Building momentum: an ethnographic study of inner-city redevelopment. (1/28)

OBJECTIVES: One factor contributing to the decay of inner-city areas, and to consequent excess mortality, is the massive loss of housing. This report studied the effects of a redevelopment project on social functioning in an inner-city community. METHODS: This ethnographic study included the following elements: a longitudinal study of 10 families living in renovated housing, repeated observations and photographing of the street scene, focus groups, and informal interviews with area residents. The project was located in the Bradhurst section of Harlem in New York City and was focused on a redevelopment effort sponsored by local congregations. RESULTS: Those who were able to move into newly renovated housing found that their living conditions were greatly improved. Neighborhood revitalization lagged behind the rehabilitation of individual apartment houses. This uneven redevelopment was a visual and sensory reminder of "what had been." Residents missed the warmth and social support that existed in Harlem before its decline. CONCLUSIONS: Rebuilding damaged housing contributes greatly to the well-being of inner-city residents. The current pace and scope of rebuilding are insufficient to restore lost vitality.  (+info)

Auditory affective agnosia. Disturbed comprehension of affective speech. (2/28)

Hughlings Jackson noted that, although some aphasic patients were unable to use propositional speech, affective speech appeared to be spared. The purpose of this experiment was to study patients with unilateral hemispheric disease in order to ascertain if there are hemispheric asymmetries in the comprehension of affective speech. Six subjects had right temporoparietal lesions (left unilateral neglect) and six subjects had left temporoparietal lesions (fluent aphasias). These subjects were presented with 32 tape recorded sentences. In 16 trials the patients were asked to judge the emotional mood of the speaker (happy, sad, angry, indifferent) and in 16 trials the patients were asked to judge the content. Line drawings containing facial expressions of the four emotions or line drawings corresponding with the four basic contents were displayed with each sentence and the patient responded by pointing. All 12 subjects made perfect scores on the content portion of the test. On the emotional portion the right hemispheric patients scored a mean of 4-17 and the left hemispheric group scored a mean 10-17. The difference between these means is significantly (P less than 0-01) and suggests that patients with right hemispheric dysfunction and neglect have a defect in the comprehension of affective speech.  (+info)

Root shock: the consequences of African American dispossession. (3/28)

Urban renewal was one of several processes that contributed to deurbanization of American cities in the second half of the 20th century. Urban renewal was an important federal policy that affected thousands of communities in hundreds of cities. Urban renewal was to achieve "clearance" of "blight" and "slum" areas so that they could be rebuilt for new uses other than housing the poor. Urban renewal programs fell disproportionately on African American communities, leading to the slogan "Urban renewal is Negro removal." The short-term consequences were dire, including loss of money, loss of social organization, and psychological trauma. The long-term consequences flow from the social paralysis of dispossession, most important, a collapse of political action. This has important implications for the well-being of African Americans. It also raises important questions about the strength and quality of American democracy.  (+info)

Double dissociation of social functioning in frontotemporal dementia. (4/28)

BACKGROUND: Efforts to characterize changes in social functioning in frontotemporal dementia (FTD) have failed to elicit clear dissociation between frontal and temporal variants of the disease based on behavioral measures. METHODS: This study obtained premorbid and current first-degree relative ratings using an established measure of interpersonal functioning, the Interpersonal Adjectives Scales, to measure personality change in 16 patients with frontal variant (FLV) and 13 with temporal variant (TLV) FTD, and in a control group of 16 patients with AD. RESULTS: All three groups showed significant change over time in multiple domains, including increased introversion (FG) and submissiveness (HI). However, patients with both FTD subtypes evidenced significantly greater increases in overall interpersonal pathology vector length [VL] than did patients with AD, who remained within the normal range on all scores. Patients with FLV showed a 2 SD increase in submissiveness (HI), but their cold-heartedness (DE) change scores were not significantly different from those of patients with AD. Conversely, the TLV cold-heartedness (DE) score increased 2 SD compared to minimal change for the AD and FLV groups, yet change in submissiveness (HI) did not differentiate between AD and TLV groups. CONCLUSIONS: The Interpersonal Adjectives Scales differentiated both FTD groups from patients with AD on the basis of both degree and direction of personality change. Also, the two subtypes of FTD showed distinctly different patterns of change in social functioning: patients with temporal variant shifted toward severe interpersonal coldness with mild loss of dominance, whereas patients with frontal variant showed the opposite pattern.  (+info)

Electrophysiological insights into conceptual disorganization in schizophrenia. (5/28)

