Historical Trends in State-Level ADC/AFDC Benefits: Living on Less and Less

This paper, using government statistics, describes state-level variation in ADC/AFDC benefits from 1940-1995. The findings illustrate that the race to the bottom began in 1975, especially among higher paying states. The concomitant declines in benefit value relative to the poverty line places TANF-dependent recipients in serious jeopardy. Implications for education and advocacy are discussed

Folding and unfolding of a triple-branch DNA molecule with four conformational states

Single-molecule experiments provide new insights into biological processes hitherto not accessible by measurements performed on bulk systems. We report on a study of the kinetics of a triple-branch DNA molecule with four conformational states by pulling experiments with optical tweezers and theoretical modelling. Three distinct force rips associated with different transitions between the conformational states are observed in the folding and unfolding trajectories. By applying transition rate theory to a free energy model of the molecule, probability distributions for the first rupture forces of the different transitions are calculated. Good agreement of the theoretical predictions with the experimental findings is achieved. Furthermore, due to our specific design of the molecule, we found a useful method to identify permanently frayed molecules by estimating the number of opened basepairs from the measured force jump values.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figure

Themes Underlying Australian General Practitioner Views towards Chiropractic and Osteopathy: An Assessment of Free Text Data from a Cross-Sectional Survey

The Australian chiropractic and osteopathic professions underwent a period of significant transformation between 1960 and 2000. This resulted in an improvement in the views held by the medical profession towards the two professions. However, a recent survey of Australian general practitioners (GPs) reported that a number of GPs still hold negative views towards chiropractors and osteopaths. This paper examines these views from the perspective of critical realism and explores the generative mechanisms that can influence the willingness of health practitioners to collaborate over patient care. A qualitative analysis of open-ended responses to a survey of 630 Australian GPs was conducted. Unfavourable attitudes of GPs towards chiropractors and osteopaths included perceived lack of safety, efficacy, and inadequacy of training, despite chiropractic’s and osteopathy’s reliance on the same evidence base and similar training to those of other manual therapy professions such as physiotherapy. These attitudes may be underpinned by the professional biases against chiropractic and osteopathy that continue to marginalise the professions within the Australian healthcare system. Continued investment in the research base for chiropractic and osteopathic practice is required, along with raising the awareness of GPs about the education and skills of chiropractors and osteopaths

A parsimonious generation of combinatorial neural model

This paper presents a new approach to reduce the space problem due to combinatorial explosion of CNM (Combinatorial Neural Model) method. First we show a description of CNM, proposed by Machado and Rocha [MAC 91], [MAC 92], [MAC 92a], [MAC 97], as a variation of fuzzy neural network introduced as an alternative to meet many requirements, such as expressiveness, inteligibility, plasticity and flexibility. Our approach represents an alternative to generate the CNM network with certainty factors for each hypothesis. We demonstrate by means of a simple practical example that the number of combinations can be really reduced.Sistemas InteligentesRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

We\u27re not the Enemy and We\u27re not Asking for the World : Low-wage Hospital Service Workers\u27 Advocacy for Fair Wages

A number of states and localities have increased the minimum wage beyond that set by the federal government in recognition of the material and health challenges faced by low-wage earners. Academics, economists, and activists have offered microeconomic, economic justice, and moral rationales to support increasing the minimum wage. These justifications can be understood from the vantage of claims-making, that is, the ways individuals and groups attempt to define and shape a social problem to influence policy. This paper examines the wage-related claims-making of low-wage hospital service workers. These workers (N=156) testified to a City Council-created Wage Review Committee, which posted the testimonies online. We qualitatively content analyzed these workers’ testimonies to identify their rationales for higher wages and fair wage rates. Hospital workers’ testimonies brought depth and new understanding to arguments for raising wages. Low-wage workers can be effective advocates for their own interests

COMUNICAÇÃO EMPRESARIAL E SUA APLICAÇÃO EM UMA INSTITUIÇÃO PÚBLICA

A temática do presente estudo é a Comunicação Empresarial e a sua efetiva utilização prática dentro de uma Instituição de Ensino Público. Seu objetivo é analisar a comunicação interna entre professores, funcionários e administração escolar, em uma escola, usando técnicas de comunicação empresarial, para, dessa forma, melhorar a comunicação. Trata-se de pesquisa quali-quantitativa, realizada com base em 24 informantes, entre os quais constam professores, funcionários e direção.  Os resultados indicam, de um modo geral, que os entrevistados têm noção da importância da comunicação para buscar o equilíbrio entre funcionários, professores e direção de uma unidade escolar. Além disso, a análise também permitiu observar as peculiaridades de uma unidade escolar, em relação à satisfação no trabalho. A principal conclusão  é que a comunicação é fundamental para transpor as barreiras impostas pela burocracia e os paradigmas de cada indivíduo dentro dessa organização, visando a encontrar soluções simples que se mostram inovadoras aos prementes problemas que afligem a comunicação e o repasse de informação

