The average American generates approximately 4.5 pounds of garbage per day, for a total of 196 million tons of trash per year, most of which ends up in landfills (Shortridge, 1993). Various government and private programs have been organized to divert part of this garbage (metals, plastics, paper and cardboard, and yard and food wastes) from landfills by recycling. Yard and food wastes often ar...

Several studies tested whether partner-focused prayer shifts individuals toward cooperative tendencies and forgiveness. In Studies 1 and 2, participants who prayed more frequently for their partner were rated by objective coders as less vengeful. Study 3 showed that, compared to partners of targets in the positive partner thought condition, the romantic partners of targets assigned to pray repo...

Seaport terminals recognise the need to change current practices in order to improve regional air quality while enhancing their terminals’ competitiveness. One area that terminals can do better at is to improve their yard crane operations and in turn reduce the trucks in-terminal delay. This study examines various container rehandling strategies by the yard cranes with the goal of improving the...

To the Editor: A recent important study1 addressing the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors in a rural African population, reports that ‘... most participants followed a physically inactive lifestyle’. The validity of their findings is difficult to evaluate as the study provides little information regarding the physical activity questionnaire that was used. Questionnaire validity is relev...

This paper discusses a case study of the board game of Scotland Yard from a computational perspective. Interestingly, Scotland Yard is a genuine “playgame” with imperfect information. For reasons not completely clear to me, games with imperfect information have escaped the interest of researchers in Algorithmic combinatorial gametheory. I show by means of a powerset argument, that Scotland Yard...

In this paper, a method integrating Q-learning algorithm and simulation technique is proposed to optimize the operation scheduling in container terminals. Firstly Q-learning algorithms for yard cranes and yard trailers are designed to obtain the optimal scheduling strategy of yard cranes and yard trailers. Then Q-learning is combined with simulation to develop an integrating scheduling model in...

OBJECTIVE This report presents selected estimates of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use among U.S. adults, using data from the 2002 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). METHODS Data for the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population were collected using comput...

CONTEXT Various predictors have been used to predict diabetic patients who are likely to have increased ventilatory hours and an increased length of stay (LOS) in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) as well as in the hospital after undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery, for example, glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c). The authors propose a simple bed-side test, i.e., the prayer sign ...

Since ancient times, a strong and pervasive belief in the efficacy of prayer–for the living and the dead–reinforces the notion that consciousness is not limited to the physical body. Not only do traditions throughout the world share a belief that prayers may in some way help (or invoke help from) deceased ancestors, many cultures throughout history have believed that prayer can bring about chan...