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Data analytics projects can be like throwing darts in the dark. Problem-centric thinking is vital, argue Vincent Charles, Ali Emrouznejad, Tatiana Gherman, and James Cochran

Analytics can help identify strategies to improve the equity and capacity of health services for populations. However, many government agencies experience challenges with heavy workloads, limited time for continued analytic education, and employee turnover among contracted staff. Therefore, streamlining analytical workflows has the potential to (1) improve labor cost-efficiencies and (2) identify strategies to improve health among enrollees. We describe an analytic framework design that automates several empirical methods and provides recommendations for increasing healthcare access for Alabama Medicaid Agency (AMA) enrollees. The described framework, which includes descriptive and prescriptive elements, has been successfully used to inform various day-to-day analyses conducted by AMA’s Analytics Department and comprehensively analyze AMA-enrolled youths’ accessibility to licensed dentists. Specifically, in the dental context, the framework assisted in identifying (1) dental procedures that were ideal candidates for increased reimbursement payments and (2) geographical locations that AMA should target for interventions to improve physical access to care for AMA’s youth enrollees. The insights offered by the framework for dental care impact more than 0.5 million underserved youth and roughly $90 million of annual revenue for licensed dentists through reimbursements. Funding: D. Lewis, J. Parton, M. Hudnall, R. Tramp, X. T. Yang, and S. Samsel received salary support from the Alabama Medicaid Agency during the execution of this study. B. Cambron, T. Tyner, N. Biligowda, and D. Rush were employed at the Alabama Medicaid Agency during the execution of this study. The other authors do not declare the receipt of funding associated with entities affiliated with this study.

This essay calls for a wider use of Tina Amorok’s (2007) concepts of eco-Being, eco-trauma of Being, and eco-recovery of Being in ecocritical literary studies. I propose the adoption of Amorok’s concepts as a literary hermeneutic because it provides a theoretical model that positions ecological damage as central to wartime trauma. To demonstrate the effectiveness of Amorok’s framework, the following essay reads Tim O’Brien’s 1990 novel The Things They Carried alongside Amorok’s eco-Being, eco-trauma, and eco-recovery. Reading O’Brien’s text through Amorok’s model is particularly intriguing and noteworthy because almost no critics investigate the ecocritical dimensions of O’Brien’s novel. Yet, despite the absence of green scholarship surrounding O’Brien’s novel, Amorok’s framework, as I will show, draws attention to the environmental costs of war as depicted in O’Brien’s novel. Applying Amorok’s model as an ecocritical lens to The Things They Carried demonstrates how we can use Amorok’s tripartite structure to further unpack the ecological dimensions of fiction that seemingly have little to do with the environment.

The "tonsil riots" of 1906 were panics that developed at several public schools in historically immigrant-dominated neighborhoods of New York City (NYC). Per archived newspaper articles, several NYC public schools asked for parental consent to have Board of Health physicians come and perform tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy on their students. When children subsequently returned home from school "drooling mouthfuls of blood and barely able to speak," mothers reacted with panic and flocked to the schools demanding the safe return of their children. Police, ultimately, had to be called in to manage the crowds, and the events of 1906 largely faded from the public eye. However, these events can offer important lessons in communication and cultural humility as the United States continues its mass vaccination against coronavirus disease 2019.

Ukraine is not the only country whose health-care system has been ravaged by conflict. Here, Mulugeta Gebregziabher and James J. Cochran describe the huge challenges of gathering reliable data on the catastrophic effect of civil war in Tigray, Ethiopia

Since 1995, sage-grouse (Centrocercus spp.) conservation planning in the western United States has largely been based upon local working groups comprised of federal, state and local governments, environmental groups, landowners, interested citizens. In this article, we review the history and process of these local working groups in western Colorado. These groups are generally convened by one or more government agencies, operate on the general principle of consensus, and have little or no administrative or financial support. The local working groups were generally comprised of field biologist, rancher/landowners, members of local environmental groups and occasionally representatives from local governments. The plans they generated were based upon consensus, therefore difficult issues were often bypassed in order to keep the plan development process moving. The early success of a number of these local working groups resulted in sage-grouse conservation plans such as the Gunnison Sage-grouse Conservation Plan, which provides sage-grouse conservation guidance for the Gunnison Basin in South Central Colorado. However, there were problems such as an undefined membership, lack of administrative support, and achieving consensus. The Gunnison County Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) created an entirely new approach to the local work group concept. The Gunnison Basin Sage-grouse Strategic Committee (GBSGSC) was created, with appointed (by the BoCC) representatives from the federal land management agencies, the state wildlife agency, the neighboring county, the ranching community, the environmental community, the development community, the recreation community, and the public at large. Formal operating guidelines were adopted by the BoCC. Specific membership criteria were identified. Administrative staff from Gunnison County was assigned to the Committee. Importantly, the BoCC determined that, though consensus was an admirable goal, this Committee would operate under majority rule. The GBSGSC has been meeting monthly since 2005.

