<P> New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont have cooperated in developing a New England Common Assessment Program test under the No Child Left Behind guidelines . These states can compare the resultant scores with each other . </P> <P> The Maine Learning Technology Initiative program supplies all students with Apple MacBook laptops . </P> <P> There are several academic journals and publishing companies in the region, including The New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard University Press, and Yale University Press . Some of its institutions lead the open access alternative to conventional academic publication, including MIT, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Maine . The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston publishes the New England Economic Review . </P> <P> New England has a shared heritage and culture primarily shaped by waves of immigration from Europe . In contrast to other American regions, many of New England's earliest Puritan settlers came from eastern England, contributing to New England's distinctive accents, foods, customs, and social structures . Within modern New England a cultural divide exists between urban New Englanders living along the densely populated coastline, and rural New Englanders in western Massachusetts, northwestern and northeastern Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, where population density is low . </P>

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