School Vouchers: Settled Questions, Continuing Disputes

Provides an assessment of the constitutional principles announced by the Court, following the June 2002 decision in the Cleveland school voucher case. Presents contrasting arguments on educational policy that address key issues about the decision

Experimental demonstration of negative index of refraction

We introduce an improved and simplified structure made of periodic arrays of pairs of H-shaped metallic wires that offer a potentially simpler approach in building negative-index materials. Using simulations and microwave experiments, we have investigated the negative-index n properties of these structures. We have measured experimentally both the transmittance and the reflectance properties and found unambiguously that a negative refractive index with Re(n)<0 and Im(n) <Re(n). The same is true for epsilon and mu. Our results show that H-shaped wire pairs can be used very effectively in producing materials with negative refractive indices

Evaluation of Harpin for the Control of Insect-Vectored Bacterial Wilt of Pumpkin and Testing of PMR-Pumpkin and Squash Varieties for Their Reaction to Beetle Feeding Activity and Bacterial Wilt Inoculations

NYS IPM Type: Project ReportThe goals of this project were 1) to determine if harpin can suppress the transmission of bacterial wilt (BW) vectored by cucumber beetles and 2) to compare cucurbit crops and varieties for their attractiveness to cucumber beetles and susceptibility to bacterial wilt

Differentiation of Drift Topographies By Statistical Analysis of Slope Data

The purpose of this study is an investigation of slope development by statistical analysis of slope angle, slope length, relief and stream gradient data developed on four different glacial drift deposits in Iowa. Measurement from randomly selected points on 1:24,000 topographic maps provide the data. Analysis of variance is used with both F-ratios and between-group t-tests. Differences from comparisons based on the age of the different glacial drifts were found to be significant for all parameters. Significant differences were also found for some of the variables in comparisons based on physiographic classification, stream order of the nearest stream, and orientation of the slope. Relationships among the variables are indicated by correlation coefficients with significance determined by t-tests

Amphotericin forms an extramembranous and fungicidal sterol sponge.

For over 50 years, amphotericin has remained the powerful but highly toxic last line of defense in treating life-threatening fungal infections in humans with minimal development of microbial resistance. Understanding how this small molecule kills yeast is thus critical for guiding development of derivatives with an improved therapeutic index and other resistance-refractory antimicrobial agents. In the widely accepted ion channel model for its mechanism of cytocidal action, amphotericin forms aggregates inside lipid bilayers that permeabilize and kill cells. In contrast, we report that amphotericin exists primarily in the form of large, extramembranous aggregates that kill yeast by extracting ergosterol from lipid bilayers. These findings reveal that extraction of a polyfunctional lipid underlies the resistance-refractory antimicrobial action of amphotericin and suggests a roadmap for separating its cytocidal and membrane-permeabilizing activities. This new mechanistic understanding is also guiding development of what are to our knowledge the first derivatives of amphotericin that kill yeast but not human cells

Tribute to Donald A. Winslow

This article is comprised of a series of tributes to Donald A. Winslow, who was a law professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law

Comparison of the visually evoked response in drug-free chronic schizophrenic patients and normal controls

Thirteen cooperative male drug-free chronic schizophrenic patients, and 11 mentally normal male controls were studied. The VER was recorded from scalp leads O1, O2, Oz, C3 and C4 to combined ear reference (A1---A2). The stimulus was an unpatterned flash of single intensity. Compared to normal controls, there were no consistent differences in wave peak latencies or amplitudes for chronic schizophrenics in any brain area tested. When the chronic schizophrenic patients were separated on the basis of high and low tryptophan uptake, using the Frohman-Gottlieb criteria, the high uptake group exhibited normal VERs while in the occipital regions the low tryptophan uptake group exhibited prolonged latencies and an increased amplitude for wave V when compared to normals. From BPRS scores the high tryptophan subgroup indicated a greater degree of psychopathology than the low tryptophan subgroup. The results obtained do not support an indole hallucinogen hypothesis for process schizophrenia.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/23636/1/0000600.pd

New strategies to improve clinical outcomes for diabetic kidney disease

BACKGROUND: Diabetic kidney disease (DKD), the most common cause of kidney failure and end-stage kidney disease worldwide, will develop in almost half of all people with type 2 diabetes. With the incidence of type 2 diabetes continuing to increase, early detection and management of DKD is of great clinical importance. MAIN BODY: This review provides a comprehensive clinical update for DKD in people with type 2 diabetes, with a special focus on new treatment modalities. The traditional strategies for prevention and treatment of DKD, i.e., glycemic control and blood pressure management, have only modest effects on minimizing glomerular filtration rate decline or progression to end-stage kidney disease. While cardiovascular outcome trials of SGLT-2i show a positive effect of SGLT-2i on several kidney disease-related endpoints, the effect of GLP-1 RA on kidney-disease endpoints other than reduced albuminuria remain to be established. Non-steroidal mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists also evoke cardiovascular and kidney protective effects. CONCLUSION: With these new agents and the promise of additional agents under clinical development, clinicians will be more able to personalize treatment of DKD in patients with type 2 diabetes

KOtBu : a privileged reagent for electron transfer reactions?

Many recent studies have used KOtBu in organic reactions that involve single electron transfer; in the literature, the electron transfer is proposed to occur either directly from the metal alkoxide or indirectly, following reaction of the alkoxide with a solvent or additive. These reaction classes include coupling reactions of halobenzenes and arenes, reductive cleavages of dithianes and SRN1 reactions. Direct electron transfer would imply that alkali metal alkoxides are willing partners in these electron transfer reactions, but the literature reports provide little or no experimental evidence for this. This paper examines each of these classes of reaction in turn, and contests the roles proposed for KOtBu; instead, it provides new mechanistic information that in each case supports the in situ formation of organic electron donors. We go on to show that direct electron transfer from KOtBu can however occur in appropriate cases, where the electron acceptor has a reduction potential near the oxidation potential of KOtBu, and the example that we use is CBr4. In this case, computational results support electrochemical data in backing a direct electron transfer reaction