Our Economy is Evolving: Shouldn't the Way We Measure It Evolve Too?

Rigorous evaluations of evolving interventions: can we have our cake and eat it too?

The years immediately following the widespread interest in patient safety and then healthcare quality saw considerable debate between pragmatically oriented improvers and research-oriented evaluators —or between ‘evangelists’ and ‘snails’ as one longtime observer characterised the two groups. Too often, enthusiastic improvers (‘evangelists’) relied on simple pre-post designs within a single con...

Just don't do it! Are we teaching our kids way too much about sex? Or not nearly enough?

JUST DON'T DO IT! (cover story). By: Kelly, Katy. U.S. News & World Report. 10/17/2005, Vol. 139 Issue 14, p44-51. 8p. 7 Color Photographs. Abstract: Offers a discussion about whether children are learning too much or not enough about sex. Emphasis of some schools on abstinence-only sexual education programs; Reference to the book "Sex & Sensibility: The Thinking Parent's Guide," by Deborah Rof...

Adaptive developmental plasticity: what is it, how can we recognize it and when can it evolve?

Developmental plasticity describes situations where a specific input during an individual's development produces a lasting alteration in phenotype. Some instances of developmental plasticity may be adaptive, meaning that the tendency to produce the phenotype conditional on having experienced the developmental input has been under positive selection. We discuss the necessary assumptions and pred...

Accountable Care Organizations: can we have our cake and eat it too?

The health care debate has largely focused on the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (the ACA) aimed at expanding health insurance coverage to all Americans, most notably the individual mandate requirement. The ACA, however, also takes important steps to address the companion challenge of making health care coverage affordable by reigning in health care costs. These steps include various ini...

Early detection of prostate cancer: can we have our cake and eat it too?