The Gunnison sage-grouse (GUSG) is an iconic species recently proposed for protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In Colorado’s Upper Gunnison River Basin, ranchers own the majority of water rights and productive river bottoms as well as approximately 30% of the most important GUSG habitat. This project used mixed-methods interviews with 41 ranch owners to document how ranchers perceive the proposed ESA listing and how they plan to respond to a listing decision. Results show that ranchers support on-the-ground GUSG conservation but are concerned about listing implications. Ranchers are most concerned about their ability to manage public and private lands productively and continue permitted grazing on public lands. If the species is listed, landowners plan to decrease participation in conservation strategies, including plans to adopt conservation easements, participation in conservation programs, and willingness to allow access to private lands for GUSG monitoring. Landowners also express plans for increased sales of land and water, which could have negative consequences for GUSG habitat. This research suggests that changes in the application of the ESA could lead to beneficial conservation outcomes. These changes include increased transparency, ability to exclude stable populations from listing under the ESA, and commitment to work with local bodies if the species is listed. This project demonstrates the importance of qualitative research for understanding the indirect and unintended effects of species protections in an increasingly interconnected world.

Describing and then explaining individual behavior during migration can help us to understand why (on both proximate and ultimate levels) birds migrate; the altitude(s) at which migratory birds fly, for example, can have far-reaching consequences. However, to date, no fine-scale, full-flight altitude data have been available for small ( 100 m) altitude adjustments during their flights (1.44 hr−1), not including initial ascent and final descent. The ...

Message Authentication Codes (MACs) are core algorithms deployed in virtually every security protocol in common usage. In these protocols, the integrity and authenticity of messages rely entirely on the security of the MAC; we examine cases in which this security is lost. In this paper, we examine the notion of "reforgeability" for MACs, and motivate its utility in the context of {power, bandwidth, CPU}-constrained computing environments. We first give a definition for this new notion, then examine some of the most widely-used and well-known MACs under our definition in a variety of adversarial settings, finding in nearly all cases a failure to meet the new notion. We examine simple counter-measures to increase resistance to reforgeabiliy, using state and truncating the tag length, but find that both are not simultaneously applicable to modern MACs. In response, we give a tight security reduction for a new MAC, WMAC, which we argue is the "best fit" for resource-limited devices.

The urban experience forms my identity as an artist. From an adolescent painting graffiti in the night it was on the railway lines or in the alleyways where I discovered my self and my raison d’etr...

A simplified method of calculating the diffraction patterns of crystals showing mistake broadening is outlined, and used to correct three results published by Wilson in 1943. Wilson’s model 3 (mistakes on {110} planes) is extended in the light of probable differences of the energy of interfaces between domains of different types. The apparent particle sizes obtained, when differences in interfacial energy are ignored, are: formistakes on { 100 } planes 3 N 1 2 / 2 ( h + k + l ) δ ; formistakes on { 110 } planes 3 ( 2 N ) 1 2 / 4 ( 2 h + k ) δ ; formistakes on { 111 } planes 3 ( 3 N ) 1 2 / 8 h δ if h ≥ k + l , 3 ( 3 N ) 1 2 / 4 ( h + k + l ) δ if h < k + l ; where δ is the probability of a mistake per unit length, h, k, l are the positive values of the indices of reflexion arranged in the order h ≥ k ≥ 1, and N = h 2 + k 2 + l 2 . When differences in interfacial energy are taken into account the apparent particle size for mistakes on {100} planes becomes 2 N 1 2 / { 2 ( h + k + l − u ) δ ′ + ( h + k + l + u ) δ ′ ′ } , where u is the impaired index, and that for mistakes on {110} planes becomes ( 2 N ) 1 2 / { 4 h δ ′ + 2 ( h + k ) δ ′ ′ } when ( 2 N ) 1 2 / { 2 ( h + k ) δ ′ + ( 3 h + k ) δ ′ ′ } when k or l is the unpaired index. All {111} interfaces have the same energy in AuCu 3 , so the expressions for mistakes on {111} planes are not altered.