Ten years ago, when a team of researchers led by Claire Gmachl and Federico Capasso at Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill, NJ) grabbed the cover of Science magazine with a paper on “bow-tie” microcavity lasers, they also uncovered what one of their coauthors, A. Douglas Stone of Yale University (New Haven, CT), described as an “embarrassing” theoretical limitation. Now Stone and another team have d...

It is well known that model parameters are not invariant to shifts in policy regimes. Since Lucas' excellent paper on the subject, economists have paid lip service to the problems raised by regime shifts. Most policy analyses, however, ranging from columns in national magazines and newspapers to more formal work, continue to use models whose parameters are implicitly assumed to be immune to reg...

Unemployment figures released last week, however, suggest that the economic recovery is running into trouble. Instead of declining, as the president promised, the rate of unemployment is increasing. This poses a serious challenge to Mr. Lagos, who promised during his 1999 campaign that 200,000 new jobs would be created this year. At 10.2%, up from 9.4%, the unemployment rate is an embarrassment...

The discussion of cosmological parameters used to be a source of embarrassment to cosmologists. Today, measurements of the cosmological parameters are leading the way into the era of precision cosmology. The CMB temperature is measured to four significant figures, T0 = 2.7277± 0.002K; the Hubble constant is now determined with a reliable error estimate, H0 = (65± 5) km secMpc; the mass density ...

BACKGROUND Psoriasis is a chronic dermatosis of unknown etiology with a tendency to relapse after treatment. The disease is frequently linked to psychological stress due to the embarrassment caused by the lesions. OBJECTIVE To analyze the stress level presented by psoriasis patients followed at the Dermatology Service of a public hospital in Salvador, Bahia state, Brazil. METHODS A cross-se...

THE controversy over prescribing drugs by their trade or approved names is a source of embarrassment to teachers of therapeutics like myselfwho have, for many years, taught medical students and young doctors to prescribe by approved names, leaving the choice of preparation to the pharmacist, on the assumption that 'the drug is the same'. Today we have to eat our words and recognize, in Sir Phil...

Despite decades of research establishing the causes and consequences of emotions in the laboratory, we know surprisingly little about emotions in everyday life. We developed a smartphone application that monitored real-time emotions of an exceptionally large (N = 11,000+) and heterogeneous participants sample. People's everyday life seems profoundly emotional: participants experienced at least ...

OBJECTIVES To assess the knowledge of laypersons about contraceptive methods and to pilot an educational strategy. DESIGN Cross-sectional survey using an anonymous questionnaire followed by an educational intervention. PARTICIPANTS A total of 167 respondents to 400 invitations. METHOD A questionnaire with 10 questions about contraceptive methods was answered before a meeting between laype...

Parental communication and support is associated with improved developmental, health and behavioral outcomes in adolescence. This study explores the quality of mother-daughter communication about sexual maturation, abstinence and unintended pregnancy in Korogocho, an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. We use data from 14 focus group discussions (n = 124) and 25 interviews with girls aged 12...

The purpose of this study is to investigate religious features of curanderismo, specifically the role of ostensibly Roman Catholic beliefs and practices in the training and work of curandero/as. The integration of religious beliefs and practices within the rituals of curanderismo and how this potential clash of worldviews negatively and positively impacts clients and practitioners are examined....