9:30–10:40am Does Accessible Health Care coverage affects cancer treatment and mortal- Economic Issues Make a Difference? The Effects of ity. Controlling for the severity of cancer Health Insurance on Use of and other predictors of mortality, I compare The Cost of Good Health Preventative Care and on Health patient outcomes by age and race, looking (short talks) Pendleton East 239 Outcomes among Diabetics carefully at how these change at the Medicare The Effect of Mandated Benefits Ilana Orloff ’10, Economics eligibility age of 65. for Alcohol and Substance Abuse advisor: Robin McKnight, Economics Treatment on Infant Health Outcomes One significant source of the increased Literature and the Arts Lisa Abraham ’10, Economics spending on health care in the United States and Mathematics is the escalating costliness and prevalence advisor: Courtney Coile, Economics of diabetes. Diabetes is extremely expensive Hysteria, Spouting Fish, due to complications that can result and and Quackery (short talks) Recent surveys indicate that alcohol the need for medication and health checks Founders Hall 120 abuse among women is rising, of which a throughout a lifetime. The costs related to particularly noxious form is drinking during Hysteria: Victorian Violence diabetes are not confined to the afflicted pregnancy. Mandated benefits for alcohol and Against Women individual, but extend to society as a whole substance abuse treatment have the potential through higher taxes, elevated insurance Megan Wilson ’13 to counter this behavior, by requiring through premiums, and reduced standards of advisor: Charlene Galarneau, Women’s state law that insurance companies provide living. Given the increasing prevalence and and Gender Studies more generous financial or medical coverage importance of diabetes, this paper focuses on for these services. My analysis measures In the Victorian Era, “hysteria” was a the role of preventative care in the successful the effect of having alcohol and substance common diagnosis that often confined treatment of diabetes. This paper investigates abuse mandated benefits within a state on a women to bed for weeks on end. The whether health insurance affects diabetics’ spectrum of infant health indicators, includ- theorized root of the disease was the inherent usage of preventative care and also measures ing Apgar scores, infant mortality, congenital frailty of women: too much strenuous activity the effects on health outcomes for diabetics. defects, period of gestation, and birth weight. was thought to cause a host of ailments, The analysis uses a regression discontinuity from anxiety and sleeplessness to delirium, Does Obstetric Intervention Improve model and the discrete change in eligibility to vaginal lubrication and other signs of Infant Health? An Economic Analysis for Medicare once Americans turn 65 to sexual arousal. The diagnosis pathologized measure these effects. Runshan Deng ’10, Economics sexual desire in women, and treatment often advisor: Kristin Butcher, Economics included isolation or sexual violation. Even Does Health Insurance Affect the threat of diagnosis was enough to enforce Pregnant women with access to modern Utilization of Health Services and the Victorian ideal of female passivity by standards of prenatal and perinatal care are Health Outcomes? Evidence from defining inappropriate behavior. The concept Cancer Patients with and without subject to a variety of screenings and proce- of hysteria was so fraught with gender Medicare Eligibility dures that are designed to improve the health stereotypes that it crossed the line from a true of both mother and infant. These “interven- Susun Kim ’10, Economics medical condition to a tool doctors used to tions” tend to increase with maternal age, as advisor: Courtney Coile, Economics forcibly control women’s bodies. By placing older mothers face greater health risks that As the U.S. moves closer to adopting uni- severe limitations on women as a sex, the may be prevented with appropriate use of versal health insurance coverage, one critical hysteria diagnosis reinforced Victorian social obstetric intervention. However, since question is how health insurance coverage norms and helped to keep women intellectu- mothers aged 35 and older are deemed to affects the utilization of health care services ally, sexually, and socially subordinate to men. have reached “advanced maternal age”, and health outcomes. This effect is difficult to interventions are performed at a more aggres- identify, since people with and without health Spouting Fish with Horizontal sive rate, creating a jump, or discontinuity, of Tails: Melville, Cetology, and insurance may differ in ways that affect these the rate of obstetric intervention at age 35 Scientific Writing outcomes—for example, people who are sick that may be due to non-medical reasons. may be more likely to buy insurance. New Amy Allport ’10, English This study takes advantage of such disconti- cancer diagnoses, which serve as a shock to an advisor: Lawrence A. Rosenwald, English nuity in order to measure the effectiveness of individual’s health status, offer a potentially various obstetric procedures in improving Is a whale a fish? Biblical references, appealing way to identify the effect of insur- infant health. Examined procedures include economic interests, and common sense in ance on utilization and outcomes. In this the performance of cesarean section deliveries the early nineteenth century thought so, project, I use the National Cancer Institute’s and induction of birth, the use of electric and scientific authorities were powerless to Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results fetal monitoring, and the implementation sway popular opinion. The barrier between database to explore whether health insurance of amniocentesis. the scientific community and lay audience RUHLMAN CONFERENCE 2010 15 WELLESLEY COLLEGE 9:30–10:40am has been in place since people first tried to Tableaux Vivants: Inhabiting Science and Technology share observations with those around them. Music through Movement and A journal article written for an audience of Connecting Sounds, Space, Language without Sounds experts is meaningless and impenetrable to and Vision (interactive teaching the average reader even if they find interest (short talks) Pendleton East 139 presentation) Pendleton West 220 in the subject, so science writers must present Emergence of Referential Shift scientific information in a familiar, almost Anne Goldberg ’10, Music and Spanish in a New Sign Language narrative style. Successful writers must be advisors: Martin Brody, Music, and Peter Annemarie Kocab ’10, Cognitive and able to evaluate the popular attitude regard- Child (MIT) Linguistic Science ing academic authority to avoid alienating In some Eastern cultures, dance and music advisor: Jennie E. Pyers, Psychology audience members while maintaining are expressed by the same word because scientific integrity. When Melville published Referential shift is a grammatical device they are treated as actions done together, Moby Dick in 1851, he was certainly familiar used to mark multiple perspectives in a one influencing the other. This composition with contemporary science writing; to what narrative. Across different sign languages, thesis is an exploration of the unique extent is his almost encyclopedic account of signers shift their torso to one side or the relationship between music and movement, whales and the business of whaling science other to express referential shift. Although specifically relating towards creation. Where writing? (Research supported by the Office the body shift ironically depicts a character does the impetus come from? Which comes of the Dean of the College.) shift, it depends on the signer consistently first—music or dance? How does the style of placing characters in the same space across a The Golden Age of Satire: Thomas one discipline affect the other? As a result, the narrative. We examined whether signers of Rowlandson’s Prints and Medical contemporary ballet, Tableaux Vivants, paints an emerging sign language in Nicaragua use Reform, 180–1830 “living pictures” of an abstract storyline that the body shift as a referential shift device. In integrates both movement and music in both Ilene Tsui ’10, Neuroscience and Art History the Nicaraguan deaf community, the younger the dancers and musicians. The phenomena advisor: Meredith Martin, Art signers introduce grammatical features that of music and dance are still a beautiful the older signers are unable to acquire. Deaf Popular prints, a valuable source of visual mystery that will never quite be explained, yet Nicaraguans’ descriptions of six videos were documentation, circulated throughout this work is one commentary and exploration coded for consistency in marking spatial Georgian London and carried influential, into the infinite realm of connection and relations and for the use of the body shift. moralizing messages. During the Golden Age interaction between the two fields. Younger signers used the body shift and of Satire, health and disease were among the consistently marked spatial relations more most prominent subjects illustrated in prints. Connecting Sounds, Space, and often than older signers. Thus, the use of the My thesis explores the dynamic relationship Vision: The (Non-)Musical Uses of body shift only emerges when signers con- between satirical prints and the evolving Analog Recording Technology sistently locate characters in space. (Research medical world of Georgian London by focus- Michelle