Engaging a New Generation of Philanthropists: Findings from the Pay IT Forward Student Philanthropy Initiative

This report focuses on an emerging trend in higher education called student philanthropy, an experiential learning approach where students study social issues in the community and make decisions about distributing funds to nonprofit organizations. Previous research in the field of student philanthropy has revealed promising results: those enrolled in student philanthropy courses have shown a greater awareness of social problems and nonprofits, a heightened sense of responsibility to help others in need, and a greater likelihood to give their time and money in the future to support their community. However, little is known about the ways previous philanthropy experiences of students and components of student philanthropy courses may explain these outcomes.This report examines students enrolled in student philanthropy courses through Pay it Forward, an initiative of the Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio Campus Compacts that seeks to develop a new generation of philanthropists through infusing the practice of philanthropy as a core component of college coursework. This report asks three key questions about the Pay it Forward course:What are the prior philanthropic experiences of Pay it Forward participants?What features of a Pay it Forward course predict student confidence in their philanthropic skills, abilities, and knowledge?What aspects of a Pay it Forward course predict changes in students' plans to donate money to, volunteer in, and otherwise support their communities

Boundary and Coulomb Effects on Boson Systems in High-Energy Heavy-Ion Collisions

The boundary of a boson system plays an important role in determining the momentum distribution of the bosons. For a boson system with a cylindrical boundary, the momentum distribution is enhanced at high transverse momenta but suppressed at low transverse momenta, relative to a Bose-Einstein distribution. The boundary effects on systems of massless gluons and massive pions are studied. For gluons in a quark-gluon plasma, the presence of the boundary may modify the signals for the quark-gluon plasma. For pions in a pion system in heavy-ion collisions, Coulomb final-state interactions with the nuclear participants in the vicinity of the central rapidity region further modify the momentum distribution at low transverse momenta. By including both the boundary effect and the Coulomb final-state interactions we are able to account for the behavior of the $\pi^{-}$ transverse momentum spectrum observed in many heavy-ion experiments, notably at low transverse momenta.Comment: 15 pages Postscript uuencoded tar-comprssed file, 9 Postscript figures uuencoded tar-compressed fil

An Evolution Based Biosensor Receptor DNA Sequence Generation Algorithm

A biosensor is composed of a bioreceptor, an associated recognition molecule, and a signal transducer that can selectively detect target substances for analysis. DNA based biosensors utilize receptor molecules that allow hybridization with the target analyte. However, most DNA biosensor research uses oligonucleotides as the target analytes and does not address the potential problems of real samples. The identification of recognition molecules suitable for real target analyte samples is an important step towards further development of DNA biosensors. This study examines the characteristics of DNA used as bioreceptors and proposes a hybrid evolution-based DNA sequence generating algorithm, based on DNA computing, to identify suitable DNA bioreceptor recognition molecules for stable hybridization with real target substances. The Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) approach is applied in the proposed algorithm to evaluate the safety and fitness of the generated DNA sequences. This approach improves efficiency and stability for enhanced and variable-length DNA sequence generation and allows extension to generation of variable-length DNA sequences with diverse receptor recognition requirements

Antibiotic prescribing for otitis media: how well does it match published guidelines?

Otitis media (OM) accounts for ∼ 31 million physician visits annually, and is typically treated with antibiotics. Amoxicillin is the recommended first-line treatment; appropriate antibiotic use slows the development of resistance. We analyzed insurance claims from families of employees working at a single company to determine if OM treatments (1) matched published standards; and (2) varied by patient characteristics, type of physician practice or geographic location. Persons diagnosed with OM between 1996 and 1999 were matched to prescription drug claims for those who filled an antibiotic prescription within 3 days of diagnosis. Physicians prescribed amoxicillin for only 31% of acute cases and 19% of recurrent cases. For acute infections in children≤ 2 years the prescribed duration often matched the standard of 10 days, but for persons > 2 years the prescribed duration was often longer than the suggested duration of 5–7 days. For persons of all ages with recurrent infections, the prescribed duration was often shorter than suggested (10 days versus≥ 14 days). There were only modest variations by urban/rural location or provider type. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/35156/1/763_ftp.pd