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Gamma-ray Bursts, Classified Physically

From Galactic binary sources, to extragalactic magnetized neutron stars, to long-duration GRBs without associated supernovae, the types of sources we now believe capable of producing bursts of gamma-rays continues to grow apace. With this emergent diversity comes the recognition that the traditional (and newly formulated) high-energy observables used for identifying sub-classes does not provide an adequate one-to-one mapping to progenitors. The popular classification of some > 100 sec duration GRBs as ``short bursts'' is not only an unpalatable retronym and syntactically oxymoronic but highlights the difficultly of using what was once a purely phenomenological classification to encode our understanding of the physics that gives rise to the events. Here we propose a physically based classification scheme designed to coexist with the phenomenological system already in place and argue for its utility and necessity.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. Slightly expanded version of solicited paper to be published in the Proceedings of ''Gamma Ray Bursts 2007,'' Santa Fe, New Mexico, November 5-9. Edited by E. E. Fenimore, M. Galassi, D. Palme

Who is Bearing the Cost of the AIDS Epidemic in Asia?

This chapter infers the distribution of AIDS costs in India, Indonesia, and Thailand from data on the costs of detecting and treating AIDS and from information on the nature of different countries health care finance systems and related institutions. The main finding is that the AIDS epidemic will contribute to increased economic inequality in these countries because (a) it is disproportionately affecting low-income groups and (b) public and private institutions that could spread the costs of the epidemic (for example, health, life, disability, and social welfare insurance) are relatively limited and do not reach the majority of the populations. The chapter also develops a new approach to measuring AIDS medical care costs that yields estimates of US $738 per case in India and US$1490 per case in Indonesia. Finally, the chapter discusses the political economy of HIV prevention and speculates that more effective control of the epidemic may result from a system in which the government pays for the medical care costs of AIDS than one in which individuals with AIDS and their families bear most of the costs

Projecting the Number of New AIDS Cases in the U.S.

This paper reviews the two leading methods used to project the number of AIDS cases: back calculation and extrapolation. These methods are assessed in light of key features of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and of data on the epidemic; they are also assessed in terms of the quality of the projections they yield. Our analysis shows that both methods have tended to overproject, often by sizable amounts, the number of AIDS cases in the U.S., especially among homosexual/bisexual males and users of blood and blood products. Our results provide no evidence that the use of AZT and other prophylaxis accounts for these projection errors. Rather, the overprojections appear to be mainly the result of a considerable reduction in the rate of new HIV infection among the gay community starting in 1983-85. A new method for projecting AIDS cases is proposed that exploits knowledge about the process generating AIDS cases and that incorporates readily available information about rates of new HIV infection. This method is far less sensitive to estimates of the incubation distribution than the method of back calculation and is shown, for the two transmission categories studied, to generate far more accurate AIDS case projections through 1990 than those based on the method of extrapolation. Relative to the method of extrapolation, this method projects 22,000 fewer new AIDS cases for 1995 (a 36 percent difference). This method also projects that intravenous drug users will replace homosexual/bisexual men as the dominant transmission category for AIDS

Rethinking the benefits and costs of childhood vaccination: the example of the Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine

Economic evaluations of health interventions, such as vaccinations, are important tools for informing health policy. Approaching the analysis from the appropriate perspective is critical to ensuring the validity of evaluation results for particular policy decisions. Using the example of benefit-cost analysis (BCA) of Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) vaccination, we demonstrate that past economic evaluations have mostly adopted narrow evaluation perspectives, focusing primarily on health gains, health care cost savings, and reductions in the time costs of caring, while ignoring other important benefits including outcome-related productivity gains (prevention of mental and physical disabilities), behavior-related productivity gains (economic growth due to fertility reductions as vaccination improves child survival), and community externalities (prevention of antibiotic resistance and herd immunity). We further show that the potential cost reductions that could be attained through changes in the delivery of the Hib vaccine have also usually been ignored in economic evaluations. Future economic evaluations of childhood vaccinations should take full account of benefits and costs, so that policy makers have sufficient information to make well-informed decisions on vaccination implementation.Economic evaluation, review, Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine

Varieties of social cognition

Recent actions. KEYWORDS: implicit social work Influence within cognition, unconsciousness psychology demonstrates is cognition, corroborated that implicit unconscious by strong measures, empirical cognition priming, evidence, plays automaticity, a but central unconscious consciousness role in the states judgments are difficult and actions to verify. of We individuals. discuss procedures We distinguish aimed between at providing two basic conclusive types evidence unconscious of state social unconsciousness, cognition: unconsciousness and apply them of the to influences recent empirical on judgments findings. and actions, and unconscious of the mental states (i.e., attitudes and feelings) that give rise to judgments After reading words related to stereotypes of the elderly, such as “Florida ” and “wrinkle, ” people tend to walk more slowly (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996). Being subliminally exposed to pictures of African American males makes people hostile, and thinking about professors improves their performance at Trivial Pursuit (Bargh et al., 1996; Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998). People are more likely to mistakenly judge a male to be famous, and an African American to be a criminal (Banaji & Bhaskar, 2000; Banaji & Greenwald, 1995; Payne, 2001). Based on these and other similarly dramatic findings, we and many other psychologists have come to agree with Bargh and Chartrand (1999), who proposed that: “... most of a person’s everyday life is determined not by their conscious intentions and deliberate choices but by mental processes that are put into motion by features of the environment and that operate outside of conscious awarenes

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Monitoring What Governments “Give for” and “Spend on” Vaccine Procurement: Vaccine Procurement Assistance and Vaccine Procurement Baseline

Background: The Global Vaccine Action Plan will require, inter alia, the mobilization of financial resources from donors and national governments – both rich and poor. Vaccine Procurement Assistance (VPA) and Vaccine Procurement Baseline (VPB) are two metrics that could measure government performance and track resources in this arena. VPA is proposed as a new subcategory of Official Development Assistance (ODA) given for the procurement of vaccines and VPB is a previously suggested measure of the share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that governments spend on their own vaccine procurement. Objective: To determine realistic targets for VPA and VPB. Methods: Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) and World Bank data for 2009 were analyzed to determine the proportions of bilateral ODA from the 23 Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries disbursed (as % of GDP in current US$) for infectious disease control. DAC country contributions to the GAVI Alliance for 2009 were assessed as a measure of multilateral donor support for vaccines and immunization programs. Findings: In 2009, total DAC bilateral ODA was 0.16$7.61 billion and 0.02% of the GDP of the poorest 117 countries was US$2.88 billion. Conclusions: Adopting 0.02% GDP as minimum targets for both VPA and VPB is based on realistic estimates of what both developed and developing countries should spend, and can afford to spend, to jointly ensure procurement of vaccines recommended by national and global bodies. New OECD purpose codes are needed to specifically track ODA disbursed for a) vaccine procurement; and b) immunization programs