Office Window Research Articles

The Musician’s Complete Guide to Underground Touring

The Musician’s Complete Guide to Underground Touring Michael Kardos (bio) The CNN article online said “Tornado Alley,” but there was simply no way this could be Ethan McLean’s band, which hadn’t played a single note in over two decades. Some other guys must have started using the name. Then Ethan followed a link to a second article that named individual songs, including—astonishingly—one of theirs. His pulse quickening, he called his brother, Bo. But Bo had gone to lunch and was also the last living human not to own a cell phone. So he forwarded the links to his daughter, Joan, who seemed never to take lunch, and inside of three minutes Ethan’s cell was ringing. “You sure this is you?” Joan asked. “Pretty sure, yeah.” “Well, it’s obviously fucking outrageous.” His daughter had developed her taste for outrage early on. As a child she struck up the sort of conversations—the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, genocide in Rwanda—that confounded other children and left their parents with raised eyebrows. Now twenty-four, she was the Midwest’s publicity director for Voices for Children. She had found a way to follow in both her parents’ footsteps: like her mother, a middle-school principal, she was dedicating her life to helping kids. And like Ethan, she worked in PR—though her causes were nobler than his own; he developed PR campaigns for the likes of Dee-Lux Donuts and Midwest Auto Lube. “I’ll bet there’s a lawsuit here,” she said. “Do you think?” “Phil would know better—I’ll forward this to him.” Joan had graduated summa cum laude from Case Western, double-majoring in cultural anthropology and political science. There she had met Philip, who was in law school at the time and was now in his first year at the public defender’s office. “And you see the irony, don’t you?” she said. “All these bands are against the war.” Ethan didn’t need to be a peacenik or constitutional scholar to know that the activities taking place at Guantanamo Bay at the hands of those civilian contractors were probably illegal and definitely immoral. Like everyone else, he’d seen the recent photographs of stacked, naked bodies, read the stories of sleep deprivation and waterboarding and guards pissing on the Koran. Maybe Joan was right and there was a layer of irony somewhere in this latest revelation—guards had apparently been shackling prisoners between loudspeakers and forcing them to endure music played at earsplitting decibels for sixteen, twenty hours at a stretch—but the word felt too cool and cerebral. It didn’t account for the queasy feeling of knowing that he might somehow be connected to all this suffering. The article quoted an anonymous interrogator as saying the music had left the prisoners fearful and disoriented. Some went catatonic. Others went into screaming fits. At least one had repeatedly smashed his head against the cell’s concrete floor. Ethan couldn’t tell from the article whether the guard was apologizing or bragging. “God,” Joan said, “you must be so angry.” From behind his desk, Ethan looked out his office window at the small horse farm across the road, then back at his computer monitor. “Of course I’m angry,” he said, though his anger was, if he was being [End Page 3] honest with himself, undercut to a degree by seeing his own band’s name alongside mega-acts like Pearl Jam and R.E.M. and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Yet none of it made a lick of sense. Tornado Alley had recorded a cassette tape—nothing but a demo, really—and sold a few hundred copies, but that time had nothing whatever to do with Ethan’s life now. “Does Bo know about this yet?” The accusation was already in Joan’s voice. “I doubt it,” Ethan said. “He’ll have the wrong reaction. I guarantee it.” “Joan.” “Dad—just wait and see.” Bo had started up Tornado Alley in the spring of ’82, a year after flunking out of Ohio State. He’d been working part-time at a chicken wing place, though his main income was...

Naval Supply Systems Command: Leading Change (a)

The effects of a declining resource environment were evident in the challenges facing the Commander of Naval Supply Systems Command in maintaining the readiness of Pacific Fleet forces. His superiors were calling for a significant transformation in the Navy's business practices to overcome what was then projected as a $10 billion annual shortfall in the amount needed to recapitalize the fleet. But returning readiness levels to acceptable levels, while programming for procurement of future forces and capabilities, was an increasingly difficult balancing act. He needed to find an additional source of funds to “balance the books.” Excerpt UVA-S-0148 Rev. Nov. 30, 2010 Naval Supply Systems Command: LEADING CHANGE (A) Rear Admiral J. Dan McCarthy gazed out his office window at Pacific Fleet headquarters, contemplating the message in his hands—orders to report as Commander, Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) and 42nd Chief of Supply Corps. McCarthy was in his 32nd year of commissioned service since completing Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. As a Supply Corps Officer, both his sea and shore assignments had provided him with extensive leadership, logistics, and financial management experience. His logistics assignments had included positions in transportation, warehousing, material-handling operations, inventory management, and operational logistics. He was now in his third year as Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, Fleet Supply, and Ordnance, U.S. Pacific Fleet. McCarthy was intimately aware of the significant fiscal challenges facing the Navy in 2001 and that NAVSUP would be expected to contribute to finding solutions to those challenges during his three-year assignment as Commander. He thought Admiral Vern Clark, soon to become Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) was right in calling for a significant transformation in the Navy's business practices to overcome what was then projected as a $ 10 billion annual shortfall in the amount needed to recapitalize the fleet. Clark was focused on the need for improved business practices throughout the Navy enterprise as a mechanism to generate the resources required to both recapitalize the fleet and provide the war-fighting capabilities to deal with the emerging threat of global terrorism. Clark had made it clear that getting the requirements right was the first step and generating the improved effectiveness and efficiency to help finance that requirement was equally important to deliver the Navy of the future. Department of Defense (DoD) Supply Chain . . .

The United Drug Packaging Division

This case is used in Darden's Business-to-Business elective. It would also work well in a General Marketing Management course, a Marketing Strategy course, or a course covering Health Care Management topics.In response to fluctuations in the economy and the pharmaceutical industry, United Drug reexamines the marketing of its packaging division, recently restructured under a new managing director. Excerpt UVA-M-0840 Rev. Dec. 5, 2012 THE UNITED DRUG PACKAGING DIVISION It was May 2009, and Ron Sweeney looked out of his office window at the foothills of the Dublin Mountains. He thought about the contrast between the peaceful serenity of that view and the chaos he was experiencing as the newly appointed managing director of the United Drug Packaging Group (the Packaging Group). The Packaging Group in United Drug comprised four separate entities, and they certainly acted as such. Sweeney's job was to try and redesign the marketing process for the group and attempt to redress a fall in the division's revenues. It was a big task, but Sweeney was confident he could do it. United Drug United Drug began as a small pharmaceutical wholesaling cooperative in the west of Ireland in the late 1940s. Through a series of acquisitions, the company spread to all four provinces of Ireland and became its largest wholesaler. In the late 1990s, as margins in its legacy wholesaling business began to decline (margins were around the 2% level), it began to diversify beyond pharmaceutical and medical device wholesaling into outsourced services for pharmaceutical manufacturers. . . .

Hedge Fund Due Diligence at Leman Alternative Asset Management Company

In early January 2008, a senior VP with LAAMCO, a fund of hedge funds known for alternative investments, was conducting due diligence on an equity market-neutral hedge fund. The hedge fund used an option strategy known as a collar (also known as a bull spread or split-strike conversion). The track record of the hedge fund had been stellar. The fund's performance had not only beaten that of the S&P 500 Index over the same period but had done so with much lower monthly return volatility. As part of the due diligence, it was necessary to backtest the collar strategy and try to quantify how much value the manager, BLM Investment Securities, LLC, (BLM) had added. The case is a disguised representation of an actual hedge fund—the true identity of BLM is revealed to students at the end of the case discussion. Excerpt UVA-F-1698 Jun. 21, 2013 HEDGE FUND DUE DILIGENCE AT LEMAN ALTERNATIVE ASSET MANAGEMENT COMPANY It was early January 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland, and the day looked as though it might turn snowy. Thierry Michaud's office window offered a view of Lake Leman and, in the background, white-capped Mont Blanc. A storm was forming above the lake, and the view of the Alps was disappearing. Michaud was a senior VP with Leman Alternative Asset Management Company (LAAMCO), a fund of hedge funds known for alternative investments. LAAMCO had a research-driven approach to constructing diversified portfolios of hedge funds for investors and utilized advanced risk analytics to monitor the portfolios. The company had close ties with major private Swiss banks that invested money for high-net-worth Europeans. Michaud was the team specialist looking at U.S. equity market-neutral hedge funds. These funds had both long and short positions on U.S. stocks and options to maintain a market-neutral position. . . .

