Development of a carpal tunnel syndrome screening method using structured interviews and vibrotactile testing

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is a debilitating and expensive health problem. An inexpensive screening method that would differentiate between people who do not have CTS and those that may have CTS would be useful. The screening methodology investigated here had two phases: a structured interview and provocative vibrotactile testing (VT). The control group (n = 36) was composed of asymptomatic college students and faculty, the case group was composed of patients currently visiting an occupational medicine clinic for symptoms consistent with CTS. The case group was subdivided into positive and negative for nerve conduction latency, NCL+ (n = 21) and NCL- (n = 13), respectively. Using a scored, structured interview, 33 of the controls and none of the symptomatic cases were identified as non-CTS. The results from the provocative flexion VT indicated that if the difference between the age corrected baseline and the threshold at 15 minutes is 15 microm or more, the subject was likely to be NCL+ (odds ratio 12.6, 95% CI 3.8 to 41.8). Further research may improve this screening methodology to not only determine whether or not a person has CTS, but also to determine the level of median nerve impingement or damage.     

Hand force of men and women over 65 years of age as measured by maximum pinch and grip force

This cross-sectional study aimed to assess the impact of age and gender on 4 measures of grip and pinch force of well elderly community dwellers and to provide normative values. The hypotheses were that age and gender affect pinch and grip force and that these 2 factors might interact. Hand strength of 224 seniors 65-92 years old was tested. Grip and pinch force decreased in successively older age groups past 65 years. Men's grip force exceeded that of women in all age groups. Men's hand-force decline was steeper than that of women over successive age groups, suggesting that gender differences in force decreased with age. Trends were the same for all 4 types of grip- and pinch-force measurement but were most clearly visible in grip and key-pinch force. Norms were provided for seniors age 65-85+ years in 5-yr increments.     

A Service Provider's Elicitation of Its Customers’ Demand Distributions by a Price Mechanism

In a service environment a service provider needs to determine the amount and kinds of capacity to meet customers’ needs over many periods. To make good decisions, she needs to know the probability distribution of her customers’ demand in each period. We study a situation in which customers’ demand for a given service is random in each period, but inelastic, or modeled well by this assumption, and cannot be delayed to the next period. This article presents a mechanism that allows a service provider to learn the distribution of a customer's demand by offering him a set of contracts through which he can partially prepay for future service for a reduced cost for units of service based on anticipated needs. We describe the form of a set of contracts that will cause the customer to reveal his demand distribution as he minimizes his expected costs. To justify the effort of organizing and offering contracts, we present an application that demonstrates the cost savings to the service provider with better capacity planning using the truthfully elicited distribution.     

CEO Age and Top Executive Pay: A UK Empirical Study

This study examines the implications that CEO age has onexecutive pay regarding data collected in a UK setting. Whereprior research has typically focused on total pay (salary plusbonus), this study offers a more complete conceptual model bysplitting pay into salary, annual bonus, and share options. Indoing so, we found that the relationship between CEO salaries andage are significantly related with this association weakeningover time. Another interesting finding not captured by priorresearch was that the relationship between CEO age and bonusappears to be non-linear in nature. Figures 2 which depicts thisnon-linear function suggest at about age 53, the proportion ofbonus as a percentage of salary begins to decrease at anincreasing rate. As a whole, these findings suggest corporate paycommittees should consider family and the financial circumstancesof the executive when designing remuneration schemes.     

BACKLASH, THE MATRIX OF DOMINATION, AND LOG CABIN REPUBLICANS

This article focuses on Log Cabin Republicans, gay members of that political party who reject "queer' politics and "leftist' projects among lesbian and gay activists. We show that members' social class, race, age, and gender are as central to an understanding of Log Cabin politics as is their nonnormative sexuality. The case of the Log Cabin Republicans illustrates how the matrix of domination is reaffirmed in backlash rhetoric and related so-ciopolitical practices. It also shows that the gay community comprises multiple, divergent subgroups that make the boundaries between lesbigay and straight politics more or less ambiguous and fluid. Put differently, the Log Cabin Republicans illuminate the practical limits of identity politics.
Early in the twentieth century, a gay white middle-class male observed:
Not till our whole commercial system, with its barter and sale of human labor and human love for gain, is done away, and not till a whole new code of ideals and customs of life has come in, will women really be free. They must remember that their cause is also the cause of the oppressed laborer over the whole earth, and the laborer has to remember that his cause is theirs. (Carpenter 1911, p. 60)     

Almost most powerful tests against composite alternatives

Likelihood ratio considerations are used to derive uniform bounds on the acceptance and rejection regions of the family of locally most powerful randomization tests for a two-sample comparison of censored data, When applied to radioimmunoassay data, these bounds are close enough to permit effective decision making. The methodology extends to a wide class of testing problems.     

Examining the efficacy of the GameSense gambling prevention programme among university undergraduate students

This article describes a study assessing the effectiveness of a gambling prevention programme, GameSense, in modifying gambling cognitions and intentions among university undergraduate students of diverse ethnicities (N = 122). Although GameSense is a widely used intervention, the effectiveness in modifying gambling cognitions and behaviours has not yet been demonstrated. In the present study, randomly assigned treatment participants completed the programme and then played a gambling game in which they could win tokens for a desired prize. Control participants played the game but did not receive the prevention programme. At the end of the game, all participants completed measures assessing gambling cognitions, immediate and future gambling intentions, and their desire to continue gambling. Programme participants showed increased knowledge about gambling, increased resistance to gambling fallacies, and fewer immediate and future intentions to continue gambling regardless of how much they won or lost, compared to the no-treatment control group. The present results indicate that the GameSense programme is effective in altering cognitions about gambling and immediate and future intentions to continue gambling. Results are discussed in terms of the modification of gambling cognitions following completion of the intervention programme and the changes in future gambling behaviour as a consequence of those changed cognitions.     

Queer Intimacies: A New Paradigm for the Study of Relationship Diversity

Recognition of sexual and gender diversity in the 21st century challenges normative assumptions of intimacy that privilege heterosexual monogamy and the biological family unit, presume binary cisgender identities, essentialize binary sexual identities, and view sexual or romantic desire as necessary. We propose a queer paradigm to study relationship diversity grounded in seven axioms: intimacy may occur (1) within relationships featuring any combination of cisgender, transgender, or nonbinary identities; (2) with people of multiple gender identities across the life course; (3) in multiple relationships simultaneously with consent; (4) within relationships characterized by consensual asymmetry, power exchange, or role-play; (5) in the absence or limited experience of sexual or romantic desire; (6) in the context of a chosen rather than biological family; and (7) in other possible forms yet unknown. We review research on queer relational forms, including same-sex relationships; relationships in which one or more partners identify as transgender, gender nonbinary, bisexual, pansexual, sexually fluid, “mostly” straight, asexual, or aromantic; polyamory and other forms of consensual nonmonogamy; kink/fetish relationships; and chosen families. We argue that a queer paradigm shifts the dominant scientific conception of relationships away from the confines of normativity toward an embrace of diversity, fluidity, and possibility.