The lost control and other mysteries: Further revelations on New Zealand's fluoridation trial

The Hastings fluoridation trial in the 1950s is listed in textbooks as an important study confirming the effectiveness of fluoridation. A paper to the 56th (1987) Congress of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science co‐authored by one of us (JC) showed, from government archives obtained under the Official Information Act, that the claimed tooth decay reductions were mainly the result of local changes in diagnostic procedure in school dental clinics, which were not mentioned in published versions of the study. The experimental control town, at first described as ‘ideal’, was abandoned following the discovery that after fluoridation commenced younger children had less tooth decay in the unfluoridated control town. Proponents claimed in explanation that a previously unknown soil factor had resulted in the control town having below average tooth decay. Opponents claimed that fluoride had worsened the teeth in the fluoridated town. This paper comments on reactions to the earlier published findings, and reports some further discoveries which help to answer questions concerning the old debate over the lost control, the behavior of those concerned and some other mysteries.     

'The heart and home of horror': The great London fogs of the late nineteenth century

This article centres on the unprecedentedly severe fog crisis which afflicted London between the 1870s and the mid-1890s. An overview of meteorological developments prefaces an interrogation of the mid-Victorian origins of environmental cost-benefit analysis and the only slowly dawning awareness that adverse weather conditions might make a significant contribution to mortality and morbidity from respiratory disease. At the same time, exceptionally degraded air quality came to be associated with the threat of physical and psychological degeneration in the poorest inner and eastern districts of the city. Perceived as a totality, these bodies of knowledge and ideology - economic, epidemiological and social Darwinistic - reinforced and legitimated a catastrophist fin de sicle vision of almost unbearably debilitating social, economic and cultural relationships between 'darkness at noon' and the potential implosion of the late nineteenth century metropolis.     

Reports of Conferences,Institutes, and Seminars

Abstract

This column covers several conference sessions from the 14th annual Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference, providing guidance on how to navigate ebook duplication, improving documentation and workflows, implementing OpenAthens, and experiences with Project SILLVR (Streaming Interlibrary Loan Video Resources)and knowledge bases and related tools (KBART) automation. There is also a report from IFLA’s SIG Library Publishing Mid-Term meeting, which was an ideological meeting in nature, discussing community building, resource sharing, and status updates. A report from the 2018 Charleston Conference is also included.     

An empirical model to predict arsenic pollution affected life expectancy

A robust, globally implementable and simple empirical model to predict the arsenic pollution affected life expectancy using a stepwise regression was developed. Life expectancy calculated using a life table technique requires crude death rates data that are not available for small administrative units, complex calculations and does not consider socioeconomic parameters. Hence, a model was needed to forecast the impact of arsenic pollution and socioeconomic parameters on life expectancy for locations with limited data availability. A linear multiple regression technique was used to develop an empirical model to predict arsenic pollution affected life expectancy at birth. The model was calibrated using nine arsenic polluted administrative blocks of district Murshidabad, West Bengal, India and tested independently for three other arsenic polluted blocks of the same district. The R ² values for the plot of actual versus predicted life expectancy at birth were 0.98 for calibration, testing and independent validation. The model is complementary to the life table technique and offers a means to assist planning by public health engineers and health policy makers to mitigate arsenic pollution on a community priority basis.     

Responding to Youth Crime in Scotland

Correspondence to Bill Whyte, Director, Criminal Justice Social Work Development Centre for Scotland, School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh, Flat 1FR, 31 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LJ. E-mail: B.Whyte{at}ed.ac.uk Summary Scotland’s Children’s Hearings deal with young peoplewho offend within an integrated system dealing also with youngpeople in need of care and protection, on the assumption thatthe difficulties of both groups have similar roots in multiplesocial disadvantage and social adversity (Whyte, 1998a). A government-fundedstudy, one of the first since the system’s inception in1971, was commissioned to examine the social characteristicsof over 1,000 children and young people referred for offenceand nonoffence reasons. This paper describes the characteristicsof 465 of the young people who were referred specifically foroffending. It provides the first ‘official’ datain twenty-five years on young people in the system. The studyfound that most of those referred for offending had characteristicsstrikingly similar to those referred for nonoffence reasons,as predicted when the system was first established, and similarto those present in the general literature on young offendersfrom other jurisdictions. The study poses fundamental questionstaken up by the Scottish Executive’s review of youth crimeon how best to design systems and develop social interventionsthat can address offending and social disadvantage in an integratedway.     

Evaluating Social Service Agencies: Fuzzy Pictures of Organizational Effectiveness

This article presents a case study of how members of three funding organizations evaluated the same two agencies in Canada. The research on which the article is based sheds light on the organizational effectiveness construct, on the ways in which the evaluators use it to reach conclusions on agency effectiveness, and the relation between these conclusions and funders' decisions on agency funding. The authors describe a framework for understanding evaluation processes, describe three funders in terms of this framework, set out predominant patterns in evaluation processes the funders used, and show the effects of these patterns from the agency's perspective. They then discuss the implications of the findings for agency managers and how the findings relate to theories of organization.     

The superstore format in Australia: Opportunities and limitations

This article outlines the development of both food superstores and non-food superstores (referred to as category killers) in Australia. Ten retail categories have been identified where there is a moderate to high rate of adoption of the superstore format (more than 20 outlets). These ten categories have been analyzed to identify the success factors in superstore development, which include accurate assessment of consumer one-stop shopping needs, sufficient finance, good store design skills and a balanced program of store expansion. The article explores the managerial implications for traditional retailers, for existing superstore retailers (especially the issue of optimal store size), for existing convenience store operators, department stores and for manufacturers and wholesalers. There are limitations of the superstore format in categories which are fashion orientated or where consumers require close distance convenience. These limitations actually provide opportunities to a myriad of retailers in fast food, dry-cleaning, banking, florists and the like, to reassess their locational and service delivery strategies. The superstore concept is clearly a revolution in itself, but its shock waves are provoking and stimulating second order mini-revolutions in traditional specialist stores, department stores, convenience stores, warehousing and manufacturing.