Imagery in Milton : L\u27 Allegro and Il Penseroso

Non-fiction by Shirley Bullar

What has become of the "stability-through-inflation" argument?

In this article, James B. Bullard and Alvin L. Marty begin by summarizing some popular arguments for positive steady-state rates of inflation based on the idea that a certain amount of inflation stabilizes economic performance. Then, synthesizing a number of disparate results in a single framework and using a general class of money-demand functions, they find that the stability-through-inflation arguments have either been completely replaced (by potent but unsettling results based on rational expectations) or called into question (by more sophisticated treatments of the adaptive expectations hypothesis).Inflation (Finance)

Innovative Workforce Plan: Recently Graduated Nurses as Super Users for EHR Implementation in a Multi-Hospital Organization

A regional health system’s decision to rapidly implement a new electronic health record (EHR) in order to meet Stage 2 meaningful use requirements led to a need for innovative cost-containment strategies. Tapping the local pool of unemployed newly graduated nurses as half the required super user workforce leveraged the technology skills of novice nurses registered nurses as trainers of experienced nurses in five hospitals. The novel workforce migrated from hospital to hospital, thereby reducing the number of experienced nurses reassigned to super user duties in each hospital. This strategy also reduced the amount of contract labor required to backfill nurse super users’ clinical shifts. The innovative model reduced labor costs associated with super user staffing by 31.8%, while positioning the organization for successful attestation to Stage 2 meaningful use objectives. Employment of the recently graduated nurses as RN Residents upon completion of the EHR implementation enabled the organization to augment its clinical workforce with expert users of its EHR, and to rapidly achieve Stage 2 meaningful use compliance

Integrated flight/propulsion control system design based on a centralized approach

An integrated flight/propulsion control system design is presented for the piloted longitudinal landing task with a modern, statically unstable, fighter aircraft. A centralized compensator based on the Linear Quadratic Gaussian/Loop Transfer Recovery methodology is first obtained to satisfy the feedback loop performance and robustness specificiations. This high-order centralized compensator is then partitioned into airframe and engine sub-controllers based on modal controllability/observability for the compensator modes. The order of the sub-controllers is then reduced using internally-balanced realization techniques and the sub-controllers are simplified by neglecting the insignificant feedbacks. These sub-controllers have the advantage that they can be implemented as separate controllers on the airframe and the engine while still retaining the important performance and stability characteristics of the full-order centralized compensator. Command prefilters are then designed for the closed-loop system with the simplified sub-controllers to obtain the desired system response to airframe and engine command inputs, and the overall system performance evaluation results are presented

An Assessment of the Effects of Medical Marijuana on the Quality of Patient Life

America is known as the land of opportunity. People attempting to better their lives tend to see America as an opportunity to do so. This statement remains true for the American medical field. Americans are known as advanced in treatment options for various diseases. With this being said, there are few diseases that still bring forth complete fear in the minds of the people of America. In spite of this, You have been diagnosed with cancer is a statement that generates this fear. Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Current treatments for cancer are invasive, expensive, and disheartening for patients. There is a true need for help in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of this horrific disease. The medical world has begun turning its attention to marijuana to help fill this gap between cancer and cure. My interest is not on the politics of marijuana, but rather on the potential to improve patients\u27 quality of life. Through the construction and future application of a medical marijuana questionnaire, a qualitative assessment will be made on the effectiveness of medical marijuana. If quality of life for patients is seen to improve with use of medical marijuana, I would like to advocate for the patients and provide them a voice in the medical marijuana discussion. The null hypothesis to this study is that medical marijuana has no effect on a patients\u27 quality of life. My research with Ewing\u27s sarcoma and current literature review on patients\u27 experiences with marijuana and its related cannabinoids lead me to conclude that the null hypothesis is invalid. I believe medical marijuana has the ability to improve the quality of life of patients to which it\u27s prescribed

Vortex Washboard Voltage Noise in Type-II Superconductors

In order to characterize flux flow through disordered type-II superconductors, we investigate the effects of columnar and point defects on the vortex velocity / voltage power spectrum in the driven non-equilibrium steady state. We employ three-dimensional Metropolis Monte Carlo simulations to measure relevant physical observables including the force-velocity / current-voltage (I-V) characteristics, vortex spatial arrangement and structure factor, and mean flux line radius of gyration. Our simulation results compare well to earlier findings and physical intuition. We focus specifically on the voltage noise power spectra in conjunction with the vortex structure factor in the presence of weak columnar and point pinning centers. We investigate the vortex washboard noise peak and associated higher harmonics, and show that the intensity ratios of the washboard harmonics are determined by the strength of the material defects rather than the type of pins present. Through varying columnar defect lengths and pinning strengths as well as magnetic flux density we further explore the effect of the material defects on vortex transport. It is demonstrated that the radius of gyration displays quantitatively unique features that depend characteristically on the type of material defects present in the sample.Comment: Latex, 17 pages, 14 figure

Medicinal Plants of Trinidad and Tobago: Selection of Antidiabetic Remedies

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a group of non-infectious diseases that cause hyperglycemia. DM symptoms were first clinically described by ancient Greek physicians whose prescriptions included plant-based remedies. Today, DM affects \u3e400 million people globally and prevalence rates are rapidly increasing in developing countries where basic healthcare relies on local knowledge of botanical remedies. Many developing countries are home to diverse peoples and plants—providing fodder for varied plant-selection strategies and unique botanical pharmacopoeias. I addressed the plant-selection strategies used in a multi-ethnic, developing country, Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), to ascertain their role in shaping the local antidiabetic pharmacopoeia and to assess their benefits and risks in identifying safe and useful remedies. Using literature reviews, field surveys, and laboratory bioassays, I completed three categories of analysis. Ethnobotanical analyses showed that T&T’s antidiabetic pharmacopoeia is primarily of recent origin as \u3e50% of the 48 historical DM remedies were Neotropical natives, including congenerics of well-known medicinal Paleotropical genera. Nevertheless, conservative knowledge transmission was also evident as several Paleotropical species of T&T’s pharmacopoeia, including Momordica charantia and Catharanthus roseus were also used in Africa, India and across the Caribbean. Paleotropical natives with a long history of use are likely to be safer remedies. Ethno-medicinal analyses of the pre- and post-2000 DM remedies of T&T, totaling 99 species, suggest that the centuries-old hot/cold folk disease-model was the model predominantly used in plant-selection. Parallels found between T&T folk concepts and biomedical mechanisms of DM provide probable bases for efficacy but the chronic use of purgatives and bitter-tasting plants is likely to be risky. Phytochemical analyses revealed that 69% of the tested plant extracts contained phenolic compounds, with more than half producing \u3e80% alpha-glucosidase inhibition. Phenolic content and alpha-glucosidase inhibition were strongly correlated among food plants used as medicines, suggesting higher probability of selection as a result of non-target effects. The medicinal use of food plants may provide the best margins of safety and efficacy in identifying antidiabetic remedies. Together, these analyses showed how culture-specific plant-selection strategies can identify safe, useful remedies for developing countries to address their increasing DM prevalence in a cost-effective and sustainable manner

Ultrastructure of \u3ci\u3eMeelsvirus\u3c/i\u3e: A nuclear virus of arrow worms (phylum Chaetognatha) producing giant tailed virions

Most known giant viruses, i.e., viruses producing giant virions, parasitize amoebae and other unicellular eukaryotes. Although they vary in the level of dependence on host nuclear functions, their virions self-assemble in the host cell\u27s cytoplasm. Here we report the discovery of a new prototype of giant virus infecting epidermal cells of the marine arrow worm Adhesisagitta hispida. Its 1.25 μm-long virions self-assemble and accumulate in the host cell\u27s nucleus. Conventional transmission electron microscopy reveals that the virions have a unique bipartite structure. An ovoid nucleocapsid, situated in a broad head end of the virion is surrounded by a thin envelope. The latter extends away from the head to form a voluminous conical tail filled with electron-dense extracapsidular material. The 31nm-thick capsid wall has a distinctive substructure resulting from a patterned arrangement of subunits; it bears no ultrastructural resemblance to the virion walls of other known giant viruses. The envelope self-assembles coincident with the capsid and remotely from all host membranes. We postulate that transmission to new hosts occurs by rupture of protruding virion-filled nuclei when infected arrow worms mate. Future genomic work is needed to determine the phylogenetic position of this new virus, which we have provisionally named Meelsvirus

Upholstered household furniture in the United States: A survey of current ownership and purchasing plans

This report presents highlights of the results of a telephone survey of U.S. households concerning their ownership, purchasing plans, and preferences regarding upholstered household furniture. The survey was conducted in October and November 1989, by the Survey Research Unit of the Social Science Research Center of the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. The SUl\u27Vey also included Canadian households, and subsequent reports will present results for Canada as well as statistical analyses of specific results for both countries. The sUl\u27vey was intended to help identify market potential for various items of upholstered household furniture, and the results are therefore not dependent on short-term economic conditions. The economic recession in the United States since the 1989 survey does not affect the validity of results; market potential becomes sup· pressed demand in an economic downturn

Rates of return on silvicultural practices

Anticipated rates of return can help landowners and forest managers evaluate hardwood control and many other stand treatments. A simple microcomputer model is discussed which displays rates of return for specific stand treatment conditions. The program can be used before or after taxes and with or without inflation. The model displays rates of return for ranges of silvicultural treatment costs and expected harvest value increases, thus providing information for evaluating treatments where growth responses or future prices are difficult to estimate