Поляризационные характеристики излучения трехапертурной случайной антенны

This work presents results of researches of aperture random antenna (ARA) field intensity polarization characteristics performed by statistical simulation. ARA electromagnetic field structure should be analyzed for inspection the information about channel leakage from office to outer space. The article deals with a lattice consisting of three rectangular ARAs that simulate office windows that make information leakage. We performed researches of described construction electromagnetic field polarization characteristics by statistical simulations. The main results are represented in the form of histograms of azimuthal and meridional angles random values that demonstrate stochastic polarization of ARA field vectors with provided configuration.

Living Longer, Living Well

Living Longer, Living Well

H.C. Andersen Was (NOT) Here

‘Our office is on Rolighedsvej,’ I said, during a casual conversation with a colleague after a seminar. ‘Rolighedsvej?’ she replied, ‘H. C. Andersen died in Villa Rolighed’. I shivered. What a strange coincidence. The building next door to my office is called Villa Rolighed, an elegant eighteenth-century villa in what was once rural Frederiksberg and which is now part of the campus of the University of Copenhagen. ‘Really?’ I said. ‘I thought he spent his last years in Nyhavn?’ I knew this, because, at the time, I was living in one of the buildings in Nyhavn, a well-known seventeenth century canal in the city centre, where H. C. Andersen was known to have resided. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but he died in Villa Rolighed!’ What a surprise. A double nearness. I rushed home and looked it up. Yes, indeed, as is well known, H. C. Andersen lived at many addresses in Copenhagen in general and in Nyhavn in particular. The high volume of tourists gathering on the pavement outside several houses in Nyhavn every day, seeking a somewhat uncanny sense of closeness to the famous writer, is a constant reminder of this fact. Yet while Andersen spent his last years overlooking the canal in Nyhavn, where he was given two rooms by his benefactors the Melchior family who owned the first floor of number 18, he also partly lived in their summer villa, Villa Rolighed. This is where the Melchior family brought the famous writer on 12 June 1875 to nurse him during the illness from which he died on 4 August 1875. Yet, their summer house was Villa Rolighed on Østerbro, not the Villa Rolighed on Frederiksberg I can see if I lean out my office window. The double movement of nearness thus became a double movement of alienation, once again distancing H. C. Andersen’s mysterious ghostly presence from that momentary feeling of proximity in spatial terms, despite the undoubted temporal distance of the long dead writer to my everyday life.

Imagining a Professional Future: Cognitive Criticism in Our Era of Information Work

