Showing papers by "University of Massachusetts Boston published in 1981"

Hurricane Allen's Impact on Jamaican Coral Reefs

Abstract: Coral reefs of north Jamaica, normally sheltered, were severely damaged by Hurricane Allen, the strongest Caribbean hurricane of this century. Immediate studies were made at Discovery Bay, where reef populations were already known in some detail. Data are presented to show how damage varied with the position and orientation of the substraturn and with the shape, size, and mechanical properties of exposed organisms. Data collected over succeeding weeks showed striking differences in the ability of organisms to heal and survive.

On the nature of linguistic functioning in early infantile autism

Abstract: This paper provides a review of studies conducted on linguistic functioning in autistic children, within the framework developed in normal language acquisition research. Despite certain methodological weaknesses, the research consistently shows that phonological and syntactic development follow the same course as in normal children and in other disordered groups, though at a slowed rate, while semantic and pragmatic functioning may be specially deficient in autism. These findings are related to other recent studies on the relative independence of different aspects of language.

Right-handedness: a consequence of infant supine head-orientation preference?

Abstract: Most newborn infants (65 percent) preferred to lie with their heads turned to the right, whereas 15 percent showed a distinct preference for the left Orientation preference is maintained for at least 2 months and predicts preferential hand use in reaching tasks at both 16 and 22 weeks Right head-orientation preference in early infancy may contribute to the early development of right-handedness

Predation pressure and gastropod foraging: a tropical-temperate comparison.

Abstract: Over the last two decades, theories of species diversity (Huston, 1979), antipredation phenomena (Vermeij, 1978) and reproductive effort (Cody, 1966) have involved a temperate-tropical gradient in predation. Comparative tropical-temperate observations in a number of systems support the case for an increase in predation intensity with a decrease in latitude (Cody, 1966; Bakus, 1974; Jeanne, 1979; Palmer, 1979); however, no experimental evidence has been presented. One of the stronger cases for a latitudinal gradient in predation pressure has been made for littoral gastropods (Vermeij, 1978, and included references). Intertidal gastropods are exposed to shellbreaking predation from two major feeding guilds: fishes and bottom-dwelling Crustacea (Vermeij, 1978; Palmer, 1979; Bertness and Cunningham, 1981). Crustaceans may either crush or peel prey shells. Small snails are generally crushed, while larger shells are grasped and pieces of apex or lip are chipped away until the molluscan soft parts are reached (Zipser and Vermeij, 1978; Bertness and Cunningham, 1981). Fish that feed on snails crush their prey and do not inflict the apical and aperture damage characteristic of crustacean related injury (Zipser and Vermeij, 1978; Palmer, 1979; Bertness, 1981). Birds are also known to feed on intertidal gastropods, but their overall effect seems minor (Gibb, 1956; Feare, 1971; Vermeij, 1978; Zach, 1978). 1 Present address: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, APO Miami, Florida 34002. Vermeij (1978) presented evidence indicating that the frequency of gastropod shell characteristics such as narrow or occluded apertures, low spires, thickened shells and strong shell sculpture increases from temperate to tropical seas. These morphological characteristics have been shown to defend gastropods from some kinds and sizes of predators (Vermeij, 1976, 1978; Zipser and Vermeij, 1978; Palmer, 1979; Bertness and Cunningham, 1981). In addition, tropical shell-crushing crabs are more efficient and specialized predators than their temperature equivalents (Shoup, 1968; Zipser and Vermeij, 1978). Palmer (1979) suggested that species of teleost fish and rays that crush gastropods are not only found more commonly in tropical oceans, but also are more specialized on a gastropod diet than their temperate relatives. Gastropod shell characteristics that appear to deter predation by fish are almost exclusively tropical in occurrence (Vermeij, 1978; Palmer, 1979). These lines of evidence strongly suggest that shell-crushing predation is greater on tropical than on temperate shells. The prevalence of shell-crushing predators in tropical waters has led to speculation and experimentation on the architectural defenses of gastropods against shell-crushing predators (Reynolds and Reynolds, 1977; Zipser and Vermeij, 1978; Palmer, 1979; Bertness and Cunningham, 1981). However, there have been no efforts to quantitatively compare the direct effects of crushing predation

