Health Care Coverage and Access for Children in Low-Income Families: Stakeholder Perspectives from Texas

An important question to ask about any health care system is how well it serves children in low-income families. In Texas, the question raises optimism as well as serious concerns. On one hand, the proportion of eligible Texas children enrolled in Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) has increased from 75 percent in 2008 to 84 percent in 2013. The passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 and the reauthorization of CHIP in 2015 helped to protect these gains. But significant uncertainties persist. Texas has not expanded Medicaid as envisioned by the ACA; the introduction of the federal health insurance Marketplace was highly contentious in thestate; and the U.S. Congress has funded CHIP only until 2017. Moreover, there is concern in Texas that access to high quality health care services for low-income children is not keeping pace with access to insurance. This issue brief was prepared as part of a small-scale qualitative study funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to convey recent positive developments, remaining unmet needs, and emerging issues in children's health care coverage and delivery, from the perspective of knowledgeable stakeholders. Companion issue briefs on children's health in California and Colorado and a cross-state analysis are also available

Representation c. 800: Arab Byzantine Carolingian

What could or should be visually represented was a contested issue across the medieval Christian and Islamic world around the year 800. This article examines how Islamic, Byzantine, Carolingian and Palestinian Christian attitudes toward representation were expressed, and differed, across the seventh and eighth centuries. Islamic prohibitions against representing human figures were not universally recognised, but were particularly – if sometimes erratically – focused on mosque decoration. Byzantine ‘iconoclasm’ – more properly called iconomachy – was far less destructive than its later offshoots in France and England, and resulted in a highly nuanced re-definition of what representation meant in the Orthodox church. Carolingian attitudes toward images were on the whole far less passionate than either Islamic or Orthodox views, but certain members of the elite had strong views, which resulted in particular visual expressions. Palestinian Christians, living under Islamic rule, modulated their attitudes toward images to conform with local social beliefs. Particularly in areas under Orthodox or Islamic control, then, representation mattered greatly around the year 800, and this article examines how and why this impacted on local production

N-version Design vs. One Good Version

Evidence indicates that n-version development techniques are more reliable than producing one "good" version-and cost effective in the long run. The author concludes that diverse, independent channels used in parallel are significantly superior to even the current state of the art, especially in situations where cost of failure is high

Critical criticism’s critique: 13 theses, or, it is all rubbish

Book synopsis: Well this is it: the end, last gasp, final straw; in short, the concluding dark volume in a series of books some idiot called ‘critical inventions.’ Let us be like wry Oscar Wilde, said the idiot, and dream of the critic as artist, or at least as someone else, as someone other than who we had thought he was, or been taught he was. Let us, continued the idiot, set the critical dogs off the leash and see what they come back with. And here they are: no less than twenty-four press-ganged souls all huddled together for warmth; some are critics, some are poets, and some are critic-poets; among them such as Steven Connor, Jonathan Dollimore, Ewan Fernie, Mark Ford, Kevin Hart, Geoffrey Hartman, Esther Leslie, Willy Maley, and Michael Simmons Roberts. … So, twenty-four voices, twenty-four shots in the dark, or maybe shots at the dark, or possibly the head, or even the foot. But whatever, each is a shot at pushing the battered perambulator of dear old criticism so far and so fast that someone somewhere – whether in anger, derision, or pain – might just cry ‘Crritic!,’ that curse of all curses, the best of all possible anathema. But maybe, just maybe, the exclamation ‘Crritic!’ will here double as a cri de coeur, or howl of self-loathing, or scream of delight, or laugh in the night, or just a smashed-up and beaten old prayer. We shall see

Queer Farmers: Sexuality and the Transition to Sustainable Agriculture

Intimate relationships are foundational to farm viability. Such relationships affect how farmers share tasks, earn income, and access land, yet the role of sexuality and heteronormativity in agriculture remains understudied. Furthermore, queers are largely ignored as potential farmers by the sustainable agriculture and LGBT movements. Through participant observation and interviews with 30 sustainable farmers of various genders and sexualities in New England, I document the lived experiences of queer sustainable farmers, an under-researched group, and examine whether sexuality and gender affects why they farm. Whereas the perception of rural heterosexism can discourage queer participation in agriculture, queer farmers faced less overt heterosexism than expected. However, they did experience heterosexism particular to sustainable agriculture, and confronting it jeopardized relationships important for economic and environmental sustainability and land access. Some were attracted to sustainable agriculture for reasons specific to gender, sexuality, and anti-consumerist values. I offer the sustainable agriculture movement a lens for observing how sexuality and heteronormativity are embedded in farmer recruitment, retention, and land acquisition

Addressing the Needs of Female Professional and Amateur Athletes

This study fills a major gap in the development of the dialogue around women's sports, a report that for the first time articulates female athletes' sense of the most pressing issues they face as competitors today. The results show that while many improvements have been made in U.S. women's sports, especially since the 1996 Olympic Games, there remains a consistent cluster of issues that needs to be addressed. This report outlines those issues and serves as the basis for policy recommendations and to facilitate communication about athletes' needs