Mind Body Regulation: Lessons From the Field and Laboratory

Commentary. Unpacking the Placebo Response: Insights from Ethnographic Studies of Healin

Medicaid in the orthodontic community: provider trends and perceptions

Background and Objectives: Medicaid is a federal and state insurance program aimed at helping economically disadvantaged individuals and families with gaining access to health care. Lack of provider participation in the Medicaid program leaves many Medicaid-eligible individuals with the inability to obtain certain medical services, such as orthodontic care. The objective of this study was to use an electronic survey to better understand the beliefs and behaviors of orthodontists in regard to participation in the Medicaid program, and to determine if differences exist between Medicaid providers and non-Medicaid providers. Experimental Design and Methods: Survey: Requests to participate in an electronic survey were submitted to private practicing orthodontists located in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia (n = 580). Contact information was obtained from the member directory listed on the American Association of Orthodontists (AAO) website. Participants’ responses were categorized based on Medicaid participation; current, former, or never accepted. Results: One hundred nine practitioners responded to the survey (19%). A total of 58 practitioners currently accepted Medicaid patients, 13 formerly accepted Medicaid patients, and 39 had never accepted Medicaid patients. All three groups cited low fees as a major deterrent to participating in the Medicaid program. More providers in the state of West Virginia accept Medicaid patients than those in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Providers who felt confident with their own and their administrative staff’s ability to navigate the Medicaid system participated in the Medicaid program in higher numbers than those that felt less confident. There were no significant differences in perceptions of Medicaid patient’s compliance in appointment keeping, breakage of appliances or oral hygiene among the different Medicaid participation statuses. Conclusions: Fee reimbursement, reimbursement schedule, and lack of confidence in navigating the Medicaid system are major barriers to orthodontic provider participation

Three Degrees of Distance on Twitter

Recent work has found that the propagation of behaviors and sentiments through networks extends in ranges up to 2 to 4 degrees of distance. The regularity with which the same observation is found in dissimilar phenomena has been associated with friction in the propagation process and the instability of link structure that emerges in the dynamic of social networks. We study a contagious behavior, the practice of retweeting, in a setting where neither of those restrictions is present and still found the same result.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

The intricate Galaxy disk: velocity asymmetries in Gaia-TGAS

We use the Gaia-TGAS data to compare the transverse velocities in Galactic longitude (coming from proper motions and parallaxes) in the Milky Way disk for negative and positive longitudes as a function of distance. The transverse velocities are strongly asymmetric and deviate significantly from the expectations for an axisymmetric Galaxy. The value and sign of the asymmetry changes at spatial scales of several tens of degrees in Galactic longitude and about 0.5 kpc in distance. The asymmetry is statistically significant at 95% confidence level for 57% of the region probed, which extends up to ~1.2 kpc. A percentage of 24% of the region studied shows absolute differences at this confidence level larger than 5 km/s and 7% larger than 10 km/s. The asymmetry pattern shows mild variations in the vertical direction and with stellar type. A first qualitative comparison with spiral arm models indicates that the arms are unlikely to be the main source of the asymmetry. We briefly discuss alternative origins. This is the first time that global all-sky asymmetries are detected in the Milky Way kinematics, beyond the local neighbourhood, and with a purely astrometric sample.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A Letter