633 research outputs found
The Essential Health Benefits Provisions of the Affordable Care Act: Implications for People with Disabilities
In establishing minimum coverage standards for health insurance plans, the Affordable Care Act includes an essential health benefits statute that directs the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services not to make coverage decisions, determine reimbursement rates, establish incentive programs, or design benefits in ways that discriminate against individuals because of their age, disability, or expected length of life. This issue brief examines how this statute will help Americans with disabilities, who currently are subject to discrimination by insurers based on health status and health care need. The authors also discuss the complex issues involved in implementing the essential benefits provision and offer recommendations to federal policymakers for ensuring that people with disabilities receive the full insurance benefits to which they are entitled
An audit on follow up duplex scans to assess graft patency following infra-inguinal arterial bypass surgery
When Worlds Collide: Boundary Management of Adolescent and Young Adult Childhood Cancer Survivors and Caregivers
Adolescent and young adult childhood cancer survivors experience health complications, late or long-term biomedical complications, as well as economic and psychosocial challenges that can have a lifelong impact on their quality-of-life. As childhood cancer survivors transition into adulthood, they must learn to balance their identity development with demands of everyday life and the near- and long-term consequences of their cancer experience, all of which have implications for the ways they use existing technologies and the design of novel technologies. In this study, we interviewed 24 childhood cancer survivors and six caregivers about their cancer survivorship experiences. The results of our analysis indicate that the challenges of transitioning to adulthood as a cancer survivor necessitate the development and management of multiple societal, relational, and personal boundaries, processes that social computing technologies can help or hinder. This paper contributes to the empirical understanding of adolescent and young adult cancer survivors’ social experiences. We further contribute sociotechnical design provocations for researchers, designers, and community members to support survivors
Stars on the edge: Galactic tides and the outskirts of the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal
Stars far beyond the half-light radius of a galaxy suggest the existence of a
mechanism able to move stars out of the region where most star formation has
taken place. The formation of these "stellar halos" are usually ascribed to the
effects of early mergers or Galactic tides, although fluctuations in the
gravitational potential due to stellar feedback is also a possible candidate
mechanism. A Bayesian algorithm is used to find new candidate members in the
extreme outskirts of the Sculptor dwarf galaxy. Precise metallicities and
radial velocities for two distant stars are measured from their spectra taken
with the Gemini South GMOS spectrograph. The radial velocity, proper motion and
metallicity of these targets are consistent with Sculptor membership. As a
result, the known boundary of the Sculptor dwarf extends now out to an
elliptical distance of half-light radii, which corresponds to a
projected physical distance of kpc. As reported in earlier work, the
overall distribution of radial velocities and metallicities indicate the
presence of a more spatially and kinematically dispersed metal-poor population
that surrounds the more concentrated and colder metal-rich stars. Sculptor's
density profile shows a "kink" in its logarithmic slope at a projected distance
of arcmin (620 pc), which we interpret as evidence that Galactic tides
have helped to populate the distant outskirts of the dwarf. We discuss further
ways to test and validate this tidal interpretation for the origin of these
distant stars.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, submitted to MNRA
Co-designing Data Experiments: Domain Experts’ Exploration and Experimentation with self-selected Data Sources
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Magnetoresistance Scaling Reveals Symmetries of the Strongly Correlated Dynamics in BaFe_{2}(As_{1-x}P_{x})_{2}.
The phenomenon of T-linear resistivity commonly observed in a number of strange metals has been widely seen as evidence for the breakdown of the quasiparticle picture of metals. This study shows that a recently discovered H/T scaling relationship in the magnetoresistance of the strange metal BaFe_{2}(As_{1-x}P_{x})_{2} is independent of the relative orientations of current and magnetic field. Rather, its magnitude and form depend only on the orientation of the magnetic field with respect to a single crystallographic axis: the direction perpendicular to the magnetic iron layers. This finding suggests that the magnetotransport scaling does not originate from the conventional averaging or orbital velocity of quasiparticles as they traverse a Fermi surface, but rather from dissipation arising from two-dimensional correlations
BlackOPs: Increasing confidence in variant detection through mappability filtering
Identifying variants using high-throughput sequen-cing data is currently a challenge because true biological variants can be indistinguishable from technical artifacts. One source of technical arti-fact results from incorrectly aligning experimen-tally observed sequences to their true genomic origin (‘mismapping’) and inferring differences in mismapped sequences to be true variants. We de-veloped BlackOPs, an open-source tool that simu-lates experimental RNA-seq and DNA whole exome sequences derived from the reference genome, aligns these sequences by custom parameters, detects variants and outputs a blacklist of positions and alleles caused by mismapping. Blacklist
Concomitant Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy for High-Risk Nonmelanoma Skin Carcinomas of the Head and Neck
Background. To report on the use and feasibility of a multimodality approach using concomitant radiotherapy and chemotherapy in patients with high-risk nonmelanoma skin carcinoma (NMSC) of the head and neck. Methods. Records of patients with NMSC of the head and neck who received concomitant CRT at the University of North Carolina between 2001 and 2007 were reviewed. Results. Fifteen identified patients had at least one of the following high-risk factors: T4 disease (93%), unresectability (60%), regional nodal involvement (40%), and/or recurrence (47%). Ten patients were treated in the definitive setting and five in the postoperative setting. Platinum based chemotherapy was given in 14 (93%) patients. Ten of fifteen (67%) patients completed all planned chemotherapy treatments, and thirteen patients (87%) completed at least 80% of planned chemotherapy. Mild radiation dermatitis occurred in all patients and reached grade 3 in 13% of patients. No patients experienced grade 4 or 5 toxicity. With a median followup of 31 months in surviving patients, the 2-year actuarial locoregional control and relapse-free survival were 79% and 49%, respectively. Conclusions. Definitive or postoperative chemoradiotherapy for patients with locally advanced or regionally metastasized NMSC of the head and neck appears feasible with acceptable toxicities and favorable locoregional control
Identification of Human Papillomavirus Infection in Cancer Tissue by Targeted Next-generation Sequencing
Human papillomaviruses (HPV) are oncogenic DNA viruses implicated in squamous cell carcinomas of several anatomic sites, as well as endocervical adenocarcinomas. Identification of HPV is an actionable finding in some carcinomas, potentially influencing tumor classification, prognosis, and management. We incorporated capture probes for oncogenic HPV strains 16 and 18 into a broader next-generation sequencing (NGS) panel designed to identify actionable mutations in solid malignancies. A total of 21 head and neck, genitourinary and gynecological squamous cell carcinomas and endocervical adenocarcinomas were sequenced as part of the UNCSeq project. Using p16 immunohistochemical results as the gold standard, we set a cutoff for proportion of aligned HPV reads that maximized performance of our NGS assay (92% sensitive, 100% specific for HPV). These results suggest that sequencing of oncogenic pathogens can be incorporated into targeted NGS panels, extending the clinical utility of genomic assays
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