9,740 research outputs found
Organization and Finance of China\u27s Health Sector: Historical Antecedents for Macroeconomic Structural Adjustment
China has exploded onto the world economy over the past few decades and is undergoing rapid transformation toward relatively more services. The health sector is an important part of this transition. This article provides a historical account of the development of health care in China since 1949. It also focuses on health insurance and macroeconomic structural adjustment to less saving and more consumption. In particular, the question of how health insurance impacts precautionary savings is considered. Multivariate analysis using data from 1990 to 2012 is employed. The household savings rate is the dependent variable in 3 models segmented for rural and urban populations. Independent variables include out-of-pocket health expenditures, health insurance payouts, housing expenditure, education expenditure, and consumption as a share of gross domestic product (GDP). Out-of-pocket health expenditures were positively correlated with household savings rates. But health insurance remains weak, and increased payouts by health insurers have not been associated with lower levels of household savings so far. Housing was positively correlated, whereas education had a negative association with savings rates. This latter finding was unexpected. Perhaps education is perceived as investment and a substitute for savings. China’s shift toward a more service-oriented economy includes growing dependence on the health sector. Better health insurance is an important part of this evolution. The organization and finance of health care is integrally linked with macroeconomic policy in an environment constrained by prevailing institutional convention. Problems of agency relationships, professional hegemony, and special interest politics feature prominently, as they do elsewhere. China also has a dual approach to medicine relying heavily on providers of traditional Chinese medicine. Both of these segments will take part in China’s evolution, adding another layer of complexity to policy
Interaction-induced mode switching in steady-state microlasers
We demonstrate that due to strong modal interactions through cross-gain
saturation, the onset of a new lasing mode can switch off an existing mode via
a negative power slope. In this process of interaction-induced mode switching
(IMS) the two involved modes maintain their identities, i.e. they do not change
their spatial field patterns or lasing frequencies. For a fixed pump profile, a
simple analytic criterion for the occurrence of IMS is given in terms of their
self- and cross-interaction coefficients and non-interacting thresholds, which
is verified for the example of a two-dimensional microdisk laser. When the
spatial pump profile is varied as the pump power is increased, IMS can be
induced even when it would not occur with a fixed pump profile, as we show for
two coupled laser cavities. Our findings apply to steady-state lasing and are
hence different from dynamical mode switching or hopping. IMS may have
potential applications in robust and flexible all-optical switching.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure
Polarization and decoherence in a two-component Bose-Einstein Condensate
We theoretically investigate polarization properties of a two-component
Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) and influence of decoherence induced by
environment on BEC polarization through introducing four BEC Stokes operators
which are quantum analog of the classical Stokes parameters for a light field.
BEC polarization states can be geometrically described by a Poincar\'{e} sphere
defined by expectation values of BEC Stokes operators. Without decoherence, it
is shown that nonlinear inter-atomic interactions in the BEC induce periodic
polarization oscillations whose periods depend on the difference between
self-interaction in each component and inter-component interaction strengths.
In particular, when inter-atomic nonlinear self-interaction in each BEC
component equals inter-component nonlinear interaction, Stokes vector
associated with Stokes operators precesses around a fixed axis in the dynamic
evolution of the BEC. The value of the processing frequency is determined by
the strength of the linear coupling between two components of the BEC. When
decoherence is involved, we find each component of the Stokes vector decays
which implies that decoherence depolarizes the BEC.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure
Electrodeposited Ni–Co layered double hydroxides on titanium carbide as a binder-free electrode for supercapacitors
We report the synthesized mixture of MXene and Ni–Co LDH on nickel foam by an electrodeposition technique. The specific capacitance of the mixture attained 983.6 F g−1 at a discharge current of 2 A g−1, which is greater than that of pure MXene. Compared to Ni–Co LDH, the sample created through electrodeposition provided a better rate capability of 983.6 F g−1 at 2 A g−1 and 536.6 F g−1 at 50 A g−1 and cycling stability with 76% retention after 5000 cycles at 30 A g−1. Moreover, a solid-state asymmetric supercapacitor with MXene-LDH as the positive electrode and multi-walled carbon nanotube coated on the nickel foam as the negative electrode delivers high energy density (36.70 Wh kg−1 at the power density of 1.44 kW kg−1), which outperforms the other devices reported previously
Constraining the Nature of X-ray Cavities in Clusters and Galaxies
We present results from an extensive survey of 64 cavities in the X-ray halos
of clusters, groups and normal elliptical galaxies. We show that the evolution
of the size of the cavities as they rise in the X-ray atmosphere is
inconsistent with the standard model of adiabatic expansion of purely
hydrodynamic models. We also note that the majority of the observed bubbles
should have already been shredded apart by Rayleigh-Taylor and
Richtmyer-Meshkov instabilities if they were of purely hydrodynamic nature.
Instead we find that the data agrees much better with a model where the
cavities are magnetically dominated and inflated by a current-dominated
magneto-hydrodynamic jet model, recently developed by Li et al. (2006) and
Nakamura et al. (2006). We conduct complex Monte-Carlo simulations of the
cavity detection process including incompleteness effects to reproduce the
cavity sample's characteristics. We find that the current-dominated model
agrees within 1sigma, whereas the other models can be excluded at >5sigma
confidence. To bring hydrodynamic models into better agreement, cavities would
have to be continuously inflated. However, these assessments are dependent on
our correct understanding of the detectability of cavities in X-ray
atmospheres, and will await confirmation when automated cavity detection tools
become available in the future. Our results have considerable impact on the
energy budget associated with active galactic nucleus feedback.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figures, emulateapj, accepted for publication in ApJ,
responded to referee's comments and added a new model, conclusions unchange
Macro-to-Micro Interface for the Control of Cellular Organization
The spatial organization of cellular communities plays a fundamental role in determining intercellular communication and emergent behavior. Few tools, however, exist to modulate tissue organization at the scale of individual cells, particularly in the case of dynamic manipulation. Micromechanical reconfigurable culture achieves dynamic control of tissue organization by culturing adherent cells on microfabricated plates that can be shifted to reorganize the arrangement of the cells. Although biological studies using this approach have been previously reported, this paper focuses on the engineering of the device, including the mechanism for translating manual manipulation to precise microscale position control, fault-tolerant design for manufacture, and the synthetic-to-living interface.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Faculty Early Career Development Program)National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (U.S.)David & Lucile Packard FoundationNational Institutes of Health (U.S.). Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awar
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