Critique [of American Medical and Intellectual Reaction to African Health Issues, 1850-1960: From Racialism to Cross-Cultural Medicine by David McBride]

Theories about inherent racial characteristics, both those purporting to be scientifically (empirically) based and those emanating from the soft sciences, have changed dramatically over the past century and a half. As David McBride notes, the basis for research about the etiology of disease and the provision of health care in the United States has been and continues to be empirically questionable. McBride further argues that the American health care approach has been significantly influenced by cultural, social, and economic factors which had little or no relation to scientific truth

[Review of] Shivalingappa S. Halli. How Minority Status Affects Fertility: Asian Groups in Canada

The broad subject of ethnicity and its impact on the social behavior of immigrant and minority groups is topical and is of interest both to scholars and to the general public. As a result, Halli\u27s study of fertility rates among Asian immigrants and their descendants in Canada addresses a timely subject

Performance of self bit synchronization systems

Optimum estimator for random signal sequence derived by digital computer and evaluated by Monte Carlo metho

Performance of self bit synchronizers for the detection of anticorrelated binary signals

Self bit synchronizers for detection of anticorrelated binary systems of digital communication system

Suppressing lepton flavor violation in a soft-wall extra dimension

A soft-wall warped extra dimension allows one to relax the tight constraints imposed by electroweak data in conventional Randall-Sundrum models. We investigate a setup, where the lepton flavor structure of the standard model is realized by split fermion locations. Bulk fermions with general locations are not analytically tractable in a soft-wall background, so we follow a numerical approach to perform the Kaluza-Klein reduction. Lepton flavor violation is induced by the exchange of Kaluza-Klein gauge bosons. We find that rates for processes such as muon-electron conversion are significantly reduced compared to hard-wall models, allowing for a Kaluza-Klein scale as low as 2 TeV. Accommodating small neutrino masses forces one to introduce a large hierarchy of scales into the model, making pressing the question of a suitable stabilization mechanism

The Kalman filter on time scales

In this work, we study concepts in optimal control for dynamic equations on time scales, which unfies the discrete and continuous cases. After a brief introduction of dynamic equations on time scales, we will examine controllability and observability for linear systems. Then we construct and solve the linear quadratic regulator for arbitrary time scales. Here, we seek to find an optimal control that minimizes a given cost function associated with a linear system. We will find such an input under two different settings; when the final state is fixed and when it is free. Later, we extend these results to deal with linear quadratic tracking on time scales. The main contribution of this dissertation is the construction of the Kalman filter on time scales. In this setting, we seek to find an optimal estimate of a linear stochastic system whose state is corrupted by noisy measurements. Finally, we will make an argument that the linear quadratic regulator and the Kalman filter are mathematically dual to each other --Abstract, page iv

[Review of] Darlene Clark Hine. Black Women in White,

In recent years nursing history has taken on a new focus. The nursing histories of the first half of the twentieth century chronicled the steady growth and development of the profession and glorified the white nursing leaders who promoted the scientific basis and professionalization of nursing. These early histories, however, ignored or glossed over the many problems of the emerging profession: poorly educated nursing students, nursing school curriculums which were controlled by service administrators rather than educators, the substandard working and living conditions of both student nurses and graduate nurses, the subservience of nurses to physicians which did not serve patient needs, the rapid growth of diploma nursing schools (which were nothing more than diploma mills), the powerlessness of nursing practitioners to control the practice of their own profession, and racism. The publication of Ashley\u27s Hospitals, Paternalism and the Role of the Nurse (1976) introduced a new genre of nursing history. Since then a number of revisionist nursing histories have been published. Darlene Hine\u27s book Black Women in White follows this revisionist trend, focusing on the particular problem of racism and gender discrimination in the emerging nursing profession. Hine\u27s study, covering the period from 1890-1950, addresses the attempts of black nurses to attain agency, which she defines as the power and resources to end racial segregation and exclusionary and discriminatory policies

Chiral Extensions of the MSSM

We present a class of extensions of the MSSM characterized by a fully chiral field content (no mu-terms) and no baryon or lepton number violating term in the superpotential due to an extra U'(1) gauge symmetry. The minimal model consist of the usual matter sector with family dependent U'(1) charges, six Higgs weak doublets, and three singlets required to give masses to the Higgsinos and cancel anomalies. We discuss its main features such as the tree level mass spectrum and the constraints on flavor changing processes.Comment: 13 pages. V2: Superpotential and U'(1) charges changed. Analysis of the spectrum for the new model added. References update

Satellite on-board processing for earth resources data

Results of a survey of earth resources user applications and their data requirements, earth resources multispectral scanner sensor technology, and preprocessing algorithms for correcting the sensor outputs and for data bulk reduction are presented along with a candidate data format. Computational requirements required to implement the data analysis algorithms are included along with a review of computer architectures and organizations. Computer architectures capable of handling the algorithm computational requirements are suggested and the environmental effects of an on-board processor discussed. By relating performance parameters to the system requirements of each of the user requirements the feasibility of on-board processing is determined for each user. A tradeoff analysis is performed to determine the sensitivity of results to each of the system parameters. Significant results and conclusions are discussed, and recommendations are presented

Satellite on-board processing for earth resources data

The feasibility was investigated of an on-board earth resources data processor launched during the 1980-1990 time frame. Projected user applications were studied to define the data formats and the information extraction algorithms that the processor must execute. Based on these constraints, and the constraints imposed by the available technology, on-board processor systems were designed and their feasibility evaluated. Conclusions and recommendations are given