Welcher Weg? A trajectory representation of a quantum Young's diffraction experiment

The double slit problem is idealized by simplifying each slit by a point source. A composite reduced action for the two correlated point sources is developed. Contours of the reduced action, trajectories and loci of transit times are developed in the region near the two point sources. The trajectory through any point in Euclidian 3-space also passes simultaneously through both point sources.Comment: 12 pages LaTeX2e, 9 figures. Typos corrected. Author's final submission. A companion paper to "Interference, reduced action, and trajectories", quant-ph/0605120. Keywords: interference, Young's experiment, entanglement, nonlocality, trajectory representation, determinis

The Relationship of Techies to General Users in Closing the Digital Divide Within Mid-Sized Law Firms

This empirical case study examined the Digital Divide (the knowledge gaps between General Users and ICT) in the setting of two mid-sized, AV-rated, law firms (252 employees) located in Nevada. Specific attention was focused on the relationships of IT professionals (Techies) to General Users in closing the Digital Divide. A total of 138 respondents were divided into 130 General Users and 8 Techies. Each respondent completed a questionnaire, which was delivered and compiled by FormSpring.com. Most General Users (71%) were female. The most likely to be successful with ICT began using ICT at an early age, reported a high level of comfort/ability with ICT, had access to ICT at home and used ICT both at work and at home. Also, they expressed positive attitudes about ICT. Younger General Users tended to report earlier ICT exposure, as well as more home usage of ICT. These younger General Users also expressed more positive attitudes towards ICT than their older counterparts. Most Techies (88%) were male. They had an average of 12 years of experience in their jobs. Techies spent more time fixing ICT knowledge gaps (one-to-one) than they spent on individualized or group training sessions combined. Techies reported being more reactive than proactive, due to the urgency of most support ticket requests. Measurement systems are needed to gauge the cost and efficiency of Techie interactions with General Users. Also, management should take action to protect Techies from burnout, given the constant demands of crisis intervention. Management tools were developed which can assure more objectivity in the process of bridging the Digital Divide. Specific formulas are included for calculation of: Techie Staffing Ratio (30 General Users: 1 Techie was reported); Techie Cost per General User ($2200-$2600 was reported); and Techie Cost Coefficient, which assists in comparing the relative value of any proposed outsourced initiative

Combining All Pairs Shortest Paths and All Pairs Bottleneck Paths Problems

We introduce a new problem that combines the well known All Pairs Shortest Paths (APSP) problem and the All Pairs Bottleneck Paths (APBP) problem to compute the shortest paths for all pairs of vertices for all possible flow amounts. We call this new problem the All Pairs Shortest Paths for All Flows (APSP-AF) problem. We firstly solve the APSP-AF problem on directed graphs with unit edge costs and real edge capacities in $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{t}n^{(\omega+9)/4}) = \tilde{O}(\sqrt{t}n^{2.843})$ time, where $n$ is the number of vertices, $t$ is the number of distinct edge capacities (flow amounts) and $O(n^{\omega}) < O(n^{2.373})$ is the time taken to multiply two $n$-by-$n$ matrices over a ring. Secondly we extend the problem to graphs with positive integer edge costs and present an algorithm with $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{t}c^{(\omega+5)/4}n^{(\omega+9)/4}) = \tilde{O}(\sqrt{t}c^{1.843}n^{2.843})$ worst case time complexity, where $c$ is the upper bound on edge costs

ACAT1 Gene Ablation Increases 24(S)-Hydroxycholesterol Content in the Brain and Ameliorates Amyloid Pathology in Mice with AD

Cholesterol metabolism has been implicated in the pathogenesis of several neurodegenerative diseases, including the abnormal accumulation of amyloid-beta, one of the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer disease (AD). Acyl-CoA:cholesterol acyltransferases (ACAT1 and ACAT2) are two enzymes that convert free cholesterol to cholesteryl esters. ACAT inhibitors have recently emerged as promising drug candidates for AD therapy. However, how ACAT inhibitors act in the brain has so far remained unclear. Here we show that ACAT1 is the major functional isoenzyme in the mouse brain. ACAT1 gene ablation (A1-) in triple transgenic (i.e., 3XTg-AD) mice leads to more than 60% reduction in full-length human APPswe as well as its proteolytic fragments, and ameliorates cognitive deficits. At 4 months of age, A1- causes a 32% content increase in 24-hydroxycholesterol (24SOH), the major oxysterol in the brain. It also causes a 65% protein content decrease in HMG-CoA reductase (HMGR) and a 28% decrease in sterol synthesis rate in AD mouse brains. In hippocampal neurons, A1- causes an increase in the 24SOH synthesis rate; treating hippocampal neuronal cells with 24SOH causes rapid declines in hAPP and in HMGR protein levels. A model is provided to explain our findings: in neurons, A1- causes increases in cholesterol and 24SOH contents in the endoplasmic reticulum, which cause reductions in hAPP and HMGR protein contents and lead to amelioration of amyloid pathology. Our study supports the potential of ACAT1 as a therapeutic target for treating certain forms of AD

