The Impact of Medicaid and SCHIP on Low-Income Children's Health

Reviews the literature on the impact of Medicaid and State Children's Health Insurance Programs on the coverage, access to care, and health outcomes for low-income children, as well as remaining challenges in preventive, primary, and dental care

The Impact of Health Insurance Coverage on Health Disparities in the United States

human development, aid, trade, security

Health Care and the Middle Class: More Costs and Less Coverage

Examines the availability, affordability, and stability of health insurance coverage for middle-income families; trends contributing to their growing medical cost burden and percentage among the newly uninsured; and implications

Supportive but wary. How Europeans feel about the EU 60 years after the Treaty of Rome. eupinions #2017/1

The Eurozone crisis has pushed reform of the European Union (EU) to the forefront of political debate. How can a Union of 28 states with a population of over half a billion be reformed to weather future economic crises and political challenges? Finding an answer to this question is extremely difficult not only because current reform proposals are so varied, but even more so because we lack insights into the preferences for reform amongst national elites and publics. Although EU support has interested scholars for over three decades now, we virtually know nothing about public support for EU reform. Current research focuses almost exclusively on the causes of support for the current project and fails to provide a sufficient basis for effective reform decisions. Surely, the feasibility and sustainability of EU reform crucially hinges on the support amongst national publics. eupinions examines public support for EU reform by developing a theoretical model and employing cutting-edge data collection techniques. Our findings will aid policy makers to craft EU reform proposals that can secure widespread public support

Does Mortality Salience Priming Influence an Individual\u27s Perceptions of Healthy Behaviors as Important?

Death awareness, or mortality salience, has the potential to motivate people to engage in healthy behavior, such as diet/exercise, sleep, and religious/spiritual importance, especially when the behaviors are perceived as reducing the connection between a particular health risk and death. One-hundred-and-eighty-three participants completed a survey to assess whether mortality salience priming, compared to a dental pain control, influences an individual\u27s perceptions of healthy behaviors as important after priming compared to before priming, and if certain behaviors are ranked preferentially in importance to others. Self-esteem levels and age were also measured to determine if condition-induced anxiety and perceptions of behavioral importance varied with these factors. Overall, while mortality salience priming did significantly increase participant anxiety levels compared to the control, this death awareness did not translate into increased perceptions on the importance of healthy behaviors. Across both conditions, however, participants perceived healthy behaviors as more important after priming compared to before priming, with certain behaviors viewed as more important than others after priming. Lower self-esteem was found to result in increased anxiety as well as result in a greater difference in perceived behavioral importance post-priming compared to before priming in mortality salience participants. Further, older participants were found to score healthy behaviors as more important. This study suggests that death awareness can influence an individual\u27s anxiety levels, but other factors such as age and self-esteem may serve as stronger predictors of perceived behavioral importance than condition alone

Enzymatic treatment of organic micropollutants in municipal wastewater: treatment conditions and reaction kinetics

Organic micropollutants enter natural waters via treated municipal wastewater discharges, threatening aquatic ecosystems and exposing humans to trace levels of these diverse chemicals through downstream drinking water supplies. Both of these concerns would be addressed simultaneously if micropollutants, which are often recalcitrant to conventional treatment processes, were removed in municipal wastewater treatment plants. Thus, the ultimate goal of this research was to advance the development of a sustainable and cost-effective enzymatic treatment process that oxidizes organic micropollutants in municipal wastewater. The enzymatic treatment process studied, laccase-catalyzed oxidation, involves the oxidation of mediator compounds by the enzyme laccase, generating mediator free radicals that can oxidize target micropollutants. The influences of key treatment conditions (pH, enzyme activity, mediator concentration, wastewater organic content) on the efficacy of the treatment process were evaluated, and the reaction kinetics of enzymatic treatment were investigated. The results demonstrated that enzymatic treatment can transform environmentally relevant concentrations of two representative micropollutants, oxybenzone and sulfamethoxazole, in a primary effluent wastewater matrix under realistic treatment conditions. Experiments with a set of structurally related chlorophenolic target compounds revealed several impacts of target compound structure on the kinetics and mechanisms of the laccase-mediator-target compound reactions. The electronic properties of the target compounds, their acid-base speciation, and steric hindrance to coupling reactions by substitution of the aromatic ring were found to influence their relative reactivities and reaction mechanisms with the free radicals generated by the laccase-mediator system. A kinetic model of the reactions between the enzyme laccase, the mediator acetosyringone, and the chlorophenolic target compounds was developed and fit the experimental data quite well despite the complexity and non-linearity of the system. This model indicated that the rate limiting step was the oxidation of the mediator by the enzyme. The relative rate constants for the reactions of the resulting mediator radical represent the distribution of the radicals among several possible reaction pathways. Although still in its early stages of development, the results of this research indicate that enzymatic treatment could one day be implemented in wastewater treatment plants for the mitigation of micropollutant release into the environment.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin

