The cash market in health care: a community-based approach

Medical care

Temporal and spatial variability in speakers with Parkinson's Disease and Friedreich's Ataxia

Speech variability in groups of speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD) and with Friedreich's ataxia was compared with healthy controls. Speakers repeated the same phrase 20 times at one of two rates (fast or habitual). A non-linear analysis of variability was performed which used some of the principles behind the spatio-temporal index (STI). The STI usually employs variation in lip displacement over repetitions of the same utterance and a linear analysis of such signals is conducted to represent the combined variation in spatial and temporal control. When working with patients, audio measures (here we used speech energy) are preferred over kinematics ones as they are minimally disruptive to speech. Non-linear methods allow spatial variability to be estimated separately from temporal variability. The results are tentatively interpreted as showing that PD speakers were distinguished from healthy control speakers in spatial variability and ataxic speakers were distinguished from controls in temporal variability. These findings are consistent with the speech symptoms reported for these disorders. We conclude that the non-linear analysis using the speech energy measure is worth investigating further as it is potentially revealing of the differences underlying these two pathologies

Monitoring-Based Commissioning: Tracking the Evolution and Adoption of a Paradigm-Shifting Approach to Retro-Commissioning

Proceedings of the 2012 ACEEE Summer Study (Panel 4, Paper 1130). Monitoring-based commissioning (MBCx) emphasizes permanent energy performance metering and trending—for diagnosis of energy waste, for savings accounting, and to enable persistence of savings. Emphasis on monitoring represents a paradigm shift for the retro-commissioning (RCx) industry, which has traditionally relied upon test protocols and modeled savings estimates. Since 2004, a major monitoring-based commissioning program at twenty-five California university campuses has evolved to meet the changing needs of university and utility partners. More recently the monitoring-based approach has been adopted by third-party programs in California. We present information on the progression of program design and results for the multiple phases of the original program, along with a look at third-party and other programs adopting similar program features

Capping the Mortgage Interest Deduction

In this paper we examine the economic implications of several policy options for capping the mortgage interest deduction (MID). We extend the standard user–cost model of owner–occupied housing to include a cap on the mortgage size receiving tax–favored status. Our user–cost estimates for taxpayers with mortgages above the current–law cap are 4.41 percent higher than estimates from a model without the cap. We simulate the share of mortgage dollars that would be subject to three alternative cap policy variants and summarize the distributional impacts of each proposal, computing the share of mortgage dollars impacted across U.S. Metropolitan Areas

THE CANADA-U.S. FREE TRADE AGREEMENT AND CANADA'S AGRI-FOOD INDUSTRIES

International Relations/Trade,

The root of the problems of the British banks is the same as that of American banks: shaky mortgage-backed securities

Banks and banking - Great Britain ; Great Britain