Statistical models of video structure for content analysis and characterization.

Content structure plays an important role in the understanding of video. In this paper, we argue that knowledge about structure can be used both as a means to improve the performance of content analysis and to extract features that convey semantic information about the content. We introduce statistical models for two important components of this structure, shot duration and activity, and demonstrate the usefulness of these models with two practical applications. First, we develop a Bayesian formulation for the shot segmentation problem that is shown to extend the standard thresholding model in an adaptive and intuitive way, leading to improved segmentation accuracy. Second, by applying the transformation into the shot duration/activity feature space to a database of movie clips, we also illustrate how the Bayesian model captures semantic properties of the content. We suggest ways in which these properties can be used as a basis for intuitive content-based access to movie libraries.

Embodied Knowledge and Making Sense of Prenatal Diagnosis.

Open-ended, qualitative interviews with women to whom amniocentesis was offered were analyzed to understand how women made sense of these tests. We found that women, whether tested or not, negotiated with biomedical information. They transformed it through identifiable processes, then wove it with their own instincts and beliefs and with their personal experiences, thereby creating "embodied" knowledge on which their decisions were based. Women who were and were not tested may have differed from each other when categorized on the basis of a final, binary choice, but they were more alike than unalike in reaching this point. The apparent importance of embodied knowledge suggests the critical role of the listening activities of the genetic counselor and of awareness of the validity and importance of women's complementary ways of knowing and doing in understanding the uses and meanings of prenatal genetic testing.

Indications for transfer for childbirth in Inuit women at the Innuulisivik Maternity.

The Innuulisivik Maternity is a northern-based service in Povungnituk, Quebec, which serves the Inuit women of the Hudson Coast. Although most women stay in the North for childbirth, others are transferred south. This paper will describe the experience of the Innuulisivik Maternity, which uses committee-based risk assessment for transfer decisions. Data for the three-year period 1989-1991 were examined. Descriptive statistics were used to compare the observed differences in the distribution of several variables according to birthplace. Data were available for 411 women. Three hundred fifty (85.2%) of the births occurred at Innuulisivik: 44 (10.7%) women were transferred and 17 (4.1%) were nursing station births. In 80% of transfers, clinical conditions were identified which in themselves usually require transfer. Premature labor was prevalent in the transfer group. The data demonstrate that risk scoring by consensus is a viable option for northern birthing units. Finally, logistical and cultural factors should be included for meaningful risk assessment in the North.

MSNJ initiatives in the campaign on domestic violence.

Reflecting concern of the Medical Society of New Jersey, the Subcommittee on Violence is dealing with legislative initiatives, physician education, and the development of innovative strategies concerning violence. The Subcommittee is studying the physician's role in the diagnosis and treatment of violence.

"Everything you need to know": how women's magazines structure prenatal diagnosis for women over 35.

The use of biomedical testing and genetic counselling is usually framed as something an individual woman chooses, with little consideration given to the context in which women make these choices. In order to understand something of the context in which women (35 and over) undergo prenatal diagnostic tests, we have surveyed the contents of 10 major women's magazines. We found that the stories told about the "older" pregnant woman and the risks attached to her pregnancy are highly selective. The dominant rhetoric used in these narratives suggests that women "need" to be informed of the facts of being pregnant when older (through reading magazine articles), that this need incurs a further need to find out the state of the fetus (through biomedical intervention), and that the pregnant woman can meet these needs by "choosing" prenatal diagnosis. These results illustrate how a "need" for prenatal testing gets created and suggest that to "choose" to be tested may be to partake of, not challenge, the mainstream biomedical assumptions about how the "older" pregnant woman will and should behave.

Resistance and adherence to the norms of genetic counseling.

Genetic counseling for women of advanced maternal age who are considering prenatal testing continues to be based on a principle of nondirectiveness. We interviewed 11 genetic counseling students and four counselors about how they experience and manage, in practice, the tensions between the ideology of nondirectiveness and the acknowledged reality that one can never be truly nondirective. We found that our respondents creatively resolve this tension-simultaneously resisting and adhering to the values of nondirectiveness and information-giving-in individual and situation-specific ways. This resolution is facilitated by the extent to which information given to counselees is fluid, mobile and context-dependent, but these very features of "information" also have critical implications for both the norms and the practice of genetic counseling.

Violence: a medical concern in New Jersey.

Violence claims attention as a leading public health issue. Violence, one of the leading causes of death and injury in young people, is a major determinant in driving up the costs of health care. This special issue addresses violence in New Jersey.

Intraoperative cardiac output monitoring: comparison of impedance cardiography and thermodilution.

Impedance cardiography (IC) is a noninvasive, simple to use method of cardiac output (CO) determination. A prospective evaluation of IC monitoring was performed in 50 patients undergoing noncardiac surgery. IC CO measurements (NC-COM3-Revision 7, BoMed Manufacturing) were compared to simultaneous measurements of thermodilution (TD) CO to assess the validity of this technique for intraoperative cardiac monitoring. Adequate impedance signals could not be obtained in 7 of the 50 patients. IC CO measurements were highly correlated to TD CO (P < .005), with a correlation coefficient r = 0.84. Bias analysis, however, indicated clinically significant disagreement between the two techniques. IC CO tended to underestimate TD CO (mean bias = -0.41 L/min) and the SD of the bias was 1.0 L/min (95% level of agreement 1.6 to -2.4 L/min). Trending data showed IC to accurately track the direction of TD CO changes but to underestimate their magnitude (r = 0.60, intercept -0.7 L/min, slope 0.47). Factors that may have impaired the performance of IC in this study include the high prevalence of cardiac disease in the study population and electrical noise in the operative setting. Further development of IC appears warranted if it is to prove useful as an intraoperative cardiac monitor.

Prenatal genetic testing and geneticization: mother matters for all.

Prenatal genetic testing represents the most widespread human application of reproductive technology, and its use is necessarily gendered. Moreover, its application both reflects and generates the process of 'geneticization' that increasingly orients contemporary western-world stories of health and disease. Taking a woman-centered approach, this paper examines some of the stories being told about testing; questions their themes of 'reassurance' and 'choice', their construction of 'risk', and their assumptions about disability; and explores the 'life-style' testing creates for (pregnant) women. Testing itself, and its power to control how we live and the children we bear, raises complex and troubling matters that require continued and fresh examination.

Led (astray) by genetic maps: the cartography of the human genome and health care.

Advocates of projects to map the human genome claim that the information produced will illuminate the causes of human disease, improve treatment and, in general, increase our health and well-being. While concerns about the costs of mapping and the possible discriminatory and eugenic applications of the information it will provide have received some attention, assumptions implicit in the biomedical discourse in which its 'benefits' are proposed and which are shaping definitions of illness and health, normality and abnormality, have not yet been adequately analyzed. This paper examines how the genetic stories about mapping and its potential products being told in the biomedical (and popular) literature continue a tradition of reductionism and determinism. This new 'cartography', by adopting the blueprint as a metaphor for genes, leads to restricted conceptions of health and illness, reinforces inequities in the distribution of health and, by privatizing and individualizing responsibility for health, creates and legitimizes a new arena for social control.