of a collection of random mutants indicated that this structure is rather insensitive to amino acid substitutions and that most amino acids are tolerated in these positions by the Rop native structure.In order to identify the rare amino acid sequences that would prevent Rop from folding and/or dimerizing, we exploited the observation that Rop can functionally substitute the dimerization domain of the λ repressor. In fact plasmids expressing a hybrid protein formed by the amino-terminal domain of the λ repressor covalently linked to Rop, confer immunity to λ infection on their hosts. We have shown that this property depends on the ability of the Rop moiety to fold and dimerize. The analysis of 380 Rop mutants containing random amino acid sequences at positions 30, 31 and 32 allowed us to identify three mutant Rop proteins that are defective in dimerization, probably as a consequence of their inability to fold. In these mutants the tripeptides VED, VPD and YPD substitute the wild-type DAD at positions 30, 31 and 32. Other combinations of amino acids are found resulting in levels of immunity that are lower than the wild-type but still sufficient to prevent single plaque formation. This result suggests that a smaller proportion of the corresponding Rop protein reaches a thermodynamic and proteolytically stable dimeric state.

The status and seasonal occurrence of Leopard Seals, Hydrurga leptonyx, in Tasmanian waters.

Seventy nine sightings of Leopard Seals, Hydrurga leptonyx, made over a period of 7 years in Tasmania are reported. They show that the species occurs annually in Tasmanian waters between July and November, probably as a result of northward movement from the Antarctic pack ice zone. Its seasonal occurrence in Tasmanian waters implies that it is a regular member of the marine fauna of the region. This is in contrast to previous reports that the species was a rare vagrant, occasionally stranding along the coastline. Comparisons of the age structure of H. leptonyx in Tasmania with those on subantarctic islands suggests that there is a clinal variation with latitude in the dispersal pattern, as young animals disperse further north than adults.

Membership Matters

A framework for integrating diverse aspects of membership dynamics is outlined, and 10 propositions about membership change and its impact on group structure, process, and performance are presented. Data from a longitudinal study of 22 small (3-to 5-person) groups are used to test some of the propositions. Groups that had an experimentally imposed temporary member (a "guest") and groups with spontaneous membership changes, such as absences, performed better on a task requiring reflection about the group's internal processes than did groups with a stable membership. No such effect wasfoundfor performance on other types of tasks. Some evidence was found for higher cohesiveness among groups with changing attendance compared to groups with greaterweek-to-weekstability. However, groups with a history of member change felt less positive about their groups when a guest replaced a regular member than did more stable groups. Groups with guests reported spending more time on task and less time dealing with conflict than did groups with no guests. Similar effects werefoundfor groups meetingface-to-face and via computers. Implications for work groups and other types of small groups are discussed

The role of the pharmacist on the home health care team

This article discuses the vital role of the pharmacist on the home care interdisciplinary patient care team. It posits that as the acuity level of patients admitted to home care increases and as the complexity of treatment regimens also increases, the professional pharmacist will soon become a regular staff member of home health agencies.

Using a Social Guide to Improve Social Relationships of People with Severe Disabilities

Staff members of community-based residential programs serving individuals with intellectual disabilities often have difficulty helping participants develop social relationships with community members. A “social guide model” taught staff of an apartment-based residential program to use a set of “community network strategies” to improve the social relationships of three women with disabilities. Results demonstrated a functional relationship between staff members' use of the strategies under the supervision of the social guide model and increases in the size of participants' social networks and the frequency with which they experienced social integration. The intervention also was associated with a higher weekly rate of introduction of new network members and a higher rate of socially integrated activities per network member per week. Gains generally were maintained during a follow-up period, with a regular staff member assuming the role of social guide.

Level of Parental Involvement on Early Childhood Intervention Teams

The authors report the results of a study of the relationship between the level of parent involvement on early childhood intervention teams and social worker membership on the team. Results of the study, based on a sample of 55 early intervention team members, supported the hypothesis that the presence of a social worker as a regular member of the early intervention team is associated with a higher level of parent involvement. Strategies to facilitate an active role for parents on multidisciplinary early intervention teams are presented.

