Physician Review of Workers\u27 Compensation Case Files: Can It Affect Decision Outcomes?

Objective: To identify common attributes of Federal workers compensation cases referred to Navy physicians for medical opinions and to determine the impact of the review on the final case decision. Methods: Retrospective case study and descriptive analysis of 258 opinion letters written by physicians on referred cases from 2006 to 2010. Results: Navy physician opinions were considered in the outcome in some of the cases, and there was a statistically significant difference between the claim acceptance rate in the study population and the total population. Worker age was correlated with certain claim types. Conclusions: There is preliminary evidence that the opinion letters of Navy physicians influenced case decisions. Because of the selection bias in how the cases came to the study population, a prospective cohort study is warranted to establish whether this conclusion and the other results noted are valid

Population and Environmental Correlates of Maize Yields in Mesoamerica: a Test of Boserup’s Hypothesis in the Milpa

Using a sample of 40 sources reporting milpa and mucuna-intercropped maize yields in Mesoamerica, we test Boserup’s (1965) prediction that fallow is reduced as a result of growing population density. We further examine direct and indirect effects of population density on yield. We find only mixed support for Boserupian intensification. Fallow periods decrease slightly with increasing population density in this sample, but the relationship is weak. Controlling for other covariates, fallow-unadjusted maize yields first rise then fall with population density. Fallow-adjusted maize yields peak at 390 kg/ha/yr for low population densities (8 persons / km2) and decline to around 280 kg/ha/yr for the highest population densities observed in our dataset. Fallow practices do not appear to mediate the relationship between population density and yield. The multi-level modeling methods we adopt allow for data clustering, accurate estimates of group-level variation, and they generate conditional predictions, all features essential to the comparative study of prehistoric and contemporary agricultural yields

A study of nonproportional reinsurance

There is no abstract available for this creative project.Thesis (M.A.