After the financial crisis: the future of payment innovations

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago hosted its tenth annual Payments Conference, Payment Innovations in the Wake of the Financial Crisis, on May 20–21, 2010, to discuss emerging trends within the payments industry and new regulation following the financial crisis.research on health and health care policy.Financial crises ; Payment systems

Exploring the new face of retail payments (special issue)

At the Chicago Fed’s 2011 Payments Conference, held on May 19–20, participants discussed how changes in consumers’ behavior in the wake of the financial crisis and recession can translate into opportunities and challenges for both traditional and nascent payment providers. They also focused on the impact of payment innovations and new consumer protection regulations.Payment systems

Why do banks reward their customers to use their credit cards?

Using a unique administrative level dataset from a large and diverse U.S. financial institution, we test the impact of rewards on credit card spending and debt. Specifically, we study the impact of cash-back rewards on individuals before and during their enrollment in the program. We find that with an average cash-back reward of $25, spending and debt increases by$79 and $191 a month, respectively during the first quarter. Furthermore, we find that cardholders who do not use their card prior to the cash-back program increase their spending and debt more than cardholders with debt prior to the cash-back program. In addition, we find that 11 percent of cardholders that did not use their cards in the previous 3 months prior to the cash-back program spent at least$50 in the first month of the program. Finally, we find heterogeneous responses by demographic and credit constraint characteristics.Credit cards ; Consumption (Economics)

Payments pricing: who bears the cost? - a conference summary

As consumers and merchants increasingly adopt electronic payments, the pricing of these services has generated substantial scrutiny by public authorities around the world. To discuss these developments and related issues, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago hosted its ninth annual Payments Conference on May 14–15, 2009.Payment systems

Prevalence of mechanisms decreasing quinolone-susceptibility among Salmonella spp. clinical isolates

Fluoroquinolone treatment failure has been reported in patients with nalidixic acid-resistant Salmonella infections. Both chromosomal- and plasmid-mediated quinolone-resistance mechanisms have been described. The objective of this study was to identify the prevalence of these mechanisms in a collection of 41 Salmonella spp. clinical isolates causing acute gastroenteritis, obtained in the Hospital Clinic, Barcelona. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of nalidixic acid and ciprofloxacin were determined by Etest. Mutations in the quinolone-resistance determining regions (QRDRs) of the gyrA, gyrB, and parC genes and the presence of the qnr, aac(6′)-Ib-cr, and qepA genes were detected by PCR and DNA sequencing. All isolates showed constitutive expression of an efflux pump. None of the isolates were ciprofloxacin-resistant, whereas 41.5% showed nalidixic acid resistance associated with a mutation in gyrA and overexpression of an efflux pump. Although qnrS1, qnrB6, and qepA were found in four isolates, the expression of these genes was not associated with decreased quinolone susceptibility. Mutations in the gyrA gene and overexpression of an efflux pump were critical for nalidixic acid resistance and decreased susceptibility to ciprofloxacin in these isolates. However, plasmid-mediated quinolone resistance did not seem to play a major role. To our knowledge, this is the first description of qepA in Salmonella. [Int Microbiol 2010; 13(1):15-20

A Novel Ion Exchange System to Purify Mixed ISS Waste Water Brines for Chemical Production and Enhanced Water Recovery

Current International Space Station water recovery regimes produce a sizable portion of waste water brine. This brine is highly toxic and water recovery is poor: a highly wasteful proposition. With new biological techniques that do not require waste water chemical pretreatment, the resulting brine would be chromium-free and nitrate rich which can allow possible fertilizer recovery for future plant systems. Using a system of ion exchange resins we can remove hardness, sulfate, phosphate and nitrate from these brines to leave only sodium and potassium chloride. At this point modern chlor-alkali cells can be utilized to produce a low salt stream as well as an acid and base stream. The first stream can be used to gain higher water recovery through recycle to the water separation stage while the last two streams can be used to regenerate the ion exchange beds used here, as well as other ion exchange beds in the ISS. Conveniently these waste products from ion exchange regeneration would be suitable as plant fertilizer. In this report we go over the performance of state of the art resins designed for high selectivity of target ions under brine conditions. Using ersatz ISS waste water we can evaluate the performance of specific resins and calculate mass balances to determine resin effectiveness and process viability. If this system is feasible then we will be one step closer to closed loop environmental control and life support systems (ECLSS) for current or future applications

