The Abbott Marshlands of New Jersey: A natural experiment in lichen community response to changes in air quality1

Abstract The Kallikak Family was, along with The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity, one of the most visible eugenic family narratives published in the early 20th century. Published in 1912 and authored by psychologist Henry Herbert Goddard, director of the psychological laboratory at the Vineland Training School for Feebleminded Children in Vineland, New Jersey, The Kallikak Family told the tale of a supposedly “degenerate” family from rural New Jersey, beginning with Deborah, one of the inmates at the Training School. Like most publications in the genre, this pseudoscientific treatise described generations of illiterate, poor, and purportedly immoral Kallikak family members who were chronically unemployed, supposedly feebleminded, criminal, and, in general, perceived as threats to “racial hygiene.” Presented as a “natural experiment” in human heredity, this text served to support eugenic activities through much of the first half of the 20th century. This article reviews the story of Deborah Kallikak, including her true identity, and provides evidence that Goddard's treatise was incorrect.

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Poison Control Center Surge Capacity during an Unusual Increase in Call Volume–Results from a Natural Experiment

Prehospital and Disaster Medicine ◽

10.1017/s1049023x00004349 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 55-58 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Zdravko P. Vassilev ◽

John Kashani ◽

Bruce Ruck ◽

Robert S. Hoffman ◽

Steven M. Marcus

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

New Jersey ◽

Education System ◽

Natural Experiment ◽

Poison Control ◽

Poison Center ◽

Surge Capacity ◽

Poison Control Centers ◽

Unusual Increase ◽

Call Volume

AbstractIntroduction:Poison Control Centers (PCCs) play an integral role in the preparation for and management of poison emergencies. Large-scale public health disasters, caused by both natural and human factors, may result in a drastic increase in the number of inquiries received and handled by Poison Control Centers (PCCs) in short periods of time. In order to plan and prepare for such public health emergencies, it is important for PCCs to assess their ability tohandle the surge in call volume and to examine how the unusually large number of calls could affect the level of services. On 26 January 2006, the New York City Poison Center experienced a sudden loss of telephone service.The disruption in telephone service led to the need to reroute calls from that geographical catchment area to the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System (NJPIES) for several hours.Methods:Data from the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System was abstracted from the telephone switch's internal reporting system and the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System's electronic record system and processed with a standard spreadsheet application.Results:Compared to the same time and day in the previous week, the total number of calls received by the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System during the four hours after the disruption increased by 148%. A substantial rise in the number of calls was observed in almost every 15-minute increment during this four-hour (h) time period (with some of these increments increasing as much as 525%). Meanwhile, the percentage of calls answered by the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System decreased, and the percentage of calls abandoned during a 15-minute increment reached as high as 62%. Furthermore, the average time for handling calls was longer than usual in most of these 15-minute increments.Conclusions:Limitations of the telephone technology, which impacted the ability of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System to respond to the surge of calls, were observed. While the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System was able to handle the unusual increase of incoming calls using available poison specialists and staff, the experience gained from this natural experiment demonstrates the need for Poison Control Centres to have a pre-planned surge capacity protocol that can be implemented rapidly during a public health emergency. A number of challenges that Poison Control Centres must meet in order to have adequate surge capacity during such events were identified.

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Business as usual: macrolichen community response to the resilience of spruce–fir forests to beetle disturbance in northwestern Colorado

Canadian Journal of Forest Research ◽

10.1139/cjfr-2020-0159 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 50 (11) ◽

pp. 1172-1183

Author(s):

Anna E. Freundlich ◽

Emily A. Holt

Keyword(s):