Seed Dynamics of Abies balsamea and Acer saccharum in a Deciduous Forest of Northeastern North America

We studied the seed dynamics of Abies balsamea and Acer saccharum in a sugar maple-yellow birch forest of Québec, Canada. Seed rain was censused every week from spring to autumn in 1988 and 1989. The soil seed bank was sampled four times during the 1988 growing season. Abies seed rain varied significantly between 1988 and 1989. A total of 92.5 ± 7.0 seeds nr-2 (mean ± 1 SE) were produced in 1988; 1989 seed production was null. Seed viability in 1988 averaged 31.5%. Dispersal during the winter period accounted for ca. 22% of the annual seed crop. The spatial dispersion pattern of the seed rain was contagious for the autumn period, but was not significantly different from random for the winter period. There was only a weak relationship in the spatial distribution of the seed rain between the autumn and winter periods. Abies did not maintain a persistent seed bank on the site; viable seeds were present on the soil only after seed dispersal had started. Postdispersal seed mortality was relatively high, ca. 70%. Acer seed rain started soon after the flowering period, but consisted at that time only of aborted, underdeveloped samaras. Viable seeds were disseminated from September through early winter. Dispersal during the autumn accounted for ca. 98% of the annual seed crop. There were significant differences between seed rain abundance of 1988 and that of 1989 (118.1 ± 9.5 samaras m-2 and 158.9 ± 16.3 samaras m-2 in 1988 and in 1989, respectively). Seed viability also varied significantly between the 2 years, i.e., 19% in 1988 and 5% in 1989. For both 1988 and 1989, samaras were contagiously dispersed over the site. There was a significant positive relationship between the spatial distribution of the seed rain in 1988 and that in 1989. Seed rain abundance was high mainly in the proximity of mature Acer trees. As for Abies, Acer did not maintain a persistent seed bank in the soil; viable seeds were present only in the autumn seed bank sampling, after seed fall had started. Postdispersal seed mortality was relatively low, i.e., 20%. Abies and Acer are quite similar in their regenerative traits, and these contrast sharply with those of Betula alleghaniensis, a regular member of this forest community. Differences in regenerative traits may contribute to the coexistence of these tree species considering the gap regime of the system studied.

SEED DYNAMICS OF ABIES BALSAMEA AND ACER SACCHARUM IN A DECIDUOUS FOREST OF NORTHEASTERN NORTH AMERICA

We studied the seed dynamics of Abies balsamea and Acer saccharum in a sugar maple‐yellow birch forest of Québec, Canada. Seed rain was censused every week from spring to autumn in 1988 and 1989. The soil seed bank was sampled four times during the 1988 growing season. Abies seed rain varied significantly between 1988 and 1989. A total of 92.5 ± 7.0 seeds nr‐2 (mean ± 1 SE) were produced in 1988; 1989 seed production was null. Seed viability in 1988 averaged 31.5%. Dispersal during the winter period accounted for ca. 22% of the annual seed crop. The spatial dispersion pattern of the seed rain was contagious for the autumn period, but was not significantly different from random for the winter period. There was only a weak relationship in the spatial distribution of the seed rain between the autumn and winter periods. Abies did not maintain a persistent seed bank on the site; viable seeds were present on the soil only after seed dispersal had started. Postdispersal seed mortality was relatively high, ca. 70%. Acer seed rain started soon after the flowering period, but consisted at that time only of aborted, underdeveloped samaras. Viable seeds were disseminated from September through early winter. Dispersal during the autumn accounted for ca. 98% of the annual seed crop. There were significant differences between seed rain abundance of 1988 and that of 1989 (118.1 ± 9.5 samaras m‐2 and 158.9 ± 16.3 samaras m‐2 in 1988 and in 1989, respectively). Seed viability also varied significantly between the 2 years, i.e., 19% in 1988 and 5% in 1989. For both 1988 and 1989, samaras were contagiously dispersed over the site. There was a significant positive relationship between the spatial distribution of the seed rain in 1988 and that in 1989. Seed rain abundance was high mainly in the proximity of mature Acer trees. As for Abies, Acer did not maintain a persistent seed bank in the soil; viable seeds were present only in the autumn seed bank sampling, after seed fall had started. Postdispersal seed mortality was relatively low, i.e., 20%. Abies and Acer are quite similar in their regenerative traits, and these contrast sharply with those of Betula alleghaniensis, a regular member of this forest community. Differences in regenerative traits may contribute to the coexistence of these tree species considering the gap regime of the system studied.

