Identifying, Monitoring, and Assessing Promising Innovations: Using Evaluation to Support Rapid-Cycle Change

Examines the new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation's mission, critical issues, and challenges in finding effective ways to raise healthcare quality and lower costs, documenting innovation, and providing evidence to support broad policy change

The early expansion and evolutionary dynamics of POU class genes.

The POU genes represent a diverse class of animal-specific transcription factors that play important roles in neurogenesis, pluripotency, and cell-type specification. Although previous attempts have been made to reconstruct the evolution of the POU class, these studies have been limited by a small number of representative taxa, and a lack of sequences from basally branching organisms. In this study, we performed comparative analyses on available genomes and sequences recovered through "gene fishing" to better resolve the topology of the POU gene tree. We then used ancestral state reconstruction to map the most likely changes in amino acid evolution for the conserved domains. Our work suggests that four of the six POU families evolved before the last common ancestor of living animals-doubling previous estimates-and were followed by extensive clade-specific gene loss. Amino acid changes are distributed unequally across the gene tree, consistent with a neofunctionalization model of protein evolution. We consider our results in the context of early animal evolution, and the role of POU5 genes in maintaining stem cell pluripotency

Experimental and Analytical Study of Balanced-Diaphragm Fuel Distributors for Gas-Turbine Engines

A method of distributing fuel equally to a plurality of spray nozzles in a gas-turbine engine by means of balanced-diaphragm fuel distributors is presented. The experimental performance of three of eight possible distributor arrangements are discussed. An analysis of all eight arrangements is included. Criterions are given for choosing a fuel-distributor arrangement to meet specific fuel-system requirements of fuel-distribution accuracy, spray-nozzle pressure variations, and fuel-system pressures. Data obtained with a model of one distributor arrangement indicated a maximum deviation from perfect distribution of 3.3 percent for a 44 to 1 range (19.5 to 862 lb/hr) of fuel-flow rates. The maximum distributor pressure drop was 125 pounds per square inch. The method used to obtain the required wide range of flow control in the distributor valves consisted in varying the length of a constant-area flow path

Equal Protection and the First Amendment: Zoning Away Skid Row

A recent United States Supreme Court decigion upheld a Detroit zoning ordinance on equal protection grounds even though the ordinance regulated free speech. The article examines the traditional equal protection analyses and the relationship between the first amendment and equal protection clause. Although he agrees with the Court\u27s decision, the author is critical of the Court\u27s failure to explicitly delineate its standards of review in equal protection cases

Equal Protection and the First Amendment: Zoning Away Skid Row

A recent United States Supreme Court decigion upheld a Detroit zoning ordinance on equal protection grounds even though the ordinance regulated free speech. The article examines the traditional equal protection analyses and the relationship between the first amendment and equal protection clause. Although he agrees with the Court\u27s decision, the author is critical of the Court\u27s failure to explicitly delineate its standards of review in equal protection cases

Constitutional Problems in Maine During the Civil War

This article discusses the constitutional issues faced by state judiciaries due to the federal Dred Scott Decision, the Fugitive Slave Act and states’ personal freedom laws

Reflectivity of plasmas created by high-intensity, ultra-short laser pulses

Experiments were performed to characterize the creation and evolution of high-temperature (T{sub e}{approximately}100eV), high-density (n{sub e}>10{sup 22}cm{sup {minus}3}) plasmas created with intense ({approximately}10{sup 12}-10{sup 16}W/cm{sup 2}), ultra-short (130fs) laser pulses. The principle diagnostic was plasma reflectivity at optical wavelengths (614nm). An array of target materials (Al, Au, Si, SiO{sub 2}) with widely differing electronic properties tested plasma behavior over a large set of initial states. Time-integrated plasma reflectivity was measured as a function of laser intensity. Space- and time-resolved reflectivity, transmission and scatter were measured with a spatial resolution of {approximately}3{mu}m and a temporal resolution of 130fs. An amplified, mode-locked dye laser system was designed to produce {approximately}3.5mJ, {approximately}130fs laser pulses to create and nonintrusively probe the plasmas. Laser prepulse was carefully controlled to suppress preionization and give unambiguous, high-density plasma results. In metals (Al and Au), it is shown analytically that linear and nonlinear inverse Bremsstrahlung absorption, resonance absorption, and vacuum heating explain time-integrated reflectivity at intensities near 10{sup 16}W/cm{sup 2}. In the insulator, SiO{sub 2}, a non-equilibrium plasma reflectivity model using tunneling ionization, Helmholtz equations, and Drude conductivity agrees with time-integrated reflectivity measurements. Moreover, a comparison of ionization and Saha equilibration rates shows that plasma formed by intense, ultra-short pulses can exist with a transient, non-equilibrium distribution of ionization states. All targets are shown to approach a common reflectivity at intensities {approximately}10{sup 16}W/cm{sup 2}, indicating a material-independent state insensitive to atomic or solid-state details

Chief Justice John Appleton

The article is a biographic essay of John Appleton, Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court