Who Pays? Who Benefits? Unfairness in American Health Care

American-style health insurance greatly amplifies price-gouging opportunities for health care providers, who inflate prices both to enrich themselves and to subsidize and expand the nation’s health care enterprise. To the extent that lower- and middle-income Americans with private health coverage pay premiums that go to support and expand the system, they are subject to an unfair (regressive) “head tax” levied by unaccountable entities for ostensibly public but also private purposes. Lower-income premium payers also often pay for costly health coverage designed to suit the economic interests and values of professional and other elites rather than their own. They also appear to get less as a group out of their employers’ health plans than their higher-income coworkers. How the cost burdens and benefits of Americans’ health care are distributed has not been sufficiently recognized as the fundamental issue of social justice that it is - even after the major reform legislation of 2010

Distributive Injustice(s) in American Health Care

Havighurst and Richman seek to show the nature--and to suggest the cumulative attitude--of the many regressive tendencies of the financing, regulatory and legal regime governing the private side of US health care

General purpose airborne simulator - Conceptual design report

General purpose airborne simulator with capabilities for model controlled and response feedback types of variable stability operatio

A possible radiation-resistant solar cell geometry using superlattices

A solar cell structure is proposed which uses a GaAs nipi doping superlattice. An important feature of this structure is that photogenerated minority carriers are very quickly collected in a time shorter than bulk lifetime in the fairly heavily doped n and p layers and these carriers are then transported parallel to the superlattice layers to selective ohmic contacts. Assuming that these already-separated carriers have very long recombination lifetimes, due to their across an indirect bandgap in real space, it is argued that the proposed structure may exhibit superior radiation tolerance along with reasonably high beginning-of-life efficiency

Multigrid Algorithms for Domain-Wall Fermions

We describe an adaptive multigrid algorithm for solving inverses of the domain-wall fermion operator. Our multigrid algorithm uses an adaptive projection of near-null vectors of the domain-wall operator onto coarser four-dimensional lattices. This extension of multigrid techniques to a chiral fermion action will greatly reduce overall computation cost, and the elimination of the fifth dimension in the coarse space reduces the relative cost of using chiral fermions compared to discarding this symmetry. We demonstrate near-elimination of critical slowing as the quark mass is reduced and small volume dependence, which may be suppressed by taking advantage of the recursive nature of the algorithm.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures. Proceedings of the XXIX International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory - Lattice 2011, July 10-16, 2011, Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe, Californi

Structure and evolution of chlorate reduction composite transposons.

UnlabelledThe genes for chlorate reduction in six bacterial strains were analyzed in order to gain insight into the metabolism. A newly isolated chlorate-reducing bacterium (Shewanella algae ACDC) and three previously isolated strains (Ideonella dechloratans, Pseudomonas sp. strain PK, and Dechloromarinus chlorophilus NSS) were genome sequenced and compared to published sequences (Alicycliphilus denitrificans BC plasmid pALIDE01 and Pseudomonas chloritidismutans AW-1). De novo assembly of genomes failed to join regions adjacent to genes involved in chlorate reduction, suggesting the presence of repeat regions. Using a bioinformatics approach and finishing PCRs to connect fragmented contigs, we discovered that chlorate reduction genes are flanked by insertion sequences, forming composite transposons in all four newly sequenced strains. These insertion sequences delineate regions with the potential to move horizontally and define a set of genes that may be important for chlorate reduction. In addition to core metabolic components, we have highlighted several such genes through comparative analysis and visualization. Phylogenetic analysis places chlorate reductase within a functionally diverse clade of type II dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) reductases, part of a larger family of enzymes with reactivity toward chlorate. Nucleotide-level forensics of regions surrounding chlorite dismutase (cld), as well as its phylogenetic clustering in a betaproteobacterial Cld clade, indicate that cld has been mobilized at least once from a perchlorate reducer to build chlorate respiration.ImportanceGenome sequencing has identified, for the first time, chlorate reduction composite transposons. These transposons are constructed with flanking insertion sequences that differ in type and orientation between organisms, indicating that this mobile element has formed multiple times and is important for dissemination. Apart from core metabolic enzymes, very little is known about the genetic factors involved in chlorate reduction. Comparative analysis has identified several genes that may also be important, but the relative absence of accessory genes suggests that this mobile metabolism relies on host systems for electron transport, regulation, and cofactor synthesis. Phylogenetic analysis of Cld and ClrA provides support for the hypothesis that chlorate reduction was built multiple times from type II dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) reductases and cld. In at least one case, cld has been coopted from a perchlorate reduction island for this purpose. This work is a significant step toward understanding the genetics and evolution of chlorate reduction

Equity of access to adult hospice inpatient care within north-west England.

There is a growing debate about the question of equity of access to hospice and palliative care services. Even countries with relatively well developed palliative care systems are considered to have problems of access and inequity of provision. Despite these concerns, we still lack a relevant evidence base to serve as a guide to action. We present an analysis of access to adult hospice inpatient provision in the north-west region of England that employs Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Measures of the possible demand for, and supply of, hospice inpatient services are used to determine the potential accessibility of cancer patients, assessed at the level of small areas (electoral wards). Further, the use of deprivation scores permits an analysis of the equity of access to adult inpatient hospice care, leading to the identification of areas where additional service provision may be warranted. Our research is subject to a number of caveats�it is limited to inpatient hospice provision and does not include other kinds of inpatient and community-based palliative care services. Likewise, we recognise that not everyone with cancer will require palliative care and also that palliative care needs exist among those with nonmalignant conditions. Nevertheless, our methodology is one that can also be applied more generally

Prospective cognitions in anxiety and depression: Replication and methodological extension

The present study presents a replication and methodological extension of MacLeod, Tata, Kentish, and Jacobsen (1997) with a nonclinical sample, using future-directed imagery to assess prospective cognitions. Results showed that only anxiety (but not depression) was related to enhanced imagery for future negative events. Both anxiety and depression showed significant zero-order correlations with reduced imagery for future positive events. However, when the overlap between anxiety and depression was controlled for, only depression (but not anxiety) showed a unique association with reduced imagery for positive events. Implications of these findings for cognitive models of anxiety and depression are discussed

Final-state interactions and superscaling in the semi-relativistic approach to quasielastic electron and neutrino scattering

The semi-relativistic approach to electron and neutrino quasielastic scattering from nuclei is extended to include final-state interactions. Starting with the usual non-relativistic continuum shell model, the problem is relativized by using the semi-relativistic expansion of the current in powers of the initial nucleon momentum and relativistic kinematics. Two different approaches are considered for the final-state interactions: the Smith-Wambach 2p-2h damping model and the Dirac-equation-based potential extracted from a relativistic mean-field plus the Darwin factor. Using the latter the scaling properties of $(e,e')$ and $(\nu_\mu,\mu^-)$ cross sections for intermediate momentum transfers are investigated.Comment: 36 pages, 17 figure