Seres imaginários: a pareidolia aplicada à pintura

Este trabalho discorre sobre teorização e materialização de uma produção artística, com base nas poéticas visuais. A teoria funda-se em autores que trabalham os conceitos de percepção, configuração e produção artística. Evidencia e contextualiza a caminhada de uma criação artística, na busca de uma linguagem com base na pareidolia como propulsor da criação. Dá-se ênfase à teoria sobre a importância da pesquisa em artes visuais, com base nas poéticas visuais. Em seguida, traça-se um caminho para entender o processo de percepção e de criação com base em Fayga Ostrower. No decorrer do texto, temos alguns apontamentos sobre o que é a pareidolia e como se tentou entendê-la um pouco melhor, com base na teoria da percepção da forma, a Gestalt. Ao final, por meio de uma descrição do processo e com interligações teóricas que fundamentam a criação, tentou-se elucidar o caminho percorrido até a conclusão da proposta artística, com análises sobre a belo, a percepção da obra e a fruição artística. Fica evidente que temos muito ainda a discutir e analisar, pois a pesquisa abre essa possibilidade.Palavras-chave: percepção, pareidolia, objeto artístico, poéticas visuais.  Imaginary Beings: pareidolia applied to painting Abstract: This paper discusses theory and realization of an artistic production, based on visual poetics. The theory is based on authors who study the concepts of perception, configuration and artistic production. Put in evidence and contextualizes the route of an artistic creation, in search of a language based on pareidolia as engines of creation. Emphasis is given to the theory about the importance of research in visual arts, based on visual poetics. Then we draw a path for understanding the process of perception and creation based on Fayga Ostrower. Throughout the text, we have some notes about what is pareidolia and how they tried to understand it a little better, based on the theory of shape perception, the Gestalt. At the end, through a process description and theoretical interconnections that underlie the creation, we tried to elucidate the path to completion of the artistic proposal, with analyzes of the beautiful, the perception of the work and artistic enjoyment. It is evident at the end of this work we have still much to discuss and analyze.Keywords: perception, pareidolia, artistic object, visual poetics 

Bimodal coupling of ripples and slower oscillations during sleep in patients with focal epilepsy.

OBJECTIVE: Differentiating pathologic and physiologic high-frequency oscillations (HFOs) is challenging. In patients with focal epilepsy, HFOs occur during the transitional periods between the up and down state of slow waves. The preferred phase angles of this form of phase-event amplitude coupling are bimodally distributed, and the ripples (80-150 Hz) that occur during the up-down transition more often occur in the seizure-onset zone (SOZ). We investigated if bimodal ripple coupling was also evident for faster sleep oscillations, and could identify the SOZ. METHODS: Using an automated ripple detector, we identified ripple events in 40-60 min intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) recordings from 23 patients with medically refractory mesial temporal lobe or neocortical epilepsy. The detector quantified epochs of sleep oscillations and computed instantaneous phase. We utilized a ripple phasor transform, ripple-triggered averaging, and circular statistics to investigate phase event-amplitude coupling. RESULTS: We found that at some individual recording sites, ripple event amplitude was coupled with the sleep oscillatory phase and the preferred phase angles exhibited two distinct clusters (p \u3c 0.05). The distribution of the pooled mean preferred phase angle, defined by combining the means from each cluster at each individual recording site, also exhibited two distinct clusters (p \u3c 0.05). Based on the range of preferred phase angles defined by these two clusters, we partitioned each ripple event at each recording site into two groups: depth iEEG peak-trough and trough-peak. The mean ripple rates of the two groups in the SOZ and non-SOZ (NSOZ) were compared. We found that in the frontal (spindle, p = 0.009; theta, p = 0.006, slow, p = 0.004) and parietal lobe (theta, p = 0.007, delta, p = 0.002, slow, p = 0.001) the SOZ incidence rate for the ripples occurring during the trough-peak transition was significantly increased. SIGNIFICANCE: Phase-event amplitude coupling between ripples and sleep oscillations may be useful to distinguish pathologic and physiologic events in patients with frontal and parietal SOZ

A parsimonious generation of combinatorial neural model

This paper presents a new approach to reduce the space problem due to combinatorial explosion of CNM (Combinatorial Neural Model) method. First we show a description of CNM, proposed by Machado and Rocha [MAC 91], [MAC 92], [MAC 92a], [MAC 97], as a variation of fuzzy neural network introduced as an alternative to meet many requirements, such as expressiveness, inteligibility, plasticity and flexibility. Our approach represents an alternative to generate the CNM network with certainty factors for each hypothesis. We demonstrate by means of a simple practical example that the number of combinations can be really reduced.Sistemas InteligentesRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Stage-Specific Germ-Cell Marker Genes Are Expressed in All Mouse Pluripotent Cell Types and Emerge Early during Induced Pluripotency

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) generated from the in-vitro culture of blastocyst stage embryos are known as equivalent to blastocyst inner cell mass (ICM) in-vivo. Though several reports have shown the expression of germ cell/pre-meiotic (GC/PrM) markers in ESCs, their functional relevance for the pluripotency and germ line commitment are largely unknown. In the present study, we used mouse as a model system and systematically analyzed the RNA and protein expression of GC/PrM markers in ESCs and found them to be comparable to the expression of cultured pluripotent cells originated from the germ line. Further, siRNA knockdown experiments have demonstrated the parallel maintenance and independence of pluripotent and GC/PrM networks in ESCs. Through chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments, we observed that pluripotent cells exhibit active chromatin states at GC marker genes and a bivalent chromatin structure at PrM marker genes. Moreover, gene expression analysis during the time course of iPS cells generation revealed that the expression of GC markers precedes pluripotency markers. Collectively, through our observations we hypothesize that the chromatin state and the expression of GC/PrM markers might indicate molecular parallels between in-vivo germ cell specification and pluripotent stem cell generation