1,449 research outputs found
Welfarism vs. extra-welfarism
'Extra-welfarism' has received some attention in health economics, yet there is little consensus on what distinguishes it from more conventional 'welfarist economics'. In this paper, we seek to identify the characteristics of each in order to make a systematic comparison of the ways in which they evaluate alternative social states. The focus, though this is not intended to be exclusive, is on health. Specifically, we highlight four areas in which the two schools differ: (i) the outcomes considered relevant in an evaluation; (ii) the sources of valuation of the relevant outcomes; (iii) the basis of weighting of relevant outcomes and (iv) interpersonal comparisons. We conclude that these differences are substantive. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
The Swiss and Dutch Health Insurance Systems: Universal Coverage and Regulated Competitive Insurance Markets
Compares systems of universal insurance coverage based on individual mandates, consumer choice of health plans, and regulated insurance market competition in Switzerland and the Netherlands. Discusses insights and implications for U.S. reform efforts
The Quiet-Sun Photosphere and Chromosphere
The overall structure and the fine structure of the solar photosphere outside
active regions are largely understood, except possibly important roles of a
turbulent near-surface dynamo at its bottom, internal gravity waves at its top,
and small-scale vorticity. Classical 1D static radiation-escape modelling has
been replaced by 3D time-dependent MHD simulations that come closer to reality.
The solar chromosphere, in contrast, remains ill-understood although its
pivotal role in coronal mass and energy loading makes it a principal research
area. Its fine structure defines its overall structure, so that hard-to-observe
and hard-to-model small-scale dynamical processes are the key to understanding.
However, both chromospheric observation and chromospheric simulation presently
mature towards the required sophistication. The open-field features seem of
greater interest than the easier-to-see closed-field features.Comment: Accepted for special issue "Astrophysical Processes on the Sun" of
Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. A, ed. C. Parnell. Note: clicking on the year in a
citation opens the corresponding ADS abstract page in the browse
On the link between rotation, chromospheric activity and Li abundance in subgiant stars
The connection rotation-CaII emission flux-lithium abundance is analyzed for
a sample of bona fide subgiant stars, with evolutionary status determined from
HIPPARCOS trigonometric parallax measurements and from the Toulouse-Geneva
code.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure
Aperture Increase Options for the Dutch Open Telescope
This paper is an invitation to the international community to participate in
the usage and a substantial upgrade of the Dutch Open Telescope on La Palma
(DOT, \url{http://dot.astro.uu.nl}).
We first give a brief overview of the approach, design, and current science
capabilities of the DOT.
The DOT database (\url{http://dotdb.phys.uu.nl/DOT}) now contains many
tomographic image sequences with 0.2-0.3 arcsec resolution and up to multi-hour
duration. You are welcome to pull them over for analysis.
The main part of this contribution outlines DOT upgrade designs implementing
larger aperture. The motivation for aperture increase is the recognition that
optical solar physics needs the substantially larger telescope apertures that
became useful with the advent of adaptive optics and viable through the DOT's
open principle, both for photospheric polarimetry at high resolution and high
sensitivity and for chromospheric fine-structure diagnosis at high cadence and
full spectral sampling.
Realization of an upgrade requires external partnership(s). This report about
DOT upgrade options therefore serves also as initial documentation for
potential partners.Comment: in press,"Physics of Chromospheric Plasmas" (Coimbra), ASP 368, 573
(2007
A Component-oriented Framework for Autonomous Agents
The design of a complex system warrants a compositional methodology, i.e.,
composing simple components to obtain a larger system that exhibits their
collective behavior in a meaningful way. We propose an automaton-based paradigm
for compositional design of such systems where an action is accompanied by one
or more preferences. At run-time, these preferences provide a natural fallback
mechanism for the component, while at design-time they can be used to reason
about the behavior of the component in an uncertain physical world. Using
structures that tell us how to compose preferences and actions, we can compose
formal representations of individual components or agents to obtain a
representation of the composed system. We extend Linear Temporal Logic with two
unary connectives that reflect the compositional structure of the actions, and
show how it can be used to diagnose undesired behavior by tracing the
falsification of a specification back to one or more culpable components
Heart-type fatty acid-binding protein in the early diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction: a systematic review and meta-analysis: the authors' reply
The “Health Benefit Basket” in The Netherlands
This contribution describes the entitlements in Dutch health care and explores how these entitlements are determined and to whom they apply. The focus is on services of curative care. No comprehensive positive or negative list of individual services is included in formal laws. Instead, the legislation states only what general types of medical services are covered and generally the “usual care” criterion determines to which interventions patients are entitled. This criterion is not very restrictive and yields local variations in service provision, which are moderated by practice guidelines. It is conceivable, however, that the recent introduction of the DBC financing system will change the reimbursement and therefore benefit-setting policy
Application of Aptamers Improves CRISPR-Based Live Imaging of Plant Telomeres
Development of live imaging techniques for providing information how chromatin is organized in living cells is pivotal to decipher the regulation of biological processes. Here, we demonstrate the improvement of a live imaging technique based on CRISPR/Cas9. In this approach, the sgRNA scaffold is fused to RNA aptamers including MS2 and PP7. When the dead Cas9 (dCas9) is co-expressed with chimeric sgRNA, the fluorescent coat protein-tagged for MS2 and PP7 aptamers (tdMCP-FP and tdPCP-FP) are recruited to the targeted sequence. Compared to previous work with dCas9:GFP, we show that the quality of telomere labeling was improved in transiently transformed Nicotiana benthamiana using aptamer-based CRISPR-imaging constructs. Labeling is influenced by the copy number of aptamers and less by the promoter types. The same constructs were not applicable for labeling of repeats in stably transformed plants and roots. The constant interaction of the RNP complex with its target DNA might interfere with cellular processes
Aggregated dynamic demand equations for specialistic-outpatient medical care:(Estimated from a time-series of cross-sections)
In this paper a dynamic model is presented which describes the development of the demand for specialistic medical care in The Netherlands, during the period 1960-1972. The "regionally correlated, time-wise auto-regressive" model is consistently estimated from a time-series of cross-sections, using a modified Aitken estimator. The dependent variables are the number of publicly insured patients referred from general care to specialistic care, and the amount of care consumed per patient referred. As independent variables we took demographic factors, the supply of different levels of medical care and the insurance system. The estimation results show a.o. important substitution possibilities between general and specialistic care, and a significant influence of supply and supply-related variables on the demand for specialistic care.</p
- …