Imagining a Professional Future:Cognitive Criticism in Our Era of Information Work Amanpal Garcha (bio) There is real trouble, though, and it has to do with money. —George Levine (1993) Information about money has become almost as important as money itself, as evidenced by the explosive growth of electronic banking. —Walter Wriston, Citicorp chairman (1983) Cognitive scientists view the human mind as a complex system that receives, stores, retrieves, transforms, and transmits information. —Neil Stillings (1995) Dream of the 90s From a 1995 issue of U.S. News and World Report, here is one description of what a digital utopia looked like at the end of the last century: “Catherine Sellman is an environmental engineer for a consulting firm in Northern Virginia. The view from her office window? The snowcapped mountains surrounding Telluride, Colo. She works in faded jeans at her Toshiba T1900 laptop—and breaks for snowboarding when the urge strikes” (Hannon 1995, 86). Academics in the humanities might seem like an unlikely group to fantasize about this model of long-distance, technologically enabled and flexible work, especially since the 1990s, when the focus of so much of academic discourse turned toward the need for more secure, institutionally supported university employment. Yet, as the following pages will show, cognitive criticism’s popularity within and outside humanities departments has been in part shaped by the cultural dominance of such utopian visions. [End Page 385] Cognitive criticism’s emergence occurred within a discursive environment with two distinguishing features: first, a culture-wide focus on the economic implications of information networks, which the growth of the internet, the dot-com bubble, and ever-more sophisticated computerized financial strategies helped spur; and second, the large amount of commentary about the humanities—commentary that attended less to its intellectual and political agendas (agendas that were the focus of the “political correctness” controversies that constituted the crisis-in-the-humanities discourse in the late 1980s and early 90s) and more to its economic future. Within the copious amounts of analysis devoted to the “crisis in the humanities” over the two decades since George Levine declared that our troubles have to do primarily with money, there have been few works of criticism that postulate a relation between on the one hand, the economic issues that have dominated both journalism and the discourse about the humanities since the 1990s, and, on the other, the precise content of literary criticism. The present analysis begins with the hypothesis that the nearly uninterrupted stream of commentary discussing, sometimes in great length and detail, the economic factors at the root of the current “crisis in the humanities” has altered what academics write about when they write about literature. There have been two theoreticians on whose work this essay will build who have similarly postulated a connection between literary criticism’s research agendas and the humanities’ monetary crisis. John Guillory argues that “the most politicized current modes of criticism” in the mid-nineties had their roots in young academics’ frustrations with the “dire state” of the academic job market (1996; 5, 4). More recently (and somewhat more obliquely), Alan Liu has written of research in the digital humanities (DH) as “register[ing] the larger uncertainty of employment in the humanities,” an uncertainty that has in turn created a “‘crisis’ in the meaningfulness” of humanities scholarship itself (2013, 419). Before discussing cognitive criticism’s links to information work and academics’ status anxiety, it is worth clarifying how these theorists understand academic research’s relationship to its practitioners’ socioeconomic conditions. Underlying Guillory’s and Liu’s analyses of economic factors and scholarly work is the notion, probably first and most powerfully articulated by Pierre Bourdieu in Homo Academicus (1988), that scholarship not only analyzes its objects of study but also performs a kind of sociological work: any given scholarly piece is about its topic at the same time as it tries to secure various kinds of power or capital for its author—for example, by denigrating other forms of inquiry associated with other disciplines or trying to reinforce the prestige of its own discipline (or institution or department) against those competing for the limited amounts of status and resources in the academy. Bourdieu’s...

The Absheron Project: Bp's Production Sharing Agreement in Azerbaijan

This case is used in a Darden second-year elective in corporate finance, Corporate Financial Policies. It asks students to analyze the cash flows estimated for a production sharing agreement (PSA) between BP and the Azerbaijan government targeted for signing by year-end 2014. The primary relationship is a joint venture (JV) between BP and the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR). The JV is entitled to recover operating costs and capital costs from the proceeds of sales of the early production of the project and share profits earned from production, called the profit petroleum (PP), with Azerbaijan after the cost recoveries. Students are provided a detailed cash flow model for the project and for BP's equity investment and are asked to explain how the value estimates correlate with the risks assumed by the respective parties. This case is appropriate for students who have studied the principles of discounted cash flow and cost of capital. It is best positioned as part of a first-year MBA finance course as the last case in a module related to cash flow analysis. The case can also be taught in an MBA elective containing advanced corporate finance topics. It would be of special interest to students planning for a career related to energy, banking, or consulting, and also relevant for students interested in international business. Excerpt UVA-F-1753 Apr. 12, 2016 The Absheron Project: BP's Production Sharing Agreement in Azerbaijan Samira Bayramli, a recently promoted finance analyst in the Azerbaijan office of the global oil and gas company, BP, had a lot on her plate. It was November 2014 and Bayramli's office window at Port Baku afforded a picturesque view of the Caspian Sea. Earlier that week, Bayramli's supervisor had asked her to review a proposed structure for a new production sharing agreement (PSA), for which BP aimed to complete negotiations with the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) by year end. This contractual agreement would define the cost and profit-sharing scheme between BP and Azerbaijan for the exploration, development, and production of the shallow-water offshore hydrocarbon fields surrounding the Absheron Peninsula (Exhibit 1). The contract structure was complex, and Bayramli wanted to understand the project's risks and rewards and how those were to be distributed between BP and the host country. Production Sharing Agreements A PSA was a contract in which an oil-producing state granted an international oil company (IOC) the exclusive right to explore and produce hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas) at a defined location called the “contract area.” PSAs were used to provide a legal framework for investment in developing countries that lacked the financial or technical capabilities to develop their own hydrocarbon reserves. The IOC bore all the financial, geological, and operational risk associated with the project and was obligated to undertake a minimum exploratory work program (geological/seismic studies and wells). If a commercial discovery occurred, then the IOC paid the full costs of the field's development. . . .

Model-based predictive control of office window shades

In the automation of interior window shading devices, a control system that relies on a prediction of environmental conditions and a building's thermal response can provide savings to space-conditioning loads beyond what can be achieved using a reactive approach. The development of these control strategies can be difficult because of the uniqueness of each building. A simplified model-based predictive control (MPC) method for window shades is proposed. To this end, a control-oriented model representing the heat transfer problem in a perimeter office space was developed. The parameters of the model were estimated using the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF). The energy-savings potential of the EnKF-based MPC approach for window shades was investigated using EnergyPlus simulations. This was accomplished by implementing the control-oriented model into the energy management system application of EnergyPlus. Simulations were conducted to assess the energy saving potential of using the EnKF-based MPC for roller blinds in a south-facing perimeter office space in Ottawa, Canada. The simulation-based results indicate the potential for about 35% reduction in electricity usage for space conditioning over manually operated interior roller blinds.

Modelling of Thermo-optical Properties of Amorphous and Microcrystalline Silicon Semitransparent PV Layer

Nowadays, one of the most promising renewable energy technology is based on photovoltaic conversion of solar energy. Application of PV systems integrated with building envelope allows electricity to be utilized on site for any functional needs. Building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) is commonly used in representative, office buildings usually occupied during the day. The large surface area of external walls or roofs is covered with PV panels instead of traditional building materials. In highly glazed buildings, transparent elements are more often being equipped with PV cells placed between two sheets of glass. Moreover, brand new technologies focus currently on homogenous, transparent glass with different transparency.The main aim of the presented study was to analyse transparent PV (TPV) integrated with office windows. The following 10%, 20% or 30% of transparency degree were considered, depending on the required illuminance inside the room. The optical properties were obtained on the basis of literature review and manufactured data. Different types of TPV were defined for the purpose of building energy performance analysis. Numerical model was developed using control volume method. The properties of TPV glass layer were estimated considering thermo- electrical solar energy conversion, taking into account the sun beam angle and temperature of thepanel.The model of single office room with TPV windowpane was analysed numerically. Results obtained for different TPV panels were compared with traditional clear float double glazing. The following two building energy performance parameters were obtained from numerical analysis: electricity produced by TPV and solar heat gains. Based on simulation results, the overall yearly energy performance was presented and compared.

Norman’s Triumph: The Transcendent Language of Self-Immolation

On a chilly November day in 1965, a thirty-one year old Quaker pacifist named Norman Morrison, a father of three, left his home in Baltimore with his infant daughter Emily and drove forty miles to Washington, DC. Once there, as dusk settled over the capitol city, he drove to the Pentagon where he drenched himself in kerosene and struck a match on his shoe. It is not clear if he had handed Emily to someone standing nearby or had sat her down out of harms way. As Norman burned alive, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, looking out of his office window only yards away, was horrified. He watched as Pentagon attaches rushed to try to put out the flames, scorching themselves in the process. 1

Playing the field.

