Healthcare Coverage in the United States and New York Metropolitan Area, 2009 - 2015

Introduction: This study examines trends regarding health insurance coverage in the United States along lines of sex, race/ethnicity, place of birth, and poverty status between 2009 and 2015. Methods: This study uses the American Community Survey PUMS (Public User Microdata Series) for the years 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015. These datasets were downloaded from the IPUMS USA website hosted by the University of Minnesota. The variables used in the study describe these populations in terms of sex, the four major race/ethnic groups (non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, Latino, and Asian), being born either within the United States or abroad, and being either above or below the poverty line. The key distinctions within concern those in the “having no health insurance” and “having at least some health insurance” categories. Results: Across all metrics, the percentage of uninsured individuals decreased between 2009 and 2015. Some slight percentage increases in uninsured occurred between 2009 and 2011. In many cases, the greatest percentage decreases in uninsured took place between 2013 and 2015. Across all metrics, the percentage of uninsured individuals decreased between 2009 and 2015. Some slight percentage increases in uninsured occurred between 2009 and 2011. In many cases, the greatest percentage decreases in uninsured took place between 2013 and 2015. Discussion: While these findings indicate a largely positive trend for the first decade after the Great Recession and for the first year after enactment of the American Affordable Care Act, further study is required before the causative factors can be stated with any certainty. Readers interested in exploring the causative factors are recommended to the Conclusion of this report for a discussion of the directions in which further research should be carried

Advanced information processing system: Inter-computer communication services

The purpose is to document the functional requirements and detailed specifications for the Inter-Computer Communications Services (ICCS) of the Advanced Information Processing System (AIPS). An introductory section is provided to outline the overall architecture and functional requirements of the AIPS and to present an overview of the ICCS. An overview of the AIPS architecture as well as a brief description of the AIPS software is given. The guarantees of the ICCS are provided, and the ICCS is described as a seven-layered International Standards Organization (ISO) Model. The ICCS functional requirements, functional design, and detailed specifications as well as each layer of the ICCS are also described. A summary of results and suggestions for future work are presented

Predictions of household water affordability under conditions of climate change, demographic growth, and fresh groundwater depletion in a southwest US city indicate increasing burdens on the poor

Reduced river flows and groundwater depletion as a result of climate change and population growth have increased the effort and difficulty accessing and processing water. In turn, residential water costs from municipal utilities are predicted to rise to unaffordable rates for poor residential water customers. Building on a regional conjunctive use model with future climate scenarios and 50-year future water supply plans, our study communicates the effects of climate change on poor people in El Paso, Texas, as water becomes more difficult and expensive to obtain in future years. Four scenarios for future water supply and future water costs were delineated based on expected impacts of climate change and groundwater depletion. Residential water use was calculated by census tract in El Paso, using basic needs indoor water use and evaporative cooling use as determinants of household water consumption. Based on household size and income data from the US Census, fraction of household income spent on water was determined. Results reveal that in the future, basic water supply will be a significant burden for 40% of all households in El Paso. Impacts are geographically concentrated in poor census tracts. Our study revealed that negative impacts from water resource depletion and increasing populations in El Paso will lead to costly and difficult water for El Paso water users. We provide an example of how to connect future resource scenarios, including those affected by climate change, to challenges of affordability for vulnerable consumers

Results of the MRI substudy of the intravenous magnesium efficacy in stroke trial

<p><b>Background and Purpose:</b>Although magnesium is neuroprotective in animal stroke models, no clinical benefit was confirmed in the Intravenous Magnesium Efficacy in Stroke (IMAGES) trial of acute stroke patients. The Magnetic Resonance in IMAGES (MR IMAGES) substudy investigated the effects of magnesium on the imaging surrogate outcome of infarct growth.</p> <p><b>Methods:</b> IMAGES trial patients in participating centers were randomized to receive either intravenous magnesium or placebo within 12 hours of stroke onset. Infarct growth was defined as volume difference between baseline diffusion-weighted imaging and day 90 fluid-attenuated inversion recovery image lesions. Patients who died were imputed the largest infarct growth observed.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> Among the 90 patients included in the primary analysis, there was no difference in infarct growth (median absolute growth, P=0.639; median percentage growth, P=0.616; proportion with any growth, P=0.212) between the 46 treated with magnesium and 44 with placebo. Infarct growth correlated with NIHSS score change from baseline to day 90. There was a trend showing baseline serum glucose correlated with infarct growth with magnesium treatment, but not in the placebo group. The mismatch frequency was reduced from 73% to 47% by increasing the mismatch threshold from >20% to >100% of core volume.</p> <p><b>Conclusions:</b> Infarct growth, confirmed here as a surrogate for clinical progression, was similar between magnesium and placebo treatment, paralleling the main IMAGES trial clinical outcomes. Glucose was a covariate for infarct growth with magnesium treatment. A more stringent mismatch threshold to define penumbra more appropriately would have excluded half of the patients in this 12-hour time window stroke study.</p&gt

Advanced information processing system for advanced launch system: Avionics architecture synthesis

