Medicaid's Future: What Might ACA Repeal Mean?

Issue: Republicans in Congress are expected to repeal portions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) using a fast-track process known as budget reconciliation.Goals: This issue brief examines how repeal legislation could affect Medicaid, the nation's health care safety net, which insured 70 million people in 2016.Findings and Conclusions: Partial-repeal legislation that passed Congress but was vetoed by President Obama in 2016 offers some insight but new legislation could go further. It could repeal the ACA's Medicaid eligibility expansions for adults and children but also roll back other provisions, such as simplified enrollment and improvements in long-term services and supports for beneficiaries with disabilities. Additionally, the Trump Administration could expand use of demonstration authority to introduce deeper structural changes into Medicaid, such as eligibility restrictions tied to work, required premium contributions and lock-out for nonpayment, annual enrollment periods, and coverage limits and exclusions. Together, these changes would have far-reaching implications for Medicaid's continued role as the nation's safety-net insurer

Families Grow Through Sharing

Getting along with people is one of the hardest things we have to learn. Our own family is the best place to begin. We want good homes for ourselves and our children. What are some ways to give them every opportunity for productive and happy lives? Let\u27s take a look at some common words that have pleasant associations to us - home, family, and democracy. Let\u27s see if their meanings are changing, along with our changing pace of living

From Tots to Teens: Growing in the Family

Growth is a most important process in life for all of us and especially so for the child from birth through adolescence. In the first third of life we gain our body growth, establish our habits, learn to think and to use ideas. We build skills of communication, we discover that there are many problems in living. We find that we have feelings and emotions and we begin to use and control them. We become acqllainted with people of all sizes and shapes, all ideas and beliefs. We have a wide variety of experiences. We prepare for living in the broadest sense of the word

Growing in the Family: The Middle Years

As we recognize the fact that all people are growing throughout the entire life-span, it becomes easier to assess quite clearly just what each period of growing means to us as an individual. Aging can be neither ignored nor escapedbut it is something that can provide many basic satisfactions. The process itself is beyond our control, but how it affects us is something we can determine. No longer do we believe that a particular age is THE most important one

Migrant Farmworkers and Access to Health Care in Minnesota: Needs, Barriers, and Remedies

Every year, migrant farmworkers (MFWs) travel from southern Texas to Minnesota to provide the temporary labor needed to harvest seasonal Minnesotan crops. Migratory agricultural labor exposes workers to increased risk of occupational hazards, communicable disease, and chronic illness. However, the agricultural industry does not offer employer-based health insurance to these seasonal workers, and provides wages insufficient to otherwise cover the cost of health care services. This research investigates the financial and non-financial barriers to health care for Minnesota’s MFWs through interviews with staff from Migrant Health Service, Inc., the only federally-designated Migrant Health Center (MHC) in Minnesota. The findings show that language, immigration status, and affordability are three prominent barriers to health care for MFWs. While the Affordable Care Act increases their access by providing additional funding to MHCs, the law does not extend private or state-based insurance to many MFWs due to their immigration status. Thus, because of limited financial means, MFWs remain restricted to MHCs for health services

A Caenorhabditis elegans genetic-interaction map wiggles into view

Systematic mapping of genetic-interaction networks will provide an essential foundation for understanding complex genetic disorders, mechanisms of genetic buffering and principles of robustness and evolvability. A recent study of signaling pathways in Caenorhabditis elegans lays the next row of bricks in this foundation

You : The American Woman

This publication discusses ways for women to make the most of their lives. It includes guidance on physical and mental health, physical fitness, fatigue, relaxation, and posture

Carbon-dependent control of electron transfer and central carbon pathway genes for methane biosynthesis in the Archaean, Methanosarcina acetivorans strain C2A

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The archaeon, <it>Methanosarcina acetivorans </it>strain C2A forms methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from a variety of one-carbon substrates and acetate. Whereas the biochemical pathways leading to methane formation are well understood, little is known about the expression of the many of the genes that encode proteins needed for carbon flow, electron transfer and/or energy conservation. Quantitative transcript analysis was performed on twenty gene clusters encompassing over one hundred genes in <it>M. acetivorans </it>that encode enzymes/proteins with known or potential roles in substrate conversion to methane.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The expression of many seemingly "redundant" genes/gene clusters establish substrate dependent control of approximately seventy genes for methane production by the pathways for methanol and acetate utilization. These include genes for soluble-type and membrane-type heterodisulfide reductases (<it>hdr</it>), hydrogenases including genes for a <it>vht</it>-type F420 non-reducing hydrogenase, molybdenum-type (<it>fmd</it>) as well as tungsten-type (<it>fwd</it>) formylmethanofuran dehydrogenases, genes for <it>rnf </it>and <it>mrp-</it>type electron transfer complexes, for acetate uptake, plus multiple genes for <it>aha- </it>and <it>atp</it>-type ATP synthesis complexes. Analysis of promoters for seven gene clusters reveal UTR leaders of 51-137 nucleotides in length, raising the possibility of both transcriptional and translational levels of control.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The above findings establish the differential and coordinated expression of two major gene families in <it>M. acetivorans </it>in response to carbon/energy supply. Furthermore, the quantitative mRNA measurements demonstrate the dynamic range for modulating transcript abundance. Since many of these gene clusters in <it>M. acetivorans </it>are also present in other <it>Methanosarcina </it>species including <it>M. mazei</it>, and in <it>M. barkeri</it>, these findings provide a basis for predicting related control in these environmentally significant methanogens.</p

Proposal to the Ethics Education in Science and Engineering Program, National Science Foundation: Role-Play Scenarios for Teaching Responsible Conduct of Research

We propose to develop and assess role-play scenarios to teach central topics in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) to graduate students in science and engineering. Together the scenarios will cover plagiarism, authorship, conflict of interest, interpersonal conflicts in mentoring, and concerns about compliance with research regulations on human participants in research, animal subjects, or hazardous substances. Two scenarios will present potential whistleblowing situations. Intellectual merit: Few previous studies have carefully assessed the effectiveness of role-play in teaching ethics. We will conduct a rigorous, systematic assessment of role-play, using multiple methods, with a diverse group of graduate students. We will examine whether role-play helps students identify moral issues in research, understand multiple perspectives in ethical disputes, and negotiate practical solutions to moral problems. We will document how students’ conceptions of RCR change. We will determine whether students retain their new knowledge and skills. For this project, we will draw on our previous experience in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Broader impacts: Collaborating with both graduate and undergraduate students, we will develop educational materials that can be adopted by graduate programs in all science and engineering departments. These materials will be disseminated through professional meetings and archived online. We believe that by engaging students through the role-play scenarios, we would teach graduate students to handle ethical problems in RCR effectively. As an outcome of this project, we expect to find that long after students have participated in role-play sessions, they will recall the lessons of those sessions, and they will be able to apply those lessons to a wide range of ethical problems that they may encounter in their professional careers