I grew up in the New York suburbs, a world of small lawns and scattered parks, but I spent most of my summers in rural upstate New York, roaming the woods. The creatures I found there fascinated me, so I went to college to study biology. One summer, I spent 2 weeks at a field station—Great Gull Island in Long Island Sound, off the coast of Connecticut—banding terns. My time there planted the seed that matured into a rewarding career and, ultimately, took me back to the woods. ![Figure][1] “I lived in the rainforest and woke to the sound of howler monkeys.” ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER Great Gull Island is owned by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). It's a former military base used mainly to study the common and roseate terns that nest there every summer. It isn't far offshore, but to me it felt remote. The boat came twice a week, on Fridays to bring food and weekend visitors and on Sundays to take the weekenders home. The buildings were old, with no electricity or running water. I didn't care. After graduating from college, I drifted a while, then returned to New York and took a waitressing job. I wanted to get back to biology, so I volunteered at AMNH. Great Gull Island was normally used only during summer, but I learned about a fall project studying bird migration along the Atlantic coast. I quit my job and returned to the island. During the day, I removed birds from mist nets and banded and released them. At night, I played cards with the other staff members by candlelight. I watched the seasons change. Every evening at dusk, a snowy owl emerged from the old gun emplacement where it hunkered down during the day and flew off over the ocean. I enrolled in a master's degree program at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. While I was there, I took a semester off to work at another field station, on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, a former hilltop that was marooned when the Panama Canal flooded the area. I lived in the rainforest and woke to the sound of howler monkeys. I spent days watching lizards and recording their behavior. Once, I returned to my room at the end of the day and found it invaded by army ants. I moved to Cornell University for a Ph.D. studying interactions between herbivorous insects and host plants. Then came a search for faculty positions, which led me to a teaching post at a liberal arts college. What I enjoyed most about that work, I found, was taking students outside: getting them on snowshoes, sending them out to catch grasshoppers, taking them canoeing. But full-time teaching had never been my dream, and when I saw an ad for a field station job, I applied. Now I'm manager of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Field Station in Saukville, Wisconsin. I've been here 15 years. It's the perfect job. I have a research program. I teach and advise. I facilitate research projects and support the teachers who bring classes here. I participate in the management of the land, at the field station and other university-owned areas: a regionally significant wetland, a virgin prairie remnant, an abandoned iron mine that's an important site for hibernating bats. My work is structured by seasons. As the snow melts, I track bud break and leaf development. In summer and fall, I administer workshops on topics ranging from creative writing to sedge and grass identification. Winter means hikes on the frozen wetlands that, at nearly 900 hectares, are a large part of the property. I've surveyed rare orchids and an endangered dragonfly, participated in prescribed burns at our prairie site, and taken students to watch through night vision telescopes as bats exit from our hibernaculum. I've watched sandhill cranes court outside my office window and seen them later shepherding their growing chicks. Experiences like these aren't just scientific; they're natural, and human. I've found a career that allows me to have such experiences and also share them with others. I like to think I'm helping inspire the next generation of students, as I was inspired by my own field station visits years ago. [1]: pending:yes

How we evaluate the view out through the window

This paper describes a study about factors impacting the perceived quality of the view out of the office window that was carried out in Trondheim, Norway, in 2013. A total of 106 subjects were visited in their respective working environments. The subjects were asked to evaluate the quality of the view from their typical working (sitting) position on a four-point scale: not satisfactory, satisfactory, good, excellent. The view was documented by taking pictures from the subject's eye position in the direction of the window(s). A regression analysis shows that the view quality evaluated by subjects is best predicted by the view distance, the number of view layers, the quality of the landscape/elements and the composition of the view. The view width, the extent of greenery in the view, the presence of water, the weather conditions, or gender and age were not found to contribute additionally to the perceived view quality.

