Historical Society of Rockland County

Abstract A liquid chromatographic method coupled with fluorescence detection was developed to measure plasma reserpine concentrations. After extraction from 3 ml of plasma, the reserpine and internal standard (methyl-18-triethoxy benzoyl reserpate) residues were oxidized to their respective fluorophors by vanadium pentoxide and chromatographed on a reversed phase trimethylsilyl column. These compounds were detected at excitation wave length 460 nm and analyzed at 570 nm. The minimum quantifiable level was ca 0.3 ng/ml and the absolute recovery was determined to be between 78–83%. The coefficient of variation was less than 9% for day-to-day and within run analyses. This method is suitable for pharmacokinetic studies of reserpine in man.

Competitiveness and cooperativeness of children in the Northeast were compared to those same attitudes in the Midwest. 102 middle- to upper-class suburban public school children in Grades 2 through 6 were given the Minnesota School Affect Assessment. Contrary to former findings, competitiveness in all grades increased with age. There were main effects for sex for both attitudes. It is proposed that region of residence contributed to the difference found.

Among the several methods of assessing need for health services, the social indicator and the rates under treatment approaches utilize routinely available data. A well designed community survey, considered by many as the criterion of need within an area, is costly, difficult to mount, and requires considerable expertise. Therefore, it would seem reasonable to attempt to limit the need to utilize this approach. Presented here is a schema which utilizes the social indicator and rates under treatment approaches for an entire catchment area, reserving the survey approach only for those areas in which the two readily available need assessments are at variance, suggesting questionable validity for one or both approaches. Within a suburban middle-class county containing pockets of small town poverty, a social area analysis was undertaken to characterize need for mental health services. Inpatient rates under treatment were developed to measure demand. Key informant and survey approaches were undertaken to study selectively those census tracts which were discordant as to need and demand. This resulted in reducing the size of the population to be surveyed to 25 per cent of the total county, thus more efficiently using the limited resources available for needs assessment purposes.

Analysis of cause-specific death rates among 750 elderly psychiatric inpatients revealed a markedly increased risk of death from pneumonia and a lesser but still substantial risk of death from cardiovascular disorders during the first year of hospitalization. Although the risks of cardiovascular death are considerably less among longer-stay patients, the pneumonia risks remain high. This suggests differing preventive strategies. To help prevent cardiovascular deaths, more attention should be paid to avoiding transfer trauma and its attendant stress. To help prevent pneumonia deaths, high priority should be given to an aggressive program of immunization, adequate nutrition, reduction of hospital overcrowding, and recognition of early pneumonia symptoms.

A study of the use of psychotropic drugs among 30 elderly psychiatric patients with pneumonia (15 of whom died), in comparison to the general elderly population of the hospital, revealed a negative association between the use of psychotropic agents and the development of pneumonia. The factors of age, sex, pre-existing illness, and organism virulence/patient resistance were all associated with death from pneumonia. However, the present findings do not support the hypothesis that psychotropic drugs are implicated in pneumonia deaths among elderly psychiatric patients.

This paper addresses some problems and tech niques which are involved in optimizing the execu tion time of a given algorithm. It shows that while high level languages such as PL/I make it easy for the programmer to express a function, they also require him/her to understand in detail how the compiler constructs object code in order to optimize the algorithm representing that func tion. Certain features of IBM's PL/I Optimizing Compiler are used, and a performance increase of over 5:1 is achieved.

Abstract A group of gibbons (Hylobates lar) has been maintained in the seminatural, designed environment of Hall island, Bermuda, since 1970, demonstrating the feasability of long term, experimental studies of animals instrumented with intracerebral electrodes and a shoulder harness to carry radio stimulators and telemetric units for recording of mobility. Observations of spontaneous behavior were synchronized using 5 sec units, broadcast to experimenters in the field. The following conclusions are derived from our study: (1) Daytime gibbon mobility showed a periodicity related to basic biological clocks and not to mutual behavioral influences. (2) Periodicities were consistent for the same animal on different days and homogeneous intervals, validating observations made during relatively brief periods. (3) Caudate nucleus stimulation produced inhibition while central gray stimulation induced escape. Neither effect modified spontaneous rhythms. (4) Behavioral categories such as SITS, HANGS, and SWINGS rema...

Department of Psychiatry, Rutgers Medical School, College of Medicine andDentistry of New Jersey, Piscataway, New Jersey (R.D.DJ; and Social BiologyLab, Rockland Research Institute, Orangeburg, New York (A.H.E., K.M.S.)This is a study of an institutionalized group of female adolescents observed for a nine-week period. These girls were observed to determine the characteristics of their domi-nance relations and how, in turn, this aspect of their social environment was related touse of their physical environment. Correlational analyses between observatiotial andsociometric data suggested that dominance rank was based upon the frequency of beingthe recipient of a dominance act. Fewer dominance acts were initiated against higherranking girls. Dominance ranking was not based upon frequency of initiating a domi-nance act towards others. Higher ranking girls were the ones most frequently observedalone in their own bedroom. Bedrooms were highly desirable areas used for grooming(eg, setting hair, ironing clothes, putting on cosmetics, resting) as girls sought to gainpopularity with the institution's male population. Comparison of results with findingsin similar studies on male adolescents suggest some tentative generalizations as to sexdifference in dominance and territoriality.Key words: adolescents, dominance hierarchy, territoriality, sex differences