A study of policies governing the employment of part-time professional nurses in hospitals

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

The effects of mortality-salience inducing direct-to-consumer prescription drug commercials on viewer attitude toward high and low status brands

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on November 13, 2009).Thesis advisor: Dr. Glenn Leshner.M.A. University of Missouri--Columbia 2009.This research sought to understand whether or not direct-to-consumer prescription drug ads (DTC ads) made people think about their own death (referred to as mortality salience) and what effects these thoughts had on people's opinions of brands of varying status. Study 1 used a free-writing questionnaire to collect brands. Study 2 used scales to rate participant attitude toward 12 DTC ads. Study 2 showed the the ads for Cymbalta and Plavix made people the most anxious; the ads for Detrol LA and Crestor made people the least anxious. Study 3 used word completions to measure for mortality salience. Study 3 also provided additional brand ratings. Study 4 used a lexical decision task to measure for mortality salience; results showed that participants who watched the ads for Cymbalta and Plavix responded faster to death words. The status of brand had no effect on how participants rated the brand. Additional signal detection analysis showed participants to be less sensitive to death words after watching the Cymbalta and Plavix ads. Participant criterion bias did not vary across word type or between condition.Includes bibliographical references

GaAs/AlGaAs potential well barrier diodes : Novel diode for detector and mixer applications

Peer reviewedPostprin

Three-year outcomes of a once daily fractionation scheme for accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) using 3-D conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT).

The aim of this study was to report 3-year outcomes of toxicity, cosmesis, and local control using a once daily fractionation scheme (49.95 Gy in 3.33 Gy once daily fractions) for accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) using three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT). Between July 2008 and August 2010, women aged ≥40 years with ductal carcinoma in situ or node-negative invasive breast cancer ≤3 cm in diameter, treated with breast-conserving surgery achieving negative margins, were accrued to a prospective study. Women were treated with APBI using 3-5 photon beams, delivering 49.95 Gy over 15 once daily fractions over 3 weeks. Patients were assessed for toxicities, cosmesis, and local control rates before APBI and at specified time points. Thirty-four patients (mean age 60 years) with Tis 0 (n = 9) and T1N0 (n = 25) breast cancer were treated and followed up for an average of 39 months. Only 3% (1/34) patients experienced a grade 3 subcutaneous fibrosis and breast edema and 97% of the patients had good/excellent cosmetic outcome at 3 years. The 3-year rate of ipsilateral breast tumor recurrence (IBTR) was 0% while the rate of contralateral breast events was 6%. The 3-year disease-free survival (DFS), overall survival (OS), and breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS) was 94%, 100%, and 100%, respectively. Our novel accelerated partial breast fractionation scheme of 15 once daily fractions of 3.33 Gy (49.95 Gy total) is a remarkably well-tolerated regimen of 3D-CRT-based APBI. A larger cohort of patients is needed to further ascertain the toxicity of this accelerated partial breast regimen

The Great Transformation of Regulated Industries Law

The nation's approach to regulating its transportation, telecommunications, and energy industries has undergone a great transformation in the last quarter-century. The original paradigm of regulation, which was established with the Interstate Commerce Act's regulation of railroads beginning in 1887, was characterized by legislative creation of an administrative agency charged with general regulatory oversight of particular industries. This approach did not depend on weather the regulated industry was naturally competitive or was a natural monopoly, and it was designed to advance accepted goals of reliability and, in particular, non-discrimination. By contrast, under the new paradigm, which is manifested most clearly in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the goals of regulation have become the promotion of competition and maximization of consumer choice. The role of agencies has been reduced to monitoring access and pricing of "bottleneck" monopolies such as the local telecommunications loop and electricity distribution systems. Having described this transformation in six core common carrier and public utility industries -- railroads, airlines, trucks, telecommunications, electricity, and natural gas -- the Article sets out on a quest to find its causes. No consistent pattern of institutional leadership can be discerned in any of the three types of government actors with the power to compel change: the regulatory agencies, the courts, and the Congress. This suggests that the causes are rooted in deep-seated economic and social forces, such as technological changes, and chain reactions that have emerged as regulatory reform in one industry segment has spread to another segment. The Article concludes that the two most persuasive explanations are that key interest groups have discovered that regulatory change is in their interests, and that an ideological consensus has emerged among economists and other policy elites that the original paradigm entails risks of regulatory failure that exceed the risks of market failure under the new paradigm

Contested Shore: Property Rights in Reclaimed Land and the Battle for Streeterville

Land reclaimed from navigable waters is a resource uniquely susceptible to conflict. The multiple reasons for this include traditional hostility to interference with navigable waterways and the weakness of rights in submerged land. In Illinois, title to land reclaimed from Lake Michigan was further clouded by a shift in judicial understanding in the late nineteenth century about who owned the submerged land, starting with an assumption of private ownership but eventually embracing state ownership. The potential for such legal uncertainty to produce conflict is vividly illustrated by the history of the area of Chicago known as Streeterville, the area of reclaimed land along Lake Michigan north of the Chicago River and east of Michigan Avenue. Beginning in the 1850s, Streeterville was subject to repeated waves of litigation, assertions of squatters’ rights (most notably by George Wellington Streeter, for whom the area is named), conspiracies to obtain federal land grants based on veterans’ rights, schemes in reliance on claims of Native Americans, and a public works project designed to secure the claims of wealthy riparian owners. The riparian owners eventually won the many-sided battle, but only after convincing institutions such as Northwestern University to build substantial structures on the land. The history of Streeterville suggests that when legal title to reclaimed land is highly uncertain, conflict over control of the land is likely to persist until one or more persons succeed in establishing what is perceived to be possession of the land

The Origins of the American Public Trust Doctrine: What Really Happened in \u3ci\u3eIllinois Central\u3c/i\u3e

The public trust doctrine has always been controversial. The general rule in American law favors ownership of natural resources as private property. The public trust doctrine, a jarring exception of uncertain dimensions, posits that some resources are subject to a perpetual trust that forecloses private exclusion rights. For environmentalists and preservationists who view private ownership as a source of the degradation of our natural and historical resources, the public trust doctrine holds out the hope of salvation through what amounts to a judicially enforced inalienability rule that locks resources into public ownership. For those who view private property as the bulwark of the free enterprise system and constitutional liberty, the doctrine looms as a vague threat