Afghanistan: How Much is Enough?

Moduli Spaces of Coherent Systems of Small Slope on Algebraic Curves

Let C be an algebraic curve of genus g ≥ 2. A coherent system on C consists of a pair (E, V ), where E is an algebraic vector bundle over C of rank n and degree d and V is a subspace of dimension k of the space of sections of E. The stability of the coherent system depends on a parameter α. We study the geometry of the moduli space of coherent systems for 0 < d ≤ 2n. We show that these spaces\udare irreducible whenever they are non-empty and obtain necessary and sucient conditions for non-emptiness

Patient and Provider Attitudes towards Monitored Naltrexone Treatment of Alcohol Dependence in Schizophrenia

To describe the attitudes of patients and their mental health providers regarding participation in a controlled trial of directly monitored naltrexone (NTX) treatment for alcohol dependence in schizophrenia.

Preventing Psychiatric Hospitalization and Involuntary Outpatient Commitment

Over the course of a decade in Victoria, Australia, this study considered how, for whom, under what circumstances, and with what consequences for a patient's treatment career involuntary outpatient commitment was used to prevent psychiatric hospitalization. Records were obtained from the Victorian Psychiatric Case Register for patients with career hospitalizations, 8,879 exposed to outpatient orders. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression were used to determine the characteristics of patients solely selected for placement on orders directly from the community, in lieu of re-hospitalization, versus patients selected for placement on orders only from the hospital or for those who experienced both hospital and community-initiated orders. Ordinary least squares regression was used to evaluate the relationship of sole reliance on community-initiated orders and experienced changes in future hospital utilization. Outpatient orders were infrequently issued directly from the community by comparison with orders issued at termination of inpatient episodes. Patients whose placements on orders were carried out only through direct community placement differed from those whose placement was primarily initiated from hospital or from both hospital and community. The former group, while largely comprised of people with schizophrenia, was less likely to include such patients than the comparison samples. It also included fewer males and "never married" individuals as well as more individuals with major affective disorders. Those served solely with community-initiated orders showed significantly less use of subsequent inpatient care than individuals in the comparison samples, all other diagnostic and pre-morbid adjustment characteristics taken into account. For patients at risk of beginning a career of long-term psychiatric hospitalization, sole reliance on community-initiated orders appeared to prevent additional hospital involvement. The issuance of orders from hospital and the combined-order strategy were associated with protective oversight throughout extended inpatient careers. Sole reliance on community-initiated outpatient orders provided a "least restrictive" alternative to hospitalization.

Resident run journal club: A model based on the adult learning theory

Multiple formats of journal club exist but data is lacking regarding which model is most effective. Many residents are dissatisfied with their current format, which was the case at our institution.

Separation of Argon and Oxygen by Adsorption on a Titanosilicate Molecular Sieve

A titanosilicate molecular sieve adsorbent, Ba-RPZ-3, was synthesized and tested for its use in the separation of O2+Ar mixtures at room temperature. A clean resolution of both gases was achieved in pulse chromatographic experiments using a standard column (0.25″ OD, 3.5 grams of adsorbent). In another experiment, using a column containing 30 grams of adsorbent and a continuous O2+Ar feed at 10 cm3/min, argon breakthrough was detected more than 5 minutes before the oxygen breakthrough, and the separation was sufficiently sensitive to achieve quantitative separation of mixtures with low argon content (5% Ar). Equilibrium adsorption isotherms and isosteric heats of adsorption for oxygen and argon were found to be almost identical at room temperature. The thermodynamic selectivity was found to be mildly in favor of oxygen (∼1.1–1.2). However, the adsorption of oxygen was observed to be much faster than argon, indicating that the separation of the O2+Ar mixtures was based on the sieving properties of the adsorbent and the difference in sizes of O2 molecules and Ar atoms. This indicates that a suitably-oriented oxygen is physically smaller than argon, despite the fact that many references assume that oxygen is larger than argon.

A Review of Effectiveness of Group Work with Children of Divorce

Black Raspberry Components Inhibit Proliferation, Induce Apoptosis, and Modulate Gene Expression in Rat Esophageal Epithelial Cells

We have shown that a diet containing freeze-dried black raspberries (BRB) inhibits the development of chemically induced cancer in the rat esophagus. To provide insights into possible mechanisms by which BRB inhibit esophageal carcinogenesis, we evaluated an ethanol (EtOH) extract of BRB, and two component anthocyanins (cyanidin-3-O-glucoside and cyanidin-3-O-rutinoside) in BRB, for their effects on growth, apoptosis, and gene expression in rat esophageal epithelial cell lines. The EtOH extract and both anthocyanins selectively caused significant growth inhibition and induction of apoptosis in a highly tumorigenic cell line (RE-149 DHD) but not in a weakly tumorigenic line (RE-149). The uptake of anthocyanins from the EtOH extract into RE-149 DHD cells far exceeded their uptake into RE-149 cells, which may have accounted for the selective effects of the extract on growth and apoptosis of RE-149 DHD cells. The growth inhibitory and proapoptotic effects were enhanced by the daily addition of the EtOH extract and the anthocyanins to the medium. Interestingly, the EtOH extract did not alter cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and nitric oxide synthase (i-NOS) expression in RE-149 DHD cells, whereas both anthocyanins downregulated the expressions of these genes. This differential effect may have been related to the relative amounts of anthocyanins in the extract vs. when they were added individually to the medium. We conclude that the selective effects of the EtOH extract on growth and apoptosis of highly tumorigenic rat esophageal epithelial cells in vitro may be due to preferential uptake and retention of its component anthocyanins, and this may also be responsible for the greater inhibitory effects of freeze-dried whole berries on tumor cells in vivo.

Exploring the Potential of Twitter as a Research Tool

Twitter (www.twitter.com) has become kind of a popular culture punch line. It’s often used as a shorthand to represent how self-obsessed and selfinvolved the American culture has become, and while Twitter does lend itself to a kind of needless sharing (“I just bought new shoes!”), it also has some potentially useful features. Twitter is a microblogging service that allows users to post and read 140character status messages. These short bursts of information, called tweets, can be anything from what someone had for lunch to feedback on a live event, like a presidential press conference. Much of the library literature focuses on Twitter as either a patron outreach tool or as a way to collect patron feedback. However, Twitter offers some functionality that might be especially helpful to librarians in the behavioral and social sciences—functionality that could also prove helpful to faculty researching and/or teaching within those disciplines. One of the ways Twitter could be helpful is as a search tool. Most search tools are historical by nature because they’re searching older information that took some time to assemble (Arnold 2009, 8). Even a standard Google search does not provide a way to search results chronologically. A standard Google News search provides that ability; however, it does not index as much as a generic Google search. Twitter, which relies on users posting quick and often responsive messages about what is going on at any given moment, is more appropriate for capturing hypercurrent information. In effect, it allows searchers to capture the Zeitgeist of certain events, based upon the perspective of certain people, in this case, Twitter users. So while it does not reliably provide a sample representative of the United States, Twitter does provide some insights into what certain people are talking about. For

Government, Effectiveness, Performance, and Local Property Values