Making Reform a Reality: Ways to Facilitate Better Healthcare Payment and Delivery Systems and Lower Healthcare Costs

Outlines the need for episode-of-care and comprehensive care payment reforms and the changes required of healthcare stakeholders. Discusses strategies for consumer engagement, helping providers transition, payment levels, measurement, and other issues

Creating Payment Systems to Accelerate Value-Driven Health Care: Issues and Options for Policy Reform

Examines the flaws in the current fee-for-service and pay-for-performance systems, proposes goals for effective value-based systems for four patient or condition types, and outlines issues to be addressed in redesigning basic payment or incentive systems

Phosphorus and Potassium Elemental or Oxide

Soil tests for phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) are reported on the elemental basis by all soil testing laboratories (state and county) in Kentucky

Tobacco Stalk Production, Value and Use

When Kentucky farmers finish stripping the 1963 tobacco crop they will have 176,000 tons of tobacco stalks worth $2 million on their farms. These stalks will contain 9.8 million pounds of nitrogen, 932,000 pounds of phosphorus (2 million pounds of P2O5) and 13 million pounds of potassium (15.6 million pounds of K2O). Equal amounts of these plant nutrients bought in commercial fertilizers in 1963 would have cost more than$2 million

Adoption Related Curiosity in Emerging Adulthood

Adoption-related curiosity was examined for a group of 169 emerging adults (M= 25.0 years) who were adopted as infants. The Adoption Communication Pathway model guided the research questions about formation of an information gap, which exists when there is a difference between what an adopted person knows and what he or she wants to know, and specific issues about which emerging adults were curious. Differences in these specific issues were examined across sex and contact with birth parents at adolescence. Logistic regression analyses revealed that the formation of an adoption information gap, which contains the content of curiosity, was more likely for those who less satisfied with the amount of contact in at both adolescence and emerging adulthood. Content of the information gap at emerging adulthood will be presented

Agronomy Notes, no. 6

This fall is an ideal time to apply needed agricultural limestone. Spreading equipment can get over the dry ground with less soil compaction, and limestone applied now can correct soil acidity during the winter months

Pilot Study of an Individualised Early Postpartum Intervention to Increase Physical Activity in Women with Previous Gestational Diabetes

Optimal strategies to prevent progression towards overt diabetes in women with recent gestational diabetes remain ill defined. We report a pilot study of a convenient, home based exercise program with telephone support, suited to the early post-partum period. Twenty eight women with recent gestational diabetes were enrolled at six weeks post-partum into a 12 week randomised controlled trial of Usual Care (n = 13) versus Supported Care (individualised exercise program with regular telephone support; n = 15). Baseline characteristics (Mean ± SD) were: Age  33 ± 4  years; Weight 80 ± 20 kg and Body Mass Index (BMI) 30.0 ± 9.7 kg/m2. The primary outcome, planned physical activity {Median (Range)}, increased by 60 (0–540) mins/week in the SC group versus 0 (0–580) mins/week in the UC group (P = 0.234). Walking was the predominant physical activity. Body weight, BMI, waist circumference, % body fat, fasting glucose and insulin did not change significantly over time in either group. This intervention designed to increase physical activity in post-partum women with previous gestational diabetes proved feasible. However, no measurable improvement in metabolic or biometric parameters was observed over a three month period

Notes on Fleshy Fungi in Iowa. VI.

During the summer and fall of 1970, 211 sporocarps of fleshy fungi were collected. In the collection were 14 species not previously reported for the state of Iowa. Cortinarius brunneus, C. coloratus, C. cylindripes, C. pulchrifolius, Hygrophorus marginatus, Psalliota comtula, P. silvatica, Psilocybe agrariella, Riussula cyanoxantha, R. puellaris, R. vesca, R. xerampelina, Tricholoma intermedium, and T. terreolens

Co-operative variety tests of corn : Variety tests of corn at Columbia

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Ozone determinations with the NOAA SBUV/2 system

The NOAA satellite ozone monitoring program was initiated by the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS) in December 1984, with the launch of the NOAA-9 spacecraft carrying the first operational Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Spectrometer (SBUV/2). This instrument and its successor on NOAA-11, launched in 1988, are similar to the SBUV instrument launched by the NASA in 1978 on the Nimbus-7 research spacecraft. Measurements by the SBUV and SBUV/2 instruments overlap beginning in 1985. These instruments use measurements of the reflected ultraviolet solar radiation from the atmosphere to derive total ozone amounts and ozone vertical profiles. Since launch, the NOAA instruments and the derived products have been undergoing extensive evaluation by scientists of NOAA and NASA. Measurements obtained with these instruments are processed in real time by the NESDIS. These are reprocessed as the SBUV/2 instrument characterization is refined and as the retrieval algorithm for processing the data is improved. The NOAA-9 ozone data archive begins in March 1985 and continues through October 1990. The archive of NOAA-11 data begins in January 1989 and the data continues to be acquired in 1992