The Cancer Transition in Japan since 1951

The overall trend of cancer mortality in Japan has been decreasing since the 1960s (age-standardized death rates for ages 30-69), though trends differ enormously among various forms of the disease. Cancer mortality was heavily influenced by Japanese postwar economic recovery, which led to improved living conditions and better control of infectious agents known to cause some common forms of cancer (stomach, cervical). However, Japanese wealth and development have also been associated with risky personal behaviors (smoking, drinking) and other conditions, leading to increases in cancers with no known or else very weak links to infection. This shift away from infectious and toward non-infectious causes of prevalent forms of cancers is called the "cancer transition," by analogy to Omran's "epidemiologic transition." We suggest that the cancer transition described here in the case of Japan must be a part of efforts to revise and update the epidemiologic transition, which should incorporate new knowledge about the role of infection in chronic disease morbidity and mortality.cancer, cancer transition, epidemiologic transition, health, health and development, infectious diseases, Japan, mortality, non-infectious disease

On the algorithmic construction of classifying spaces and the isomorphism problem for biautomatic groups

We show that the isomorphism problem is solvable in the class of central extensions of word-hyperbolic groups, and that the isomorphism problem for biautomatic groups reduces to that for biautomatic groups with finite centre. We describe an algorithm that, given an arbitrary finite presentation of an automatic group $\Gamma$, will construct explicit finite models for the skeleta of $K(\Gamma,1)$ and hence compute the integral homology and cohomology of $\Gamma$.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure

Evaluating the collaborative strategic reading intervention: An overview of randomized controlled trial options

When attempting to determine if an intervention has a causal impact, the ‘gold standard’ of program evaluation.is the randomized controlled trial (RCT). In education studies random assignment is rarely feasible at the.student level, making RCTs harder to conduct. School-level assignment is more common but this often.requires considerable resources compared to designs where classrooms can be assigned within a school. This.article describes the costs and benefits of testing the effects of a classroom based instructional intervention.using the multi-site cluster RCT. Topics covered include a discussion of various design options, statistical.power, contamination, prior evidence, generalizability of results, ease of recruitment and need for data.collection. The purpose of the article is to inform practice by providing program evaluators with an in-depth.look at various RCT design options that were considered when searching for a way to efficiently evaluate a.school-based intervention. Accessed 15,611 times on https://pareonline.net from January 28, 2009 to December 31, 2019. For downloads from January 1, 2020 forward, please click on the PlumX Metrics link to the right

Soft-core meson-baryon interactions. I. One-hadron-exchange potentials

The Nijmegen soft-core model for the pseudoscalar-meson baryon interaction is derived, analogous to the Nijmegen NN and YN models. The interaction Hamiltonians are defined and the resulting amplitudes for one-meson-exchange and one-baryon-exchange in momentum space are given for the general mass case. The partial wave projection is carried through and explicit expressions for the momentum space partial wave meson-baryon potentials are presented.Comment: 25 pages, 2 PostScript figures, revtex4, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Assisting students struggling with mathematics: Response to intervention (RtI) for elementary and middle schools.

Taking early action may be key to helping students struggling with mathematics. The eight recommendations in this guide are designed to help teachers, principals, and administrators use Response to Intervention for the early detection, prevention, and support of students struggling with mathematics

Primitive Words, Free Factors and Measure Preservation

Let F_k be the free group on k generators. A word w \in F_k is called primitive if it belongs to some basis of F_k. We investigate two criteria for primitivity, and consider more generally, subgroups of F_k which are free factors. The first criterion is graph-theoretic and uses Stallings core graphs: given subgroups of finite rank H \le J \le F_k we present a simple procedure to determine whether H is a free factor of J. This yields, in particular, a procedure to determine whether a given element in F_k is primitive. Again let w \in F_k and consider the word map w:G x G x ... x G \to G (from the direct product of k copies of G to G), where G is an arbitrary finite group. We call w measure preserving if given uniform measure on G x G x ... x G, w induces uniform measure on G (for every finite G). This is the second criterion we investigate: it is not hard to see that primitivity implies measure preservation and it was conjectured that the two properties are equivalent. Our combinatorial approach to primitivity allows us to make progress on this problem and in particular prove the conjecture for k=2. It was asked whether the primitive elements of F_k form a closed set in the profinite topology of free groups. Our results provide a positive answer for F_2.Comment: This is a unified version of two manuscripts: "On Primitive words I: A New Algorithm", and "On Primitive Words II: Measure Preservation". 42 pages, 14 figures. Some parts of the paper reorganized towards publication in the Israel J. of Mat

Abelian subgroups of Garside groups

In this paper, we show that for every abelian subgroup $H$ of a Garside group, some conjugate $g^{-1}Hg$ consists of ultra summit elements and the centralizer of $H$ is a finite index subgroup of the normalizer of $H$. Combining with the results on translation numbers in Garside groups, we obtain an easy proof of the algebraic flat torus theorem for Garside groups and solve several algorithmic problems concerning abelian subgroups of Garside groups.Comment: This article replaces our earlier preprint "Stable super summit sets in Garside groups", arXiv:math.GT/060258

Beat-wave generation of plasmons in semiconductor plasmas

It is shown that in semiconductor plasmas, it is possible to generate large amplitude plasma waves by the beating of two laser beams with frequency difference close to the plasma frequency. For narrow gap semiconductors (for example n-type InSb), the system can simulate the physics underlying beat wave generation in relativistic gaseous plasmas.Comment: 11 pages, LaTex, no figures, no macro

Anomalous spectral scaling of light emission rates in low dimensional metallic nanostructures

The strength of light emission near metallic nanostructures can scale anomalously with frequency and dimensionality. We find that light-matter interactions in plasmonic systems confined in two dimensions (e.g., near metal nanowires) strengthen with decreasing frequency owing to strong mode confinement away from the surface plasmon frequency. The anomalous scaling also applies to the modulation speed of plasmonic light sources, including lasers, with modulation bandwidths growing at lower carrier frequencies. This allows developing optical devices that exhibit simultaneously femto-second response times at the nano-meter scale, even at longer wavelengths into the mid IR, limited only by non-local effects and reversible light-matter coupling