The Effect of Identity Preserved Premiums on Elevator Grain Flows

The effect of identity preserved premiums on a grain elevator's received volumes is modeled using stochastic simulation across the harvest season. A feedback loop simulates competing elevators' bid prices and tracks producer delivery decisions using arbitrage criteria at competing market elevators. Results provide information about the sensitivity of distance thresholds in producer delivery decisions given IP premiums.Crop Production/Industries,

Media, racism and public health psychology

A growing literature has established that racism contributes to ill-health of migrants, minority group members and indigenous peoples. Racial discrimination has been shown to act at personal, institutional and societal levels, negatively affecting physical health as evidenced by heart disease and other stress related conditions and generally negating wellbeing, signalled by psychological and psychiatric disorders including depression. In our highly mediatized world, mass communications in diverse forms are decisive for people’s knowledge and understandings of the world and their place in it. From critical studies we know that the media consistently marginalize, denigrate and neglect particular ethnic and cultural groups. Where media do focus on such groups much of the reporting is negative and stereotyping. Achievements are ignored or minimized while representations of those groups as problems for and threats to the dominant are highlighted. In this paper we consider the particular case of media representations of the indigenous Maori of Aotearoa New Zealand. We review extant studies to argue that detailed and systematic study is necessary for the development of critical, local media scholarship. Such scholarship is necessary if the current media impact on Maori health and wellbeing is to be mitigated. While such considerations may not have been traditional concerns of health psychology we, following George Albee (2003), argue for them as affirming the need for critical public health psychology

Inconsistent black hole kick estimates from gravitational-wave models

The accuracy of gravitational-wave models of compact binaries has traditionally been addressed by the mismatch between the model and numerical-relativity simulations. This is a measure of the overall agreement between the two waveforms. However, the largest modelling error typically appears in the strong-field merger regime and may affect subdominant signal harmonics more strongly. These inaccuracies are often not well characterised by the mismatch. We explore the use of a complementary, physically motivated tool to investigate the accuracy of gravitational-wave harmonics in waveform models: the remnant's recoil, or kick velocity. Asymmetric binary mergers produce remnants with significant recoil, encoded by subtle imprints in the gravitational-wave signal. The kick estimate is highly sensitive to the intrinsic inaccuracies of the modelled gravitational-wave harmonics during the strongly relativistic merger regime. Here we investigate the accuracy of the higher harmonics in four state-of-the-art waveform models of binary black holes. We find that the SEOBNRv4HM_ROM, IMRPhenomHM, IMRPhenomXHM and NRHybSur3dq8 models are not consistent in their kick predictions. Our results enable us to identify regions in the parameter space where the models require further improvement and support the use of the kick estimate to investigate waveform systematics. We discuss how numerical-relativity kick estimates could be used to calibrate waveform models further, proposing the first steps towards kick-based gravitational-wave tuning.Comment: 31 pages, 17 figure

Childhood Hearing Impairment: How Do Parents Feel About It?

Background Hearing impairment or deafness is a major disabling condition worldwide. Etiology of the hearing loss   range from congenital to acquired, and includes common and preventable childhood infections like otitis  media and meningoencephalitis. Morbidity and burden of hearing impairment on the children and their parents is enormous. This is because affected children have developmental delay in many domains  including speech, cognition as well as behavioural and other aspects of psychosocial development. Early  identification and effective treatment of hearing loss improves language, other forms of communication, and cognitive skills. This study was carried out to evaluate and ascertain the  perception and attitude of parents of children with hearing impairment. Material  and Method This was a questionnaire based  study of parents' perception and attitude about children with hearing impairment in the PortHarcourt metropolis from pt June 2011 to 31"t May2012.Results Thirty seven parents of children with hearing impairment were studied. The parents demonstrated different attitudes towards the children. Majority, 34(94.59%) of them felt sad, others  expressed anger. Twenty seven (72.97%) felt hearing loss was due to punishment from the "gods" for an evil deed by a family member. The attitude and feelings of parents included sadness, self blame and  anger. Parents also believe that immediate cause is spiritual.ConclusionThe public should be enlightened about common preventable causes so as to correct all negative attitudes about hearing loss I impairment.Keyword: Hearing impairment; children; parents; perception and attitude

A Study of Medical Negligence Claiming in Scotland

Published version made available in accordance with the Publisher's Policy. © Crown copyright 2012 You may re-use this information (not including logos) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. To view this licence, visit http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/ or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or e-mail: [email protected]

Joint versus separate inpatient rehabilitation treatment for patients with alcohol use disorder or drug use disorder : an observational study

Background: In many national treatment systems, patients with alcohol use disorders (AUD) and those with drug use disorders (DUD) are treated separately, while other systems provide joint treatment for both kinds of substance use disorders (SUDs). Regarding long-term rehabilitation treatment of DUD and AUD patients, there is however a lack of empirical studies on the comparison between a separate versus joint treatment modality. Methods: Data were gathered from 2 rehabilitation units located in small towns from the same German region. One unit provided treatment to a mixed group of AUD and DUD patients, while the other unit treated the 2 groups separately. Staffing, funding, and treatment programs were otherwise similar between facilities. Data were gathered from standardized routine documentation and standardized interviews. In order to understand correlates of premature treatment termination, a logistic regression analysis was performed, with treatment modality and type of SUD as main predictors, and a range of patient characteristics as covariates. Results: Patients (N=319) were diagnosed with AUD (48%), DUD (34%), or AUD plus DUD (18%). Patients in joint treatment showed a higher prevalence of lapses during treatment than those in separate treatment (26% versus 12%; p=0.009), but there was no significant difference in the prevalence of premature terminations (38% versus 44%, p=0.26). Treatment modality and interaction between modality and type of SUD was not significantly associated with premature termination. Joint treatment completers showed higher satisfaction with treatment than separate treatment completers ( p<0.001). Conclusion: We found no evidence here for a difference between treatment modalities in terms of premature termination rate. Satisfaction level was higher in those who completed joint treatment compared to separate treatment.Peer reviewe

Non-degeneracy for the critical Lane–Emden system

We prove the non-degeneracy for the critical Lane–Emden system −ΔU = V^p, −ΔV = U^q, U,V >0 in R^N for all N ≥ 3 and p, q > 0 such that 1/(p+1) + 1/(q+1) = (N−2)/N. We show that all solutions to the linearized system around a ground state must arise from the symmetries of the critical Lane–Emden system provided that they belong to the corresponding energy space or they tend to zero at infinity