We study the following balls and bins stochastic game between a player and an adversary: there are B bins and a sequence of ball arrival and extraction events. In an arrival event a ball is stored in an empty bin chosen by the adversary and discarded if no bin is empty. In an extraction event, an algorithm selects a bin, clears it, and gains its content. We are interested in analyzing the gain ...

In 1997 Ron Davis, Tobacco Control’s inaugural editor, and I wrote an editorial titled Smoking in movies: is it a problem? Since then, a growing body of research has examined the relation between viewing of movies containing depictions of smoking and subsequent smoking among youth. Reviewing this evidence, a 2008 National Cancer Institute monograph concluded ‘‘The depiction of cigarette smoking...

A transition in the approach to anemia management in nephrology occurred when randomized trials demonstrated that higher hemoglobin targets do not result in better outcomes and may arguably cause harm. Contradicting the speculative conclusions drawn based on earlier observational data, this has resulted in hypotheses regarding the cause of these seemingly disparate but substantively similar mes...

Aneurysmal portohepatic venous shunt is communication between the branches of portal and hepatic veins that shows aneurysmal dilatation. They are rare. However with advances in cross-sectional imaging techniques and increased utilization of imaging modalities, the detection of asymptomatic intrahepatic portosystemic venous shunts has increased. Identification and characterization of the portosy...

Groundwater contamination is a serious problem that is growing in the United States, but its true extent is not known and it is difficult to determine because of the complexities of contaminants, their transformation, and fate in groundwater systems. It is also difficult to predict their movement in groundwater. Since we know that the problem is serious and that our needs for groundwater will g...