15,011 research outputs found
Health, health insurance coverage, health care service utilization and family structure among children of immigrants
Family structure may alleviate or exacerbate barriers to better health and health
care among children of immigrants, whose families tend to be highly interdependent and
reliant on family cohesion as a survival strategy to manage challenges associated with
immigrant status, such as policy restrictions, legal status issues, and linguistic barriers.
Despite evidence has shown that children in single- and cohabiting-parent families have
worse health and access to health care, very little is known about whether and how family
structure plays a role in health and health care among children of immigrants. As a result,
it is also unknown whether the relationship between family structure and these outcomes
varies by immigrant generation, a significant indicator of health and access to health care.
To this end, this three-paper dissertation examines the role of family structure on
health, health insurance coverage, and health care service utilization among children of
immigrants in different immigrant generations. This dissertation found that second- generation children of single parents are less likely to be in good health, and second-generation children of cohabiting parents have higher risk of being overweight or obese,
compared to children of U.S.-born married parents. Another finding is that first-
generation children of single and cohabiting parents residing in 33 Medicaid/CHIP
eligibility expansion states had the greatest gains in overall and public health insurance
coverage through Medicaid/CHIP expansion compared to their counterpart children in
non-expansion states. Also, this policy change was associated with improved overall
health insurance coverage among second-generation children in single-parent families.
Lastly, a notable finding of this dissertation is that children of immigrants with married
parents had most advantage in utilizing routine dental and medical care over time despite
their lower initial rates of care use, compared to children of U.S.-born married parents.
Although first-generation children with single parents had lower initial status of dental
checkups as well, their rates of change in care use did not significantly increased unlike
their counterpart children with married parents. Taken together, these three papers offer
insights into the relationship between family structure and health and access to health
care among children of immigrants during the post-ACA era. The findings of this
dissertation have practical meaning under the current political environment in which
formerly established policies and programs to address health care inequality between
children of immigrants and non-immigrants are being challenged and restructured
Monte Carlo Simulation Calculation of Critical Coupling Constant for Continuum \phi^4_2
We perform a Monte Carlo simulation calculation of the critical coupling
constant for the continuum {\lambda \over 4} \phi^4_2 theory. The critical
coupling constant we obtain is [{\lambda \over \mu^2}]_crit=10.24(3).Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, LaTe
Market-Driven Management and Intangible Assets in Global Television Set Manufacturers
The television set industry is a global sector where the most competitive companies are market-driven. Their competitive advantage is based not only on their ability to innovate products but also on their capability to develop and strengthen intangible assets, such as corporate culture, brand image and relationships between organisations.Television set industry, Market Driven Management, Competitiveness, Intangible Assets DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.4468/2010.2.07silvestrelli
Chiral Vertex Operators in Off-Conformal Theory: The Sine-Gordon Example
We study chiral vertex operators in the sine-Gordon [SG] theory, viewed as an
off-conformal system. We find that these operators, which would have been
primary fields in the conformal limit, have interesting and, in some ways,
unexpected properties in the SG model. Some of them continue to have scale-
invariant dynamics even in the presence of the non-conformal cosine
interaction. For instance, it is shown that the Mandelstam operator for the
bosonic representation of the Fermi field does {\it not} develop a mass term in
the SG theory, contrary to what the real Fermi field in the massive Thirring
model is expected to do. It is also shown that in the presence of the
non-conformal interactions, some vertex operators have unique Lorentz spins,
while others do not.Comment: 32 pages, Univ. of Illinois Preprint # ILL-(TH)-93-1
LASIK Interface-Captured Foreign Bodies after Mild Traumatic Corneal Scratch without Flap Displacement
A 38-year-old woman developed diffusely distributed opacities with crystalline materials in the laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) interface of her eye after she was scratched by a sprig during mountain climbing. No sign of flap displacement was noted. Despite two days of topical and systemic antibiotics therapy, the corneal infiltration with interface opacities persisted. The following day, the distribution of the crystalline materials had rotated in a counterclockwise direction. Flap lifting and foreign body removal using sufficient irrigation were performed. One month after surgery, the patient's postoperative uncorrected visual acuity was 0.8 with cleared interface. No signs of epithelial ingrowth or flap striae were noted. Mild traumatic corneal scratching without flap displacement may threaten the integrity of the LASIK interface. If foreign bodies are suspected to be the cause of inflammation, early flap lifting with irrigation is imperative for successful treatment
