THEY SAY THAT THEY ARE HEALTHY, BUT ARE THEY? HEALTH PERCEPTIONS IN THE U.S.

Public health initiatives are the result of strategies developed to address current health issues facing a population that are posing a significant concern to the public. This concern is primarily driven by the economics of health care. The objective of this study is to provide a contemporary analysis of how socio-economic and behavioral factors influence subjective health status. By understanding how these factors influence perceived health status, we can develop successful policies and strategies to target those groups who have a gap between their perceived and real health status and significantly lower health care costs. This analysis makes use of the socio-economic and behavioral data from the 2005-2006 NHANES and an extension of the traditional economic model for ordered data. Results indicate that higher education and an individual's perceived diet quality have a significant effect on influencing an individual's health perception. Strategies to improve health status may include incorporating valid health education into the formal education system.Self-perception, health status, education, ordered logit, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Health Economics and Policy, I10, D03,

System Dynamic Approach to Assessing New Product Introduction: The Case of Functional Foods in the United States

Health care costs particularly those associated with chronic health conditions such as cancer have been significantly increasing for both individuals and governments in the past decades, prompting the demand for preventative medical initiatives, such as functional food, and spawning a new industry in the food sector functional food industry. This article conducts a feasibility study for a firm entering the functional food industry with a specific product, Avert®, CLA-enhanced cheese. It also assesses alternative market conditions under which the firm will be successful. A system dynamics framework is used for the analyses. The results show that a firm can be profitable in the functional food industry provided that it satisfies certain pricing and target market conditions. The results indicate that the extent to which the market differentiates Avert® from commodity cheese, and hence the premium it pays, is a critical success factor for the firm introducing the product.Agribusiness,

A Nonparametric Efficiency Analysis of Bean Producers from North and South Kivu

The purpose of this research is to determine how technically efficient small-scale producers are in two provinces (North and South Kivu) in the Democratic of Republic (DR) of Congo at producing two different varieties of beans: bush and climbing beans. In addition to calculating the efficiency scores, this research attempts to identify what producer and field characteristics affect these scores. We hypothesize that bean producers will be more productive than producers in South Kivu and that climbing bean producers will be more productive than bush bean producers. Technical efficiency is estimated using a nonparametric approach. A tobit model is used to examine the effect of producer and field characteristic on the efficiency score. On average, farms were 66% technically efficient. North Kivu bean producers and climbing bean producers have, on average, a higher technical efficiency score than their counterparts. Implications from this research suggest that there is room for improvement in the technical efficiency scores for producers in DR of Congo. Based on the results, it may be more productive to continue focusing on improving the yield and nutritional content of climbing beans.Production Economics, Production Economics,

Existence Theory for the Radically Symmetric Contact Lens Equation

In this paper we present a variational formulation of the problem of determining the elastic stresses in a contact lens on an eye and the induced suction pressure distribution in the tear film between the eye and the lens. This complements the force-balance derivation that we used in earlier work [K. L. Maki and D. S. Ross, J. Bio. Sys., 22 (2014), pp. 235–248]. We investigate the existence of solutions of the relevant boundary value problem for the singular, second-order Euler–Lagrange equation. We prove that, for lenses of constant thickness, solutions exist. We present an example to show that in some cases in which the lens thickness increases with distance from the lens center no solution exists

Implementing Pharmacy Informatics in College Curricula: The AACP Technology in Pharmacy Education and Learning Special Interest Group

Many professional organizations have initiatives to increase the awareness and use of informatics in the practice of pharmacy. Within education we must respond to these initiatives and make technology integral to all aspects of the curriculum, inculcating in students the importance of technology in practice. This document proposes 5 central domains for organizing planning related to informatics and technology within pharmacy education. The document is intended to encourage discussion of informatics within pharmacy education and the implications of informatics in future pharmacy practice, and to guide colleges of pharmacy in identifying and analyzing informatics topics to be taught and methods of instruction to be used within the doctor of pharmacy curriculum

Long XMM observation of the Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 galaxy IRAS13224-3809: rapid variability, high spin and a soft lag

Results are presented from a 500ks long XMM-Newton observation of the Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 galaxy IRAS13224-3809. The source is rapidly variable on timescales down to a few 100s. The spectrum shows strong broad Fe-K and L emission features which are interpreted as arising from reflection from the inner parts of an accretion disc around a rapidly spinning black hole. Assuming a power-law emissivity for the reflected flux and that the innermost radius corresponds to the innermost stable circular orbit, the black hole spin is measured to be 0.988 with a statistical precision better than one per cent. Systematic uncertainties are discussed. A soft X-ray lag of 100s confirms this scenario. The bulk of the power-law continuum source is located at a radius of 2-3 gravitational radii.Comment: 7 pages, 14 figures, submitted to MNRA

