Examining effective and realized healthcare access in the west south central division.

This study explores realized and effective access domains outlined by Andersen’s Behavioral Model of Health Services Use. Exploring other domains of access is critical to understanding how the healthcare system functions (Kirby & Yabroff, 2020). This study evaluates rural-urban and racial/ethnic differences in access to care using two underresearched domains of healthcare access. It also allows for exploring access disparities within rural communities amongst minority populations. This dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapter One provides an overview of health disparities and inequities and a brief overview of the study. Chapter Two details a high-level history of racism and its impacts on racial and ethnic groups. It introduces the Andersen Model of Health Services Use, structural racism, and structural urbanism. Individual and contextual factors affecting access to a usual source of care and patient satisfaction are identified. Chapter Three describes the methodological approach for the study. Chapter Four covers the results. Race/ethnicity and urbanicity/rurality were shown to be significant predictors of having a usual source of care. White, non-Hispanic individuals are 1.4 times more likely to have a usual source of care than their non-White or Hispanic counterparts. Those living in an urban area are .78 times (22%) less likely to have a usual source of care. The interaction between race/ethnicity and urbanicity/rurality was not significant. Furthermore, race/ethnicity and urbanicity/rurality were not significant predictors of patient satisfaction with care. The interaction between race/ethnicity and urbanicity/rurality was significant. The area in which patients lived determined the nature and direction of the association between race/ethnicity. In urban areas, there was a negative association, such that urban, White/non-Hispanic individuals had higher levels of satisfaction than their non-White, Hispanic counterparts. In rural areas, this association was positive: White/non-Hispanic individuals had lower levels of satisfaction than their non-White, Hispanic counterparts. Chapter Five discusses the meaning of these results and the potential advocacy opportunities social work may consider to improve access and satisfaction with care. Community health workers are situated as allies in the field and several policies are discussed

Reverse Engineering: WiMAX and IEEE 802.16e

Wireless communications is part of everyday life. As it is incorporated into new products and services, it brings additional security risks and requirements. A thorough understanding of wireless protocols is necessary for network administrators and manufacturers. Though most wireless protocols have strict standards, many parts of the hardware implementation may deviate from the standard and be proprietary. In these situations reverse engineering must be conducted to fully understand the strengths and vulnerabilities of the communication medium. New 4G broadband wireless access protocols, including IEEE 802.16e and WiMAX, offer higher data rates and wider coverage than earlier 3G technologies. Many security vulnerabilities, including various Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, have been discovered in 3G protocols and the original IEEE 802.16 standard. Many of these vulnerabilities and new security flaws exist in the revised standard IEEE 802.16e. Most of the vulnerabilities already discovered allow for DoS attacks to be carried out on WiMAX networks. This study examines and analyzes a new DoS attack on IEEE 802.16e standard. We investigate how system parameters for the WiMAX Bandwidth Contention Resolution (BCR) process affect network vulnerability to DoS attacks. As this investigation developed and transitioned into analyzing hardware implementations, reverse engineering was needed to locate and modify the BCR system parameters. Controlling the BCR system parameters in hardware is not a normal task. The protocol allows only the BS to set the system parameters. The BS gives one setting of the BCR system parameters to all WiMAX clients on the network and everyone is suppose to follow these settings. Our study looks at what happens if a set of users, attackers, do not follow the BS\u27s settings and set their BCR system parameters independently. We hypothesize and analyze different techniques to do this in hardware with the goal being to replicate previous software simulations that looked at this behavior. This document details our approaches to reverse engineer IEEE 802.16e and WiMAX. Additionally, we look at network security analysis and how to design experiments to reduce time and cost. Factorial experiment design and ANOVA analysis is the solution. In using these approaches, one can test multiple factors in parallel, producing robust, repeatable and statistically significant results. By treating all other parameters as noise when testing first order effects, second and third order effects can be analyzed with less significance. The details of this type of experimental design is given along with NS-2 simulations and hardware experiments that analyze the BCR system parameters. This purpose of this paper is to serve as guide for reverse engineering network protocols and conducting network experiments. As wireless communication and network security become ubiquitous, the methods and techniques detailed in this study become increasingly important. This document can serve as a guide to reduce time and effort when reverse engineering other communication protocols and conducting network experiments