The mayor in small council-manager municipalities: Are mayors to be seen and not heard?

The National Civic League's recent revision of the Model City Charter recognizes the leadership potential of the mayor's office under the council-manager plan. The new charter reflects the work on leadership by James Svara, who has developed a model of the “facilitative” mayor applicable to council-manager jurisdictions. In this study, Svara's model has been applied to four Pennsylvania municipalities. After an examination of the mayor's 1) formal position in the governmental structure, 2) information network. and 3) performance in each community, we conclude that the facilitative model is void provided the mayor is a regular voting member of council.

1989”1990 AGU Congressional Fellow report

Describing the last 3 months on the Subcommittee on International Scientific Cooperation of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is no easy task. I have learned a great deal about many issues and about the workings of Congress; yet this knowledge has not been gained in a necessarily straightforward or logical manner.Although my status on the Subcommittee is that of a Fellow, in effect I am expected to function as a regular staff member. I immediately became involved in the preparation of two hearings, the first on science and technology initiatives for Poland and Hungary, and the second on the Human Genome Project. At these hearings, I learned firsthand about important aspects of science‐related issues that concern Congress, namely, intellectual property rights, U.S. competitiveness in the science and technology arena with other countries, Japan, in particular; and big science versus small science funding.

Certification in the American Embryo Transfer Association

Certification in the American Embryo Transfer Association (AETA) is a voluntary program available to all commercial embryo transfer businesses (ETB) operating in the United States. As of August 1989, 46 regular AETA member companies were certified. Certification involved a three step process. The ETB agreed that 1) they would meet or exceed the requirements for certification set forth by AETA, 2) they would employ at least one qualified individual who has successfully completed the AETA certification examination and who performs or supervises embryo collection and processing and 3) they would agree to an on-site inspection of the ETB's facilities and non-financial records. Examinations of professional staff selected by the ETB's began in October 1985 and were offered twice annually. Candidates were examined for competence by three examiners in each of six areas, i.e. recordkeeping, superovulation, embryo recovery, embryo handling and transfer, embryo freezing and pregnancy diagnosis. During the first year of the program, 59 ETB's were eligible for certification, in that one or more of their practitioners passed the examination. Practitioners must take the examination every three years to maintain eligibility. On-site inspections of ETB facilities and non-financial records began in February 1989. Due to location of ETB's, time availability and costs, this step will take two to three years to complete. The goal of the AETA is that all regular AETA members, especially those involved in export, will meet or exceed the standards outlined in the certification program.

Ectoparasites on small mammals in Iceland: Origin and population characteristics of a species‐poor insular community

