A central issue in the controversy surrounding the death penalty is the A~I t , I C t question of deterrence. Specifically, does the additional severity of capital punishment over life imprisonment serve to deter potential criminals? I attempt to deal with this question by separating the effects of severity of punishment from those o f certainty o f punishment by examining various woys in which these factors have been manipulated in the attempt to curb the incidence of skyjacking. I conclude that increasing the certainty o f punishment results in a decrease in crime, whereas increasing the severity does not, in effect arguing against the necessity of the death penulty.

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Views of the creation and maintenance of social problems have largely omitted the influence of government agencies. An examination of one behavior (teenage drinking) reveals efforts by one government agency (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism) to generate a social problem in the face of evidence which belies the inflammatory rhetoric. The difficulties of community agencies and parents of teenage drinkers in responding to the federal campaign exemplify the questionable nature of the government claims.

Previous studies have demonstrated some tumors develop or maintain a small sub-population of cells with stem cell-like properties. This Cancer Stem Cells (CSC) may exhibit differential properties that allow their escape from traditional radiation or chemotherapy treatments and may therefore be responsible for cancer recurrence. Few studies have explored this phenomenon among oral cancer cell lines, therefore the objective of this study was to examine multiple oral cancer cell lines to determine if any or all contained subpopulations of CSCs. Multiple commercially available Oral Squamous Carcinoma Cell (OSCC) lines were obtained for this study, including SCC15, SCC25 and CAL27. Cells were cultured for CSC screening and isolation. RNA was isolated from any potential CSC isolates for biomarker screening and verification. All OSCC lines examined developed adhesion-independent tumor spheres (AiTS), a characteristic phenotype of oral CSC. Each AiTS was manually isolated for separate, independent culture and analysis. RNA extracted from the AiTS revealed differential expression of specific CSC markers, including CD44, CD133, ABCG, CXCR6 and NANOG. These biomarkers were not observed in RNA extracted from the remaining non-CSC cell cultures. Although a previous study from this group successfully isolated AiTS from one cervical and one oral cancer cell line, this may be the first study to isolate CSC from multiple oral cancer cell lines and verify both cell-surface and intracellular CSC biomarkers. These results may suggest that many tumors and oral cancers could harbor AiTS and CSC and that screening for these sub-populations may provide guidance for treatment and therapy to improve oral cancer survival rates.