Coal resources of the lower part of the Allegheny formation in Ohio

This study of the coal resources of the lower part of the Allegheny formation in Ohio considers all coal horizons from the base of the series to the underclay of the Lower Kittanning No. 5 coal bed, but is devoted mainly to the Brookville No. 4 and Clarion No. 4A coal beds. Other coal beds in the lower part of the Allegheny formation are the Ogan, Winters, Scrubgrass, and Lawrence. The Lawrence coal bed which underlies the underclay of the Lower Kittanning coal bed is thin and contributes no reserves anywhere in the state. In southern Ohio all of the other subject coal beds are represented and are of varying economic importance over an area that is generally centered around Vinton County. In northern Ohio the Brookville coal bed is the only one of the subject coal beds that contains reserves. The Brookville coal bed which is the basal unit of the Allegheny formation contains an estimated 446,215, 000 tons of original coal reserve. Of this reserve 338, 034, 000 tons are confined to the northern field which centers around southern Stark and northern Tuscarawas Counties; the balance occurs in Vinton County. It is a high-volatile B bituminous rank coal suitable for domestic and steam generating purposes. The stratigraphic position of the Clarion coal bed is approximately midway between the Brookville and Lower Kittanning coal beds. The original Clarion coal reserve is estimated at 715,637, 000 tons and is classified as a high volatile B bituminous rank coal. The Ogan and Winters coal beds occupy positions between the Brookville and Clarion coal beds; the Scrubgrass overlies the Clarion coal bed. The thicker portion of these beds is limited almost exclusively to Vinton County where they have been mined for local use. Throughout their extent these coal beds are variable in thickness and structure and do not constitute an important segment of Ohio's coal reserve

A supervised adverse drug reaction signalling framework imitating Bradford Hill’s causality considerations

Big longitudinal observational medical data potentially hold a wealth of information and have been recognised as potential sources for gaining new drug safety knowledge. Unfortunately there are many complexities and underlying issues when analysing longitudinal observational data. Due to these complexities, existing methods for large-scale detection of negative side effects using observational data all tend to have issues distinguishing between association and causality. New methods that can better discriminate causal and non-causal relationships need to be developed to fully utilise the data. In this paper we propose using a set of causality considerations developed by the epidemiologist Bradford Hill as a basis for engineering features that enable the application of supervised learning for the problem of detecting negative side effects. The Bradford Hill considerations look at various perspectives of a drug and outcome relationship to determine whether it shows causal traits. We taught a classifier to find patterns within these perspectives and it learned to discriminate between association and causality. The novelty of this research is the combination of supervised learning and Bradford Hill’s causality considerations to automate the Bradford Hill’s causality assessment. We evaluated the framework on a drug safety gold standard known as the observational medical outcomes partnership’s non-specified association reference set. The methodology obtained excellent discrimination ability with area under the curves ranging between 0.792 and 0.940 (existing method optimal: 0.73) and a mean average precision of 0.640 (existing method optimal: 0.141). The proposed features can be calculated efficiently and be readily updated, making the framework suitable for big observational data

Financing U.S. Graduate Medical Education: A Policy Position Paper of the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine and the American College of Physicians

In this position paper, the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine and the American College of Physicians examine the state of graduate medical education (GME) financing in the United States and recent proposals to reform GME funding. They make a series of recommendations to reform the current funding system to better align GME with the needs of the nation's health care workforce. These recommendations include using Medicare GME funds to meet policy goals and to ensure an adequate supply of physicians, a proper specialty mix, and appropriate training sites; spreading the costs of financing GME across the health care system; evaluating the true cost of training a resident and establishing a single per-resident amount; increasing transparency and innovation; and ensuring that primary care residents receive training in well-functioning ambulatory settings that are financially supported for their training roles