A Novel Ion Exchange System to Purify Mixed ISS Waste Water Brines for Chemical Production and Enhanced Water Recovery

Current International Space Station water recovery regimes produce a sizable portion of waste water brine. This brine is highly toxic and water recovery is poor: a highly wasteful proposition. With new biological techniques that do not require waste water chemical pretreatment, the resulting brine would be chromium-free and nitrate rich which can allow possible fertilizer recovery for future plant systems. Using a system of ion exchange resins we can remove hardness, sulfate, phosphate and nitrate from these brines to leave only sodium and potassium chloride. At this point modern chlor-alkali cells can be utilized to produce a low salt stream as well as an acid and base stream. The first stream can be used to gain higher water recovery through recycle to the water separation stage while the last two streams can be used to regenerate the ion exchange beds used here, as well as other ion exchange beds in the ISS. Conveniently these waste products from ion exchange regeneration would be suitable as plant fertilizer. In this report we go over the performance of state of the art resins designed for high selectivity of target ions under brine conditions. Using ersatz ISS waste water we can evaluate the performance of specific resins and calculate mass balances to determine resin effectiveness and process viability. If this system is feasible then we will be one step closer to closed loop environmental control and life support systems (ECLSS) for current or future applications

Interpreting ambiguous ‘trace’ results in Schistosoma mansoni CCA Tests: Estimating sensitivity and specificity of ambiguous results with no gold standard

Background The development of new diagnostics is an important tool in the fight against disease. Latent Class Analysis (LCA) is used to estimate the sensitivity and specificity of tests in the absence of a gold standard. The main field diagnostic for Schistosoma mansoni infection, Kato-Katz (KK), is not very sensitive at low infection intensities. A point-of-care circulating cathodic antigen (CCA) test has been shown to be more sensitive than KK. However, CCA can return an ambiguous ‘trace’ result between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’, and much debate has focused on interpretation of traces results. Methodology/Principle findings We show how LCA can be extended to include ambiguous trace results and analyse S. mansoni studies from both Côte d’Ivoire (CdI) and Uganda. We compare the diagnostic performance of KK and CCA and the observed results by each test to the estimated infection prevalence in the population. Prevalence by KK was higher in CdI (13.4%) than in Uganda (6.1%), but prevalence by CCA was similar between countries, both when trace was assumed to be negative (CCAtn: 11.7% in CdI and 9.7% in Uganda) and positive (CCAtp: 20.1% in CdI and 22.5% in Uganda). The estimated sensitivity of CCA was more consistent between countries than the estimated sensitivity of KK, and estimated infection prevalence did not significantly differ between CdI (20.5%) and Uganda (19.1%). The prevalence by CCA with trace as positive did not differ significantly from estimates of infection prevalence in either country, whereas both KK and CCA with trace as negative significantly underestimated infection prevalence in both countries. Conclusions Incorporation of ambiguous results into an LCA enables the effect of different treatment thresholds to be directly assessed and is applicable in many fields. Our results showed that CCA with trace as positive most accurately estimated infection prevalence

Development of an affirming and customizable electronic survey of sexual and reproductive health experiences for transgender and gender nonbinary people

To address pervasive measurement biases in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) research, our interdisciplinary team created an affirming, customizable electronic survey to measure experiences with contraceptive use, pregnancy, and abortion for transgender and gender nonbinary people assigned female or intersex at birth and cisgender sexual minority women. Between May 2018 and April 2019, we developed a questionnaire with 328 items across 10 domains including gender identity; language used for sexual and reproductive anatomy and events; gender affirmation process history; sexual orientation and sexual activity; contraceptive use and preferences; pregnancy history and desires; abortion history and preferences; priorities for sexual and reproductive health care; family building experiences; and sociodemographic characteristics. Recognizing that the words people use for their sexual and reproductive anatomy can vary, we programmed the survey to allow participants to input the words they use to describe their bodies, and then used those customized words to replace traditional medical terms throughout the survey. This process-oriented paper aims to describe the rationale for and collaborative development of an affirming, customizable survey of the SRH needs and experiences of sexual and gender minorities, and to present summary demographic characteristics of 3,110 people who completed the survey. We also present data on usage of customizable words, and offer the full text of the survey, as well as code for programming the survey and cleaning the data, for others to use directly or as guidelines for how to measure SRH outcomes with greater sensitivity to gender diversity and a range of sexual orientations