Examining Sport Management Programs in the United States

Analysis of sport management programs is important for potential students as well as for the future development of sport management as an academic discipline. The historical evolution of sport management programs in the United States moved from the physical education model to a more business-oriented curriculum. Given this historical development, debate exists among sport management professionals regarding administrative housing of current and future sport management programs. The purposes of this study were to: (1) Provide an overview of the development of U.S. sport management programs, (2) Provide a snapshot of sport management programs including admissions requirements and faculty profiles, and (3) Analyse critical issues facing the field of sport management. A random sample of 137 institutions offering undergraduate sport management programs in the United States were invited to participate in the study; 50 usable surveys were returned. Results indicate a lack of diversity (racial and gender) among sport management faculty, and a large proportion of part-time faculty without a terminal degree in the field

On the π\pi and KK as qqˉq \bar q Bound States and Approximate Nambu-Goldstone Bosons

We reconsider the two different facets of $\pi$ and $K$ mesons as $q \bar q$ bound states and approximate Nambu-Goldstone bosons. We address several topics, including masses, mass splittings between $\pi$ and $\rho$ and between $K$ and $K^*$, meson wavefunctions, charge radii, and the $K-\pi$ wavefunction overlap.Comment: 15 pages, late

A case study of school age female minority athletes who became pregnant

The purpose of this study is to provide an in-depth understanding of \u27\u27What had happened to the urban minority female athletes who became pregnant while playing high school basketball?\u27\u27 The study wanted to provide a qualitative analysis of rich narrative data collected from questionnaire interviews of two separate groups (one in Pittsburgh, the other in New York City). The findings of this study suggest that in fact urban female African-Americans athletes still received benefits from sports participation

Handbook for handling and storage of nickel-cadmium batteries: Lessons learned

The handbook provides guidelines for the handling and storage of conventional NiCd flight batteries. The guidelines are based on many years of experience with ground and in-flight handling of batteries. The overall goal is to minimize the deterioration and irreversible effects of improper handling of NiCd flight batteries on flight performance. A secondary goal is to provide the reader with an understanding, in nonanalytical terms, of the degradation mechanisms of NiCd cells and how these mechanisms are affected by improper ground handling of flight hardware. Section 2 provides the reader with a brief introduction to NiCd cells. The effects of the environment on NiCd batteries are discussed in Section 3, and Section 4 contains 12 guidelines for battery handling and storage with supporting rationale for each guideline. The appendix provides a synopsis of NiCd cell design and evolution over 30 years of space flight on Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) satellites, along with a chronological review of key events that influenced the design of NiCd cells being flown today

Protection against Prenatal Alcohol-Induced Damage

Spong discusses a new animal study that showed that nicotinamide had a protective effect against prenatal alcohol-induced brain damage

Optimizing a Certified Proof Checker for a Large-Scale Computer-Generated Proof

In recent work, we formalized the theory of optimal-size sorting networks with the goal of extracting a verified checker for the large-scale computer-generated proof that 25 comparisons are optimal when sorting 9 inputs, which required more than a decade of CPU time and produced 27 GB of proof witnesses. The checker uses an untrusted oracle based on these witnesses and is able to verify the smaller case of 8 inputs within a couple of days, but it did not scale to the full proof for 9 inputs. In this paper, we describe several non-trivial optimizations of the algorithm in the checker, obtained by appropriately changing the formalization and capitalizing on the symbiosis with an adequate implementation of the oracle. We provide experimental evidence of orders of magnitude improvements to both runtime and memory footprint for 8 inputs, and actually manage to check the full proof for 9 inputs.Comment: IMADA-preprint-c