The stability of resting metabolic rate and diet-induced thermogenesis in children

The stability of resting metabolic rate and diet-induced thermogenesis was assessed in a group of 8- to 12-year-old children over two sessions. Children were first oriented to the laboratory and participated in a practice session to adapt them to the laboratory procedures. The two metabolic sessions began with the measurement of resting metabolic rate. The children were then provided a caloric challenge, with metabolic measures taken at 30-min intervals for 150 min. Results showed stable resting and integrated diet-induced thermogenic responses across sessions. Differences in the pattern of response from 30 to 60 min were observed, with the response peaking earlier in the first session.This experiment was supported in part by Grant HD19532 NICHD awarded to the first author.     

Just health care (I): Is beneficence enough?

Few in our society believe that access to health care should be determined primarily by ability to pay. We believe instead that society has an obligation to assure access to adequate health care for all. This is the view explicitly endorsed in the President's Commission Report Securing Access to Health Care. But there is an important moral ambiguity here, for this obligation may be construed as being either beneficence-based or justice-based. A beneficience-based construal would yield a much weaker obligation with respect to the distribution of health care. In the first section of this paper I argue that the President's Commission is committed only to this weaker construal of this obligation. In the second section I argue that such a beneficence-based obligation is really rooted in a libertarian conception of justice, similar to that recently articulated by Engelhardt, and that this conception is seriously flawed when it comes to effecting a just distribution of health care.     

Relation between the syndromes of bulimia nervosa and obsessive compulsive disorder

Bulimia nervosa (BN) has been conceptualized as similar to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The results of studies investigating the relation between BN and OCD, however, are inconclusive. Our goal was to attempt to clarify the relation between the syndromes of BN and OCD. The Padua Inventory (PI), a measure of OCD, and the Bulimia Test—Revised (BULIT-R), a measure of bulimic behaviors, were administered to 981 women and 722 men. A significant relationship, equal in magnitude for women and men, was found between BN and OCD. Bulimic symptoms also had a stronger relation to obsessions than compulsions. Finally, 6 of 23 women (26%) who met the diagnostic criteria for BN also met the criteria for OCD, while 1 of 1 man who met the criteria for BN also met the criteria for OCD. Implications for similarities between the two disorders as well as future issues in the study of comorbidity are discussed.This report is based on the first author's masters thesis, which was supervised by the second author.     

A modification of Feldt's test of the equality of two dependent alpha coefficients

The available statistical tests of the equality of nonindependent alpha reliability coefficients require that the product of the number of test parts times the number of subjects be quite large—1000 or more. A modification of one of these tests is derived which avoids this limitation. Monte Carlo studies indicate that the modified test effectively controls the Type I error rate with as few as 2 or 3 test parts and 50 subjects. This means the modified test can be safely employed in comparisons between interrater reliabilities.     

An evaluation of the short-term impact of a media-based substance abuse prevention programme

A state-wide substance abuse prevention programme, entitled KidsInTouch, incorporated a multifaceted approach involving: (a) media-based interventions; and (b) parent training workshops. KidsInTouch was targeted at parents and their children, ages five to 12 years. The media-based interventions attempted to increase children's and parents' awareness and knowledge about substance abuse and prevention. In addition, the intervention advertised and solicited audience participation in parent training workshops. Parents participating in the parent training workshops, in comparison to the control parents, evidenced significant improvement in both alcohol and other drug knowledge and parenting skills. The implications of using the media and involving children and their parents in substance abuse prevention programmes are discussed.     

Searching for impossible objects: Processing form and attributes in early vision

In five experiments, we investigated the extent to which form (shape) and metric attributes (three-dimensional, 3-D, orientation), both defined by relations between une elements, are processed in early vision. Search for a target defined by an abstract property of form (i.e., impossibility) was slow and serial. In contrast, search for a 3-D orientation target was considerably easier. Subsequent experiments suggest that this difference reflects the fact that 3-D orientation is derivable from localized sets of lines, whereas impossibility is an idiosyncratic property of the complete set of relations between lines. We conclude that only “gross” aspects of form are available in early vision as the complete set of line relations is not processed preattentively. However, localized processing of line relations is sufficient to derive 3-D orientation.     

Effects of Enforcement of Youth Access Laws on Smoking Prevalence

Smoking is the primary preventable cause of death, and yet 3,000 adolescents become smokers each day. Most adult smokers begin this deadly habit when they are under the age of 18, which is the minimum legal age for the purchase of cigarettes. The majority of adolescent smokers are able to purchase cigarettes even though laws prohibit the sale of cigarettes to minors. In the late 1980s, Woodridge, IL, became one of the first towns in the nation to demonstrate a significant reduction in the ability of youth to purchase cigarettes. Almost 2 years after passage of this legislation, the percentage of regular smokers among 7th- and 8th-grade students had been reduced from 16 to 5%. Seven-year follow-up data in a sample of high school youths indicate that youths living in communities with regular enforcement had significantly less smoking than those living in communities without regular enforcement. In particular, rates of regular smoking were 8.1% in communities with regular enforcement versus 15.5% in communities without regular enforcement. It is possible that adolescents who had restricted access to tobacco products were less likely to become regular smokers. These findings have important public health implications, particularly in light of recent federal legislation mandating that all states develop programs to reduce access of youth to tobacco products.