The Impact of the Medicare Drug Benefit on Health Care Spending by Older Households

This report uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey from 2004 to 2006 as well as data from the Congressional Budget Office to analyze the savings in prescription drug spending for seniors as a result of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA). The results show that the 1st income quintile of seniors experienced a fall in the rate of expenditures for prescription drugs and the 2nd income quintile saw a slowing of the rate of increase in expenditures. However, senior households in the middle- and upper-income quintiles saw a rise in expenditures for prescription drugs.medicare, prescription drugs, MMA, senior citizens, health care

Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Unbound Philanthropy Supported Options Initiative: Evaluation of Phase One

The Supported Options Initiative is one element of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation's Social Justice programme, delivered in partnership with Unbound Philanthropy (the Foundations). The first phase of the Initiative ran for two years from 2012. Its strategic goal was to 'support and encourage migrant, youth and advice organisations to better understand, respond to and reach out to young and child migrants with irregular immigration status, and capture and share learning to improve practice and policy'. In addition, three priority outcomes were specified:- Better advice services to young migrants through holistic approaches to their advice, support and information needs (legal and social)- Improved provision of online information and support to young migrants- Increased understanding of the issues facing young people leaving the UK, forcibly or voluntarily, and piloting options to better support them

The Approximate Invariance of the Average Number of Connections for the Continuum Percolation of Squares at Criticality

We perform Monte Carlo simulations to determine the average excluded area $$of randomly oriented squares, randomly oriented widthless sticks and aligned squares in two dimensions. We find significant differences between our results for randomly oriented squares and previous analytical results for the same. The sources of these differences are explained. Using our results for$$ and Monte Carlo simulation results for the percolation threshold, we estimate the mean number of connections per object $B_c$ at the percolation threshold for squares in 2-D. We study systems of squares that are allowed random orientations within a specified angular interval. Our simulations show that the variation in $B_c$ is within 1.6% when the angular interval is varied from 0 to $\pi/2$

Meeting the evil god challenge

The evil god challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years. It is apt to be understood as a parody argument: a wholly evil, omnipotent, and omniscient God is absurd, as both theists and atheists will agree. But according to the challenge, belief in evil God is about as reasonable as belief in a wholly good, omnipotent, and omniscient God; the two hypotheses are roughly epistemically symmetrical. Given this symmetry thesis belief in an evil god and belief in a good god are taken to be similarly preposterous. In this paper we argue that the challenge can be met, suggesting why the three symmetries that need to hold between evil God and good God – intrinsic, natural theology and theodicy symmetries – can all be broken. As such, we take it that the evil God challenge can be met

Pretty Little Baby

With Ukulele accompaniment. Contains advertisements and/or short musical examples of pieces being sold by publisher.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/6906/thumbnail.jp

Anthropometric and physical characteristics of english academy rugby league players.

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the anthropometric and physical characteristics of English academy rugby league players by annual-age category (under 16s-under 20s) and between backs and forwards. Data were collected on 133 academy players over a 6-year period (resulting in a total of 257 assessments). Player assessments comprised of anthropometric (height, body mass, sum of 4 skinfolds) and physical (vertical jump, 10- and 20-m sprint, estimated V[Combining Dot Above]O2max via the yo-yo intermittent recovery test level 1, absolute 1 repetition maximum [1RM], and relative squat, bench press, and prone row) measures. Univariate analysis of variance demonstrated significant (p ≤ 0.05) increases in height, body mass, vertical jump, absolute, and relative strength measures across the 5 annual-age categories (e.g., body mass: under 16s = 75.2 ± 11.1, under 20s = 88.9 ± 8.5 kg; vertical jump: under 16s = 45.7 ± 5.2, under 20s = 52.8 ± 5.4 cm; 1RM bench press: under 16s = 73.9 ± 13.2, under 20s = 114.3 ± 15.3 kg). Independent t-tests identified significant (p ≤ 0.05) differences between backs and forwards for anthropometric (e.g., under 16s body mass: backs = 68.4 ± 8.6, forwards = 80.9 ± 9.7 kg) and physical (e.g., under 19s 20-m sprint: backs = 3.04 ± 0.08, forwards = 3.14 ± 0.12s; under 18s relative squat: backs = 1.65 ± 0.18, forwards = 1.51 ± 0.17 kg·kg) characteristics that were dependent on the age category and measure assessed. Findings highlight that anthropometric and physical characteristics develop across annual-age categories and between backs and forwards in academy rugby league players. These findings provide comparative data for such populations and support the need to monitor player development in junior rugby league players

Carcanet Press Email Preservation Project

Collecting institutions are increasingly facing the challenge of preserving `born digital' material when acquiring recent and contemporary archives. Interim solutions like printing important documents and correspondence to paper are clearly not feasible in the long-term. One of the most important modern archives held by the John Rylands Library is that of Carcanet Press, one of the UK's premier poetry publishing houses. Correspondence with famous poets, critics, editors, translators and artists forms one of the most important elements of this archive. Most of this correspondence is now conducted by email, with the result that the quantity of hard copy correspondence acquired in annual accruals to the archive has diminished significantly. It is therefore vital that libraries like the John Rylands Library are able to preserve these emails in digital form, in order to ensure that this invaluable primary research material is not lost to the archival record. This project aimed to tackle the challenge of capturing and preserving the email archive of Carcanet Press. Basing our work on both traditional archival practice and digital preservation standards, we used this email archive as a test-bed for practical digital preservation. We tested and assessed existing tools for metadata extraction, validation, migration, packaging and ingest. We also explored different long-term preservation formats for email to determine the most appropriate solution for our institutional context. Our preservation planning activities draw and build on the work of the InSPECT Project in identifying the `significant properties' of email. We also established documentation and workflows which can be adapted to deal with similar born-digital archives in the future. Due to data protection, sensitivity and copyright issues, our focus for this project was on preservation rather than access. However, we took into account and explored some of the ways in which researchers might access and use such a body of material in the future. This report sets out the project's findings