Brain images are the scientific icon of our age, replacing Bohr’s planetary atom as the symbol of science. Many businesses have realized that brain images make their products or services appear to be especially scientific and cutting edge, whether they are selling to high-level corporate executives or the viewers of TV infomercials. Of course, brain imaging is increasingly able to deliver pract...

AIMS To examine the population impact and economic costs associated with environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in Chinese infants with non-smoking mothers. METHODS Prospective, population based birth cohort study in Hong Kong, 1997-98. Main outcome measures were: doctor consultations and hospitalisations; adjusted odds ratios for higher utilisation by service type for each of the ETS exposure var...

BACKGROUND The Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997 was designed to reduce Medicare reimbursements by $116.4 billion from 1998 to 2002. The objective of this study was to determine whether the process of care for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) worsened to a greater degree in hospitals under increased financial strain from the BBA and whether vulnerable populations such as the uninsured were dis...

Farmers’ markets presumably benefit local economies through enhanced retention of local dollars. Unlike other studies, the net impact of farmers’ markets on the West Virginia economy is examined. Producer survey results are used in estimating annual direct sales ($1.725 million). Using an IMPLAN-based input-output model, gross impacts are 119 jobs (69 full-time equivalent jobs) and $2.389 milli...

When a failure occurs in the Linux kernel, the kernel emits an “oops”, summarizing the execution context of the failure. Kernel oopses describe real Linux errors, and thus can help prioritize debugging efforts and motivate the design of tools to improve the reliability of Linux code. Nevertheless, the information is only meaningful if it is representative and can be interpreted correctly. In th...

Consider a gambling game in which we are allowed to repeatedly bet a portion of our bankroll at favorable odds. We investigate the question of how to minimize the expected number of rounds needed to increase our bankroll to a given target amount. Specifically, we disprove a 50-year old conjecture of L. Breiman [1], that there exists a threshold strategy that optimizes the expected number of rou...