Ready or not

Clinicians and educators both need more realistic understanding of how prepared newly registered nurses are for practice

Social capital and income generation in South Africa, 1993-98

The goal of this paper is to determine the nature of the causal relationship between "social capital," as measured by household membership in formal and informal groups and household welfare in South Africa. Using a recently collected panel data set in South Africa's largest province, we estimate per capita expenditure functions and find a positive and significant impact of household-level social capital. For example, after controlling for fixed effects, social capital has no impact on per capita expenditure in 1993 but positive and significant effects in 1998. We interpret this as reflecting structural changes in the South African economy as it removes the many restrictions that underlay apartheid.Gender ,Women ,Social networks ,Income South Africa ,

Density dependent hadron field theory for hypernuclei

The Density Dependent Relativistic Hadron Field (DDRH) theory, previously introduced and applied to isospin nuclei, is extended to hypernuclei by including the octet hyperons. Infinite matter Dirac-Brueckner theory for octet baryons and the derivation of in-medium DDRH baryon-meson vertices is discussed. From the properties of Dirac-Brueckner interactions it is found that hyperon and nucleon self-energies and vertices are related by the ratios of free space coupling constants. This leads to simple scaling laws for the in-medium hyperon and nucleon vertices. The model is applied in relativistic DDRH mean-field calculations to singl$\Lambda nuclei. Free space N-Lambda T-matrix results are used for the scalar vertex. As the only free parameter the hyperon vector vertex scaling factor is adjusted to a selected set of hypernuclear data. Spectroscopic data of single Lambda hypernuclei over the full mass range are well described. The reduced Lambda spin-orbit splitting is reproduced and found to be related closely the medium dependence of scalar and vector interactions.Comment: 38 pages, 9 figure

A multi-targeted approach to suppress tumor-promoting inflammation

Cancers harbor significant genetic heterogeneity and patterns of relapse following many therapies are due to evolved resistance to treatment. While efforts have been made to combine targeted therapies, significant levels of toxicity have stymied efforts to effectively treat cancer with multi-drug combinations using currently approved therapeutics. We discuss the relationship between tumor-promoting inflammation and cancer as part of a larger effort to develop a broad-spectrum therapeutic approach aimed at a wide range of targets to address this heterogeneity. Specifically, macrophage migration inhibitory factor, cyclooxygenase-2, transcription factor nuclear factor-κB, tumor necrosis factor alpha, inducible nitric oxide synthase, protein kinase B, and CXC chemokines are reviewed as important antiinflammatory targets while curcumin, resveratrol, epigallocatechin gallate, genistein, lycopene, and anthocyanins are reviewed as low-cost, low toxicity means by which these targets might all be reached simultaneously. Future translational work will need to assess the resulting synergies of rationally designed antiinflammatory mixtures (employing low-toxicity constituents), and then combine this with similar approaches targeting the most important pathways across the range of cancer hallmark phenotypes

Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV

The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum