Uninsured Spells of the Poor: Prevalence and Duration

The number of persons in the United States without health insurance, particularly those lacking private health insurance, is increasing. Although there is a large body of research documenting the insurance status of people in poverty at a point in time, the duration of spells without health insurance, and the duration of poverty spells, much less attention has been paid to the dynamics of spells without health insurance among those in poverty. The results presented here, based on data from the 1990 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), conclude that the typical uninsured spell is longer for the uninsured poor (roughly 8.3 months) than for the uninsured nonpoor (roughly 6 months) and that the duration of spells has increased over time. The findings suggest that over 40 percent of the uninsured at a point in time are chronically uninsured and poor or near poor. The cost of obtaining health care is particularly prohibitive for this group, with serious implications for the reform of health care.

Review on Slip Transmission Criteria in Experiments and Crystal Plasticity Models

A comprehensive overview is given of the literature on slip transmission criteria for grain boundaries in metals, with a focus on slip system and grain boundary orientation. Much of this extensive literature has been informed by experimental investigations. The use of geometric criteria in continuum crystal plasticity models is discussed. The theoretical framework of Gurtin (2008, J. Mech. Phys. Solids 56, p. 640) is reviewed for the single slip case. This highlights the connections to slip transmission criteria from the literature that are not discussed in the work itself. Different geometric criteria are compared for the single slip case with regard to their prediction of slip transmission. Perspectives on additional criteria, investigated in experiments and used in computational simulations, are given.Comment: in Journal of Materials Science, 201

Measuring regional progress: regional index of sustainable economic well-being (R-ISEW) for all the English regions

This report describes the development and application of a Regional Index of Sustainable Economic Well-Being (R-ISEW), and calculates it for all English regions

An unconditionally stable algorithm for generalized thermoelasticity based on operator-splitting and time-discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods

An efficient time-stepping algorithm is proposed based on operator-splitting and the space–time discontinuous Galerkin finite element method for problems in the non-classical theory of thermoelasticity. The non-classical theory incorporates three models: the classical theory based on Fourier’s law of heat conduction resulting in a hyperbolic–parabolic coupled system, a non-classical theory of a fully-hyperbolic extension, and a combination of the two. The general problem is split into two contractive sub-problems, namely the mechanical phase and the thermal phase. Each sub-problem is discretized using the space–time discontinuous Galerkin finite element method. The sub-problems are stable which then leads to unconditional stability of the global product algorithm. A number of numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the performance and capability of the method

The mechanisms of project management of software development

The changing environments of software development such as component-based, distributed and outsourced software development require matching changes by project managers to monitor, control and coordinate their projects. While the objectives of project management may be well established, the mechanisms with which those objectives are achieved are less well known. An empirical study was undertaken to investigate which mechanisms were used by practising project managers to monitor, control and coordinate software development projects. First, the types of mechanisms are discussed so that the mechanisms can be classified usefully. Then, the design of the empirical study is described. The data were collected through structured interview, which provided both quantitative and qualitative data. The data are analysed for each mechanism separately and the findings presented. The study found that project managers use multiple mechanisms to achieve project management objectives and use the same mechanism to serve multiple objectives. Further research is suggested to investigate project management from the opposite orientation, that is, which objectives are served by specific project management mechanisms. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Decision-making in software development

There are many decisions made during the processes of software development and there are several decision-making methods that could be used in any specific circumstance. International standards for software and systems engineering tend to assume a specific decision-making method will be used in some processes while in others the decision-making method is implied rather than explicitly stated. An empirical study investigated which decision-making methods were used by practicing software developers. The study found that practitioners used a variety of methods, highlighting the need for flexible processes and flexible assessment of those processes where decision-making is concerned