Zen Puzzle Garden is NP-complete

Zen Puzzle Garden (ZPG) is a one-player puzzle game. In this paper, we prove that deciding the solvability of ZPG is NP-complete.Comment: Submitte

Public perceptions and community issues

This paper is the seventh in a series of 8 that make up the evidence base for SDC report 'The role of nuclear power in a low carbon economy'.Publisher PD

Family and consumer sciences life skills: attainment by secondary school students

This study evaluated the effectiveness of Iowa\u27s secondary school family and consumer sciences programs as perceived by students. A two-stage stratified random sampling procedure resulted in usable data from 273 graduating seniors from 98 schools during the 1995-96 school year. The sample was comprised of 135 students (53% males, 47% females) with one semester or less of family and consumer sciences education and 138 students (34% males, 66% females) with three or more semesters of instruction. Students\u27 perceived level of competence was measured in the areas of housing and home management; food and nutrition; individual and family health; personal and family living; consumer education and resource management; textiles and clothing; child development and parenting; and leadership, job getting and job keeping, and entrepreneurship;A significant difference (p \u3c.01) in the total mean scores between groups was found. Students with three or more semesters of family and consumer sciences education reported a higher level of self-perceived competence than did students with one semester or less of instruction. When the family and consumer sciences competencies were studied individually, mean levels of reported competence for 36 of the 38 competencies were higher for those students in the three-semesters-or-more group than for those in the one-semester-or-less group. Significant differences (p \u3c.001) were found for 16 of the 38 competencies assessed and for six of the eight content areas evaluated;Significant differences in gender and academic rank were found between groups in the sample. Students who had three semesters or more of instruction ranked lower academically, worked longer hours, lived in families with lower incomes, and joined FHA or HERO more often than did their peers with less instruction. Two variables--the number of semesters of instruction students had and the number of sources of information students used--accounted for only 11% of the variance found in students\u27 scores;Quantitative data from this study document the effectiveness of family and consumer sciences programs in Iowa as perceived by students

Nurse-patient perception of stressors associated with coronary artery bypass surgery

Patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery endure many stressors postoperatively. The purpose of this research study was to approximately replicate Puetz\u27s study (1990) regarding the incongruencies of patient and nurse perceptions of stresser associated with coronary artery bypass surgery. Neuman\u27s System Model was used to identify stresser as intrapersonal, interpersonal, and extrapersonal; The population consisted of two conveniently sampled groups: (1) thirty-five patients recovering from coronary artery bypass surgery; and (2) twenty nurses caring for the respective coronary bypass surgery patients. The instruments included demographic data sheets and a 37 item Revised Cardiac Surgery Stressor Scale (RCSSS); Overall mean scores of patients and nurses on the CSSS and RCSSS showed no significant difference (p =.448). Correlation studies determined that no significant correlation existed between patient and nurse stressor scale ratings, with r =.243 for the CSSS and r =.238 for the RCSSS. Highest rated stressor for patients and nurses for both the CSSS and the RCSSS were different, even though the overall scores were similar; Correlational analysis determined a weak relationship between the three subscales of the RCSSS and stressor scale scores. The strongest correlation existed between the extrapersonal stressor (r = 0.234). Patient and nurse characteristics overall were found to have a more positive correlation on RCSSS stressor score ratings; Although overall patient and nurse survey scores were similar, the two groups of subjects differed as to which items were rated as most stressful. Nurses need to therefore assess patients more holistically and individually to better care for them as they recover from coronary artery bypass surgery

Increasing Substantive Fairness and Mitigating Social Costs in Eviction Proceedings: Instituting a Civil Right to Counsel for Indigent Tenants in Pennsylvania

The U.S. Constitution provides criminal defendants the right to a court-appointed attorney but gives no similar protection to civil litigants. Although federal law does not supply any categorical rights to counsel for civil litigants, all 50 states have instituted the right in at least one category of civil law that substantially impacts individuals’ rights. Since 2017, several U.S. cities have enacted such a right for tenants facing eviction. In so doing, these cities responded to American families’ increasing rent burden, the recent publication of nationwide eviction data, the sociological research concerning the impact of eviction, and the lack of procedural and substantive fairness for tenants in court. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the urgency for this right. This Comment will recommend that the Pennsylvania legislature enact the nation’s first statewide civil right to counsel for tenants in eviction proceedings, given the support in case law and anticipated benefits to individuals and communities. This Comment explores the unique challenges and opportunities Pennsylvania faces in implementing tenants’ right to counsel, based on its demographics, its existing legal services infrastructure, and its largely rural geography. Additionally, this Comment overviews the implementation and results from similar programs in other jurisdictions. This Comment concludes by proposing concrete steps and raising abstract considerations for making aspirational justice a reality for tenants facing eviction in Pennsylvania

19th and 20th century French exoticism: Pierre Loti, Louis-Ferdinand Cé́line, Michel Leiris, and Simone Schwarz-Bart

This study of four 19th and 20th century colonial texts, as well as a later postcolonial novel exposes the cadres exotiques, or exotic frameworks, of literary exoticism. The thesis names and interprets the moods of and reactions to exoticism, including colonial exoticism, antiexoticism, and autoexoticism. Poetic and theoretical interpretations of exoticism, such as Victor Segalen’s Notion du Divers and Edouard Glissant’s Opacité and Poétique de la Relation challenge the prevalent assumptions that the literary practice was only an unfortunate byproduct of colonialism. The first chapter presents literary history and theoretical considerations relating to exoticism: Orientalism, nostalgia, colonial literary history, and a critical literature review. Chapter II explores Le Roman d’un spahi (1881) and Les Trois dames de la Kasbah (1882) by Pierre Loti, two texts dating from France’s high colonial period of the late 19th century. Chapter III studies works and contexts of the 1930s—Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932) and Michel Leiris’s L’Afrique fantôme (1934). These modernist texts appeared with the decline of colonial exoticism’s popularity. conclude with an analysis of Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle (1973), a postcolonial novel about the life of a Creole woman in the former French colony of Guadeloupe

Virtual knot groups and almost classical knots

We define a group-valued invariant of virtual knots and relate it to various other group-valued invariants of virtual knots, including the extended group of Silver-Williams and the quandle group of Manturov and Bardakov-Bellingeri. A virtual knot is called almost classical if it admits a diagram with an Alexander numbering, and in that case we show that the group factors as a free product of the usual knot group and Z. We establish a similar formula for mod p almost classical knots, and we use these results to derive obstructions to a virtual knot K being mod p almost classical. Viewed as knots in thickened surfaces, almost classical knots correspond to those that are homologically trivial. We show they admit Seifert surfaces and relate their Alexander invariants to the homology of the associated infinite cyclic cover. We prove the first Alexander ideal is principal, recovering a result first proved by Nakamura et al. using different methods. The resulting Alexander polynomial is shown to satisfy a skein relation, and its degree gives a lower bound for the Seifert genus. We tabulate almost classical knots up to 6 crossings and determine their Alexander polynomials and virtual genus.Comment: 44 page