A critique of the official report on the evacuation of the World Trade Center: continued doubts.

This paper criticises the conclusions and the unanswered questions in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)'s official report on the evacuation of the World Trade Center in New York City, United States, on 11 September 2001. It reviews the extent to which the report disregards several conventional statistical methods and comments on the NIST's refusal to share the machine-readable data file with the scientific community for replication and further analysis. Problems lie in the sampling methods employed, the treatment of missing data, the use of ordinary least squares (OLS) with binary dependent variables, the failure to document the scalability of the scales used, the lack of tests to check for constant error variance, and the absence of overall fit tests of the model. There are also conceptual and theoretical issues, such as the absence in the report of considerations of the influence of group-level processes and their impact on the collective behaviour of evacuating collectivities.

Normative collective behavior in the Station building fire.

Objective. This article offers a test of the normative explanation of collective behavior by examining the fire at the Station nightclub in Rhode Island that killed 100 and injured nearly 200 persons.Methods. Information on all persons at the club comes from content analysis of documents from the Rhode Island Police Department, the Rhode Island Office of the Attorney General, and The Providence Journal. We use negative binomial regression to test hypotheses about the effects of group-level predictors of the counts of dead and injured in 179 groups at the nightclub.Results. Results indicate that group-level factors such as distance of group members at the start of the fire, the number of intimate relations among them, the extent to which they had visited the nightclub prior to the incident, and the average length of the evacuation route they used predict counts of injured and dead. The research also looks at what behavioral differences exist between survivors and victims, ascertains the existence of role extension among employees of the nightclub, and provides support for the affirmation that dangerous contexts negate the protective influence of intimate relations in groups.Conclusion. We argue for the abandonment of current emphasis on irrationality and herd-like imitative behavior in studies of evacuation from structural fires in buildings and for the inclusion of group-level processes in social psychological explanations of these incidents.

Neonatal screening for congenital hypothyroidism in Mexico: experience, obstacles, and strategies.

OBJECTIVE: To report the experience, obstacles, and strategies of screening for congenital hypothyroidism. SETTING: Newborns in Mexico. METHODS: Thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) was measured by enzyme immunoassay using commercial kits in 1,140,364 newborns. RESULTS: There were 464 positive cases, of whom 299 (64.4%) were girls. 236 (50.9% showed ectopic nodules, 202 (43.5%) thyroid agenesis, 21 (4.5%) dyshormonogenesis, and 5 (1.1%) an unclassified goitre. The false positive rate was 0.024% and there were 11 false negative results. Currently, 600,000 (26%) of the 2,300,000 newborns are screened. This percentage has been increased in recent years by taking samples from cord blood and will be increased further by starting congenital hypothyroidism screening at social security units and by midwives screening infants born at home. CONCLUSIONS: Mental retardation in infants in developing countries can be reduced by neonatal screening, and carefully planned strategies can steadily extend the benefits of screening.

In search of Asian war brides.

Because of the long presence of U.S. soldiers in Asia, war-bride marriages involving servicemen and Asian women have been formed throughout the century. The literature, however, contains little empirically sound information on Asian war brides. This analysis develops a methodology to identify war brides and applies it to estimate the number of war brides from the six major Asian groups, using the national 1980 Public Use Microdata Sample. Further analysis comparing Asian war brides with other groups of Asian wives tends to support the traditional and lower socioeconomic images commonly associated with Asian war brides.

[Neonatal screening for congenital hypothyroidism and phenylketonuria]. / Tamiz neonatal para hipotiroidismo congénito y fenilcetonuria.

A newborn screening program for congenital hypothyroidism (CH) and phenylketonuria (PKU) was conducted in 140 163 infants from the Federal District and the states of Mexico and Tlaxcala. These children were born mainly in hospitals for the non-insured population, although some were social security beneficiaries. Their filter-paper blood TSH and phenylalanine concentrations were determined 48 hours after birth. The frequency of CH was 1:1 797, with a 95 per cent confidence interval of 1:1 470 to 1:2 315, and was quite similar in the different types of hospitals. Only two PKU cases were found, for a frequency of 1:70 082, with a 95 per cent confidence interval of 0 to 1:4 762. This work demonstrates the feasibility of newborn screening programs in Mexico, identifies the problems to be solved in order to achieve a wide coverage and establishes the high frequency of CH in the Mexican population.

The human ecology of tornadoes.

This paper offers an empirical test of the impact of human ecological patterns and other known correlates on tornado occurrence. It uses the National Severe Storms Forecast Center's information on tornadoes from 1950 through 1990 and employs ecological data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census and the Environmental Protection Agency. The results show that metropolitan and other urban counties have higher odds of tornado occurrence than rural counties, and that the probability of occurrence of tornadoes increases with increases in the number of previous tornadoes. The paper assesses the meaning of this finding for demographers, atmospheric scientists, engineers, and disaster managers.

Occupational prestige in the health care delivery system.

In this study ethnic and gender differences in occupational prestige of health care workers are used to measure the extent of inequality in the health care delivery systems of large SMSAs. Aggregate characteristics of these communities and of their health care delivery systems are used to explain variations in occupational prestige among health workers. The analysis is guided by Blau's macrostructural theory of intergroup relations. It employs 1980 U.S. Census information on the number of men, women, whites, blacks, and Hispanics in 19 health occupations in the 31 largest SMSAs. The results include a description of the size of the health care delivery systems and the proportions of women and minority workers in the systems, as well as the average occupational prestige of categories of respondents, their level of concentration among the occupations, and the relative presence of respondents in the occupations of physicians and registered nurses. Multivariate regression analysis is used to explore intergroup differences in occupational prestige. As deduced from Blau's theory, groups with greater relative occupational dispersion, greater political participation, advanced education, and higher sex ratios have greater relative occupational prestige in the health care delivery system.

Ethnic differences in the demand for physician and hospital utilization among older adults in major American cities: conspicuous evidence of considerable inequalities.

Reinterpreting ethnicity's role in the prevailing behavioral model of health services usage reveals among older Americans a patient pattern of inequality favoring the Anglo-American population. Demand for hospital and physicians' care among minority elderly is far more constrained and sensitive to health needs than it is for their Anglo-American counterparts. The findings underscore the importance of examining ethnic differences in determinants of health behavior as well as in health service utilization. Such results also appear to strengthen the grounds for developing new programs aimed at eliminating inequalities of access to health care that older members of minorities now face.

The aged in Hispanic groups: a review.

This study presents an inventory of social science published reports about the elderly in Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban subnationalities in the United States. A review of this literature indicates that Cuban and Puerto Rican elderly have been disregarded by gerontologists interested in the study of ethnic groups. Available information on service availability and utilization and extended family support, as well as methodological and theoretical problems in this area of investigation, are assessed. The study concludes with a call for greater attention to matters of ethnic population density and ecology for understanding the life experiences of the ethnic elderly.