Using Data to Drive State Improvement in Enrollment and Retention Performance

Outlines the RWJF Maximizing Enrollment program's core performance measures for Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program enrollment and retention, designed to assess state efforts to better utilize data to monitor and improve outreach and policy

A Green Bank Telescope search for narrowband technosignatures between 1.1-1.9 GHz during 12 Kepler planetary transits

A growing avenue for determining the prevalence of life beyond Earth is to search for "technosignatures" from extraterrestrial intelligences/agents. Technosignatures require significant energy to be visible across interstellar space and thus intentional signals might be concentrated in frequency, in time, or in space, to be found in mutually obvious places. Therefore, it could be advantageous to search for technosignatures in parts of parameter space that are mutually-derivable to an observer on Earth and a distant transmitter. In this work, we used the L-band (1.1-1.9 GHz) receiver on the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to perform the first technosignature search pre-synchronized with exoplanet transits, covering 12 Kepler systems. We used the Breakthrough Listen turboSETI pipeline to flag narrowband hits ($\sim$3 Hz) using a maximum drift rate of $\pm$614.4 Hz/s and a signal-to-noise threshold of 5 - the pipeline returned $\sim 3.4 \times 10^5$ apparently-localized features. Visual inspection by a team of citizen scientists ruled out 99.6% of them. Further analysis found 2 signals-of-interest that warrant follow-up, but no technosignatures. If the signals-of-interest are not re-detected in future work, it will imply that the 12 targets in the search are not producing transit-aligned signals from 1.1-1.9 GHz with transmitter powers $>$60 times that of the former Arecibo radar. This search debuts a range of innovative technosignature techniques: citizen science vetting of potential signals-of-interest, a sensitivity-aware search out to extremely high drift rates, a more flexible method of analyzing on-off cadences, and an extremely low signal-to-noise threshold.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figure

Oceans Melting Greenland: Early Results from NASA's Ocean-Ice Mission in Greenland

Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet represents a major uncertainty in projecting future rates of global sea level rise. Much of this uncertainty is related to a lack of knowledge about subsurface ocean hydrographic properties, particularly heat content, how these properties are modified across the continental shelf, and about the extent to which the ocean interacts with glaciers. Early results from NASA’s five-year Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission, based on extensive hydrographic and bathymetric surveys, suggest that many glaciers terminate in deep water and are hence vulnerable to increased melting due to ocean-ice interaction. OMG will track ocean conditions and ice loss at glaciers around Greenland through the year 2020, providing critical information about ocean-driven Greenland ice mass loss in a warming climate

Factors Associated with Revision Surgery after Internal Fixation of Hip Fractures

Background: Femoral neck fractures are associated with high rates of revision surgery after management with internal fixation. Using data from the Fixation using Alternative Implants for the Treatment of Hip fractures (FAITH) trial evaluating methods of internal fixation in patients with femoral neck fractures, we investigated associations between baseline and surgical factors and the need for revision surgery to promote healing, relieve pain, treat infection or improve function over 24 months postsurgery. Additionally, we investigated factors associated with (1) hardware removal and (2) implant exchange from cancellous screws (CS) or sliding hip screw (SHS) to total hip arthroplasty, hemiarthroplasty, or another internal fixation device. Methods: We identified 15 potential factors a priori that may be associated with revision surgery, 7 with hardware removal, and 14 with implant exchange. We used multivariable Cox proportional hazards analyses in our investigation. Results: Factors associated with increased risk of revision surgery included: female sex, [hazard ratio (HR) 1.79, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.25-2.50; P = 0.001], higher body mass index (fo

Assessment of Incinerator Emissions During Operational Transients

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) was enacted in 1976 and amended in 1984 by the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments (HSWA) to address problems of toxic and hazardous waste disposal. Commensurate with these statues, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regards incineration as one of the principal technologies for the safe disposal of wastes. Pursuant to RCRA the EPA promulgated the standards for hazardous waste incinerators in January 1981 that require a destruction and removal efficiency (ORE) of 99.99 percent for each principal organic hazardous constituent (POHC) designated for each waste feed. This standard and past studies of hazardous waste incinerators have primarily examined the performance of combustion systems relative to ORE for RCRA Appendix VIII compounds in the waste feed. These earlier studies demonstrated that in general most facilities performed quite well relative to the ORE. However, subsequent review by the EPAIs Science Advisory Board (SAB)2 raised questions about additional Appendix VIII or non-Appendix VIII constituents that were not identified in the earlier tests and might be emitted from combustion of hazardous waste. These other organic compounds present in the stack gas are commonly referred to as products of incomplete combustion (PIC). The total of all POHCs and PICs that were identified in incinerator stack gases during the earlier studies was typically less than 10 percent of the total organic emissions. To address the SAB question, Midwest Research Institute (MRI) was contracted by the Hazardous Waste Engineering Research Laboratory, EPA, Cincinnati, Ohio, to measure all organic emissions from a hazardous waste incinerator to the extent possible. This paper presents results of measurements of stack emissions from this study

From foraging to autonoetic consciousness : the primal self as a consequence of embodied prospective foraging

The capacity to adapt to resource distributions by modulating the frequency of exploratory and exploitative behaviors is common across metazoans and is arguably a principal selective force in the evolution of cognition. Here we (1) review recent work investigating behavioral and biological commonalities between external foraging in space and internal foraging over environments specified by cognitive representations, and (2) explore the implications of these commonalities for understanding the origins of the self. Behavioural commonalities include the capacity for what is known as area-restricted search in the ecological literature: this is search focussed around locations where resources have been found in the past, but moving away from locations where few resources are found, and capable of producing movement patterns mimicking Lévy flights. Area-restricted search shares a neural basis across metazoans, and these biological commonalities in vertebrates suggest an evolutionary homology between external and internal foraging. Internal foraging, and in particular a form we call embodied prospective foraging, makes available additional capacities for prediction based on search through a cognitive representation of the external environment, and allows predictions about outcomes of possible future actions. We demonstrate that cognitive systems that use embodied prospective foraging require a primitive sense of self, needed to distinguish actual from simulated action. This relationship has implications for understanding the evolution of autonoetic consciousness and self-awarenes