Alien Registration- Joyce, Patrick (Portland, Cumberland County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/23645/thumbnail.jp

The energy exchanges of ruminants

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The efficacy of mindfulness as a complementary cancer therapy

Cancer is a life-changing disease that introduces an abundance of psychosocial stress into patient's lives. Exposure to psychosocial stress over periods of weeks or more has a maladaptive effect on the human immune system. Chronic psychosocial stress means elevated activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and the sympathetic-adrenomedullary (SAM) axes which over time induce deleterious physiological effects in the form of glucocorticoid resistance, chronic low-level inflammation, and inhibition of leukocyte telomerase activity. Because these down-stream physiologic effects of psychosocial stress have oncogenic implications, the effective management of chronic stress inherent to a cancer diagnosis should positively impact the efficacy of current cancer therapies. Mindfulness is an age-old concept that has recently gained traction in the medical community for its utility as a cognitive therapy in treating patients with mental health disorders. Although the study of mindfulness as a complementary cancer therapy is in its relative infancy, other examples of mind-body medicine have already been documented to help treat many psychological side effects of cancer including anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation, and pain. It has been theorized that mindfulness acts by providing a cognitive strategy to buffer the harmful effects of psychosocial stress. Mindfulness elicits discrete effects on human psychology and physiology that are conducive to the efficacy of current cancer treatments. Mindfulness techniques have shown promise in providing relief for many of the psychological side effects of a cancer diagnosis. In this thesis, we explore the psychological and physiological effects of mindfulness practice that counter-act many of the harmful consequences of chronic stress exposure specifically immunosuppression, chronic inflammation, and telomerase activity

The pricing of water in a university town: An economic analysis of draining a cash cow

This paper analyzes some economic issues involved with the common practice of using metered water rate revenue to fund debt retirement associated with the provision of municipal water and wastewater services. We conclude that rather than simply raising the metered rate, city officials should seriously consider increasing the tax rate levied under the local property tax. There is an important trade-off in the choice of a price policy. An increased property tax rate can result in tax savings to some home owners, which lowers their net expenditure for water. However, a corresponding decrease in the metered rate may increase water consumption, which in turn raises operating cost. In order to do what is best for home owners, it might make sense to give other customers (e.g., a university) an easy ride, even if the latter, because of its low (inelastic) price elasticity of demand for water, is viewed by the municipality as a cash cow

My Money or Yours: House Money Payment Effects

This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to study how subjects’ decision making may be affected by the timing of participation payments (or show-up fees). The experiment follows Davis et al. (J. Econ. 30:69–95, 2004) where subjects were asked to make a sequential purchase decision and were given the opportunity to purchase information about the value of a good prior to a decision to purchase the good itself. There, subjects purchased information less often than expected which was interpreted as risk-seeking behavior. Here, we test a payment hypothesis by varying the timing of the participation payment. Payment of a show-up fee before the decision-making stages of the experiment increases information purchase, which we interpret as an increase in risk-averse behavior

Evidence-based retrieval in evidence-based medicine

pre-printObjective: Clinical decisions based on a meta-analysis that is based on an ineffective retrieval strategy may have serious negative consequences for patients. The study objective was to investigate the extent to which meta-analyses report proof of their retrieval strategies' effectiveness. Methods: The authors examined a random sample (n 5 100) of articles in the 1996 to 2002 full-text subset of Ovid MEDLINE indexed as ‘‘meta-analysis.'' We classified the articles in three ways: the article (A) reported both a retrieval strategy in sufficient detail (such that it could be repeated) and with evidence of the strategy's effectiveness, (B) reported a retrieval strategy in sufficient detail but not with evidence of the strategy's effectiveness, or (C) neither reported a strategy in detail nor evidence of the strategy's effectiveness. Articles classified as (A) were further classified according to the level of evidence reported. Results: Of the eighty-nine articles in our final analysis, six (6.7%) were classified as category (A), fifty-seven (64%) as (B), and twenty-six (29%) as (C). Articles in category (A) reported a previously validated search, a published strategy, or strategy based on expert opinion. Conclusion: Peer-review standards must be developed that require authors of meta-analyses to report evidence for the effectiveness of their retrieval strategies