You Have Nothing to Lose

DOI: 10.1200/JCO.2014.60.5634 “Hey, Lee, it’s John. Do you have a couple of minutes?” “Of course,” I said. I already knew by his tone of voice where this conversation was going. John is a friend of a friend, and we had chatted at several social gatherings. He is a young executive on the advancement track. Having earned his MBA at a prestigious business school, he had already held significant finance jobs in two divisions at his company. He is a strategic thinker who handles numbers easily, an excellent leader, and a genuinely sincere guy. I run the cancer team for a large health plan. Although I know John from our informal meetings, this call could only mean one thing—his wife had breast cancer, or his child had a tumor. “It’s my wife, Jan. She’s been diagnosed with breast cancer.” The facts came easily from a man used to working with numbers. “The primary tumor was 2.1 centimeters. The lymph glands were negative for cancer. Her estrogen receptor is positive and the HER2 [human epidermal growth factor receptor 2] gene was 1 . Her Oncotype [Oncotype DX] score was 17. She’s scheduled for postoperative radiation therapy and antiestrogen therapy.” “But,” he then said. “We don’t know what to do.” I was surprised. When I considered all of those factors together, I was estimating that this woman’s benefit from additional treatment with adjuvant chemotherapy was extremely small. No one with breast cancer is guaranteed to have a cure, but I liked her odds. This couple should be uncorking their best bottle of wine in celebration. John was not celebrating. The first medical oncologist his wife had consulted had recommended 6 months of adjuvant chemotherapy, stating that it would improve her chances of a permanent cure. “The oncologist believed that Jan should be treated because of her T2 tumor size,” he said. “I’ve done some reading about adjuvant treatment, and from what I’ve read, the Oncotype score means that she won’t have any benefit from the chemotherapy.” I caught myself nodding in agreement as I watched my reflection in the office window. Researchers know that a small fraction of women with small tumors still relapse, although the overwhelming majority of them are cured with surgery and radiation. It is clear from other studies that women with larger tumors and positive lymph glands benefit from chemotherapy immediately after surgery— the cure rates are often improved by 50% compared with surgery alone. But women like Jan had little room for improvement because the cure rate with surgery was more than 90%. Still, a small fraction, approximately 10 of every 100, did relapse. Previously, among women with small tumors, there was not a way to identify those with poor risk and those who were already cured. Oncologists faced a dilemma. Should they treat all of these women to provide benefit for a few? The Oncotype DX test (Genomic Health, Redwood City, CA) was devised for exactly this situation, because it identifies the few women in this group who do benefit from additional treatment. The women with high scores were much more likely to experience recurrence than the majority of their fellow women, who had low scores although their tumors were the same small size. Jan had the numbers in her favor. I thought John was right. “So we sought a second opinion at one of the major cancer centers,” John said. “Whom did you see there?” I asked. John told me the name, and I smiled. I knew this man well from work we have done together in professional societies. I respected him as a physician and I liked him as a person. I was certain that with his input, the ambiguity about adjuvant chemotherapy would be resolved. “And what did he recommend?” I asked. “He recommended the same adjuvant chemotherapy. He admitted that the benefit would be small, if there was any benefit at all, but he finished by saying, ‘You have nothing to lose.’” I was stunned. There was definitely something to lose. Jan’s life would be turned upside down for 6 months while she and John rearranged their work schedules and found child care for her treatment days. She would lose her hair and battle the inevitable fatigue. I knew the numbers from our database at UnitedHealthcare. In the 2-year span from 2011 to 2012, there were 3,137 women in the company’s clinical registry who received adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer. Six of them died as a result of complications of that treatment. In the same cohort, 2,386 women were evaluated in emergency rooms JOURNAL OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY A R T O F O N C O L O G Y VOLUME 33 NUMBER 14 MAY 1