A Performative Autoethnography on the Irruption of a Healing Assemblage

In this ecofeminist poststructural performative autoethnography, I explored my own personal journey through prolonged grief, conceptualized as a grief assemblage, while critically examining the functionality of preexisting thought and practices on loss and self-care. The research questions that guided this dissertation were: (1) Who and what constitutes a grief assemblage? (2) How does a grief assemblagea fluid entity of nonhumans and humans that somehow functions togetherproduce me as a woman, a graduate student, and a counselor? (3) How can a reconceptualization of grief as assemblage expand thinking and practices on loss, grief, and self-care? (4) How can an applicable, customizable tool arise from this work that can further the aim of helping others heal from grief and engage in self-care practices in therapeutic settings?I worked closely with ecofeminist poststructural theory and performative autoethnographic methodology and became enmeshed in a fluid process that interrogated the confines of traditional research studies. This enmeshment also generated interrogations of preconceived notions about binary systems supposedly separating self and other, life and death, and nature and culture, until these separations collapsed into constant movements along infinite lines of flight. As I assembled artifacts related to my experiences of grief, loss, and self-care, the assemblage continued to vibrate with the constant fluctuations at work among a myriad of forces, thereby necessitating that I think and work with data differently. St. Pierres (1997) transgressive data irrupted along these lines of flight as concrete artifacts, dreams, hauntings, memories, emotions, and performative knowledge through living the assemblage with my body. I employed writing as a method of inquiry (St. Pierre & Richardson, 2005) and analysis to assemble a rhizomatic narrative in which I showed the many identity performances I enact as a person who is simultaneously grieving and healing. I used photo-text to illustrate how the grief assemblage is becoming a healing assemblage. Just as the assemblage collapses, folds, vibrates, and performs constant movements, I found myself assembling, dismantling, and re-assembling the data into various configurations which culminated in the alternating pages of photographs and text as I conversed with my mother and all the other forces in the assemblage. I found that I am performing healing as I continue to move with the assemblage.To further the aim of social justice for others who are grieving and trying to heal in a world that is far too often focused on work and achievement at the expense of self-care, I created a healing-gram, which is a practical therapeutic tool mental health professionals can use with their clients. The healing-gram itself is an assemblage of artifacts with which grieving individuals become entangled as they work with their selected artifacts in empowering and creative ways. The healing-gram includes a protocol that serves as a standardized guide for therapists, yet which also honors the unique experiences and identity locations of diverse populations. I created this tool to bridge the gap between counseling-specific theories and practices about loss, grief, and healing, and poststructural thought. I conceptualize this work as an ongoing process that does not provide straightforward answers to questions such as those that guided this study. Instead, more questions continue to irrupt which I hope will lead to future studies and practices on these topics

La trenza de las fronterizas: The cultural worlds first-generation women navigate to access college

First generation female students of color face challenges in accessing and navigating the college-going realm. Scholars write about this population, but their tone is often deficit-based, focusing on these students’, families’, and communities’ shortcomings rather than highlighting their resilience and adept abilities at transitioning between different cultural worlds. Using Holland’s (1998) theory of cultural worlds, and employing portraiture methodology, tools of feminist research, and narrative ethnography, this intimate micro-study examines the college-going world that young women of minoritized identities navigates. It asks: (a) What are the identities, relationships, and resources that construe their participation in this world? (b) What are other worlds in which they participate? (c) What are the effective border-crossing strategies they use to transition from other worlds into the college-going world? It concludes by finding that young women transition between complex cultural worlds – including those centered on: resilience in the face of oppression; young adulthood; and complex familial relationships – to “border cross” into college. These findings are important in highlighting an asset-based approach of working with and understanding this population. Suggestions are included for institutions – especially PWIs – as to how to best support these students in their transition from high school to college. Particular emphasis should be placed on reducing on-campus racism and increasing supports of mentors, particularly those who may also be first-generation students of color

Preferences over the Fair Division of Goods: Information, Good, and Sample Effects in a Health Context

