COLA with massive neutrinos

The effect of massive neutrinos on the growth of cold dark matter perturbations acts as a scale-dependent Newton's constant and leads to scale-dependent growth factors just as we often find in models of gravity beyond General Relativity. We show how to compute growth factors for $\Lambda$CDM and general modified gravity cosmologies combined with massive neutrinos in Lagrangian perturbation theory for use in COLA and extensions thereof. We implement this together with the grid-based massive neutrino method of Brandbyge and Hannestad in $\texttt{MG-PICOLA}$ and compare COLA simulations to full $\it N$-body simulations of $\Lambda$CDM and $f(R)$ gravity with massive neutrinos. Our implementation is computationally cheap if the underlying cosmology already has scale-dependent growth factors and it is shown to be able to produce results that match $\it N$-body to percent level accuracy for both the total and CDM matter power-spectra up to $k\lesssim 1 h/$Mpc.Comment: 29 pages, 15 figures, 1 table, version accepted for publication in JCAP, added frame-lagging terms in 2LPT sections (results unaffected) and appendix on comparison to SP

e-Consumer Behaviour

Purpose – The primary purpose of this article is to bring together apparently disparate and yet interconnected strands of research and present an integrated model of e-consumer behaviour. It has a secondary objective of stimulating more research in areas identified as still being underexplored. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is discursive, based on analysis and synthesis of econsumer literature. Findings – Despite a broad spectrum of disciplines that investigate e-consumer behaviour and despite this special issue in the area of marketing, there are still areas open for research into econsumer behaviour in marketing, for example the role of image, trust and e-interactivity. The paper develops a model to explain e-consumer behaviour. Research limitations/implications – As a conceptual paper, this study is limited to literature and prior empirical research. It offers the benefit of new research directions for e-retailers in understanding and satisfying e-consumers. The paper provides researchers with a proposed integrated model of e-consumer behaviour. Originality/value – The value of the paper lies in linking a significant body of literature within a unifying theoretical framework and the identification of under-researched areas of e-consumer behaviour in a marketing context

Investigating the degeneracy between modified gravity and massive neutrinos with redshift-space distortions

There is a well known degeneracy between the enhancement of the growth of large-scale structure produced by modified gravity models and the suppression due to the free-streaming of massive neutrinos at late times. This makes the matter power-spectrum alone a poor probe to distinguish between modified gravity and the concordance $\Lambda$CDM model when neutrino masses are not strongly constrained. In this work, we investigate the potential of using redshift-space distortions (RSD) to break this degeneracy when the modification to gravity is scale-dependent in the form of Hu-Sawicki $f(R)$. We find that if the linear growth rate can be recovered from the RSD signal, the degeneracy can be broken at the level of the dark matter field. However, this requires accurate modelling of the non-linearities in the RSD signal, and we here present an extension of the standard perturbation theory-based model for non-linear RSD that includes both Hu-Sawicki $f(R)$ modified gravity and massive neutrinos.Comment: 24 pages, 12 figures, 1 table; corrected typo in prefactors of the '13'-type 1-loop SPT term

The Impact of Program Changes on Enrollment, Access, and Utilization in the Oregon Health Plan Standard Population

In February 2003, in an effort to expand Medicaid coverage within tight fiscal constraints, the Oregon Health Plan (OHP) underwent a significant redesign of benefits, cost-sharing and premium structure. The OHP2 redesign resulted in two tiers of coverage, OHP Plus and OHP Standard, and a premium subsidy program. The OHP Plus benefit package and cost sharing structure is similar to the original OHP and serves the federally-mandated Medicaid populations: children and pregnant women, low-income elderly and individuals meeting the SSI definition of disability. OHP Standard, designed for Oregon’s expansion population,1 includes a reduced benefit package, expanded co-pays and increased premiums. Premium rules were also tightened for the OHP Standard group: individuals are now disqualified from benefits for non-payment of premiums and locked-out from OHP for six months following a disqualification. In addition, monthly premiums are no longer waived for certain groups.(e.g., homeless, zero income). In order to assess the impact of recent program changes, a mail-return survey was conducted between November 2003 and February 2004 with a random sample of OHP beneficiaries who were enrolled as of February 2003, immediately before the program changes were implemented. The survey assessed issues related to enrollment, health care access, health care use, and financial and health status and covered a six-month period following the OHP changes. A total of 2,783 individuals completed surveys, 1,405 individuals in OHP Plus and 1,378 in OHP Standard. This report presents descriptive survey results for the 1,378 OHP Standard enrollees and addresses the impact of recent program changes on 3 key outcomes: enrollment, health care access, and utilization

The Impacts of Medicaid Expansion on Rural Low-Income Adults: Lessons From the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment.

Medicaid expansions through the Affordable Care Act began in January 2014, but we have little information about what is happening in rural areas where provider access and patient resources might be more limited. In 2008, Oregon held a lottery for restricted access to its Medicaid program for uninsured low-income adults not otherwise eligible for public coverage. The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment used this opportunity to conduct the first randomized controlled study of a public insurance expansion. This analysis builds off of previous work by comparing rural and urban survey outcomes and adds qualitative interviews with 86 rural study participants for context. We examine health care access and use, personal finances, and self-reported health. While urban and rural populations have unique demographic profiles, rural populations appear to have benefited from Medicaid as much as urban. Qualitative interviews revealed the distinctive challenges still facing low-income uninsured and newly insured rural populations

Integrating practices that benefit wildlife with crops grown for biomass in Missouri (2014)

This guide describes management practices that can be conducted in fields used for biomass production to benefit wildlife. It also provides information to help landowners make informed decisions on enhancing habitats on surrounding areas of their property while producing crops for biomass.New 3/14/Web

The Ontario Universities’ Teaching Evaluation Toolkit: Feasibility Study

This feasibility study (the first of three phases) sought to develop a framework for improvement-oriented formative and summative assessment of teaching in Ontario. It is intended to inform future developments in teaching evaluation in the Province, and to offer a well-contextualized understanding of what the goals of teaching evaluation ought to be, what the challenges are, and the kinds of initiatives and infrastructure that would best promote the evolution of a data- informed and inquiry-inspiring approach to evaluating and improving teaching. Our institutionally-based project teams identified and examined leading teaching evaluation practices in use internationally, compared to those in use in the Ontario context, and identified a range of aggregate data and technical tool elements to be considered when moving forward.https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ctlreports/1003/thumbnail.jp

The Effect Of Medicaid On Medication Use Among Poor Adults: Evidence From Oregon.

Oregon\u27s 2008 Medicaid expansion significantly increased the use of prescription medications in 2009-10

Incoherent light in tapered graded-index fibre: a study of transmission and modal noise

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/We investigated the impact of taper length on light transmission through tapered graded-index fibres. We tested commercial fibres from Thorlabs and a custom graded-index fibre using both coherent and incoherent light sources. Our experimental results show optimum performance for taper transition lengths of 25 mm, although our simulations suggest further improvement may be possible for even shorter transition lengths. We also measured the modal noise power fluctuations caused by bending the fibre. Here, we observe that the custom fibre tapers have the highest transmission but suffer from the most modal noise. Accordingly, we find that the commercial graded-index fibre tapers promise practical usage as a beam mode-field converter, as they have lower power fluctuations but retain relatively high transmission if compared to commercial small core step-index fibre.Peer reviewe

Shared Modular Course Development: A Feasibility Study

This project evaluated the viability of shared course development (SCD) and identified the necessary baseline mechanisms, principles, policies, and procedures for future joint course development collaborations. Although collaborative course design is still relatively new in Ontario, our institutionally-based project teams identified and researched a number of successful examples from Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These successful models demonstrated the transformative possibilities of blended learning, expanded course variety, maintained or enhanced the breadth of course offerings, and reduced institution-specific development costs while maintaining delivery autonomy. They also focused on enhancing student learning and produced momentum for instructional improvement and course re-design among collaborating institutions. This report concludes that there is considerable value to the development of collaborative institutional cultures in and of itself, and that collaborative capacity will become an increasingly important core competency in the more differentiated and change-oriented university sector that is emerginghttps://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ctlreports/1000/thumbnail.jp