Aims: Although recent advances in pharmacogenomics are making possible the use of genetic testing to determine the best medication for patients, little is known about how patients view such procedures. The aims for this study that were developed collaboratively as part of a community-academic partnership are: (1) What are the attitudes and perceptions of prescription drug consumers concerning personalized medicine and genetic testing for drug compatibility and how do they differ between African American and white patients? (2) What are the attitudes and perceptions of patients concerning race-based prescribing and how do they differ between African American and white patients? Methods: We conducted 6 focus groups, 2 with white participants and 4 with African American participants. Focus groups were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed to ascertain common themes. Results: Our results suggest that personalized medicine and genetic testing, though not well understood by lay persons, were considered positive advances in medicine. However, participants also voiced concerns about these advances that differed by race. Conclusion: This study points to the need to include perspectives of at-risk communities as we move toward wider use of this technology.

Aims: Although recent advances in pharmacogenomics are making possible the use of genetic testing to determine the best medication for patients, little is known about how patients view such procedures. The aims for this study that were developed collaboratively as part of a community-academic partnership are: (1) What are the attitudes and perceptions of prescription drug consumers concerning personalized medicine and genetic testing for drug compatibility and how do they differ between African American and white patients? (2) What are the attitudes and perceptions of patients concerning race-based prescribing and how do they differ between African American and white patients? Methods: We conducted 6 focus groups, 2 with white participants and 4 with African American participants. Focus groups were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed to ascertain common themes. Results: Our results suggest that personalized medicine and genetic testing, though not well understood by lay persons, were considered positive advances in medicine. However, participants also voiced concerns about these advances that differed by race. Conclusion: This study points to the need to include perspectives of at-risk communities as we move toward wider use of this technology.

Laser ion sources offer the possibility to have ion beams that can be useful as injector for particle accelerators. In this work, we studied the geometric quality of ion beams produced by the PLATONE accelerator. It is a LIS source and an electrostatic accelerator. It consists of ns pulsed KrF laser which works at the intensity of 108-1010 W/cm2 and a vacuum chamber where the ions are extracted from the plasma plume and accelerate by a double gap accelerating system. The accelerating voltage applied in DC mode was 60 kV. The beam characterization was performed by the Pepper Pot method with the use of radio-chromic films as sensible target. The measurements were performed by varying the geometric configuration of the anode (the extracting electrode) for the accelerating system. The lowest value found for the normalized emittance was 0.20 mm mrad.

In this work we present the preliminary investigations about the production of proton beams by pulsed laser ablation of solid disks produced by compressed Titanium dihydride powder. The laser we used was an excimer KrF, operating at low intensity and ns pulse duration. The ion emission was analyzed by the time-of-flight technique using a Faraday cup as ion collector. We performed studies on the produced plasma for different laser fluence values and accelerating voltage. In free expansion mode we obtained protons and titanium ions having kinetic energy of some hundred of eV; by applying a postaccelerating voltage we obtained beams up to 15 keV.

Laser ion sources offer the possibility to get ion beams utilizable to improve particle accelerators. Today many laboratories, as well as the LEAS, are involved to develop accelerators of very contained dimensions, easy to be installed in little laboratories and hospitals. Pulsed lasers at intensities of the order of 108 W/cm2 and of ns pulse duration, interacting with solid matter in vacuum, produce plasma of high temperature and density. The charge state distribution of the plasma generates high electric fields which accelerate ions along the normal to the target surface. The energy of emitted ions has a shifted Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution which depends on the ion charge state. To increase the ion energy, a post-acceleration system can be employed by means of high voltage power supplies of about 100 kV. The post acceleration system results a good method to obtain high ion currents using a not expensive system and the final ion beams find interesting applications in the field of the ion implantations, hadrontherapy, scientific applications and industrial use. In this work we study the electromagnetic and geometric proper-ties, like the emittance of the beams delivered by Cu target. Plasma‟s characterization was performed us-ing a Faraday cup for the electromagnetic characteris-tics, while for the geometric ones by adopting a pep-per pot system. Applying 60 kV of accelerating volt-age and a laser irradiance of 0.1 GW/cm2, we obtain 5.5 mA of output current and a normalized beam emittance of 0.2 π mm mrad. The brightness of the beams was 137 mA(p mm mrad)-2.