ABSTRACT
The purpose of this viewpoint is to discuss the risks associated with offering clinic-backed payment plans, with a particular focus on financial risks. We provide a financial calculator tool that clinics can use with their financial information to make more informed decisions about whether implementing clinic-backed payment plans are viable for them. Realistic but hypothetical financial information for a clinic is used to simulate financial evaluations, including cash flow budget analysis, multivariate sensitivity analysis, and risk assessment to help clinics better understand these evaluations. Our simulations show that even under high default rates, the revenue benefits outweigh the labor costs and could bring higher profitability to clinics while increasing access to care for clients and patients.
Subject(s)
Veterinary Medicine , Veterinary Medicine/economicsABSTRACT
Pursuing one's life calling can be personally fulfilling and professionally rewarding, but it also requires sacrifice. We provide evidence of a strong vocational drive using veterinary students as a case study and find that they willingly contribute higher monetary donations for helping animals relative to students in other fields. We also find a significant reduction in the cognitive performance of veterinarian students when exposed to an animal-in-need manipulation. The performance of non-veterinary students in the cognitive task is unaffected by the manipulation. Our results highlight the need for programs to address the economic, financial, and mental health well-being of students and professionals to promote sustainable vocational career commitment. "You owe it to all of us to get on with what you're good at." W.H. Auden.
Subject(s)
Education, Veterinary , Population Health , Veterinarians , Animals , Humans , Veterinarians/psychology , Students/psychology , Mental Health , OccupationsABSTRACT
This article studies the stability of risk-preference during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results differ between risk-preference measurements and also men and women. We use March 13, 2020, when President Trump declared a national state of emergency as a time anchor to define the pre-pandemic and on-pandemic periods. The pre-pandemic experiment was conducted on February 21, 2020. There are three on-pandemic rounds conducted 10 days, 15 days, and 20 days after the COVID-19 emergency declaration. We include four different risk-preference measures. Men are more sensitive to the pandemic and become more risk-averse based on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). Women become more risk-averse in the Social and Experience Seeking domains based on the results from the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) and Sensation Seeking Scales (SSS). Both men's and women's risk-preference are stable during COVID-19 based on a Gamble Choice (GC) task. The results match our hypotheses which are based on the discussion about whether the psychological construct of risk-preference is general or domain-specific. The differential outcomes between incentivized behavioral and self-reported propensity measures of risk-preference in our experiment show the caveats for studies using a single measure to test risk-preference changes during COVID-19.
ABSTRACT
The single crystals of two novel copper(ii)-based complexes containing l-methioninol-derived Schiff bases were obtained and characterized. The nanoparticles of these complexes were prepared and their cellular uptake was measured in MDA-MB-231 cells and HUVECs. It was found that these complexes could remarkably induce apoptosis, inhibit proliferation, suppress migration and metastasis, and inhibit angiogenesis and the growth of triple-negative breast cancer derived from MDA-MB-231 cells in vitro. Meanwhile, these complexes exhibit anticancer and antiangiogenic functions by activating the important protein molecules VEGFR2, FAK, AKT and Erk1/2 or their phosphorylated molecules p-VEGFR2, p-FAK, p-AKT, and p-Erk1/2 in the VEGF/VEGFR2 signaling pathway, collapsing the mitochondrial membrane potential, and damaging the level of reactive oxygen species.
Subject(s)
Antineoplastic Agents/pharmacology , Breast Neoplasms/drug therapy , Coordination Complexes/pharmacology , Copper/pharmacology , Nanoparticles/chemistry , Protein Kinase Inhibitors/pharmacology , Antineoplastic Agents/chemical synthesis , Antineoplastic Agents/chemistry , Apoptosis/drug effects , Breast Neoplasms/metabolism , Breast Neoplasms/pathology , Cell Proliferation/drug effects , Cell Survival/drug effects , Coordination Complexes/chemical synthesis , Coordination Complexes/chemistry , Copper/chemistry , Crystallography, X-Ray , Drug Screening Assays, Antitumor , Female , Humans , Models, Molecular , Molecular Structure , Particle Size , Protein Kinase Inhibitors/chemical synthesis , Protein Kinase Inhibitors/chemistry , Signal Transduction/drug effects , Surface Properties , Tumor Cells, Cultured , Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A/antagonists & inhibitors , Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A/metabolism , Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Receptor-2/antagonists & inhibitors , Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Receptor-2/metabolismABSTRACT
Three novel single crystals of the metal-based complexes Cu-1, Cu-2, and Co-1 were obtained and characterized. Compared with Cu-2 and Co-1, Cu-1 showed remarkable activities of anti-cervical cancer, anti-cisplatin-resistant non-small cell lung cancer and anti-angiogenesis by downregulating the expressions of important proteins in the VEGF/VEGFR2 signaling pathway to inhibit angiogenesis and cancer cell proliferation, induce apoptosis, and suppress migration and metastasis. Moreover, Cu-1 dramatically inhibited the expression of the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 and up-regulated the expressions of the proapoptotic proteins caspase-9 and Bax to induce the apoptosis of tumor cells, simultaneously decreasing the density of endothelial cells to inhibit tumor angiogenesis in cisplatin-resistant tumors.