Laws Affecting the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP)

[Excerpt] The purpose of the report is to provide historical and background information that helps explain how FEHBP has evolved into the program it is today. This report focuses solely on changes made to FEHBP through legislative action. Policymakers may use this report to understand how Congress has interacted with FEHBP in the past, and to inform its future interactions with FEHBP. Specifically, the report includes short discussions of how Congress has effected and maintained policy changes to FEHBP by restricting the use of federal funds; changed the formula for determining the government’s share of FEHBP premiums; expanded eligibility for the program; and implemented policies that affect the relationship between Medicare and FEHBP. The Appendix includes detailed summaries of selected laws or provisions of laws that have directly amended or otherwise changed FEHBP

On pole-swapping algorithms for the eigenvalue problem

Pole-swapping algorithms, which are generalizations of the QZ algorithm for the generalized eigenvalue problem, are studied. A new modular (and therefore more flexible) convergence theory that applies to all pole-swapping algorithms is developed. A key component of all such algorithms is a procedure that swaps two adjacent eigenvalues in a triangular pencil. An improved swapping routine is developed, and its superiority over existing methods is demonstrated by a backward error analysis and numerical tests. The modularity of the new convergence theory and the generality of the pole-swapping approach shed new light on bi-directional chasing algorithms, optimally packed shifts, and bulge pencils, and allow the design of novel algorithms

A Sort of Homecoming

Stories from alums who came home to Cedarvill

Gentleman George Hunt Pendleton: Party Politics and Ideological Identity in Nineteenth-Century America

George Hunt Pendleton is a significant but neglected figure in the history of nineteenth-century politics. A Democrat from Cincinnati, Ohio, Pendleton led the mid-western faction of the party for much of the nineteenth century. He served in the Ohio Senate for one term before serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1857 until 1865. He was a leader of the Extreme Peace Democrats during the Civil War and was General George B. McClellan\u27s running mate in the presidential campaign of 1864. Losing both the election and his seat in the House, he spent almost fifteen years out of public office. During those years he remained active in the Democratic Party both within Ohio and across the nation and was rewarded with a seat in the U.S. Senate. Serving one term from 1879 to 1885, Pendleton fathered the first major civil service reform legislation, the Pendleton Act of 1883. Gentleman George not only provides a microcosm of Democratic Party operations during Pendleton\u27s lifetime but is also a case study in the longevity of Jacksonian principles. In an era of intense Democratic factionalism stretching from the 1850s to the 1880s, Pendleton sought to unite the divided party around its traditional Jacksonian principles, which, when reapplied to address the changing political issues, became the foundation of the mid-western Democratic ideology. With its close examination of nineteenth-century American politics, this biography will be welcomed by scholars and lovers of history alike.https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/alum_books/1468/thumbnail.jp

Enhanced time response of 1-in. LaBr3(Ce) crystals by leading edge and constant fraction techniques

We have characterized in depth the time response of three detectors equipped with cylindrical LaBr$_{3}$ (Ce) crystals with dimensions of 1-in. in height and 1-in. in diameter, and having nominal Ce doping concentration of 5%, 8% and 10%. Measurements were performed at $^{60}$Co and $^{22}$Na {\gamma}-ray energies against a fast BaF$_{2}$ reference detector. The time resolution was optimized by the choice of the photomultiplier bias voltage and the fine tuning of the parameters of the constant fraction discriminator, namely the zero-crossing and the external delay. We report here on the optimal time resolution of the three crystals. It is observed that timing properties are influenced by the amount of Ce doping and the crystal homogeneity. For the crystal with 8% of Ce doping the use of the ORTEC 935 CFD at very shorts delays in addition to the Hamamatsu R9779 PMT has made it possible to improve the LaBr$_{3}$(Ce) time resolution from the best literature value at 60Co photon energies to below 100 ps.Comment: Article submitted to Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipmen