William J. Horvath

Parental and Child Health Beliefs and Behavior

Personal interviews concerning health beliefs and behav iors were conducted with a parent and child in each of 250 households. Index scores were constructed for parental and child health beliefs, and these scores were entered, along with demographic variables, in a series of multiple regression analyses predicting child health beliefs and behaviors. The age of the child was the variable most highly associated with three of four child health behaviors and four of six child health beliefs. The childrens snacking between meals and cigarette smoking were related to several parental behaviors and, to a lesser extent, parental health beliefs. The childrens health beliefs were less predictable than were their health behaviors, and the observed significant relationships were with parental health beliefs and demographics. The implications for the design of health education programs are discussed.

The theoretical channel capacity of a single neuron as determined by various coding systems

The information channel capacity of a model neuron with a fixed refractory period δ has been calculated for optimum continuous time interval coding. Two types of noise perturbations have been considered, a Gaussian probability distribution and a rectangular distribution of the time of occurrence of the response to a stimulus. Laboratory measurements indicate a Gaussian distribution with a standard deviation of latency σ, of about 5 μsec gives the best fit to an actual nerve fiber. This results in a maximum information transmission of slightly over 4000 bits per second. The results are compared with the discrete theory of MacKay and McCulloch.

Philip McCord Morse 1903-1985-A Remembrance

Philip M. Morse, friend and mentor of two generations of operations researchers, and first president of the Operations Research Society, died in Concord, Massachusetts, on September 5, 1985. In many ways, Philip Morse was a symbol of operations research over the past four decades.

Letter to the Editor---Some Thoughts on Operations Research on Municipal Operations

The rapid expansion in the use of mathematical methods of inventory control and production scheduling brought about in the last few years through the efforts of an active group of operations analysts and econometricians has led me to reflect on the forces that determine the directions in which new developments and new ideas such as operations research are channeled. Operations Research, ISSN 0030-364X, was published as Journal of the Operations Research Society of America from 1952 to 1955 under ISSN 0096-3984.

The Current Situation in Psychiatry and its Effects on the Delivery of Mental Health Services in the Next Decade

As long as mental illness is regarded as primarily a behavioral disorder, current and foreseeable manpower shortages in psychiatry make it necessary to increase the participation of nonmedical personnel in the treatment process. The controversy between those advocating behavioral treatment and those favoring the medical model cannot be resolved due to the fact that our current knowledge of the biologic roots of mental illness is inadequate. A breakthrough in research in this area could resolve the argument and solve the manpower problem by transferring psychiatric disorders into physiologic disease susceptible to medical treatment. Alternative models for the delivery of mental health services can be developed to allow for different possibilities in the outcome of research. Additional data is needed, especially on the costs and effectiveness of future therapies, before an evaluation of programs can be carried out.

British experience with operations research in the health services.

OPERATIONS research and its companion activities, management science and systems research, have found wide use in many governmental and industrial organizations. The objective of these activities is the application of the scientific method to the study of the complex operations carried out by these organizations and, ultimately, through such studies, to provide the administrators and executives with a quantitative basis for making decisions. The motivation for using these techniques has varied widely. Generally speaking, an effectively functioning organization with no external challenges may find little reason for employing operations research. On the other hand, outside pressures, such as business competition or grave military threats, may provide a strong incentive for increasing efficiency and, under those circumstances, the heads of the affected organizations will readily make use of any proven method for increasing the effectiveness of their groups. It is no surprise,. therefore, that some of the most successful work in operations research occurred in military applications during World War II when, due to the military emergency, scientists were brought in to study all aspects of military operations. However, less publicized but equally important results have been achieved in business applications, especially in the United States, since the end of the war. As yet, the health systems, both private and governmental, have made only sparing use of operations research. FLAGLE has recently surveyed s,ome of the problems in the health field which should be amenable to operations research [l]. He suggests in his paper that the administration of health systems, particularly hospitals, represents one of these ‘troubled areas’ where rising political and economic pressures are forcing the organizations affected to make serious efforts to revise their systems and improve their effectiveness. By and large, hospital administrators recognize the magnitude of these problems and are attempting to cope with them on a day-to-day basis without recourse to analytical studies. A few hospitals have been fortunate enough to have access to qualified operations research teams and have recognized the value of using specialized groups to study their