Disability Benefits as Social Insurance: Tradeoffs Between Screening Stringency and Benefit Generosity in Optimal Program Design

The Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) system is designed to provide income security to workers in the event that health problems prevent them from working. In order to qualify for benefits, applicants must pass a medical screening that is intended to verify that the individual is truly incapable of work. Past research has shown, however, that the screening procedures used do not function without error. If screening were error-free, it has can be demonstrated that it is socially optimal to distinguish the disabled non-worker from the non-disabled, providing benefits to the disabled. In this paper we first demonstrate that if the errors in the medical screening are too large, it will not be optimal to distinguish the disabled from the non-disabled. Then, we use data on the actual quality of screening to determine first, if segmenting the non-working population is desirable, and second whether the current SSDI system relies too heavily on screening than is justified. Our preliminary conclusion is that while screening is good enough to justify some distinction in benefits, it may not be good enough to justify the size of the benefit offered.

The Really Good Buffalo Project: A ‘Values Added’ Product

For several years, an effort to ‘bring back the buffalo’ has been of key interest in many American Indian communities across the country, and particularly in the Northern Plains of the United States. Tribal college faculty approached colleagues at South Dakota State University during a meeting of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) with the desire to develop a niche market for Native American-raised bison. The Lakota words for the concept underlying the effort are Tatanka Waste (pronounced Ta-TONK-a Wash-TAY), roughly translated as ‘Really Good Buffalo’. A pivotal factor that influenced the development of the Really Good Buffalo project was the unique historical, cultural, and spiritual relationship between American Indians and bison. These issues and the diverse consortium of partners involved made it critically important that the project deliberately address values as part of the niche market analysis. As one tribal partner stated, “Great care must be taken when we are working with our brothers, the buffalo.” This case emphasizes the process of concept-testing, pre-feasibility analysis, and branding of an agriculturally based niche product within a broader cultural context.(Contact author for a copy of the complete report.)Bison Production, Cultural Values

The Prairie Ph.D.: A New Model for Tribal Graduate Education

A cohort of tribal college faculty and tribal professionals are working toward graduate degrees in the biological sciences through a collaborative program nicknamed the “Prairie Ph.D.” Results to date show promise for graduate education targeted at American Indian communities. Program history, approach, and formative evaluation are discussed

Operation of the aerodynamic plasma actuator at high altitude

A plasma actuator was operated at altitudes from 0 to 18288 meters to determine the mechanisms leading to decreased force production at low pressures. The actuator was driven with a 5 kHz sine wave and a peak to peak voltage of 13.4 kV at pressures of 760, 429, 321, 226, and 88 Torr. A passive measurement technique called the capacitive V-dot probe was adapted to the actuator in order to resolve the spatiotemporal evolution of the surface potential and electric field on the dielectric surface. At low pressures up to 20 times more plasma is present than at atmospheric conditions. Average force production is calculated and shown to decrease at lower pressures due to the fact that up to 88% of the plasma is created in regions where the electric field is approximately zero. The calculated average body force shows a slight increase up to a pressure of 429 Torr before trending to zero at lower pressures. Performing a power analysis shows that as pressure is decreased more power is used creating plasma than accelerating it, leading to a decrease in efficiency --Abstract, page iii

Propagation of Sensor Noise in Navigation Equations and High Accuracy Dynamic Calibration of Sensors

Accurate navigation in GPS denied locations is extremely hard to achieve. Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) are currently the only reasonable onboard alternative to GPS but INS has error terms that grow very quickly. Even current high-end INSs have an error exceeding one km after only ten minutes of use. A high-accuracy INS would be very useful in underwater applications, spacecraft and extraterrestrial rovers, and military applications. This thesis seeks to enable such Inertial Navigation Systems