The Icelandic small mammal fauna is depauperated as is the associated ectoparasite fauna. Three small mammal species occur, viz. Apodemus sylvaticus L., Mus musculus L., and Rattus norvegicus Berk. (R. rattus is probably not a regular member). The mice supposedly came to the island by settlers from the 10th century and onwards. Apodemus and Mus from five localities altogether had seven ectoparasite species, five mites and two fleas. All species occurred on Apodemus whereas Mus was infested by four. Compared with the numbers of ectoparasite species recorded in similar studies in the Nordic countries, there are conspicuously few species in Iceland. Further, Apodemus had an overall higher infestation frequency than Mus (90% and 30%, respectively) and a higher total density of ectoparasites (3.3–20.3 and 0.5 inds/host, respectively). The density figures were high compared with those for mainland Apodemus. Especially the mite Laelaps agilis C. L. Koch and the flea Ctenophthalmus agyrtes (Heller) were common on Icelandic Apodemus. Reduced competition among parasites and/or low predator pressure on small mammals may explain the density figures obtained.The ectoparasite species compositions on small mammals in Scandinavia and Iceland have many features in common that renders it probable that Apodemus originate from Scandinavia.

Formation of pentagonal tunnels bordered with P 2O 7 groups in diphosphate tungsten bronzes (P 2O 4) 2(WO 3) 2 m: A HREM investigation

During the investigation of the phosphate bronzes (PO 2) 4(WO 3) 2 m [MPTB P] and K x (P 2O 4) 2WO 3) 2 m [DPTB H] crystals of a new type were observed. HREM images of these crystals showed twinned ReO 3-type slabs the junction of which was parallel to the (102) ReO 3 plane. The proposed model identified the twin boundary as built from P 2O 7 groups involving the formation of pentagonal tunnels. The structure of this new type of extended defects is quite original: it corresponds to a new structural type named “diphosphate tungsten bronzes with pentagonal tunnels” [DPTB P], for which no regular member could be synthesized. Image calculations were performed to confirm the junction model. Apart from the disordered stacking of the ReO 3-type slabs, very few defects were observed and shear planes were only obtained in reduced samples. This new structural type takes its place in the large family of phosphate tungsten bronzes where all members (DPTB H, MPTB H, MPTB P) are very closely related.

Social behaviour of an Australian paper wasp,Ropalidia plebeiana, with special reference to the process of acceptance of an alien female

Social interactions amongRopalidia plebeiana females on a nest were observed in Brisbane, Australia. Although a single female (queen-like female) tended to remain on the nest most of the time, and received food most frequently from females which returned from foraging trips, no dominance/aggressive acts were directed by her to regular nestmates. When a possibly alien female tried to join the female group, however, the queen-like female attacked this female strongly. The frequency of these attacks gradually decreased and the newcomer was accepted as a regular member by the eighth day. The attacked female showed a special, possibly ritualized, posture and this seemed to have reduced the frequency of attacks.

Social dilemmas and leadership

AbstractSubjects acted in a social dilemma situation. Two variables were experimentally manipulated: use and variance. One third of the subjects thought that the others in their group were overusing the common resource, one third thought that the others were underusing it, and the remaining third were led to believe that the others were using the resource optimally. Moreover, half of the subjects thought that the others took relatively similar harvests (low variance) while the other half thought the others differed greatly (high variance). Support was found for Homans' assumption that the internal function of leaders is to allocate outcomes equitably over group members, whereas their external function is to deal efficiently with the external environment.The results indicated that more subjects in the overuse condition voted to give up free access to the resource and to hand over the management of the resource to a leader than in the other me conditions. Moreover, more subjects in the high variance condition voted for a leader than in the low variance condition. Over all conditions, furthermore, subjects preferred themselves most as prospective leader. In addition, group members who were similar to the subject, competent at the task and concerned for the group were preferred as Leader. When subjects acted as leader they were more moderate in withdrawing harvests from the resource than as regular group member. Moreover, leaders allocated outcomes equitably to the group members.

The power of the chairman

Our results here demonstrate rather convincingly what our intuition tells us is correct. A chairman with a regular and tie-breaking vote is more likely to get his first choice than is a person with only a regular vote, and a person with a regular vote is more likely to get his way than is a chairman with only a tiebreaking vote. In addition, if ties occur, a non-member who is chairman is more likely to get his first choice than is a regular member. These results hold for sincere and sophisticated voting and for the successive and amendment procedures. They hold — only more so — if the chairman controls the agenda.