Appropriate Perspectives for Health Care Decisions

NICE uses cost-effectiveness analysis to compare the health benefits expected to be gained by using a technology with the health that is likely to be forgone due to additional costs falling on the health care budget and displacing other activities that improve health. This approach to informing decisions will be appropriate if the social objective is to improve health, the measure of health is adequate and the budget for health care can reasonably be regarded as fixed. If NICE were to recommend a broader =societal perspective‘, wider effects impacting on other areas of the public sector and the wider economy would be formally incorporated into analyses and decisions. The problem for policy is that, in the face of budgets legitimately set by government, it is not clear how or whether a societal perspective can be implemented, particularly if transfers between sectors are not possible. It poses the question of how the trade-offs between health, consumption and other social arguments, as well as the valuation of market and non market activities, ought to be undertaken.Perspective. Cost-effectiveness analysis. Economic evaluation.

Historical Glacier and Climate Fluctuations at Mount Hood, Oregon

Terminus fluctuations of five glaciers and the correspondence of these fluctuations to temperature and precipitation patterns were assessed at Oregon\u27s Mount Hood over the period 1901–2001. Historical photographs, descriptions, and climate data, combined with contemporary GPS measurements and GIS analysis, revealed that each glacier experienced overall retreat, ranging from −62 m at the Newton Clark Glacier to −1102 m at the Ladd Glacier. Within this overall trend, Mount Hood\u27s glaciers experienced two periods each of retreat and advance. Glaciers retreated between 1901 and 1946 in response to rising temperatures and declining precipitation. A mid-century cool, wet period led to glacier advances. Glaciers retreated from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s as a result of rising temperatures and generally declining precipitation. High precipitation in the late 1990s caused slight advances in 2000 and 2001. The general correspondence of Mount Hood\u27s glacier terminus fluctuations with glaciers in Washington and Oregon suggests that regional, decadal-scale weather and climate events, driven by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, play a key role in shaping atmosphere-cryosphere interactions in Pacific Northwest mountains. Deviations from the general glacier fluctuation pattern may arise from local differences in glacier aspect, altitude, size, and steepness as well as volcanic and geothermal activity, topography, and debris cover

A Narrative Review of Protective Factors that Predict Enculturation Processes for Latinx Individuals in the U.S.

A Narrative Review of Protective Factors that Predict Enculturation Processes for Latinx Individuals in the U.S. Jane Sun, Dept. of Psychology, Jennifer Rodriguez, Alanna Cason, Yessica Flores, Karl Villareal, Arlenis Santana, Dept. of Psychology Graduate Student, & Chloe Walker, Dept. of Psychology Graduate Student, with Dr. Chelsea D. Williams, Dept. of Psychology According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the rise of immigration led the Latinx community to experience the largest population growth amongst all ethnic-racial groups (Sanchez et al., 2012). Enculturation is the process of preserving heritage cultural values while enduring the influence of the current, surrounding culture (Schwartz et al., 2013). Enculturation is a subcomponent in the broad spectrum of acculturation, the process through which the introduction of two differing cultures induces cultural changes (Rodriguez et al., 2002). While current research has focused on the protective factors involved in the acculturative process, minimal research has centered on the protective factors in enculturation amongst the Latinx community. The aim of the current narrative review was to identify the protective factors (e.g., language, values, generational differences, group membership) associated with enculturation of Latinx U.S. citizens. Implications will discuss the promotion of social awareness within the Latinx community.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/uresposters/1333/thumbnail.jp

Stack-based Typed Assembly Language

In previous work, we presented a Typed Assembly Language (TAL). TAL is sufficiently expressive to serve as a target language for compilers of high-level languages such as ML. This work assumed such a compiler would perform a continuation-passing style transform and eliminate the control stack by heap-allocating activation records. However, most compilers are based on stack allocation. This paper presents STAL, an extension of TAL with stack constructs and stack types to support the stack allocation style. We show that STAL is sufficiently expressive to support languages such as Java, Pascal, and ML; constructs such as exceptions and displays; and optimizations such as tail call elimination and callee-saves registers. This paper also formalizes the typing connection between CPS-based compilation and stack-based compilation and illustrates how STAL can formally model calling conventions by specifying them as formal translations of source function types to STAL types.Engineering and Applied Science

Plans for a 10-m Submillimeter-wave Telescope at the South Pole

A 10 meter diameter submillimeter-wave telescope has been proposed for the NSF Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Current evidence indicates that the South Pole is the best submillimeter-wave telescope site among all existing or proposed ground-based observatories. Proposed scientific programs place stringent requirements on the optical quality of the telescope design. In particular, reduction of the thermal background and offsets requires an off-axis, unblocked aperture, and the large field of view needed for survey observations requires shaped optics. This mix of design elements is well-suited for large scale (square degree) mapping of line and continuum radiation from submillimeter-wave sources at moderate spatial resolutions (4 to 60 arcsecond beam size) and high sensitivity (milliJansky flux density levels). the telescope will make arcminute angular scale, high frequency Cosmic Microwave Background measurements from the best possible ground-based site, using an aperture which is larger than is currently possible on orbital or airborne platforms. Effective use of this telescope will require development of large (1000 element) arrays of submillimeter detectors which are background-limited when illuminated by antenna temperatures near 50 K.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure