An Administrative View of Model Uncertainty in Public Health

Dr. Carrington reviews several ways to deal with model uncertainty, including those failing to acknowledge any use of models. He then evaluates six such methods with regard to, e.g., transparency and cost of execution

FORTRAN program flow chart is automatically produced

Computer under control of the flo-tran program automatically produces and updates flowcharts of fortran program source decks fed to it. The flowcharts are produced on either 35mm film or paper

Critical scaling for yield is independent from distance to isostaticity

Using discrete element simulations, we demonstrate that critical behavior for yielding in soft disk and sphere packings is independent of distance to isostaticity over a wide range of dimensionless pressures. Jammed states are explored via quasistatic shear at fixed pressure, and the statistics of the dimensionless shear stress $\mu$ of these states obey a scaling description with diverging length scale $\xi \propto |\mu-\mu_c|^{-\nu}$. The critical scaling functions and values of the scaling exponents are nearly independent of distance to isostaticity despite the large range of pressures studied. Our results demonstrate that yielding of jammed systems represents a distinct nonequilibrium critical transition from the isostatic critical transition which has been demonstrated by previous studies. Our results may also be useful in deriving nonlocal rheological descriptions of granular materials, foams, emulsions, and other soft particulate materials

Who Pays? Who Benefits? Unfairness in American Health Care

American-style health insurance greatly amplifies price-gouging opportunities for health care providers, who inflate prices both to enrich themselves and to subsidize and expand the nation’s health care enterprise. To the extent that lower- and middle-income Americans with private health coverage pay premiums that go to support and expand the system, they are subject to an unfair (regressive) “head tax” levied by unaccountable entities for ostensibly public but also private purposes. Lower-income premium payers also often pay for costly health coverage designed to suit the economic interests and values of professional and other elites rather than their own. They also appear to get less as a group out of their employers’ health plans than their higher-income coworkers. How the cost burdens and benefits of Americans’ health care are distributed has not been sufficiently recognized as the fundamental issue of social justice that it is - even after the major reform legislation of 2010