Greater recognition by economists of the influential role that concern for distributional equity exerts on decision making in a variety of economic contexts has spurred interest in empirical research on the public judgments of fair distribution. Using a stated-preference experimental design, this paper contributes to the growing literature on fair division by investigating the empirical support for each of five distributional principles — equal division among recipients, Rawlsian maximin, total benefit maximization, equal benefit for recipients, and allocation according to relative need among recipients — in the division of a fixed bundle of a good across settings that differ with respect to the good being allocated (a health care good — pills, and non-health care but still health-affecting good — apples) and the way that alternative possible divisions of the good are described (quantitative information only, verbal information only, and both). It also offers new evidence on sample effects (university sample vs. community samples) and how the aggregate ranking of principles is affected by alternative vote-scoring methods. We find important information effects. When presented with quantitative information only, support for the division to equalize benefit across recipients is consistent with that found in previous research; changing to verbal descriptions causes a notable shift in support among principles, especially between equal division of the goods and total benefit maximization. The judgments made when presented with both quantitative and verbal information match more closely those made with quantitative-only descriptions rather than verbal-only descriptions, suggesting that the quantitative information dominates. The information effects we observe are consistent with a lack of understanding among participants as to the relationship between the principles and the associated quantitative allocations. We also find modest good effects in the expected direction: the fair division of pills is tied more closely to benefit-related criterion than is the fair division of apples (even though both produce health benefits). We find evidence of only small differences between the university and community samples and important sex-information interactions.Distributive Justice; Equity; Resource Allocation; Health Care

Breast size, bra fit and thoracic pain in young women: a correlational study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>A single sample study was undertaken to determine the strength and direction of correlations between: a) breast size and thoracic spine or posterior chest wall pain; b) bra fit and thoracic spine or posterior chest wall pain and; c) breast size and bra fit, in thirty nulliparous women (18–26 years), with thoracic spine or posterior chest wall pain, who wore bras during daytime.</p> <p>Measures</p> <p>Pain (Short Form McGill Pain Questionnaire), bra size (Triumph International), bra fit (Triumph International).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Most (80%) women wore incorrectly sized bras: 70% wore bras that were too small, 10% wore bras that were too large. Breast size was negatively correlated with both bra size (r = -0.78) and bra fit (r = -0.50). These results together indicate that large breasted women were particularly likely to be wearing incorrectly sized and fitted bras. Negligible relationships were found between pain and bra fit, and breast size and pain. Menstrual cycle stage was moderately positively correlated with bra fit (r = 0.32).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In young, nulliparous women, thoracic pain appears unrelated to breast size. Bra fit is moderately related to stage of menstrual cycle suggesting that this research may be somewhat confounded by hormonal changes or reproductive stage. Further research is needed to clarify whether there is a relationship between breast size or bra fit and thoracic pain in women during times of hormonal change.</p

AACSB Accreditation and Student Demand

We ask whether AACSB accreditation has a meaningful impact on university admissions. To do this, we explore 16 U.S. institutions which first achieved this certification recently. We, first, document a modest, but nonzero, impact on university-wide undergraduate applications, without any changes in first-year enrollment, price, or quality of the incoming student body. Restricting attention to business schools, while initial evidence suggests that the accreditation is associated with a decrease in enrollments, we show that this is complicated by non-parallel trends prior to accreditation. Compared to their comparison institutions, universities who seek out accreditation were experiencing flatter business enrollments. Correcting for the non-parallel trends, we fail to find evidence that AACSB accreditation halts this negative enrollment trend

Methods for Estimating Seed Production of Two Summer-Active Grass Weeds, \u3cem\u3eSetaria pumila\u3c/em\u3e and \u3cem\u3eDigitaria sanguinalis\u3c/em\u3e, in New Zealand Dairy Pastures

Undesirable C4 annual grasses such as summer grass (Digitaria sanguinalis, (L.) Scop., SG) and yellow bristle grass (Setaria pumila (Poir.) Roem. et Schult., YBG) are prevalent in dairying regions in the North Island of New Zealand. Field surveys of 39 dairy pastures in the central North Island demonstrated that their percentage ground cover has tripled over the last four years (Tozer et al. 2012). The prolific seed production of these species is thought be facilitating this increase in ground cover. However, little information is available on their fecundity in dairy pastures. Counting the number of seeds in a panicle is slow and laborious, therefore a rapid and robust method to assess fecundity is required. In USA crops, Forcella et al. (2000) found a significant curvilinear relationship between YBG seeds per panicle and panicle length, regardless of crop identity, year and weed density. A study was therefore established to determine if panicle length or weight could be used to estimate YBG and SG fecundity in intensively managed dairy pastures in New Zealand