Coordinated semi-adaptive closed-loop control for infusion of two interacting medications
This paper presents a coordinated and semi‐adaptive closed‐loop control approach to the infusion of 2 interacting medications. The proposed approach consists of an upper‐level coordination controller and a lower‐level semi‐adaptive controller. The coordination controller recursively adjusts the reference targets based on the estimated dose‐response relationship of a patient to ensure that they can be achieved by the patient. The semi‐adaptive controller drives the patient outputs to the reference targets while estimating the patient's dose‐response relationship online. In this way, the controller is resilient to unachievable caregiver‐specified reference targets and responsive to the medication needs of individual patients. To establish the proposed approach, we developed the following: (1) a linear two‐input–two‐output dose‐response model; (2) a two‐input–two‐output semi‐adaptive controller to regulate the patient outputs while adapting high‐sensitivity parameters in the patient model; and (3) a coordination controller to adjust the reference targets that reconcile caregiver inputs and medication use. The proposed approach was applied to an example scenario in which cardiac output and respiratory rate are regulated via infusion of propofol and remifentanil in an in silico simulation setting. The results show that the coordinated semi‐adaptive control could (1) track achievable reference targets with consistent transient and steady‐state performance and (2) resiliently adjust the unachievable reference targets to achievable ones
Amplitude- and phase-resolved nano-spectral imaging of phonon polaritons in hexagonal boron nitride
Phonon polaritons are quasiparticles resulting from strong coupling of
photons with optical phonons. Excitation and control of these quasiparticles in
2D materials offer the opportunity to confine and transport light at the
nanoscale. Here, we image the phonon polariton (PhP) spectral response in thin
hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) crystals as a representative 2D material using
amplitude- and phase-resolved near-field interferometry with broadband mid-IR
synchrotron radiation. The large spectral bandwidth enables the simultaneous
measurement of both out-of-plane (780 cm-1) and in-plane (1370 cm-1) hBN phonon
modes. In contrast to the strong and dispersive in-plane mode, the out-of-plane
mode PhP response is weak. Measurements of the PhP wavelength reveal a
proportional dependence on sample thickness for thin hBN flakes, which can be
understood by a general model describing two-dimensional polariton excitation
in ultrathin materials
ARGONAUTE PIWI domain and microRNA duplex structure regulate small RNA sorting in Arabidopsis.
Small RNAs (sRNAs) are loaded into ARGONAUTE (AGO) proteins to induce gene silencing. In plants, the 5'-terminal nucleotide is important for sRNA sorting into different AGOs. Here we show that microRNA (miRNA) duplex structure also contributes to miRNA sorting. Base pairing at the 15th nucleotide of a miRNA duplex is important for miRNA sorting in both Arabidopsis AGO1 and AGO2. AGO2 favours miRNA duplexes with no middle mismatches, whereas AGO1 tolerates, or prefers, duplexes with central mismatches. AGO structure modelling and mutational analyses reveal that the QF-V motif within the conserved PIWI domain contributes to recognition of base pairing at the 15th nucleotide of a duplex, while the DDDE catalytic core of AtAGO2 is important for recognition of the central nucleotides. Finally, we rescued the adaxialized phenotype of ago1-12, which is largely due to miR165 loss-of-function, by changing miR165 duplex structure which we predict redirects it to AGO2
Protein-protein interaction as a predictor of subcellular location
Background: Many biological processes are mediated by dynamic interactions between and among proteins. In order to interact, two proteins must co-occur spatially and temporally. As protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and subcellular location (SCL) are discovered via separate empirical approaches, PPI and SCL annotations are independent and might complement each other in helping us to understand the role of individual proteins in cellular networks. We expect reliable PPI annotations to show that proteins interacting in vivo are co-located in the same cellular compartment. Our goal here is to evaluate the potential of using PPI annotation in determining SCL of proteins in human, mouse, fly and yeast, and to identify and quantify the factors that contribute to this complementarity
KickSoul: A Wearable System for Feet Interactions with Digital Devices
In this paper we present a wearable device that maps natural feet movements into inputs for digital devices. KickSoul consists of an insole with sensors embedded that tracks movements and triggers actions in devices that surround us. We present a novel approach to use our feet as input devices in mobile situations when our hands are busy. We analyze natural feet?s movements and their meaning before activating an action. This paper discusses different applications for this technology as well as the implementation of our prototype
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