The Ideal of the Educated Person

Abstract: R. S. Peters calls it an ideal.’ So do Nash, Kazemias and Perkinson who, in their introduction to a collection of studies in the history of educational thought, say that one cannot go about the business of education without it.‘ Is it the good life? the responsible citizen? personal autonomy? No, it is the educated man. The educated man! In the early 1960s when I was invited to contribute to a book of essays to be entitled The Educated Man, I thought nothing of this phrase. By the early 1970s I felt uncomfortable whenever I came across it, but I told myself it was the thought not the words that counted. It is now the early 1980s. Peters’s use of the phrase “educated man” no longer troubles me for I think it fair to say that he intended it in a gender-neutral way.3 Despite one serious lapse which indicates that on some occasions he was thinking of his educated man as male, I do not doubt that the ideal he set forth was meant for males and females alike.4 Today my concern is not Peters’s language but his conception of the educated man or person, as I will henceforth say. I will begin by outlining Peters’s ideal for you and will then show that it does serious harm to women. From there I will go on to argue that Peters’s ideal is inadequate for men as well as women and, furthermore, that its inadequacy for men is intimately connected to the injustice it does women. In conclusion I will explore some of the requirements an adequate ideal must satisfy. Let me explain at the outset that I have chosen to discuss Peters’s ideal of the educated person here because for many years Peters has been perhaps the dominant figure in philosophy of education. Moreover, although Peters’s ideal is formulated in philosophically sophisticated terms, it is certainly not idiosyncratic. On the contrary, Peters claims to have captured our concept of the educated person, and he may well have done so. Thus, I think it fair to say that the traits Peters claims one must possess to be a truly educated person and the kind of education he assumes one must have in order to acquire those traits would, with minor variations, be cited by any number of people today if they were to describe their own conception of the ideal. I discuss Peters’s ideal, then, because it has significance for the field of philosophy of education as a whole.

What is the origin of the common bean

Abstract: Systematists concerned with the origin of the common bean have disagreed or have been inconsistent in what name should be applied to the closest wild relatives of the domesticated Phaseolus vulgaris L. Phaseolus aborigineus Burk. (Berglund-Briicher and Briicher, 1976); P. aborigineus var. hondurensis Burk., P. vulgaris forma aborigineus Burk. (Burkart and Briicher, 1953); P. vulgaris ssp. aborigineus Burk. (Kloz et al., 1966); P. vulgaris L. (Gentry, 1969) are names which have been applied. With the present inadequate state of our knowledge concerning the biological relationships between the North and South American wild beans and between these wild types and the cultivars, P. vulgaris L. is the least ambiguous name for the wild species, escapes, cultivars and land races. The wild-growing South American populations may be distinguished informally by using "aborigineus" in conjunction with them. The wild types grow in isolated stands in a long and disjunct range from west central Mexico through Central America, along the eastern slopes of the Andes to northwestern Argentina (Gentry, 1969; Berglund-Briicher and Briicher, 1976) (Fig. 1). Miranda Colin (1967) and Gentry (1969) both suggested that at least one group of Phaseolus vulgaris domesticates evolved in the Mexico-Guatemala region, Mesoamerica. Berglund-Briicher and Briicher (1976) presented evidence for the domestication of P. vulgaris in South America. Neither group of authors explicitly ruled out the possibility of independent domestication in Mesoamerica and Andean America. A keen interest in the systematic and archaeological evidence bearing on single versus multiple regions of common bean domestication has been expressed by several writers on the origins of agriculture, among them DeCandolle in 1886 (1964), Mangelsdorf et al. (1964) and Heiser (1973). This paper presents further evidence to indicate that there remain substantial questions regarding the geographic origin of the common bean. The question of "origin" relevant to common bean domestication is examined with respect to how certain specific characters developed to distinguish domesticates from wild ancestors. Two of the traits that are characteristic of the common bean are extensive regional diversity and relatively large seed size. Extensive regional diversity is manifested by the presence of a large number of common bean land races, typically the vining rather than the dwarf types, grown in a region and recognizable by differences in seed color and pattern and in morphology. Large seed size as compared with Old World pulses was attributed to direct human selection by Carl 0. Sauer (1969) in lectures delivered in 1952. He viewed the distinctive New World system of planting single seeds contrasted with Old World broadcast sowing as permitting human selection for large seeds. Experimental and archaeological evidence are presented here to

Sentence Comprehension in Autistic Children.

Abstract: Comprehension and strategy use by autistic children were tested in two experiments. Eighteen autistic subjects were compared with thirty normal 3- and 4-year-olds, matched on the PPVT and Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices. In Experiment I subjects were asked to act out active and passive, biased and reversible sentences. The autistic group's overall comprehension was lower than that of the normal controls; although the autistic subjects did use a word-order strategy, they did not generally use a probable-event strategy. These findings were confirmed in Experiment II, in which the same procedure with anomalous three-word items was used. The results are interpreted as evidence that in autism there is a semantic-cognitive deficit in utilizing conceptual knowledge about relational aspects of the environment and that this deficit underlies the comprehension difficulties of autistic persons.

