Reception: Organization and Decision Making in a Juvenile Correctional Reception Center

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/50818/1/33.pd

Dibenzcycloheptadienes: With Some Remarks on Their Relationship to Degradation Products of Colchicine

Abstract Not Provided

Bureaucracy and Morality: An Organizational Perspective on Moral Crusade

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/50822/1/38.pd

The history of the Open Brethren in Scotland 1838-1999

The thesis is a history of the Open Brethren in Scotland. Its aim is to analyse the development of the movement incorporating its social history. A sequence of chapters traces the expansion and contraction of the movement and its internal development from its inception in 1838 until 1999. After an introductory chapter in which the aims and methods of the work will be set out, Chapter 2 examines the largely Bowesite movement of the 1840s and 1850s. Chapter 3 analyses the crucial decade which followed the 1859 Revival. In these chapters external growth and internal development are studied in conjunction with each other. The period of greatest increase for the movement was the late Victorian period and Chapter 4 analyses expansion until the outbreak of World War I. The Brethren were in their most developed form in the inter-war period of the twentieth century and this phase had an after-life until the mid-1960s. Chapter 6 examines patterns of growth and decline from 1914 until 1965 with, in addition, an investigation of the ethos of the movement when it was in its mature form. Complementary to Chapters 4 and 6 are Chapters 5 and 7 in which the internal development of the movement is examined for the respective periods. The classic era of the Brethren might be said to have ceased in the mid-1960s. Chapter 8 is devoted to an investigation of the spirituality of the movement from the 1830s until that decade and Chapter 9 to the relationship of the Brethren to culture and society for the same period. Chapter 10 examines the contemporary movement from the mid-1960s, analysing internal development and changes in membership size, spirituality, and attitudes to culture and society. The conclusion, Chapter 11, draws together the central themes of the thesis and presents some assessment

Algorithmic approach to adiabatic quantum optimization

It is believed that the presence of anticrossings with exponentially small gaps between the lowest two energy levels of the system Hamiltonian, can render adiabatic quantum optimization inefficient. Here, we present a simple adiabatic quantum algorithm designed to eliminate exponentially small gaps caused by anticrossings between eigenstates that correspond with the local and global minima of the problem Hamiltonian. In each iteration of the algorithm, information is gathered about the local minima that are reached after passing the anticrossing non-adiabatically. This information is then used to penalize pathways to the corresponding local minima, by adjusting the initial Hamiltonian. This is repeated for multiple clusters of local minima as needed. We generate 64-qubit random instances of the maximum independent set problem, skewed to be extremely hard, with between 10^5 and 10^6 highly-degenerate local minima. Using quantum Monte Carlo simulations, it is found that the algorithm can trivially solve all the instances in ~10 iterations.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Non-Locality and Theories of Causation

The aim of the paper is to investigate the characterization of an unambiguous notion of causation linking single space-llike separated events in EPR-Bell frameworks. This issue is investigated in ordinary quantum mechanics, with some hints to no collapse formulations of the theory such as Bohmian mechanics.Comment: Presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Modality, Probability and Bell's Theorems, Cracow, Poland, August 19-23, 200

Long-Term Depression in the Hippocampal CA1 Area of Aged Rats, Revisited: Contribution of Temporal Constraints Related to Slice Preparation

BACKGROUND: The effects of low-frequency conditioning stimulation (LFS, 900 pulses at 1 Hz) of glutamatergic afferents in CA1 hippocampal area using slices from two different strains of adult (3-5 month-old) and aged (23-27 month-old) rats were reinvestigated regarding the discrepancies in the literature concerning the expression of long-term depression (LTD) in the aging brain. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDA-R) dependent LTD was examined in both adult (n = 21) and aged (n = 22) Sprague-Dawley rats. While equivalent amounts of LTD could be obtained in both ages, there was significant variability depending upon the time between the slices were made and when they were tested. LTD was not apparent if slices were tested within 3 hours of dissection. The amount of LTD increased over the next three hours but more in adult than in aged rats. This age-related impairment was abolished by exogenous d-serine, thus reflecting the reduced activation of the NMDA-R glycine-binding site by the endogenous agonist in aged rats. Then, the amount of LTD reached asymptote at 5-7 hours following dissection. Similar temporal profiles of LTD expression were seen in young and aged Wistar rats. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Taken together, these results sound a cautionary note regarding the existence of an experimental "window of opportunity" for studying the effects of aging on LTD expression in hippocampal slice preparation

Study of perturbed periodic systems of differential equations - The Stroboscopic method

Stroboscopic method for solving perturbed periodic systems of differential equation