679 research outputs found
Prohibit or Regulate?: The Fraser Report and New Approaches to Pornography and Prostitution
The Fraser Report adopts a liberal-feminist approach to pornography and prostitution at a time when conservatism is on the rise. Michael Kanter reviews the basis for and the recommendations of the Report and concludes that, rather than going too far to the political left, it has not gone far enough in addressing male domination of North American society
Prohibit or Regulate?: The Fraser Report and New Approaches to Pornography and Prostitution
The Fraser Report adopts a liberal-feminist approach to pornography and prostitution at a time when conservatism is on the rise. Michael Kanter reviews the basis for and the recommendations of the Report and concludes that, rather than going too far to the political left, it has not gone far enough in addressing male domination of North American society
Taylor series expansions for the entropy rate of Hidden Markov Processes
Finding the entropy rate of Hidden Markov Processes is an active research
topic, of both theoretical and practical importance. A recently used approach
is studying the asymptotic behavior of the entropy rate in various regimes. In
this paper we generalize and prove a previous conjecture relating the entropy
rate to entropies of finite systems. Building on our new theorems, we establish
series expansions for the entropy rate in two different regimes. We also study
the radius of convergence of the two series expansions
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Barriers to Pediatric Sickle Cell Disease Guideline Recommendations.
National guidelines recommend that providers counsel all patients with sickle cell anemia about hydroxyurea (HU) therapy and screen children with sickle cell anemia annually for the risk of stroke with transcranial Doppler (TCD). We surveyed a national convenience sample of sickle cell disease clinicians to assess factors associated with low adherence. Adherence was 46% for TCD screening. Low adherence was associated with a lack of outcome expectancy (eg, a belief that there would be poor patient follow-up to TCD testing; P < .05). Adherence was 72% for HU counseling. Practice barriers (eg, lack of support staff or time) and a lack of agreement with HU recommendations were associated with low adherence (P < .05). This study demonstrates that different types of strategies are needed to improve TCD screening (to address follow-up and access to testing) versus HU counseling (to address physician agreement and practice barriers)
Fluorescent ligand for human progesterone receptor imaging in live cells.
We employed molecular modeling to design and then synthesize fluorescent ligands for the human progesterone receptor. Boron dipyrromethene (BODIPY) or tetramethylrhodamine were conjugated to the progesterone receptor antagonist RU486 (Mifepristone) through an extended hydrophilic linker. The fluorescent ligands demonstrated comparable bioactivity to the parent antagonist in live cells and triggered nuclear translocation of the receptor in a specific manner. The BODIPY labeled ligand was applied to investigate the dependency of progesterone receptor nuclear translocation on partner proteins and to show that functional heat shock protein 90 but not immunophilin FKBP52 activity is essential. A tissue distribution study indicated that the fluorescent ligand preferentially accumulates in tissues that express high levels of the receptor in vivo. The design and properties of the BODIPY-labeled RU486 make it a potential candidate for in vivo imaging of PR by positron emission tomography through incorporation of (18)F into the BODIPY core
Spiking Optical Patterns and Synchronization
We analyze the time resolved spike statistics of a solitary and two mutually
interacting chaotic semiconductor lasers whose chaos is characterized by
apparently random, short intensity spikes. Repulsion between two successive
spikes is observed, resulting in a refractory period which is largest at laser
threshold. For time intervals between spikes greater than the refractory
period, the distribution of the intervals follows a Poisson distribution. The
spiking pattern is highly periodic over time windows corresponding to the
optical length of the external cavity, with a slow change of the spiking
pattern as time increases. When zero-lag synchronization between the two lasers
is established, the statistics of the nearly perfectly matched spikes are not
altered. The similarity of these features to those found in complex interacting
neural networks, suggests the use of laser systems as simpler physical models
for neural networks
Stable isochronal synchronization of mutually coupled chaotic lasers
The dynamics of two mutually coupled chaotic diode lasers are investigated
experimentally and numerically. By adding self feedback to each laser, stable
isochronal synchronization is established. This stability, which can be
achieved for symmetric operation, is essential for constructing an optical
public-channel cryptographic system. The experimental results on diode lasers
are well described by rate equations of coupled single mode lasers
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