Just Care: Healthcare on the Margins

Inequality is one of the most significant issues facing contemporary society. This is evident upon a close examination of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Health Data report “U.S. Health Care System from an International Perspective”. This report documents a number of critical deficits with respect to accessibility and quality of health care in the United States compared to the other 33 member nations in the OECD study. The U.S. spends over two and a half times more than the majority of developed countries while providing significantly fewer physicians, hospital beds, and a slower increase in life-expectancy per person than most other OECD countries. The findings of the OECD report raise normative claims regarding public health policy and the delivery of medical care in the U.S. We maintain that nations have the moral responsibility to provide just care for the marginalized, poor, indigent, and undocumented persons. Such care follows from a number of basic claims about the nature of health care, the dignity of persons, and the moral/social fabric of a nation. These claims are undermined by the pursuit of profit leading to the disparity in health care. The existence of health care organizations that succeed in providing “just care” demonstrates that such care is both achievable and represents a positive alternative to the dominant for-profit model of health care delivery. In fact, such work begs the question of equity and justice. A nation that spends $8,233 per capita per year on health care owes its citizens and non-documented workers greater accessibility and a higher quality of care than is currently provided

Study of several factors affecting crew escape trajectories from the Space Shuttle Orbiter at low-subsonic speeds

Factors affecting the bailout characteristics from the space shuttle orbiter at low-subsonic speeds were investigated. In the 12-foot low-speed tunnel and the 4 by 7-meter tunnel with 0.03-scale models. The effect of crew-model exit velocity, body position, and body weight were studied with egress from the main side hatch with the orbiter upright and from the upper cabin hatch with the orbiter inverted. Crew model drag and flow field measurements around the orbiter were estimated. The high-angle-of-attack trim characteristics of the orbiter was determined by force tests in an attempt to improve bailout conditions. A computer simulation was made to evaluate the maneuver necessary to attain the high-angle-of-attack trim

Description of 0.186-scale model of high-speed duct of national transonic facility

The National Transonic Facility (NTF) is a pressurized cryogenic wind tunnel with a 2.5 m square test section. A 0.186-scale model of the NTF was used to simulate the aerodynamic performance of the components of the high-speed duct of the NTF. These components consist of a wide-angle diffuser, settling chamber, contraction section, test section, model support section, and high-speed diffuser. The geometry of the model tunnel, referred to as the diffuser flow apparatus is described, and some of its operating characteristics are presented

Evidence for a long-lived superheavy nucleus with atomic mass number A=292 and atomic number Z=~122 in natural Th

Evidence for the existence of a superheavy nucleus with atomic mass number A=292 and abundance (1-10)x10^(-12) relative to 232Th has been found in a study of natural Th using inductively coupled plasma-sector field mass spectrometry. The measured mass matches the predictions [1,2] for the mass of an isotope with atomic number Z=122 or a nearby element. Its estimated half-life of t1/2 >= 10^8 y suggests that a long-lived isomeric state exists in this isotope. The possibility that it might belong to a new class of long-lived high spin super- and hyperdeformed isomeric states is discussed.[3-6]Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Existence of long-lived isotopes of a superheavy element in natural Au

Evidence for the existence of long-lived isotopes with atomic mass numbers 261 and 265 and abundance of (1-10)x10$^{-10}$ relative to Au has been found in a study of natural Au using an inductively coupled plasma - sector field mass spectrometer. The measured masses fit the predictions made for the masses of $^{261}$Rg and $^{265}$Rg (Z=111) and for some isotopes of nearby elements. The possibility that these isotopes belong to the recently discovered class of long-lived high spin super- and hyperdeformed isomeric states is discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

A Formal Study of the Privacy Concerns in Biometric-Based Remote Authentication Schemes

With their increasing popularity in cryptosystems, biometrics have attracted more and more attention from the information security community. However, how to handle the relevant privacy concerns remains to be troublesome. In this paper, we propose a novel security model to formalize the privacy concerns in biometric-based remote authentication schemes. Our security model covers a number of practical privacy concerns such as identity privacy and transaction anonymity, which have not been formally considered in the literature. In addition, we propose a general biometric-based remote authentication scheme and prove its security in our security model

Large FHE Gates from tensored homomorphic accumulator

The main bottleneck of all known Fully Homomorphic Encryption schemes lies in the bootstrapping procedure invented by Gentry (STOC’09). The cost of this procedure can be mitigated either using Homomorphic SIMD techniques, or by performing larger computation per bootstrapping procedure.In this work, we propose new techniques allowing to perform more operations per bootstrapping in FHEW-type schemes (EUROCRYPT’13). While maintaining the quasi-quadratic Õ(n2) complexity of the whole cycle, our new scheme allows to evaluate gates with Ω(log n) input bits, which constitutes a quasi-linear speed-up. Our scheme is also very well adapted to large threshold gates, natively admitting up to Ω(n) inputs. This could be helpful for homomorphic evaluation of neural networks.Our theoretical contribution is backed by a preliminary prototype implementation, which can perform 6-to-6 bit gates in less than 10s on a single core, as well as threshold gates over 63 input bits even faster.<p

Risk algorithm using serial biomarker measurements doubles the number of screen-detected cancers compared with a single-threshold rule in the United Kingdom collaborative trial of ovarian cancer screening

PURPOSE: Cancer screening strategies have commonly adopted single-biomarker thresholds to identify abnormality. We investigated the impact of serial biomarker change interpreted through a risk algorithm on cancer detection rates. PATIENTS AND METHODS: In the United Kingdom Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening, 46,237 women, age 50 years or older underwent incidence screening by using the multimodal strategy (MMS) in which annual serum cancer antigen 125 (CA-125) was interpreted with the risk of ovarian cancer algorithm (ROCA). Women were triaged by the ROCA: normal risk, returned to annual screening; intermediate risk, repeat CA-125; and elevated risk, repeat CA-125 and transvaginal ultrasound. Women with persistently increased risk were clinically evaluated. All participants were followed through national cancer and/or death registries. Performance characteristics of a single-threshold rule and the ROCA were compared by using receiver operating characteristic curves. RESULTS: After 296,911 women-years of annual incidence screening, 640 women underwent surgery. Of those, 133 had primary invasive epithelial ovarian or tubal cancers (iEOCs). In all, 22 interval iEOCs occurred within 1 year of screening, of which one was detected by ROCA but was managed conservatively after clinical assessment. The sensitivity and specificity of MMS for detection of iEOCs were 85.8% (95% CI, 79.3% to 90.9%) and 99.8% (95% CI, 99.8% to 99.8%), respectively, with 4.8 surgeries per iEOC. ROCA alone detected 87.1% (135 of 155) of the iEOCs. Using fixed CA-125 cutoffs at the last annual screen of more than 35, more than 30, and more than 22 U/mL would have identified 41.3% (64 of 155), 48.4% (75 of 155), and 66.5% (103 of 155), respectively. The area under the curve for ROCA (0.915) was significantly (P = .0027) higher than that for a single-threshold rule (0.869). CONCLUSION: Screening by using ROCA doubled the number of screen-detected iEOCs compared with a fixed cutoff. In the context of cancer screening, reliance on predefined single-threshold rules may result in biomarkers of value being discarded