The prognostic value of eighth grade records with respect to pupils' achievement in the high school sciences.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Why Do Employees Keep Choosing the Expensive Health Care Plan? An Investigation of the Quality and Logic of Employee Health Care Plan Selections

In 1991, The Dannon Company provided 287 of its employees with a choice of healthcare plans. The new plan was less expensive and designed to fit employees\u27 needs better. Contrary to managerial expectation, three-quarters of employees continued to choose the more expensive plan. To study why this was occurring and to determine if these choices reflected employee mistakes, a cooperative effort was begun between The Dannon Company and Cornell University. This cooperative effort allowed us to investigate this problem using actual employee medical claims. Analysis revealed employees strive not only to minimize costs, but also to avoid risk in their health care plan decisions. Overall, employees with the most significant cost difference chose the plan with the lowest total costs. This effect translated into financial savings for the employees. Employees were better off as a group with the freedom to make their own selections than they would have been if they had been forced into either of the two available health care options. Thus, this study demonstrated that choice is valuable to employees. Implications for Dannon and for future research are discussed

Omaha Metropolitan Statistical Area Input-Output Tables and Multipliers: A User\u27s Manual -- A Guide for Identifying and Assessing the Effects of Business Changes on the Omaha Economy

The impact of a new convention center or a new firm entering or leaving a region requires the use of multipliers to estimate the full economic effect. Multipliers account for the interactions from industries to industries and from industries to households and back, and are produced easily from input-output studies

Economic Impact of Eppley and Millard Airfields on the Omaha Metropolitan Statistical Area

This economic impact study concentrates on three components of economic value that Eppley and Millard Airfields create for the Omaha Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA): incomes earned; benefits to residents, businesses, and nonbusinesses; and expenditures by visitors

Prebiotics may alter bile salt hydrolase activity: Possible implications for cholesterol metabolism

Probiotics secrete bile salt hydrolase (BSH) which catalyses the deconjugation and excretion of bile salts in the GI tract altering cholesterol metabolism in the liver. Many probiotic preparations include prebiotics to promote probiotic growth but little is understood about how prebiotics affect BSH activity. In this study the ability of probiotic Lactobacilli species to deconjugate bile salts in the presence of various prebiotics was determined by measuring cholic acid release. The kinetic properties of BSH was assessed to determine the impact the prebiotics on bile salt deconjugation. When L. acidophilus NCTC 1723 was incubated with inulin (1%) there was a significant (p < 0.01) increase in cholic acid release by 0.16 nmol/min. Lactulose and lactobionic acid at 1% decreased cholic acid release to 0.2 nmol/min and 0.06 nmol/min respectively. In the presence of the pure BSH, inulin and lactulose (0-6%) altered Kₘ and Vₘₐₓ of the enzyme with a Kᵢ of 12% and 10.5% respectively. By contrast, lactobionic acid (2%) increased BSH activity two-fold (p < 0.01). These results confirm that prebiotics are capable of altering BSH activity in vitro. Similar changes in vivo could potentially affect the claimed health benefits of synbiotics particularly where the desired outcome is lowering of serum cholesterol

Supercritical multicomponent solvent coal extraction

The yield of organic extract from the supercritical extraction of coal with larger diameter organic solvents such as toluene is increased by use of a minor amount of from 0.1 to 10% by weight of a second solvent such as methanol having a molecular diameter significantly smaller than the average pore diameter of the coal