The Thayer Method: Student Active Learning with Positive Results

Graduation from West Point requires successful completion of four courses in the mathematical sciences. These core mathematics courses include topics in discrete dynamical systems, differential and integral calculus (single variable and multivariable), differential equations, linear algebra, probability, and statistics. The instructional system employed throughout the core is the Thayer Method, named for Colonel Sylvanus Thayer, the Father of the Military Academy. In the Thayer Method, traces of cooperative education and discovery learning are evident. It is quintessential active learning. The West Point catalyst is the fundamental principle that cadets are responsible for their own education

Health Care Reform — A Historic Moment in US Social Policy

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed into law the first U.S. comprehensive health care reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). After almost a century of failed attempts, the U.S. now has a national health care system which promises to increase access to care, increase consumer choice, and ban insurance discrimination for individuals with preexisting medical conditions. The PPACA is expected to expand insurance coverage to 32 million individuals by 2019 through a variety of measures. At a cost of $938 billion over 10 years, the PPACA is projected to reduce the deficit by$143 billion in the first decade and $1.2 trillion over the second. Almost everyone will be required to purchase health insurance by 2014, with certain exceptions, or face a penalty. The mandate is coupled with sliding scale subsidies to make the purchase more affordable, and it limits annual and out of pocket spending. If the penalty is strong enough, the mandate will be effective in expanding the pool of insured people, spreading the health risk, and eventually decreasing premiums. Key coverage expansions, such as expanding Medicaid benefits to individuals and families with incomes up to 133% of the federal poverty line (FPL), are critical, but access to providers must also be ensured. By 2014, states must set up exchanges where consumers can shop for health insurance at competitive rates. Subsidies will be provided to individuals and families under 400% of the FPL and not eligible under Medicaid to help purchase insurance in the exchange. Additionally, small businesses with fewer than 100 employees will receive tax credits for offering insurance. The PPACA reverses common industry practices that have, in the past, created barriers to coverage. It prohibits insurers from denying coverage to those with preexisting conditions and allows young adults to remain on their parents’ plans up to age 26. For Medicare patients, the Part D coverage gap is closed and cost sharing for preventative care is eliminated, while the amount of out-of-pocket costs paid per year is limited. This historic legislation takes great strides towards providing everyone with medical care, irrespective of income or health status. It will improve public health, and place more emphasis on primary and preventive care. However, issues still remain surrounding difficult choices on how to reduce increasing costs, improve quality, and ensure appropriate payment reimbursement for providers

Chutes and Ladders with Large Spinners

We prove a conjecture from a 2011 College Mathematics Journal article addressing the expected number of turns in a Chutes and Ladders game when the spinner range is close to the length of the board. While the original paper approached the question using linear algebra and the theory of Markov processes, our main method uses combinatorics and recursion

Health Care Reform in Transition: Incremental Insurance Reform Without an Individual Mandate

A major access problem exists in the private insurance market for individuals with preexisting conditions, who are either denied coverage or charged exorbitant premiums. In effect, individuals are denied coverage for exactly what they need, which jeopardizes their health and the financial security of their family. Before health reform passed, discussions surrounding incremental reform took place, including perhaps the most politically compelling – prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to those with preexisting health conditions. Insurance is based upon the principles of spreading risk of individuals across a population to ensure that everyone can afford medical care when he or she needs it. However, risk pools are functional only if they include enough healthy individuals to keep overall health care expenditures lower than premium costs so that high-cost individuals will be covered. Although providing access to health care for all is vital, in practice requiring insurers to accept more high cost individuals without adding more healthy individuals to the pool could result in adverse selection, increase costs, and a potential financial death spiral. If there are no incentives or mandates for individuals who are healthy to purchase insurance, risk pools become even more expensive and result in even more adverse selection and malfunctioning markets. A mandate to purchase insurance counteracts adverse selection by bringing more healthy individuals into the risk pool, thereby decreasing premiums. Moreover, mandates decrease the number of uninsured, lessening cost-shifting due to uncompensated care. A tax penalty would be levied on individuals who do not have qualifying insurance. Of course, adequate subsidies must also be provided for poor individuals and families to help purchase insurance. But while many support covering those with preexisting conditions, support for a mandate is still contentious, even after the health reform law, which includes a mandate. Conservatives frame the mandate in terms of personal freedom, compulsory contracts, and transfer of money to a private party. In actuality, mandates combined with prohibition of excluding those with preexisting conditions would prevent insurers from engaging in opportunistic marketing practices. The goals of health reform are to increase access to quality affordable care, while reining in costs. But preexisting condition coverage without an individual mandate may ultimately lead to insurance that is less affordable for everyone and make access problems even worse

Analysis and Treatment of Emerging Polar Contaminants

Two major classes of polar compounds have recently become a major focus as sources of contamination of water systems. Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) enter water through wastewater streams, and many of these compounds survive current wastewater treatment processes. High production volume chemicals (HPVCs), defined as chemicals produced in excess of one million pounds per year have numerous entries into surface and drinking waters due to their ubiquity. The commonality between many of these compounds is their polarity, which makes them water-soluble. While both PPCPs and HPVCs have been entering into the environment for decades, advances in analyte detection have increased the ability of scientists to identify these compounds in surface, waste and drinking waters. Methods for polar compound suites have been developed using a number of technologies, however these processes are often time consuming and require specialized instrumentation. In this study, a fast, robust method for the detection and treatment of emerging polar contaminants was developed with accompanying instrumentation. A liquid chromatography system, hyphenated to a universal gas phase detector, flame ionization detector (FID), was designed. By using pure subcritical water as a mobile phase, temperature was used to control chromatographic retention. This instrument may be used for rapid screening of environmental samples with minimal preparation. Using subcritical water chromatography allowed for testing of mass transfer between subcritical water and organic phases, which provides data on the transport of polar contaminants between solvent phases. A second component of the work in this dissertation was to test a treatment protocol for waste streams, which demonstrated the reduction of selected analytes within the PPCP and HPVC classes. Subcritical water wet oxidation allowed for the breakdown of all polar organic molecules dissolved in a water sample. As a thermochemical process, the oxidation reaction further reduced select compounds that remain after current biological waste removal processes, and provided a value-added process to current wastewater treatment, in which a needed process, disinfection, can be coupled to additional contaminant removal

Measures of consumer prices.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityThis paper has been devoted to an examination and comparison of the techniques and methodologies underlying six measures of consumer prices, with particular reference to the Consumer Price Index for the United States as maintained by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. The term price covers a very broad and complex area of economic thought and theory, but probably no part of the general subject of price receives more practical attention and application than that of consumer prices. [TRUNCATED

A bibliography on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

This report presents a uniform compilation of works dealing with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Entries are by first author, with cross-reference by topic index and by periodical index. This bibliography updates earlier bibliographies on this general topic while concentrating on research related to listening for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence