Peak oil, geopolitics and the need for relocalization: will our magnificent obsession become our obsolete obsession?

This essay will look at the peak oil question, contemporary “oil geopolitics” and their effect not only on energy supplies, but also on transportation, agriculture and food supplies, and population distribution in the United States. While the war in Iraq forms a centerpiece in the geopolitical scene, Russia, China, and other nations will be discussed as well. This essay will also examine the inevitable relocalization which appears to be a necessary result

Electrical grounding bracket

Device serves as common grounding point for shielded wires of multipin electrical connector and permits addition or removal of ground leads without disturbing other grounded wires

Lost in semantic space: a multi-modal, non-verbal assessment of feature knowledge in semantic dementia

A novel, non-verbal test of semantic feature knowledge is introduced, enabling subordinate knowledge of four important concept attributes--colour, sound, environmental context and motion--to be individually probed. This methodology provides more specific information than existing non-verbal semantic tests about the status of attribute knowledge relating to individual concept representations. Performance on this test of a group of 12 patients with semantic dementia (10 male, mean age: 64.4 years) correlated strongly with their scores on more conventional tests of semantic memory, such as naming and word-to-picture matching. The test's overlapping structure, in which individual concepts were probed in two, three or all four modalities, provided evidence of performance consistency on individual items between feature conditions. Group and individual analyses revealed little evidence for differential performance across the four feature conditions, though sound and colour correlated most strongly, and motion least strongly, with other semantic tasks, and patients were less accurate on the motion features of living than non-living concepts (with no such conceptual domain differences in the other conditions). The results are discussed in the context of their implications for the place of semantic dementia within the classification of progressive aphasic syndromes, and for contemporary models of semantic representation and organization

The Cube Recurrence

We construct a combinatorial model that is described by the cube recurrence, a nonlinear recurrence relation introduced by Propp, which generates families of Laurent polynomials indexed by points in $\mathbb{Z}^3$. In the process, we prove several conjectures of Propp and of Fomin and Zelevinsky, and we obtain a combinatorial interpretation for the terms of Gale-Robinson sequences. We also indicate how the model might be used to obtain some interesting results about perfect matchings of certain bipartite planar graphs

The Dependent Coverage Provision Is Good for Mothers, Good for Children, and Good for Taxpayers

Importance The effect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) dependent coverage provision on pregnancy-related health care and health outcomes is unknown. Objective To determine whether the dependent coverage provision was associated with changes in payment for birth, prenatal care, and birth outcomes. Design, Setting, and Participants Retrospective cohort study, using a differences-in-differences analysis of individual-level birth certificate data comparing live births among US women aged 24 to 25 years (exposure group) and women aged 27 to 28 years (control group) before (2009) and after (2011-2013) enactment of the dependent coverage provision. Results were stratified by marital status. Main Exposures The dependent coverage provision of the ACA, which allowed young adults to stay on their parent’s health insurance until age 26 years. Main Outcomes and Measures Primary outcomes were payment source for birth, early prenatal care (first visit in first trimester), and adequate prenatal care (a first trimester visit and 80% of expected visits). Secondary outcomes were cesarean delivery, premature birth, low birth weight, and infant neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission. Results The study population included 1 379 005 births among women aged 24 to 25 years (exposure group; 299 024 in 2009; 1 079 981 in 2011-2013), and 1 551 192 births among women aged 27 to 28 years (control group; 325 564 in 2009; 1 225 628 in 2011-2013). From 2011-2013, compared with 2009, private insurance payment for births increased in the exposure group (36.9% to 35.9% [difference, −1.0%]) compared with the control group (52.4% to 51.1% [difference, −1.3%]), adjusted difference-in-differences, 1.9 percentage points (95% CI, 1.6 to 2.1). Medicaid payment decreased in the exposure group (51.6% to 53.6% [difference, 2.0%]) compared with the control group (37.4% to 39.4% [difference, 1.9%]), adjusted difference-in-differences, −1.4 percentage points (95% CI, −1.7 to −1.2). Self-payment for births decreased in the exposure group (5.2% to 4.3% [difference, −0.9%]) compared with the control group (4.9% to 4.3% [difference, −0.5%]), adjusted difference-in-differences, −0.3 percentage points (95% CI, −0.4 to −0.1). Early prenatal care increased from 70% to 71.6% (difference, 1.6%) in the exposure group and from 75.7% to 76.8% (difference, 0.6%) in the control group (adjusted difference-in-differences, 0.6 percentage points [95% CI, 0.3 to 0.8]). Adequate prenatal care increased from 73.5% to 74.8% (difference, 1.3%) in the exposure group and from 77.5% to 78.8% (difference, 1.3%) in the control group (adjusted difference-in-differences, 0.4 percentage points [95% CI, 0.2 to 0.6]). Preterm birth decreased from 9.4% to 9.1% in the exposure group (difference, −0.3%) and from 9.1% to 8.9% in the control group (difference, −0.2%) (adjusted difference-in-differences, −0.2 percentage points (95% CI, −0.3 to −0.03). Overall, there were no significant changes in low birth weight, NICU admission, or cesarean delivery. In stratified analyses, changes in payment for birth, prenatal care, and preterm birth were concentrated among unmarried women. Conclusions and Relevance In this study of nearly 3 million births among women aged 24 to 25 years vs those aged 27 to 28 years, the Affordable Care Act dependent coverage provision was associated with increased private insurance payment for birth, increased use of prenatal care, and modest reduction in preterm births, but was not associated with changes in cesarean delivery rates, low birth weight, or NICU admission