Delivering on the Promise: A State Guide to the Next Steps for Health Care Reform

Outlines recommendations and considerations for creating health insurance exchanges, lowering costs and improving quality, providing consumer protections, addressing reforms beyond the federal law, and offering state-level public options

Close range mini Uavs photogrammetry for architecture survey

The survey of historical façades contains several bottlenecks, mainly related to the geometrical structure, the decorative framework, the presence of natural or artificial obstacles, the environment limitations. Urban context presents additional restrictions, binding by ground acquisition activity and leading to building data loss. The integration of TLS and close-range photogrammetry allows to go over such stuff, not overcoming the shadows effect due to the ground point of view. In the last year the massive use of UAVs in survey activity has permitted to enlarge survey capabilities, reaching a deeper knowledge in the architecture analysis. In the meanwhile, several behaviour rules have been introduced in different countries, regulating the UAVs use in different field, strongly restricting their application in urban areas. Recently very small and light platforms have been presented, which can partially overcome these rules restrictions, opening to very interesting future scenarios. This article presents the application of one of these very small RPAS (less than 300 g), equipped with a low-cost camera, in a close range photogrammetric survey of an historical building façade in Bologna (Italy). The suggested analysis tries to point out the system accuracy and details acquisition capacity. The final aim of the paper is to validate the application of this new platform in an architectonic survey pipeline, widening the future application of close-range photogrammetry in the architecture acquisition process

Making the Grade: A Scorecard for State Health Insurance Exchanges

Assesses states' progress in creating exchanges and grades established exchanges on policies regarding governance and structure, negotiating power and ability to drive value, consumer experience, and stability, including protection from adverse selection

Building a Better Health Care Marketplace

Details issues for creating insurance exchanges, including accountability and transparency, power to negotiate, innovations in cost and quality, stability, consumer-friendly design, and coordination with public programs, with a focus on small businesses

Does the Quality of the Patient-Physician Relationship Moderate Predictors of Poor Adherence in Urban, Underserved and Vulnerable Patients with Chronic Illness?

Escalating prevalence rates and rising economic costs of chronic illnesses necessitate a better understanding of factors affecting patient adherence in the primary care setting. Despite technological advances and evidenced-based treatments, clinical outcomes are often poor. Data drawn from archival data of the “A Healthier You” wellness program designed to serve a predominately underserved population were examined to assess whether or not positive predictors of adherence could moderate the impact of negative predictors such as depression. Limitations of the study methodology precluded significant interpretations but suggested significant discrepancies between patient and physician perceptions of trust in the relationship and the satisfaction with medical services. Results supported trust and satisfaction as essential components of the patient-physician relationship construct

Cities and Energy Consumption: a Critical Review

The relationship between cities and energy consumption has been of great interest for the scientific community for over twenty years. Most of the energy consumption, indeed, occurs in cities because of the high concentration of human activities. Thus, cities are responsible for a big share of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2). However, the debate on this topic is still open, mainly because of the heterogeneity of published studies in the selection, definition and measurement of the urban features influencing energy consumption and CO2 emissions, as well as in the choice of the energy sectors to be considered, in the territorial scale of analysis, and in the geographical distribution of the sample. Therefore, the goal of this research is to systematize and compare the approach, methodology and results of the relevant literature on the relationship between cities and energy consumption over the last twenty years. Furthermore, this critical review identifies the knowledge gap between what is known and what is still under debate and, based on that, it proposes a conceptual framework that will help to outline a new direction for future research and support local policy makers in the definition of strategies and actions that can effectively reduce urban energy use and CO2 emissions

Aspects of Land Take in the Metropolitan Area of Naples

Land take is a phenomenon of great concern nowadays because of the large number of its negative impacts regarding biological, economic and social balance. In Italy, the development of urban and other artificial land has been irreversibly transforming a nonrenewable resource such as soil, regardless the almost constant population rate, with different speed depending of the region considered. The aim of this paper is to analyze the phenomenon in the metropolitan area of Naples, which is an area highly affected by territorial aggression of human matrix. The data used are both by the Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) Report 2015 on the usage of the land and by ISTAT relating to the resident population up to the 1st of January 2015 and the extension of land for agricultural use (Census 2010). The mathematical combination of this data creates a new indicator that can be referred to as “residual land”; this residual area is of great extension with many different characteristics and it could represent the area where the phenomenon of land take most occurs. The identification, measurement and analysis of “residual land” provide new insights on the evolution of land take and this new indicator can represent a critical element to work on to prevent future land transformation and protect natural and agricultural areas within the Italian context

Malleability of the self: electrophysiological correlates of the enfacement illusion

Self-face representation is fundamentally important for self-identity and self-consciousness. Given its role in preserving identity over time, self-face processing is considered as a robust and stable process. Yet, recent studies indicate that simple psychophysics manipulations may change how we process our own face. Specifically, experiencing tactile facial stimulation while seeing similar synchronous stimuli delivered to the face of another individual seen as in a mirror, induces 'enfacement' illusion, i.e. the subjective experience of ownership of the other’s face and a bias in attributing to the self, facial features of the other person. Here we recorded visual Event-Related Potentials elicited by the presentation of self, other and morphed faces during a self-other discrimination task performed immediately after participants received synchronous and control asynchronous Interpersonal Multisensory Stimulation (IMS). We found that self-face presentation after synchronous as compared to asynchronous stimulation significantly reduced the late positive potential (LPP; 450-750 ms), a reliable electrophysiological marker of self-identification processes. Additionally, enfacement cancelled out the differences in LPP amplitudes produced by self- and other-face during the control condition. These findings represent the first direct neurophysiological evidence that enfacement may affect self-face processing and pave the way to novel paradigms for exploring defective self-representation and self-other interactions

Skills traits and enterpreneurial competences: an applied study

Teniendo en cuenta que "el empresario no nace, sino se hace", la educación empresarial es de gran importancia para el desarrollo y la formación de los empresarios. Sin embargo, no se puede ignorar que ciertas características, más que otras, parecen afectar a la voluntad de iniciar un negocio. En particular, estas variables son el locus de control, el compromiso, la auto-eficacia y la empleabilidad. De hecho, el interés que la psicología muestra hacia el empresario está conectado con el desarrollo personal del individuo que "se compromete". La investigación se llevó a cabo en Roma en una muestra de un centenar de empresarios y empresarios potenciales. Se demostró que significativamente estas variables están presentes entre las personas que trabajan en la compañía romana que se ha analizado concretamente.Given that “entrepreneurs are not born but made”, entrepreneurship education is of great importance for the development and training of entrepreneurs. However, one cannot ignore that certain characteristics, more than others, seem to affect the will to start a business. In particular, these variables are locus of control, engagement, self-efficacy, and employability. In fact, the interest that psychology turns to entrepreneurship is connected to the personal development of the individual that “undertakes”. The research took place in Rome on a sample of one hundred entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs. It showed that these variables are significantly present among the people employed in the Roman company that has been specifically analyzed.peerReviewe

Glycans in nanomedicine, impact and perspectives

Glycans have been selected by nature for both structural and 'recognition' purposes. Taking inspiration from nature, nanomedicine exploits glycans not only as structural constituents of nanoparticles and nanostructured biomaterials but also as selective interactors of such glyco-nanotools. Surface glycosylation of nanoparticles finds application in targeting specific cells, whereas recent findings give evidence that the glycan content of cell microenvironment is able to induce the cell fate. This review will highlight the role of glycans in nanomedicine, schematizing the different uses and roles in drug-delivery systems and in biomaterials for regenerative medicine