Twelve Years of Workplace Cooperation: Ford and the UAW

Synopsis Prepared for the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations.Paper_Lofton_Pestillo_072893.pdf: 543 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Perceptions of the cancer care left undone in primary and community services: A mixed methods evaluation

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Lawler,J., Lofton,L., and Leary, A. (2020) Perceptions of the cancer care left undone in primary and community services: a mixed methods evaluation, Health and Social Care in the Community which will be published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/13652524. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions." Primary and community care in the United Kingdom are under increasing workforce and time pressures. How these pressures effect the delivery of cancer care has rarely been explored. This service evaluation aimed to elucidate some of the views of the workforce in this sector of what work in cancer care is left undone, and what they would like to be able to offer more of. An exploratory sequential design was taken including a questionnaire and interviews asking primary and community care staff in London about their workload in cancer care. Surveys were analysed using descriptive statistics. The evaluation revealed a perception from primary and community care that there is work in cancer care that is currently being left undone. 64% of the workforce across all professions reported that they worked 10 or more hours of unpaid overtime per week. Respondents identified psychological care for people with cancer, and bereavement care for families and carers of people with cancer as the most common areas that were left undone. They would like to do more proactive work, in place of the current reactive “fire-fighting” they are doing. For example, signposting available services to people with cancer and access to nutritional support. There was a desire for acknowledgement of the time and workforce pressures in primary and community care, and how these are hindering the delivery of care for people with cancer

Weedy mustards of Oklahoma

The Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service periodically issues revisions to its publications. The most current edition is made available. For access to an earlier edition, if available for this title, please contact the Oklahoma State University Library Archives by email at [email protected] or by phone at 405-744-6311

Targeted Feature Recognition Using Mechanical Spatial Filtering with a Low-Cost Compliant Strain Sensor

Partial funding for Open Access provided by the UMD Libraries' Open Access Publishing Fund.A tactile sensing architecture is presented for detection of surface features that have a particular target size, and the concept is demonstrated with a braille pattern. The approach is akin to an inverse of mechanical profilometry. The sensing structure is constructed by suspending a stretchable strainsensing membrane over a cavity. The structure is moved over the surface, and a signal is generated through mechanical spatial filtering if a feature is small enough to penetrate into the cavity. This simple design is tailorable and can be realized by standard machining or 3D printing. Images of target features can be produced with even a low-cost compliant sensor. In this work a disposable elastomeric piezoresistive strain sensor was used over a cylindrical “finger” part with a groove having a width corresponding to the braille dot size. A model was developed to help understand the working principle and guide finger design, revealing amplification when the cavity matches the feature size. The new sensing concept has the advantages of being easily reconfigured for a variety of sensing problems and retrofitted to a wide range of robotic hands, as well as compatibility with many compliant sensor types

Mode imaging and selection in strongly coupled nanoantennas

The number of eigenmodes in plasmonic nanostructures increases with complexity due to mode hybridization, raising the need for efficient mode characterization and selection. Here we experimentally demonstrate direct imaging and selective excitation of the bonding and antibonding plasmon mode in symmetric dipole nanoantennas using confocal two-photon photoluminescence mapping. Excitation of a high-quality-factor antibonding resonance manifests itself as a two-lobed pattern instead of the single spot observed for the broad bonding resonance, in accordance with numerical simulations. The two-lobed pattern is observed due to the fact that excitation of the antibonding mode is forbidden for symmetric excitation at the feedgap, while concomitantly the mode energy splitting is large enough to suppress excitation of the bonding mode. The controlled excitation of modes in strongly coupled plasmonic nanostructures is mandatory for efficient sensors, in coherent control as well as for implementing well-defined functionalities in complex plasmonic devices.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 1 supplementary informatio

Bimodal crystallization at polymer-fullerene interfaces

The growth-kinetics of [6,6]-phenyl C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) crystals, on two different length-scales, is shown to be controlled by the thickness of the polymer layer within a PCBM-polymer bilayer. Using a model amorphous polymer we present evidence, from in situ optical microscopy and grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD), that an increased growth-rate of nanoscale crystals impedes the growth of micron-sized, needle-like PCBM crystals. A combination of neutron reflectivity and GIXD measurements, also allows us to observe the establishment of a liquid-liquid equilibrium composition-profile between the PCBM layer and a polymer-rich layer, before crystallization occurs. While the interfacial composition-profile is independent of polymer-film-thickness, the growth-rate of nanoscale PCBM crystals is significantly larger for thinner polymer films. A similar thickness-dependent behavior is observed for different molecular weights of entangled polymer. We suggest that the behavior may be related to enhanced local-polymer-chain-mobility in nanocomposite thin-films

Long-range epigenetic silencing at 2q14.2 affects most human colorectal cancers and may have application as a non-invasive biomarker of disease

Large chromosomal regions can be suppressed in cancer cells as denoted by hypermethylation of neighbouring CpG islands and downregulation of most genes within the region. We have analysed the extent and prevalence of long-range epigenetic silencing at 2q14.2 (the first and best characterised example of coordinated epigenetic remodelling) and investigated its possible applicability as a non-invasive diagnostic marker of human colorectal cancer using different approaches and biological samples. Hypermethylation of at least one of the CpG islands analysed (EN1, SCTR, INHBB) occurred in most carcinomas (90%), with EN1 methylated in 73 and 40% of carcinomas and adenomas, respectively. Gene suppression was a common phenomenon in all the tumours analysed and affected both methylated and unmethylated genes. Detection of methylated EN1 using bisulfite treatment and melting curve (MC) analysis from stool DNA in patients and controls resulted in a predictive capacity of, 44% sensitivity in positive patients (27% of overall sensitivity) and 97% specificity. We conclude that epigenetic suppression along 2q14.2 is common to most colorectal cancers and the presence of a methylated EN1 CpG island in stool DNA might be used as biomarker of neoplastic disease

Prospective evaluation of methylated SEPT9 in plasma for detection of asymptomatic colorectal cancer

As screening methods for colorectal cancer (CRC) are limited by uptake and adherence, further options are sought. A blood test might increase both, but none has yet been tested in a screening setting

The context and potential of epigenetics in oncology

Cancer has long been known to be a disease caused by alterations in the genetic blueprint of cells. In the past decade it has become evident that epigenetic processes have a function, at least equally important, in neoplasia. Epigenetics describes the mechanisms that result in heritable alterations in gene expression profiles without an accompanying change in DNA sequence. Genetics and epigenetics intricately interact in the pathogenesis of cancer (Esteller, 2007). In this review, we paint a broad picture of current understanding of epigenetic changes in cancer cells and reflect on the immense clinical potential of emerging knowledge of epigenetics in the diagnosis, prognostic assessment, treatment, and screening of cancer