DENTAL PLAN PERFORMANCE WITH MEDICAID REFORM IN VIRGINIA

Purpose: To assess the effect of dental Medicaid reforms in the state of Virginia on dental plan performance. Methods: This project is a retrospective cohort study of 825,000 dental claims obtained from the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services. This cohort includes dental claims for children enrolled in Virginia’s Medicaid program from July 1, 2002 through June 30, 2008. The independent variable was enrollment pre or post policy reform with July 1, 2005 as the period dividing date. The dependent variable was dental benefit utilization measured as the average number of restorative, preventative, and total procedures. Statistical methods include Welch’s t-test and repeated measures mixed model ANOVA controlling for gender, race, age, length of enrollment, gaps in patient enrollment, citizenship status, and geographic location. Results: This cohort of data showed a significant increase in the total number of procedures utilized by enrolled children (P value \u3c 0.001). There were also significant increases in restorative services across all periods of enrollment. Conclusion: The consolidation of Virginia’s multiple managed care programs into a single vendor with increased reimbursement levels resulted in increased in access to care and improved utilization of dental services for children enrolled in Medicaid

Transient expression for engineering triterpenoid diversity in plants

The triterpenes are one of the largest and most structurally diverse classes of plant specialised metabolites, with important commercial, agronomical and medical potential. However the structural complexity and low abundance of these compounds in nature presents significant challenges for exploiting this diversity. In recent years, advances in our understanding of triterpene biosynthesis in various plant species have greatly facilitated the ability to produce these compounds in other hosts. Plant-based host systems hold great promise because they may provide substrates, cofactors and subcellular compartmentalisation mechanisms facilitating engineering production of complex triterpenoids. Agroinfiltration is a rapid and scalable process that enables transient expression of biosynthetic genes in amenable plants such as Nicotiana benthamiana. This technique holds great promise for selective production and modification of triterpenes, but studies in this area have been limited. In this PhD thesis, transient expression is used to produce and oxidise triterpenes in N. benthamiana. Triterpene yields are improved through expression of rate-limiting genes in the mevalonate pathway (Chapter 3). An enzymatic ‘toolkit’ is established from a collection of previously characterised triterpene biosynthetic genes, allowing production of milligram quantities of a diverse array of simple and oxidised triterpenes in N. benthamiana. Furthermore, combinatorial biosynthesis is utilised to engineer production of novel oxidised triterpenes in planta (Chapter 4). A set of oxidised derivatives of β-amyrin are purified and evaluated for antiproliferative and anti-inflammatory activity in human cell lines, yielding insights into structural features underlying these activities in humans (Chapter 5). Finally, N. benthamiana is used for functional screening of cytochrome P450s implicated in the biosynthesis of agronomically important antifungal triterpene glycosides (avenacins) in oat, leading to identification of new P450s required for disease resistance (Chapter 6). This work highlights the utility of N. benthamiana as triterpene engineering platform and provides a basis for future studies exploring triterpene structure-activity relationships

Discovering the Data-driven City Breakdown and Literacy in the Installation of the Elm Sensor Network

In this article, we examine the role of environmental big data in the installation of an environmental sensor in a UK city. Taking the installation of the Elm sensor as an empirical case study, we understand the installation as incurring an instance of natural breakdown which reveals the contingent work- ings of the device, and places it in the context of the practices of normalisation and stabilisation of the device. We use this to ask questions about the taken for granted smoothing of outputs and the continual elaboration of use and design, alongside the constructive potential for disruptive digital literacies as a site of intervention. By following, empirically, the installation of the technology, we are led to combine, and re-examine, theoretical lines of reasoning about data competences and relationships, and in turn advocate a form of ‘material politics’

Computer Analysis of Consumer Attitude and Consumption Data for Fluid Milk Products

The American public, with a per capita disposable income currently at an all time high, has become a source of vital concern to dairy market researchers. The unique socio-economic structure of the present generation causes the dairy industry to be concerned with how the consumer view its products. Effective education and advertising programs must be developed to attract the taste and meet the demands of the consumer. Two factors which greatly influence market research and advertising programs are the attitude of the consumer toward a given product and the relationship of attitude to the degree of actual milk consumption. To avoid unnecessary waste and decreased profits resulting from production in excess of consumer demands, a method of measuring consumer preference and consumption could conceivably affect the dairy producer, processor, and marketer

Cotextual Android Education

With advances in mobile phone hardware, the demand for mobile applica- tions has risen drastically. This has resulted in mobile phones becoming a pop- ular new medium for application development. However, the body of knowledge for contextual examples and tutorials leaves much to be desired. As of January 2010, California Polytechnic State University has offered a mobile development class that teaches students how to write applications for phones running Google’s Android platform. This class aims at taking advantage of students’ current in- terest in mobile applications to teach them about difficult computer science topics. As a corollary, the class hopes to foster and encourage a sense of inde- pendence and entrepreneurship through having students design, implement, and publish their own applications to the Android Application Marketplace. The main contribution of this thesis project comes in the form of a series of detailed educational laboratory exercises and a system for grading student submissions in an automated fashion. These labs are designed to supplement the Android documentation by providing contextual examples, activities, and tutorials. It is therefore the goal of this thesis project to aid in transforming the class of mobile development students into a group of successful, practicing, mobile developers