Household out-of-pocket medical expenditures and national health insurance in Taiwan: income and regional inequality

BACKGROUND: Unequal geographical distribution of medical care resources and insufficient healthcare coverage have been two long-standing problems with Taiwan's public health system. The implementation of National Health Insurance (NHI) attempted to mitigate the inequality in health care use. This study examines the degree to which Taiwan's National Health Insurance (NHI) has reduced out-of-pocket medical expenditures in households in different regions and varying levels of income. METHODS: Data used in this study were drawn from the 1994 and 1996 Surveys of Family Income and Expenditure. We pooled the data from 1994 and 1996 and included a year dummy variable (NHI), equal to 1 if the household data came from 1996 in order to assess the impact of NHI on household out-of-pocket medical care expenditures shortly after its implementation in 1995. RESULTS: An individual who was older, female, married, unemployed, better educated, richer, head of a larger family household, or living in the central and eastern areas was more likely to have greater household out-of-pocket medical expenditures. NHI was found to have effectively reduced household out-of-pocket medical expenditures by 23.08%, particularly for more affluent households. With the implementation of NHI, lower and middle income quintiles had smaller decreases in out-of-pocket medical expenditure. NHI was also found to have reduced household out-of-pocket medical expenditures more for households in eastern Taiwan. CONCLUSION: Although NHI was established to create free medical care for all, further effort is needed to reduce the medical costs for certain disadvantaged groups, particularly the poor and aborigines, if equality is to be achieved

Educational robotics as an Innovative teaching practice using technology: minimization of risks

This research is focused on studying educational robotics, specifically robots which provide functions of educational activity. We have considered the questions of intelligent agents' behavior and have studied their educational opportunities. Educational robotics is a powerful tool of developing person's skills and abilities in various fields of technical creativity and professional activity. The evolutionary development of robotics is connected with development of artificial intelligence, where emotions play a great role in operations. Nowadays the main thing is to form the ability and skills of optimum interaction with social environment when a person, based on gained knowledge, is capable to put goals of the activity in strict accordance with laws and society conditions and using current technology

A Comparative Study of Thermal Aging Effect on the Properties of Silicone-Based and Silicone-Free Thermal Gap Filler Materials

Thermal conductive gap filler materials are used as thermal interface materials (TIMs) in electronic devices due their numerous advantages, such as higher thermal conductivity, ease of use, and conformity. Silicone is a class of synthetic materials based on a polymeric siloxane backbone which is widely used in thermal gap filler materials. In electronic packages, silicone-based thermal gap filler materials are widely used in industries, whereas silicone-free thermal gap filler materials are emerging as new alternatives for numerous electronics applications. Certainly, characterization of these TIMs is of immense importance since it plays a critical role in heat dissipation and long-term reliability of the electronic packages. Insubstantial studies on the effects of various chemical compounds on the properties of silicone-based and silicone-free TIMs has led to this study, which focuses on the effect of thermal aging on the mechanical, thermal, and dielectric properties of silicone-based and silicone-free TIMs and the chemical compounds that cause the changes in properties of these materials. Characterization techniques such as dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), thermomechanical analysis (TMA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and broadband dielectric spectroscopy (BbDS) are used to study the mechanical, thermal, and dielectric characteristics of these TIMs, which will guide towards a better understanding of the applicability and reliability of these TIMs. The experiments demonstrate that upon thermal aging at 125 °C, the silicone-free TIM becomes hard, while silicone-based TIM remains viscoelastic, which indicates its wide applicability to higher temperature applications for a long time. Though silicone-based TIM displays better mechanical and thermal properties at elevated temperatures, dielectric properties indicate low conductivity for silicone-free TIM, which makes it a better candidate for silicone-sensitive applications where higher electric insulation is desired

Synthesis of Novel Tritopic Hydrazone Ligands: Spectroscopy, Biological Activity, DFT, and Molecular Docking Studies

Polytopic organic ligands with hydrazone moiety are at the forefront of new drug research among many others due to their unique and versatile functionality and ease of strategic ligand design. Quantum chemical calculations of these polyfunctional ligands can be carried out in silico to determine the thermodynamic parameters. In this study two new tritopic dihydrazide ligands, N’2, N’6-bis[(1E)-1-(thiophen-2-yl) ethylidene] pyridine-2,6-dicarbohydrazide (L1) and N’2, N’6-bis[(1E)-1-(1H-pyrrol-2-yl) ethylidene] pyridine-2,6-dicarbohydrazide (L2) were successfully prepared by the condensation reaction of pyridine-2,6-dicarboxylic hydrazide with 2-acetylthiophene and 2-acetylpyrrole. The FT-IR, 1H, and 13C NMR, as well as mass spectra of both L1 and L2, were recorded and analyzed. Quantum chemical calculations were performed at the DFT/B3LYP/cc-pvdz/6-311G+(d,p) level of theory to study the molecular geometry, vibrational frequencies, and thermodynamic properties including changes of ∆H, ∆S, and ∆G for both the ligands. The optimized vibrational frequency and (1H and 13C) NMR obtained by B3LYP/cc-pvdz/6-311G+(d,p) showed good agreement with experimental FT-IR and NMR data. Frontier molecular orbital (FMO) calculations were also conducted to find the HOMO, LUMO, and HOMO–LUMO gaps of the two synthesized compounds. To investigate the biological activities of the ligands, L1 and L2 were tested using in vitro bioassays against some Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria and fungus strains. In addition, molecular docking was used to study the molecular behavior of L1 and L2 against tyrosinase from Bacillus megaterium. The outcomes revealed that both L1 and L2 can suppress microbial growth of bacteria and fungi with variable potency. The antibacterial activity results demonstrated the compound L2 to be potentially effective against Bacillus megaterium with inhibition zones of 12 mm while the molecular docking study showed the binding energies for L1 and L2 to be −7.7 and −8.8 kcal mol−1, respectively, with tyrosinase from Bacillus megaterium