Measuring Black Hole Spin using X-ray Reflection Spectroscopy

I review the current status of X-ray reflection (a.k.a. broad iron line) based black hole spin measurements. This is a powerful technique that allows us to measure robust black hole spins across the mass range, from the stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries to the supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei. After describing the basic assumptions of this approach, I lay out the detailed methodology focusing on "best practices" that have been found necessary to obtain robust results. Reflecting my own biases, this review is slanted towards a discussion of supermassive black hole (SMBH) spin in active galactic nuclei (AGN). Pulling together all of the available XMM-Newton and Suzaku results from the literature that satisfy objective quality control criteria, it is clear that a large fraction of SMBHs are rapidly-spinning, although there are tentative hints of a more slowly spinning population at high (M>5*10^7Msun) and low (M<2*10^6Msun) mass. I also engage in a brief review of the spins of stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binaries. In general, reflection-based and continuum-fitting based spin measures are in agreement, although there remain two objects (GROJ1655-40 and 4U1543-475) for which that is not true. I end this review by discussing the exciting frontier of relativistic reverberation, particularly the discovery of broad iron line reverberation in XMM-Newton data for the Seyfert galaxies NGC4151, NGC7314 and MCG-5-23-16. As well as confirming the basic paradigm of relativistic disk reflection, this detection of reverberation demonstrates that future large-area X-ray observatories such as LOFT will make tremendous progress in studies of strong gravity using relativistic reverberation in AGN.Comment: 19 pages. To appear in proceedings of the ISSI-Bern workshop on "The Physics of Accretion onto Black Holes" (8-12 Oct 2012). Revised version adds a missing source to Table 1 and Fig.6 (IRAS13224-3809) and corrects the referencing of the discovery of soft lags in 1H0707-495 (which were in fact first reported in Fabian et al. 2009

Water Contaminants Detection Using Sensor Placement Approach in Smart Water Networks

Incidents of water pollution or contamination have occurred repeatedly in recent years, causing significant disasters and negative health impacts. Water quality sensors need to be installed in the water distribution system (WDS) to allow real-time water contamination detection to reduce the risk of water contamination. Deploying sensors in WDS is essential to monitor and detect any pollution incident at the appropriate time. However, it is impossible to place sensors on all nodes of the network due to the relatively large structure of WDS and the high cost of water quality sensors. For that, it is necessary to reduce the cost of deployment and guarantee the reliability of the sensing, such as detection time and coverage of the whole water network. In this paper, a dynamic approach of sensor placement that uses an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) is proposed and implemented. The proposed method generates a multiple set of water contamination scenarios in several locations selected randomly in the WDS. Each contamination scenario spreads in the water networks for several hours, and then the proposed approach simulates the various effect of each contamination scenario on the water networks. On the other hand, the multiple objectives of the sensor placement optimization problem, which aim to find the optimal locations of the deployed sensors, have been formulated. The sensor placement optimization solver, which uses the EA, is operated to find the optimal sensor placements. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been evaluated using two different case studies on the example of water networks: Battle of the Water Sensor Network (BWSN) and another real case study from Madrid (Spain). The results have shown the capability of the proposed method to adapt the location of the sensors based on the numbers and the locations of contaminant sources. Moreover, the results also have demonstrated the ability of the proposed approach for maximising the coverage of deployed sensors and reducing the time to detect all the water contaminants using a few numbers of water quality sensor

Achievement of therapeutic antibiotic exposures using Bayesian dosing software in critically unwell children and adults with sepsis

PURPOSE: Early recognition and effective treatment of sepsis improves outcomes in critically ill patients. However, antibiotic exposures are frequently suboptimal in the intensive care unit (ICU) setting. We describe the feasibility of the Bayesian dosing software Individually Designed Optimum Dosing Strategies (ID-ODS™), to reduce time to effective antibiotic exposure in children and adults with sepsis in ICU. METHODS: A multi-centre prospective, non-randomised interventional trial in three adult ICUs and one paediatric ICU. In a pre-intervention Phase 1, we measured the time to target antibiotic exposure in participants. In Phase 2, antibiotic dosing recommendations were made using ID-ODS™, and time to target antibiotic concentrations were compared to patients in Phase 1 (a pre-post-design). RESULTS: 175 antibiotic courses (Phase 1 = 123, Phase 2 = 52) were analysed from 156 participants. Across all patients, there was no difference in the time to achieve target exposures (8.7 h vs 14.3 h in Phase 1 and Phase 2, respectively, p = 0.45). Sixty-one courses in 54 participants failed to achieve target exposures within 24 h of antibiotic commencement (n = 36 in Phase 1, n = 18 in Phase 2). In these participants, ID-ODS™ was associated with a reduction in time to target antibiotic exposure (96 vs 36.4 h in Phase 1 and Phase 2, respectively, p < 0.01). These patients were less likely to exhibit subtherapeutic antibiotic exposures at 96 h (hazard ratio (HR) 0.02, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.01-0.05, p < 0.01). There was no difference observed in in-hospital mortality. CONCLUSIONS: Dosing software may reduce the time to achieve target antibiotic exposures. It should be evaluated further in trials to establish its impact on clinical outcomes

Reproductive inequality in humans and other mammals

To address claims of human exceptionalism, we determine where humans fit within the greater mammalian distribution of reproductive inequality. We show that humans exhibit lower reproductive skew (i.e., inequality in the number of surviving offspring) among males and smaller sex differences in reproductive skew than most other mammals, while nevertheless falling within the mammalian range. Additionally, female reproductive skew is higher in polygynous human populations than in polygynous nonhumans mammals on average. This patterning of skew can be attributed in part to the prevalence of monogamy in humans compared to the predominance of polygyny in nonhuman mammals, to the limited degree of polygyny in the human societies that practice it, and to the importance of unequally held rival resources to women’s fitness. The muted reproductive inequality observed in humans appears to be linked to several unusual characteristics of our species—including high levels of cooperation among males, high dependence on unequally held rival resources, complementarities between maternal and paternal investment, as well as social and legal institutions that enforce monogamous norms