The Advanced Information Processing System (AIPS) is a fault-tolerant distributed computer system architecture that was developed to meet the real time computational needs of advanced aerospace vehicles. One such vehicle is the Advanced Launch System (ALS) being developed jointly by NASA and the Department of Defense to launch heavy payloads into low earth orbit at one tenth the cost (per pound of payload) of the current launch vehicles. An avionics architecture that utilizes the AIPS hardware and software building blocks was synthesized for ALS. The AIPS for ALS architecture synthesis process starting with the ALS mission requirements and ending with an analysis of the candidate ALS avionics architecture is described

Radio Galaxy Zoo: Knowledge Transfer Using Rotationally Invariant Self-Organising Maps

With the advent of large scale surveys the manual analysis and classification of individual radio source morphologies is rendered impossible as existing approaches do not scale. The analysis of complex morphological features in the spatial domain is a particularly important task. Here we discuss the challenges of transferring crowdsourced labels obtained from the Radio Galaxy Zoo project and introduce a proper transfer mechanism via quantile random forest regression. By using parallelized rotation and flipping invariant Kohonen-maps, image cubes of Radio Galaxy Zoo selected galaxies formed from the FIRST radio continuum and WISE infrared all sky surveys are first projected down to a two-dimensional embedding in an unsupervised way. This embedding can be seen as a discretised space of shapes with the coordinates reflecting morphological features as expressed by the automatically derived prototypes. We find that these prototypes have reconstructed physically meaningful processes across two channel images at radio and infrared wavelengths in an unsupervised manner. In the second step, images are compared with those prototypes to create a heat-map, which is the morphological fingerprint of each object and the basis for transferring the user generated labels. These heat-maps have reduced the feature space by a factor of 248 and are able to be used as the basis for subsequent ML methods. Using an ensemble of decision trees we achieve upwards of 85.7% and 80.7% accuracy when predicting the number of components and peaks in an image, respectively, using these heat-maps. We also question the currently used discrete classification schema and introduce a continuous scale that better reflects the uncertainty in transition between two classes, caused by sensitivity and resolution limits

Advanced information processing system: The Army fault tolerant architecture conceptual study. Volume 1: Army fault tolerant architecture overview

Digital computing systems needed for Army programs such as the Computer-Aided Low Altitude Helicopter Flight Program and the Armored Systems Modernization (ASM) vehicles may be characterized by high computational throughput and input/output bandwidth, hard real-time response, high reliability and availability, and maintainability, testability, and producibility requirements. In addition, such a system should be affordable to produce, procure, maintain, and upgrade. To address these needs, the Army Fault Tolerant Architecture (AFTA) is being designed and constructed under a three-year program comprised of a conceptual study, detailed design and fabrication, and demonstration and validation phases. Described here are the results of the conceptual study phase of the AFTA development. Given here is an introduction to the AFTA program, its objectives, and key elements of its technical approach. A format is designed for representing mission requirements in a manner suitable for first order AFTA sizing and analysis, followed by a discussion of the current state of mission requirements acquisition for the targeted Army missions. An overview is given of AFTA's architectural theory of operation

Advanced information processing system: The Army fault tolerant architecture conceptual study. Volume 2: Army fault tolerant architecture design and analysis

Described here is the Army Fault Tolerant Architecture (AFTA) hardware architecture and components and the operating system. The architectural and operational theory of the AFTA Fault Tolerant Data Bus is discussed. The test and maintenance strategy developed for use in fielded AFTA installations is presented. An approach to be used in reducing the probability of AFTA failure due to common mode faults is described. Analytical models for AFTA performance, reliability, availability, life cycle cost, weight, power, and volume are developed. An approach is presented for using VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL) to describe and design AFTA's developmental hardware. A plan is described for verifying and validating key AFTA concepts during the Dem/Val phase. Analytical models and partial mission requirements are used to generate AFTA configurations for the TF/TA/NOE and Ground Vehicle missions

Individual tree biomass equations or biomass expansion factors for assessment of carbon stock changes in living biomass - A comparative study

AbstractSignatory countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its supplementary Kyoto Protocol (KP) are obliged to report greenhouse gas emissions and removals. Changes in the carbon stock of living biomass should be reported using either the default or stock change methods of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) under the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry sector. Traditionally, volume estimates are used as a forestry measures. Changes in living biomass may be assessed by first estimating the change in the volume of stem wood and then converting this volume to whole tree biomass using biomass expansion factors (BEFs). However, this conversion is often non-trivial because the proportion of stem wood increases with tree size at the expense of branches, foliage, stump and roots. Therefore, BEFs typically vary over time and their use may result in biased estimates. The objective of this study was to evaluate differences between biomass estimates obtained using biomass equations and BEFs with particular focus on uncertainty analysis. Assuming that the development of tree fractions in different ways can be handled by individual biomass equations, BEFs for standing stock were shown to overestimate the biomass sink capacity (Sweden). Although estimates for BEFs derived for changes in stock were found to be unbiased, the estimated BEFs varied substantially over time (0.85–1.22ton CO2/m3). However, to some extent this variation may be due to random sampling errors rather than actual changes. The highest accuracy was obtained for estimates based on biomass equations for different tree fractions, applied to data from the Swedish National Forest Inventory using a permanent sample design (estimated change in stock 1990–2005: 420million tons CO2, with a standard error amounting to 26.7million tons CO2) Many countries have adopted such a design combined with the stock change method for reporting carbon stock changes under the UNFCCC/KP