A theory-based intervention to increase dental utilization by disadvantaged children.

Oral disease is the greatest unmet healthcare need of disadvantaged children in the United States, with only 20% of disadvantaged Medicaid-eligible children receiving routine dental care. Peter Margolis proposed a theoretical model of access to healthcare services and reported the effectiveness of a case manager intervention in increasing medical care utilization by disadvantaged mothers and infants. This study was based on Margolis\u27s theory and used a case manager to assist parents in obtaining dental care. Methods. The study was based on secondary analyses of data from the Parental Help Seeking for Dental Care project. The randomized, controlled intervention study was conducted with 202 parents/caregivers of Medicaid insured children in Louisville, Kentucky, from March 2004 to April 2005. The research questions were: (1) What is the direct effect of the intervention on dental care utilization? (2) Do contextual factors moderate the intervention effects on utilization? (3) What is the effect of the intervention on barriers? The primary dependent variable was dental care utilization and the primary independent variable was group assignment. Covariates included socioeconomic and psychosocial factors. Analyses were conducted using univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistical techniques. Results. One-fourth of the children enrolled were regular dental utilizers and the intervention did not have a direct effect on utilization for the entire sample of children. Subgroup analyses, however, indicated that younger children in the intervention group were three times more likely to visit the dentist than younger children in the control group. Additional subgroup analyses indicated that intervention families who did not routinely utilize dental care, who had a low family annual income, and/or who completed all study activities were almost three times more likely to see the dentist than similar families in the control group. The intervention did not have any obvious effect on perceived barriers. Conclusions. The intervention was effective in increasing utilization only by younger children, those who had not previously received routine dental care, and those families in the lowest income brackets. Important information was gained from this study that could help develop effective interventions for disadvantaged families, thus reducing oral health disparities

An Analysis of Farm Enlargement by Owner-Operators in Spink County, South Dakota, 1958

The purpose of the study was to furnish information that could be used in farming agricultural policy. An attempt was made to analyze the process occurring in land valuation during a period when farmers were enlarging their units. Moreover, other objectives are to make a comparison of the price paid for land that is added to the buyers existing unit, and the price paid for land that is not added to the buyer’s unit. To determine the characteristics of farmers who have purchased land to enlarge their operations. To determine the main forces compelling farmers to buy additional land. To analyze the valuation procedure followed by such buyers with a special reference to the additional costs and income they estimate for the land purchased

Impedance Tube Alternative via the Transfer Function Method

Typical industry-ready impedance tube systems for measuring sound absorption cost between $20,000 and$60,000. The scope of this project was to explore an industrial impedance tube and its functions as well as iteratively reduce the cost of each component of the system to its lowest possible conclusion without severely sacrificing quality of data acquisition. Replacement of the hardware and software with “off-the-shelf” alternatives and custom-made components can reduce the overall cost by as much as two orders of magnitude in order to be used in the education sector, mainly high schools. We find that the designed tube and driver replacements resulted in less than optimal performance as compared to an industrial system. We also explore alternatives to the proprietary software used for our application and improvements to the originally designed system

Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Habitat Selection Across Canopy Gradients Generates Patterns of Species Richness and Composition in Aquatic Beetles

1. Colonisation is a critical ecological process influencing both population and community level dynamics by connecting spatially discrete habitat patches. How communities respond to both natural and anthropogenic disturbances, furthermore, requires a basic understanding of how any environmental change modifies colonisation rates. For example, disturbance-induced shifts in the quantity of forest cover surrounding aquatic habitats have been associated with the distribution and abundance of numerous aquatic taxa. However, the mechanisms generating these broad and repeatable field patterns are unclear. 2. Such patterns of diversity could result from differential spatial mortality post colonisation, or from colonisation alone if species select sites non-randomly along canopy coverage gradients. We examined the colonisation/oviposition dynamics of aquatic beetles in experimental ponds placed under both open and closed forest canopies. 3. Canopy coverage imposed a substantial behavioural filter on the colonisation and reproduction of aquatic beetles representing multiple trophic levels, and resulted in significantly higher abundance, richness, and oviposition activity in open canopy ponds. These patterns strengthened overtime; although early in the experiment, the most abundant beetle had similar abundance in open and closed ponds. However, its abundance subsequently declined and then most other species heavily colonised open canopy ponds. 4. The primary response of many aquatic species to disturbances that generate canopy coverage gradients surrounding aquatic ecosystems is behavioural. The magnitude of the colonisation responses reported here rivals, if not exceeds, those produced by predators, suggesting that aquatic landscapes are behaviourally assessed and partitioned across multiple environmental gradients. The community level structure produced solely by selective colonisation, is predicted to strongly modify how patch area and isolation affect colonisation rates and the degree to which communities are linked by the flux of individuals and species

Landscape-Scale Dynamics of Aspen in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Past studies of quaking aspen in Rocky Mountain National Park suggested that the aspen population is declining due to intensive browsing by elk (Cervus elaphus). These studies were conducted in the elk winter range, an area of intensive elk impact. The elk summer range experiences less intense grazing pressure. We tested the hypothesis that impacts of elk would be greater in the elk winter range than the summer range with landscape-scale data from the Park. The detrimental effects of elk on aspen are highly localized and, at larger spatial scales, elk browsing does not seem to be influencing the aspen population

PyGGI 2.0: Language independent genetic improvement framework

PyGGI is a research tool for Genetic Improvement (GI), that is designed to be versatile and easy to use. We present version 2.0 of PyGGI, the main feature of which is an XML-based intermediate program representation. It allows users to easily define GI operators and algorithms that can be reused with multiple target languages. Using the new version of PyGGI, we present two case studies. First, we conduct an Automated Program Repair (APR) experiment with the QuixBugs benchmark, one that contains defective programs in both Python and Java. Second, we replicate an existing work on runtime improvement through program specialisation for the MiniSAT satisfiability solver. PyGGI 2.0 was able to generate a patch for a bug not previously fixed by any APR tool. It was also able to achieve 14% runtime improvement in the case of MiniSAT. The presented results show the applicability and the expressiveness of the new version of PyGGI. A video of the tool demo is at: https://youtu.be/PxRUdlRDS40

A comparison of tree- and line-oriented observational slicing

Observation-based slicing and its generalization observational slicing are recently-introduced, language-independent dynamic slicing techniques. They both construct slices based on the dependencies observed during program execution, rather than static or dynamic dependence analysis. The original implementation of the observation-based slicing algorithm used lines of source code as its program representation. A recent variation, developed to slice modelling languages (such as Simulink), used an XML representation of an executable model. We ported the XML slicer to source code by constructing a tree representation of traditional source code through the use of srcML. This work compares the tree- and line-based slicers using four experiments involving twenty different programs, ranging from classic benchmarks to million-line production systems. The resulting slices are essentially the same size for the majority of the programs and are often identical. However, structural constraints imposed by the tree representation sometimes force the slicer to retain enclosing control structures. It can also “bog down” trying to delete single-token subtrees. This occasionally makes the tree-based slices larger and the tree-based slicer slower than a parallelised version of the line-based slicer. In addition, a Java versus C comparison finds that the two languages lead to similar slices, but Java code takes noticeably longer to slice. The initial experiments suggest two improvements to the tree-based slicer: the addition of a size threshold, for ignoring small subtrees, and subtree replacement. The former enables the slicer to run 3.4 times faster while producing slices that are only about 9% larger. At the same time the subtree replacement reduces size by about 8–12% and allows the tree-based slicer to produce more natural slices