Community Structure ◽

Past Research ◽

Community Response ◽

Habitat Characteristics ◽

Ecological Resilience ◽

Lichen Community ◽

Canopy Opening ◽

Habitat Differences ◽

Spruce Beetle ◽

Coarse Woody Material

Over the past few decades, spruce beetles (Dendroctonus rufipennis Kirby) have drastically altered spruce–fir forests in western North America. Past research has shown that forest conditions (i.e., canopy openings, amounts of coarse woody material) change after spruce beetle disturbance, but little work has studied the impacts of these changes on the resident biotic communities. Even less research has investigated how spruce beetle disturbance affects lichen communities, which we anticipated as benefiting them due to canopy opening and increased woody material availability. We studied macrolichen community structure, including abundance and community composition, and habitat characteristics in areas with significant spruce beetle damage, as first detected between 1996 and 2017 in northwestern Colorado. We found few habitat differences among beetle disturbance classes that reflected varying time since infestation, and only the most recently affected plots (2012–2017) had significantly different lichen community structure relative to other sampled areas. We observed that the spruce–fir forests within our study exhibited ecological resilience to beetle outbreaks, and we did not measure differences in the amount of canopy openings or amounts of coarse woody material. Subsequently, the lack of differential lichen community response was not surprising.

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Community-based dental programs: University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Dental School

Journal of Dental Education ◽

10.1002/j.0022-0337.1999.63.12.tb03337.x ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 63 (12) ◽

pp. 969-975 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

WR Cinotti ◽

RA Saporito ◽

CA Feldman ◽

G Mardirossian ◽

J DeCastro

Keyword(s):

New Jersey ◽

Dental School ◽

Community Based

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The Medical Society of New Jersey since 1766

JAMA ◽

10.1001/jama.196.7.645 ◽

1966 ◽

Vol 196 (7) ◽

pp. 645-646

Author(s):

F. B. Rogers

Keyword(s):

New Jersey ◽

Medical Society

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Unknown and Under-Researched: The Anatomy of Drinking Under Control Programs

SUCHT - Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Praxis / Journal of Addiction Research and Practice ◽

10.1024/0939-5911/a000504 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 63 (5) ◽

pp. 277-288

Author(s):

Harald Klingemann ◽

Justyna Klingemann

Keyword(s):

Quality Of Life ◽

Harm Reduction ◽

Evaluation Studies ◽

Mission Statements ◽

Community Response ◽

Limited Resources ◽

Admission Criteria ◽

Control Programs ◽

Institutional Order

Abstract. Introduction: While alcohol treatment predominantly focuses on abstinence, drug treatment objectives include a variety of outcomes related to consumption and quality of life. Consequently harm reduction programs tackling psychoactive substances are well documented and accepted by practitioners, whereas harm reduction programs tackling alcohol are under-researched and met with resistance. Method: The paper is mainly based on key-person interviews with eight program providers conducted in Switzerland in 2009 and up-dated in 2015, and the analysis of reports and mission statements to establish an inventory and description of drinking under control programs (DUCPs). A recent twin program in Amsterdam and Essen was included to exemplify conditions impeding their implementation. Firstly, a typology based on the type of alcohol management, the provided support and admission criteria is developed, complemented by a detailed description of their functioning in practice. Secondly, the case studies are analyzed in terms of factors promoting and impeding the implementation of DUCPs and efforts of legitimize them and assess their success. Results: Residential and non-residential DUCPs show high diversity and pursue individualized approaches as the detailed case descriptions exemplify. Different modalities of proactively providing and including alcohol consumption are conceptualized in a wider framework of program objectives, including among others, quality of life and harm reduction. Typically DUCPs represent an effort to achieve public or institutional order. Their implementation and success are contingent upon their location, media response, type of alcohol management and the response of other substance-oriented stake holders in the treatment system. The legitimization of DUCPs is hampered by the lack of evaluation studies. DUCPs rely mostly – also because of limited resources – on rudimentary self-evaluations and attribute little importance to data collection exercises. Conclusions: Challenges for participants are underestimated and standard evaluation methodologies tend to be incompatible with the rationale and operational objectives of DUCPs. Program-sensitive multimethod approaches enabled by sufficient financing for monitoring and accompanying research is needed to improve the practice-oriented implementation of DUCPs. Barriers for these programs include assumptions that ‘alcohol-assisted’ help abandons hope for recovery and community response to DUCPs as locally unwanted institutions (‘not in my backyard’) fuelled by stigmatization.

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