Assessing efficiency of public health and medical care provision in OECD countries after a decade of reform

The objective of this study was to examine the change in efficiency of health care systems of 34 OECD countries between 2000 and 2012, a period marked by significant health reform in most OECD countries. This paper uses a novel Dynamic Network Data Envelopment Analysis (DNDEA) model to analyze the efficiency of the public health system and the medical care system of these OECD countries independently along with assessing the efficiency of their overall health system. This helps understand the relative priorities for improving the overall health system. The data for this study was obtained from the OECD Health Facts database. The study findings suggest that countries which improved their public health system were more likely to show overall improvement in efficiency

Duo modules

Let R be a ring. An R-module M is called a (weak) duo module provided every (direct summand) submodule of M is fully invariant. It is proved that if R is a commutative domain with field of fractions K then a torsion-free uniform R-module is a duo module if and only if every element k in K such that kM is contained in M belongs to R. Moreover every non-zero finitely generated torsion-free duo R-module is uniform. In addition, if R is a Dedekind domain then a torsion R-module is a duo module if and only if it is a weak duo module and this occurs precisely when the P-primary component of M is uniform for every maximal ideal P of R

Support for participation in electronic paper prototyping

In this paper, we examine a range of tools for early prototyping of interactive systems that might be described as enabling 'electronic paper prototyping'. We then introduce Gabbeh, a prototype that we are developing to re-enable participatory design when using such tools. Paper-prototyping is an established approach to the creation of early prototypes in the participatory design of computer systems. Recent years have seen the rapid development of new interaction devices in which a display screen is combined with pen-based input to allow users to create sketches or hand-written notes in an interaction that is similar to writing with a pen on paper. Research with such devices has shown how this capability can be used to rapidly create simple prototypes of interactive systems such as websites. However, previous systems have not considered how end-users and other stakeholders could contribute to design dialogues around such prototypes.</p

Pilomatrix carcinoma of the lacrimal caruncle: a case report.

A 45-year-old man presented with a 3-month history of a mass located in the caruncle of his right eye. An incisional biopsy had been performed one month prior by another specialist, and the histopathology report showed basal cell carcinoma. The mass was completely excised with a 2 mm safety margin, and the large conjunctival defect was reconstructed with one sheet of amniotic membrane allograft. A histological diagnosis of pilomatrix carcinoma was established. To prevent recurrence after surgery, we added bevacizumab (25 mg/mL, 1.25 mg/mL per drop) eye drops four times per day for three months. At the one-year follow-up, the patient showed no evidence of local recurrence or distant metastasis after initial excision and remains under close follow-up. Pilomatrix carcinoma should be considered in the differential diagnosis of a caruncular mass

Resistive Switching based Electro-Optical Modulation

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Resistive switching enables optical modulation via atomic scale modifications that induce change in the refractive index of active device materials. The formation of filaments and migration of atoms around these filaments between high resistance and low resistance states results in the modulation of the free carrier concentration and, hence, the optical constants of the material