Contrasting Inequalities: Comparing Correlates of Health in Canada and the United States

Comparative health studies consistently find that Canadians on average are healthier than Americans. Comparing health status within and between Canada and the United States provides key insights into the distribution of inequalities in these two countries. Canada’s universal health care insurance system contrasts with the mixed system of the United States: universal care for seniors, private health care insurance for many, and no or intermittent coverage for others. These countries are also notably different in the extent of income and racial/ethnic inequalities. It is within this context that this study compares the relative strength of the relationships between social, economic, and demographic factors (sex, age, marital status, income, education, country of birth, and race/ethnicity) and health status in Canada and the United States. Evidence drawn from the 2002-2003 Joint Canada/United States Survey of Health reveals that the correlations between these factors, above all country of birth and race/ethnicity, and health are relatively stronger in the United States, reflecting differences in health care access and racial/ethnic-based inequalities between the countries. The study findings are suggestive of the effects of universal access to health care and more equitable distribution of other social resources in protecting the health of the general population.self-reported health, United States, Canada, health insurance, income, race, ethnicity, age, sex

A new method of observing weak extended x-ray sources with RHESSI

We present a new method, fan-beam modulation, for observing weak extended x-ray sources with the Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI). This space-based solar x-ray and gamma-ray telescope has much greater sensitivity than previous experiments in the 3-25 keV range, but is normally not well suited to detecting extended sources since their signal is not modulated by RHESSI's rotating grids. When the spacecraft is offpointed from the target source, however, the fan-beam modulation time-modulates the transmission by shadowing resulting from exploiting the finite thickness of the grids. In this paper we detail how the technique is implemented and verify its consistency with sources with clear known signals that have occurred during RHESSI offpointing: microflares and the Crab Nebula. In both cases the results are consistent with previous and complementary measurements. Preliminary work indicates that this new technique allows RHESSI to observe the integrated hard x-ray spectrum of weak extended sources on the quiet Sun.Comment: Publishe

Contrastive Corpus Attribution for Explaining Representations

Despite the widespread use of unsupervised models, very few methods are designed to explain them. Most explanation methods explain a scalar model output. However, unsupervised models output representation vectors, the elements of which are not good candidates to explain because they lack semantic meaning. To bridge this gap, recent works defined a scalar explanation output: a dot product-based similarity in the representation space to the sample being explained (i.e., an explicand). Although this enabled explanations of unsupervised models, the interpretation of this approach can still be opaque because similarity to the explicand's representation may not be meaningful to humans. To address this, we propose contrastive corpus similarity, a novel and semantically meaningful scalar explanation output based on a reference corpus and a contrasting foil set of samples. We demonstrate that contrastive corpus similarity is compatible with many post-hoc feature attribution methods to generate COntrastive COrpus Attributions (COCOA) and quantitatively verify that features important to the corpus are identified. We showcase the utility of COCOA in two ways: (i) we draw insights by explaining augmentations of the same image in a contrastive learning setting (SimCLR); and (ii) we perform zero-shot object localization by explaining the similarity of image representations to jointly learned text representations (CLIP).Comment: Updated for the final camera-ready version of ICLR 202

Max '91: Flare research at the next solar maximum

To address the central scientific questions surrounding solar flares, coordinated observations of electromagnetic radiation and energetic particles must be made from spacecraft, balloons, rockets, and ground-based observatories. A program to enhance capabilities in these areas in preparation for the next solar maximum in 1991 is recommended. The major scientific issues are described, and required observations and coordination of observations and analyses are detailed. A program plan and conceptual budgets are provided

The effectiveness of support groups: a literature review

Purpose: Support groups are a common feature of the mental health support engaged by carers and consumers. The purpose of this paper is to update and consolidate the knowledge and the evidence for the effectiveness of mental health support groups. Design/methodology/approach: This paper is based on a systematic literature review of relevant databases around support groups for mental health. Support groups are defined as meetings of people with similar experiences, such as those defined as carers of a person living with a mental illness or a person living with a mental illness. These meetings aim to provide support and companionship to one another. Findings: The results show that there is a consistent pattern of evidence, over a long period of time, which confirms the effectiveness of mental health support groups for carers and people living with mental illness. There is strong, scientifically rigorous evidence which shows the effectiveness of professionally facilitated, family-led support groups, psychoeducation carers support groups, and professionally facilitated, program-based support groups for people living with mental illness. Research limitations/implications: This research implies the use of support groups is an important adjunct to the support of carers and people with mental illness, including severe mental illness. Originality/value: This research brings together a range of studies indicating the usefulness of support groups as an adjunct to mental health therapy

Microfiber Coupler Based Biosensor Incorporating a Layer of Gold Nanoparticles with Improved Sensitivity

We studied the effect of a star-shaped gold nanoparticles layer coated on the surface of the microfiber coupler (MFC) on the sensitivity of the embedded MFC biosensor. It is shown that deposition of the layer of star-shaped gold nanoparticles on the MFC sensor surface results in a significantly increased spectral shift (on average 3.05 nm shift compared to a 1.08 nm shift per layer of electrolyte for the sample without the nanoparticles layer). In addition, introducing the nanoparticle layer results in the decrease of the transmission power; measurement of the changes in transmission also could be used as a means for the sensor interrogation

Quantifying Efficiency Loss of Perovskite Solar Cells by a Modified Detailed Balance Model

A modified detailed balance model is built to understand and quantify efficiency loss of perovskite solar cells. The modified model captures the light-absorption dependent short-circuit current, contact and transport-layer modified carrier transport, as well as recombination and photon-recycling influenced open-circuit voltage. Our theoretical and experimental results show that for experimentally optimized perovskite solar cells with the power conversion efficiency of 19%, optical loss of 25%, non-radiative recombination loss of 35%, and ohmic loss of 35% are the three dominant loss factors for approaching the 31% efficiency limit of perovskite solar cells. We also find that the optical loss will climb up to 40% for a thin-active-layer design. Moreover, a misconfigured transport layer will introduce above 15% of energy loss. Finally, the perovskite-interface induced surface recombination, ohmic loss, and current leakage should be further reduced to upgrade device efficiency and eliminate hysteresis effect. The work contributes to fundamental understanding of device physics of perovskite solar cells. The developed model offers a systematic design and analysis tool to photovoltaic science and technology.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, 3 table