Disorganized speech, or thought disorder, in schizophrenia may reflect abnormal processing of meaningful concepts. To examine whether schizophrenia involves abnormalities in how a meaningful context influences processing of concepts strongly, weakly, or not related to it, we used the N400, an event-related brain potential (ERP) index of semantic relatedness. ERPs were recorded from schizophrenia patients (n=18) and normal controls (n=18) while they viewed category definitions (e.g., a type of fruit), each followed by a target word that was either a high-typicality category exemplar (apple), low-typicality exemplar (cherry), or non-exemplar (clamp). Participants' task was to indicate via button-press whether or not the target belonged to the category. In both patients and controls, N400 amplitude was largest (most negative) for non-exemplars, intermediate for low-typicality exemplars, and smallest (least negative) for high-typicality exemplars. Compared to controls, patients showed a trend toward reduced N400 amplitude differences between non-exemplars and low-typicality exemplars. Most importantly, within patients, reduced N400 amplitude differences between high- and low-typicality exemplars were correlated with psychotic symptoms. This association of an N400 index of semantic processing with psychotic symptoms suggests that psychosis in schizophrenia may be associated with greater similarity in how concepts strongly and weakly meaningfully related to their context are processed.  (+info)

A heuristic indication and warning staging model for detection and assessment of biological events. (6/28)

OBJECTIVE: This paper presents a model designed to enable rapid detection and assessment of biological threats that may require swift intervention by the international public health community. DESIGN: We utilized Strauss' grounded theory to develop an expanded model of social disruption due to biological events based on retrospective and prospective case studies. We then applied this model to the temporal domain and propose a heuristic staging model, the Wilson-Collmann Scale for assessing biological event evolution. MEASUREMENTS: We retrospectively and manually examined hard copy archival local media reports in the native vernacular for three biological events associated with substantial social disruption. The model was then tested prospectively through media harvesting based on keywords corresponding to the model parameters. RESULTS: Our heuristic staging model provides valuable information about the features of a biological event that can be used to determine the level of concern warranted, such as whether the pathogen in question is responding to established public health disease control measures, including the use of antimicrobials or vaccines; whether the public health and medical infrastructure of the country involved is adequate to mount the necessary response; whether the country's officials are providing an appropriate level of information to international public health authorities; and whether the event poses a international threat. The approach is applicable for monitoring open-source (public-domain) media for indications and warnings of such events, and specifically for markers of the social disruption that commonly occur as these events unfold. These indications and warnings can then be used as the basis for staging the biological threat in the same manner that the United States National Weather Service currently uses storm warning models (such as the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale) to detect and assess threatening weather conditions. CONCLUSION: Used as a complement to current epidemiological surveillance methods, our approach could aid global public health officials and national political leaders in responding to biological threats of international public health significance.  (+info)

Hostility and anomie: links to preterm delivery subtypes and ambulatory blood pressure at mid-pregnancy. (7/28)

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Developmental trajectories of substance use from early to late adolescence: a comparison of rural and urban youth. (8/28)

OBJECTIVE: This study investigated differences in the development of heavy drinking and marijuana use among students in urban and rural areas and assessed whether any such differences can be accounted for by locality differences in racial/ethnic makeup, social disorganization/low social bonding, feelings of despondency and escapism, and the availability of drugs. METHOD: Drawn from 62 South Dakota middle schools involved in a drug prevention field trial, participating students were assigned to a locality category based on the location of their seventh-grade school. Schools in metropolitan areas were distinguished from schools in nonmetropolitan areas. Schools in nonmetropolitan areas were further distinguished into those in micropolitan (medium and large towns) and noncore (rural areas without towns and with small towns) areas. We used latent growth curve analysis to model the influence of locality on the development of heavy drinking and marijuana use from ages 13 to 19 and to determine whether differences in development across locality were attributable to location-based differences in race/ethnicity, social disorganization/bonding, feelings of despondency and escapism, and alcohol and marijuana availability. RESULTS: Heavy drinking increased at a faster rate among youth living in micropolitan areas compared with youth living in metropolitan areas. Marijuana use increased at a faster rate among youth living in metropolitan and micropolitan areas compared with youth living in noncore areas. Differences in the rate of change in heavy drinking were attributable to differences in the racial/ethnic composition of metropolitan and micropolitan areas. Differences in the rate of change in marijuana use were attributable to differences in residential instability and marijuana availability. CONCLUSIONS: This study underscores the diversity of drug use within rural communities, suggesting that living in a very rural area is protective against some forms of drug use but that living in a rural area that includes a medium or large town is not.  (+info)

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