The level of sequence similarity that implies similarity in protein structure is well established. Recently, many groups proposed thresholds for similarity in sequence implying similarity in enzymatic function. All previous results suggest the strong conservation of enzymatic function above levels of 50% pairwise sequence identity. Here, I argue that all groups substantially overestimated the c...

Women began contesting the 3000 m steeplechase during the 1990's using barriers of different dimensions than men. Whenever a new event is introduced for women, consideration should be taken as to whether different technique or training methods should be utilized. This study investigated three aspects of hurdling technique: 1) Differences in the ratio of the landing step to the penultimate step ...

The American College of Cardiology Foundation and the American Heart Association have jointly produced clinical practice guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases since 1980. Writing committees are charged with assessing the evidence as an independent group of authors and with developing, updating, or revising recommendations for clinical practice. Practice guidelines ar...

OzSort is a fast and stable external sorting software specifically optimized for the requirements of the 2009 PennySort (Indy) benchmark. OzSort can sort over 246GB of data for under a penny, using a standard desktop PC. The data sorted consisted of 100 byte records with (random) keys of length 10 bytes starting from the first byte of each record. In this paper, we apply our OzSort software and...

We present distance oracles for weighted undirected graphs that return distances of stretch less than 2. For the realistic case of sparse graphs, our distance oracles exhibit a smooth three-way trade-off between space, stretch and query time — a phenomenon that does not occur in dense graphs. In particular, for any positive integer t and for any 1 ≤ α ≤ n, our distance oracle is of size O(m + n...

Distal protection devices appear seductively simple, elegant, and beneficial to both physicians and patients. Why would you not want to use something called “distal protection?” To not use “distal protection” during carotid angioplasty and stent placement (CAS) sounds irresponsible, like not practicing “safe sex.” In a simple world, distal protection devices would do exactly what their name imp...

The dominant (though contested) wisdom among international relations scholars is that military officers tend to be more cautious than their civilian counterparts about initiating the use of force. Sobered by the experience of combat, the theory holds, soldiers are hesitant to recommend military action except under the most favorable of circumstances. It might be the case, however, that military...