A Deployment of Spreadsheets

Many steganographers would agree that, had it not been for the appropriate unification of the partition table and cache coherence, the unproven unification of IPv7 and architecture might never have occurred. In fact, few researchers would disagree with the evaluation of evolutionary programming. Our focus here is not on whether the much-touted replicated algorithm for the deployment of forward-error correction by Gupta and White runs in Ω(n) time, but rather on presenting a semantic tool for deploying operating systems (Taw)

Characterization of the SAM domain of the PKD-related protein ANKS6 and its interaction with ANKS3

Background: Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is the most common genetic disorder leading to end-stage renal failure in humans. In the PKD/Mhm(cy/+) rat model of ADPKD, the point mutation R823W in the sterile alpha motif (SAM) domain of the protein ANKS6 is responsible for disease. SAM domains are known protein-protein interaction domains, capable of binding each other to form polymers and heterodimers. Despite its physiological importance, little is known about the function of ANKS6 and how the R823W point mutation leads to PKD. Recent work has revealed that ANKS6 interacts with a related protein called ANKS3. Both ANKS6 and ANKS3 have a similar domain structure, with ankyrin repeats at the N-terminus and a SAM domain at the C-terminus. Results: The SAM domain of ANKS3 is identified as a direct binding partner of the ANKS6 SAM domain. We find that ANKS3-SAM polymerizes and ANKS6-SAM can bind to one end of the polymer. We present crystal structures of both the ANKS3-SAM polymer and the ANKS3-SAM/ANKS6-SAM complex, revealing the molecular details of their association. We also learn how the R823W mutation disrupts ANKS6 function by dramatically destabilizing the SAM domain such that the interaction with ANKS3-SAM is lost. Conclusions: ANKS3 is a direct interacting partner of ANKS6. By structurally and biochemically characterizing the interaction between the ANKS3 and ANKS6 SAM domains, our work provides a basis for future investigation of how the interaction between these proteins mediates kidney function

Heterogeneity in Surface Sensing Suggests a Division of Labor in Pseudomonas aeruginosa Populations

The second messenger signaling molecule cyclic diguanylate monophosphate (c-di-GMP) drives the transition between planktonic and biofilm growth in many bacterial species. Pseudomonas aeruginosa has two surface sensing systems that produce c-di-GMP in response to surface adherence. Current thinking in the field is that once cells attach to a surface, they uniformly respond by producing c-di-GMP. Here, we describe how the Wsp system generates heterogeneity in surface sensing, resulting in two physiologically distinct subpopulations of cells. One subpopulation has elevated c-di-GMP and produces biofilm matrix, serving as the founders of initial microcolonies. The other subpopulation has low c-di-GMP and engages in surface motility, allowing for exploration of the surface. We also show that this heterogeneity strongly correlates to surface behavior for descendent cells. Together, our results suggest that after surface attachment, P. aeruginosa engages in a division of labor that persists across generations, accelerating early biofilm formation and surface exploration