Lincoln's citadel: the Civil War in Washington, DC

In the late 1840s, Representative Abraham Lincoln resided at Mrs. Sprigg's boardinghouse on Capitol Hill. Known as Abolition House, Mrs. Sprigg's hosted lively dinner-table debates of antislavery politics by the congressional boarders. The unusually rapid turnover in the enslaved staff suggested that there were frequent escapes north to freedom from Abolition House, likely a cog in the underground railroad. These early years in Washington proved formative for Lincoln. In 1861, now in the White House, Lincoln could gaze out his office window and see the Confederate flag flying across the Potomac. Washington, DC, sat on the front lines of the Civil War. Vulnerable and insecure, the capital was rife with Confederate sympathizers. On the crossroads of slavery and freedom, the city was a refuge for thousands of contraband and fugitive slaves. The Lincoln administration took strict measures to tighten security and established camps to provide food, shelter, and medical care for contrabands. In 1863, a Freedman's Village rose on the grounds of the Lee estate, where the Confederate flag once flew. The president and Mrs. Lincoln personally comforted the wounded troops who flooded wartime Washington. In 1862, Lincoln spent July 4 riding in a train of ambulances carrying casualties from the Peninsula Campaign to Washington hospitals. He saluted the One-Legged Brigade assembled outside the White House as orators, their wounds eloquent expressions of sacrifice and dedication. The administration built more than one hundred military hospitals to care for Union casualties. These are among the unforgettable scenes in Lincoln's Citadel, a fresh, absorbing narrative history of Lincoln's leadership in Civil War Washington. Here is the vivid story of how the Lincoln administration met the immense challenges the war posed to the city, transforming a vulnerable capital into a bastion for the Union.

Lucky

Lucky

It Just Doesn’t Make Good Business Sense

It Just Doesn’t Make Good Business Sense

An experimental study of the indoor air quality in areas of different use

The purpose of the present work was to study experimentally the indoor air quality status regarding PM10, PM2.5, TVOCs, CO2, NOx, SO2 and O3 in selected differently used areas. A flat on the third floor of a multi-storey building, located at a suburban area north-east of the centre of Athens and close to a heavily trafficked road and two offices of the Environmental Physics Department building at the University campus, in a suburban area were selected for the purpose of the measurements. The experimental campaigns covered several days in each area in order to include different indoor conditions and outdoor concentration levels. Total VOCs and CO2 were measured on a continuous basis at selected locations only in the indoor environment with two sets of portable samplers. Indoor and outdoor NOx, SO2 and O3 were measured with analysers. PM10 and PM2.5 24 hour averaged measurements were taken with the aid of two sets of indoor particle samplers. Experimental results obtained from Offices 1 and 2 indicate that the indoor air quality in both offices is satisfactory with respect to NOx, SO2 and O3. PM10 concentrations are well above the specified limits on days of smoking or closure of windows in both offices. The indoor air quality in Office 1 seems satisfactory with respect to CO2 and total VOCs concentrations measured, even on days when smoking was taking place and windows were kept closed while all occupants were present. In Office 2, both CO2 and total VOCs concentrations are elevated, even on days when the windows were open or smoking was not taking place, but do not exceed the specified limits, indicating poor air renewal. Experimental data obtained from the residence indicate firstly that NOx, SO2 and O3 concentrations in the indoor environment depend directly on the outdoor levels as they presented the same diurnal variation, while the indoor values were lower than the outdoor ones. Surprisingly enough, the total VOCs concentrations in the living room presented high values when windows were kept open indicating strong presence of outdoor sources. Furthermore, activities such as cooking, cleaning, smoking and use of indoor air fresheners further increased the total VOCs levels. Regarding CO2 concentrations, they were almost constant indicating acceptable but not satisfactory renewal of the indoor air. Finally, PM10 concentration measurements were most of the time below the specified limits, with some exceptions mainly related to window opening and cooking.

Writing with an Ear to the Ground: The Armenian Genocide's "Stubborn Murmur"

Writing with an Ear to the Ground: The Armenian Genocide's "Stubborn Murmur"