Realization, extension, and classification of certain physically important groups and algebras

Abstract: An associative algebra of differential forms with division has been constructed. The algebra of forms in each different space provides a practical realization of the universal Clifford algebra of that space. A classification of all such algebras is given in terms of two distinct types of algebras Nk and Sk. The former include the dihedral, quaternion, and Majorana algebras; the latter include the complex, spinor, and Dirac algebras. The associative product expresses Hodge duality as multiplication by a basis element. This makes possible the realization of higher order algebras in a calculationally useful algebraic setting. The fact that the associative algebras, as well as the enveloped Lie algebras, are precisely those arising in physics suggests that this formalism may be a convenient setting for the formulation of basic physical laws.

Andromonoecism, protandry, and sexual selection in Umbelliferae

Abstract: Most Umbelliferae are protandrous and andromonoecious with hermaphrodite flowers concentrated in earlier opening umbellets and umbel orders. When weakly developed: protogyny is more effective than protandry in promoting outcrossing, yet is uncommon. It ts suggested that sexual selection, rather than selection for outcrossing, explains the Widespread occurrence of protandry. When protandry is strongly developed, male and female phases may be completely separated in time within a plant so that outcrossing is assured.

Science in Poland

Abstract: The Nencki Institute in Warsaw was founded in 1918 to honor one of Poland’s most distinguished biochemists, Marceli Nencki. Since its inception, the institute has evolved from a confederation of privately supported laboratories to a center of research productivity intimately associated with the Polish Academy of Sciences. Early relations with Pavlov’s laboratory laid the foundation for the emergence of a Polish School of Neurophysiology under the leadership of Jersy Konorski. The impact of Konorski and his colleagues has transformed the interpretation of conditioning to include a systematic physiologic basis that more adequately considers the psychology of learning processes. The prestige of the Nencki Institute within contemporary Eastern European and Soviet science was achieved despite the economic pressures on a new nation and its total devastation of World War II. Moreover, the more than 60 years of scientific work in an independent Poland have provided a critical transition between Eastern and Western research efforts, and the Nencki Institute has filled a leading role in facilitating communication among scientists.

Social Issues and Body Image Concerns of Port Wine Stain Patients Undergoing Laser Therapy

Abstract: When applying lasers to treatment of port wine stains and other flaws of appearance, the physician needs to have an appreciation of the psychological and social aspects of body image as well as the physical aspect. A number of aspects of our society impinge upon port wine stain patients to make their condition psychologically burdensome. Fortunately, the 82 patients in our sample have received extraordinary support from family members in coping with their affliction. As a group they do not display an unusual degree of emotional disturbance in comparision with a normal control population. However, their initial expectations tend to be unrealistically perfectionistic, and many seem to be unwilling to absorb the fact that laser treatment is accompanied by certain hazards and limitations. An especially conscientious adherence to the canons of informed consent with these patients is therefore recommended.

Measures of human influence in habitats of South Asian monkeys

Abstract: Human disturbance of habitat has important consequences for the demography, the morbidity, the behavior, and ultimately the survival of non-human primates. This paper is an effort to define, qualitatively, the potential influence of humans on monkey habitats and behavior in South Asia. Four variables are proposed and scored on a fourpoint scale. These variables can be used in comparisons within and between species. The four variables are description of the home range, level of harassment of the animals, habituation of the animals to humans, and the presence of predators. These measures are intentionally simple and conventional so that information may be retrieved from earlier field studies, and sites scored retrospectively. Methods for some continuous numerical measures of human influence are proposed for future studies.

Algebras with three anticommuting elements. I. Spinors and quaternions

Abstract: A general construction of alternative algebras with three anticommuting elements and a unit is given. As an exhaustive result over the real and complex fields, we obtain the Clifford algebras H (quaternions), N1 (dihedral Clifford algebra which is related to real 2‐spinors), and S1 (algebra of Pauli matrices which is related to complex 2‐spinors). What is important is that the algebras N1 and S1 possess inverses everywhere except on a region akin to the light cone of the Minkowski space, while the quaternion algebra H has inverses everywhere except at the zero element. We discuss the reasons why the three algebras N1, H, and S1 are so difficult to distinguish in the representation space of 2×2 complex matrices.

Beans for Valdivia

Abstract: Carbonized remains of Canavalia beans were recovered from archaeological deposits excavated at Real Alto (OGCh-12), southwestern Ecuador. The identification, context and dating of the earliest beans from Real Alto demonstrate their use from the beginning of Valdivia (about 3300 B.C.) and the Early Formative in coastal Ecuador.

Behavior analysis in instructional design: A functional typology of verbal tasks.

Abstract: This paper describes and illustrates a typology of verbal instructional tasks for advanced classroom instruction and inservice training The typology is based upon functional definitions of elementary and conceptual behavior, and incorporates the kinds of goals and objectives that surveys and research have shown to be important for experienced learners The typology’s metastructure is B F Skinner’s (1957) verbal behavior classification system This paper describes Skinner’s system as a context for understanding and selecting instructional tasks for experienced learners This paper also discusses rate of response as an important dimension of proficiency or mastery, and procedures for selecting proficiency criteria of tasks in the typology are also described Results of the first of a series of validation studies indicated that high agreement between typology designer and subjects’ classification of tasks can be attained after a short training session The typology is discussed as a vehicle for standardizing instructional research and practice, and as a basis for research on transfer of control across classes of verbal behavior Implications for research on building fluency of adult performance, and efficiency in instructional design are also discussed

Electromagnetism and the holomorphic properties of spacetime

Abstract: The Cauchy–Riemann equations of holomorphy are extended to fields in higher‐dimensional spaces in a framework of Clifford algebras. The equations of holomorphy in Minkowski spacetime turn out to be the Maxwell equations in vacuum. The Lorentz gauge condition is a result of the holomorphy. Sources can be included in an extension of the residue theorem, where charges correspond to the residues.

The bias of three pseudo-random shuffles

Abstract: Three schemes for shuffling a deck ofn cards are studied, each involving a random choice from [n] n . The shuffles favor some permutations over others sincen! does not dividen n . The probabilities that the shuffles lead to some simple permutations, for instance cycles left and right and the identity, are calculated. Some inequalities are obtained which lead to information about the least and most likely permutations. Numbers of combinatorial interest occur, notably the Catalan numbers and the Bell numbers.

Algebras with three anticommuting elements. II. Two algebras over a singular field

Abstract: The Clifford algebra Ω generated by the elements {1,ω} with (ω)2 = +1, is an abelian ring of dimension two with properties analogous to the complex field C. The ring Ω has a string of singular inverses, and may be regarded as a ’’singular field’’ which circumvents both the fundamental theorem of algebra and the Frobenius theorem. We construct two associative algebras of dimension four over Ω: the Clifford algebra Ω1 and the biquaternions of Clifford Ω2, and demonstrate that both algebras possess inverses everywhere except on a singular region akin to the light cone of the Minkowski space. Matrix representations are discussed, as well as the importance of the algebras Ω1 and Ω2, in the description of physical vector fields.

Lumsden-Wilson Theory of Gene-Culture Coevolution

Abstract: A critique is presented of the Lumsden-Wilson theory [Lumsden, C. J. & Wilson, E. O. (1980) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 77, 4382-4386] of the transmission of cultural traits. An analysis of the underlying assumptions and the mathematical nature of the theory clarifies its essentially reductionist and determinist qualities. The mathematical functions governing the transition probability that an individual member of a group of a specified size will switch from one trait to an alternative form of that trait is assumed to be genetically controlled although the single independent variable of this function, the number of individuals characterized by each of the two forms of the trait, is environmentally determined. The model assumes that the cultural properties of a society are simply the sum of the properties of the individuals; that each individual is equally influenced by every other member of the group; and that kinship structures, cultural institutions, and historical factors can be neglected.

Health Education and Promotion in HMOs: The Recent Evidence

Abstract: Based in part on Chapter 1 from Guidelines for Health Education and Promotion Services: Completing an HMO Program Washington, D.C.: Office of Health Information, Health Promotion, and Physical Fitness and Sports Medicine, Department of Health and Human Services, 1981 and on Mullen’s background paper for the Select Panel for the Promotion of Child Health, \"Behavioral Aspects of Maternal and Child Health: Natural Influences and Educational Interventions\" in Better Health for Our Children, v. 4, Background Papers, Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1981. The authors’ work on this paper was in their private capacities, and no official endorsement by the Department of Health and Human Services is intended or should be inferred.

A comparison of sample size determination methods in the two group trial where the underlying disease is rare

Abstract: Four commonly used procedures for calculating sample size in the two group trial testing equality of proportions are compared when the true underlying proportions are very small. Thearcsin formula provides the closest approximation to an exact but computationally more difficult method which determines the sample size necessary to attain a specified type I and type II e rror.