Managing Medicaid Pharmacy Benefits: Current Issues and Options

Examines issues and considerations for state reforms of Medicaid prescription drug reimbursement, pharmacy management, and cost sharing and other best practices for realizing savings

Potenziale der teilflächenspezifischen Kalkversorgung von Grünland

Gegenstand war der Erhalt einer optimalen Boden-Acidität im Grünland. Ziele des Vorhabens waren: (i) Entwicklung, Tests und Bewertungen von pH-Sensorsystemen, (ii) Entwicklung von Auswertungsmethoden für die sensorgestützte Bodenkartierung sowie von sen-sorgestützen Entscheidungsunterstützungsalgorithmen zur adaptiven Kalkung, (iii) Ermittlungen der Bodenvariabilität durch Bodensensoren und ihr Zusammenhang mit wesentlichen Eigenschaften des Grünlands. Im Projektverlauf gab es Schwierigkeiten: Budgetkürzungen, Fachkräftemangel, technische Probleme und Schäden, Trockenphasen sowie ein Arbeitsunfall beeinflussten Projektziele und Zeitplanung. Eine Verlängerung und Aufstockung des Projektes kam nicht zustande. Die Ergebnisse wurden nicht voll-ständig erreicht. Erster Untersuchungsgegenstand war die Verletzung der Grasnarbe infolge des mechanischen Bodenkontaktes der Sensoren. Sensoranordnungen sowie Lösungen zum Schließen der Furchen wurden untersucht: Radwalzen, ein modifiziertes Pflugschar sowie im Zuge der Entwicklung alternativer Lösungen zur automatisierten Probeentnahme eine durch den Boden gezogene Kettensäge, ein Kern-bohrgerät und ein schmalerer Messschuh. Im Ergebnis wurde entschieden, ein alternatives absätziges Messverfahren mit Kernbohrgerät zu favorisieren. Weiterer Untersuchungsschwerpunkt war die Zuverlässigkeit des Veris MSP Systems. Nach Störungen in der Software, bei der Datenaufzeichnung, einem Kabelbrand sowie Neubau der Stromversorgung wird der Einsatz im Grünland nicht empfohlen. Es wurde notwendig alternative Messverfahren mit handgehaltenen Sensorsystemen entwickelt. Dies ist durch die absehbare Verfügbarkeit autonomer Mobile gerechtfertigt, mit denen eine absätzige Kartierung möglich wird. Ergebnis ist ein pH-Modul auf Basis von Antimon-pH-Elektroden. Mit der Entwicklung eines Spektrometer-Moduls wurde begonnen. Untersuchungen zur Variabilität und zum Kalkbedarf belegen die kleinräumige Variation von Grünlandvegetation und Boden-pH, engmaschige Beprobungen sind notwendig. Der Boden-pH wirkt neben anderen Faktoren ertragslimitierend und beeinflusst die Artenzusammensetzung. Primär besteht daher großer Entwicklungsbedarf für robuste Sensorlösungen zur engräumigen Bodenuntersuchung auf Grünland

Do people's first names match their faces?

We often feel that people’s first names suit their faces in some way. Evidence has already shown that we share common stereotypes about how people with particular names should look. Here, we investigate whether there is any accuracy to these beliefs. Simply, can we match people’s names to their faces? Across two experiments, we tested whether American (Experiment 1) and British participants (Experiment 2) were able to match the first names of strangers with photographs of their faces. Although Experiment 1 provided some initial support for accuracy in female participants, we were unable to replicate this result in Experiment 2. Therefore, we find no overall evidence to suggest that particular names and faces are associated with each other

Displaying red and black on a first date: A field study using the “First Dates” television series

Previous research has shown that displaying the color red can increase attractiveness. As a result, women display red more often when expecting to meet more attractive men in a laboratory context. Here, we carried out a field study by analyzing 546 daters from the “First Dates” television series. Each participant was filmed in a pre-date interview and during a real first date, allowing direct comparison of the clothing worn by each person in these two contexts. Analysis of ratings of the amount of red displayed showed that both men and women wore more red clothing during their dates. This pattern was even stronger for black clothing, while the amount of blue clothing did not differ across the two contexts. Our results provide the first real-world demonstration that people display more red and black clothing when meeting a possible mate for the first time, perhaps seeking to increase their attractiveness and/or reveal their intentions to potential partners

Social Evaluation of Faces Across Gender and Familiarity

Models of social evaluation aim to capture the information people use to form first impressions of unfamiliar others. However, little is currently known about the relationship between perceived traits across gender. In Study 1, we asked viewers to provide ratings of key social dimensions (dominance, trustworthiness, etc.) for multiple images of 40 unfamiliar identities. We observed clear sex differences in the perception of dominance—with negative evaluations of high dominance in unfamiliar females but not males. In Study 2, we used the social evaluation context to investigate the key predictions about the importance of pictorial information in familiar and unfamiliar face processing. We compared the consistency of ratings attributed to different images of the same identities and demonstrated that ratings of images depicting the same familiar identity are more tightly clustered than those of unfamiliar identities. Such results imply a shift from image rating to person rating with increased familiarity, a finding which generalises results previously observed in studies of identification. </jats:p

Pairwise Distance and Position Estimators From Differences in UWB Channels to Observers

We consider the problem of obtaining relative location information between two wireless nodes from the differences in their ultra-wideband (UWB) channels to observer nodes. Our approach focuses on the delays of multipath components (MPCs) extracted from the observed channels. For the two different cases of known and unknown MPC association between these channels, we present estimators for the distance and for the relative position vector between the two nodes. The position estimators require both MPC directions and MPC delays as input. All presented estimators exhibit very desirable technological properties: they do not require line-of-sight conditions, precise synchronization, or knowledge about the observer locations or about the environment. These advantages could enable low-cost wireless network localization in dynamic multipath environments. The exposition is complemented by a numerical evaluation of the estimation accuracy using random sampling, where especially the position estimators show the potential for great accuracy.Comment: To appear at the IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) Workshops 2021, Madrid, Spain. This work has been submitted to the IEEE for publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice. This is the short conference version of the full paper arXiv:2108.09703. v2 fixes a copy-and-paste error in (21). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2108.0970

Why (and how) Superman hides behind glasses: the difficulties of face matching

As a mild-mannered reporter, Clark Kent is able to blend into human society without drawing much attention to himself. Although he utilises several methods of disguise (clothing, posture, hair style), perhaps his most famous is a simple pair of glasses (see Figure 1). We know that wearing glasses can make you look more educated and intelligent (e.g., Hellström & Tekle, 1994), but for Superman, the goal is primarily to hide his true identity. Of course, one of the cornerstones of enjoying superhero fiction is that we suspend our disbelief and try to ignore the obvious questions (for example, how useful or plausible is it that Squirrel Girl can communicate with and understand squirrels?!). However, the scientist inside us sometimes breaks through and we are given the opportunity to investigate. Here, we tackle the question that comic book fans have been asking for decades – could Superman really hide his identity using a pair of glasses