In 2005, Dr David Brailer, our first National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, had a vision of widespread adoption of electronic health records connected through networks run by regional health-information organizations. An advisory panel recommended at that time that proactive fraud management functions be embedded in this emerging information infrastructure. This has not occurre...

Cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the world. Nicotine is a highly addictive substance. Nicotine dependence is a major barrier to successful smoking cessation. Smoking is a risk factor for 30 diseases with a high rate of morbidity and mortality. There is no safe level of smoking. Help and support to smoking cessation should be an integral part of treatment, particula...

We show that if NP , co−RP then the existence of efficient indistinguishability obfuscation (iO) implies the existence of one-way functions. Thus, if we live in “Pessiland”, where NP problems are hard on the average but one-way functions do not exist, or even in “Heuristica”, where NP problems are hard in the worst case but easy on average, then iO is impossible. Our result makes it redundant t...

ences of the Artificial with a parable about an ant making her way home across a beach and comments that the complexity of her route is not a manifestation of any complex, goal-seeking behavior within the ant but rather reflects the complexity of the environment. The ant “must adapt [her] course repeatedly to the difficulties [she] encounters and often detour uncrossable barriers.” The question...

Understanding the circumstances under which exposure to transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) leads to infection is important for managing risks to public health. Based upon ideas in toxicology and radiology, it is plausible that exposure to harmful agents, including TSEs, is completely safe if the dose is low enough. However, the existence of a threshold, below which infection proba...

Given that the core issues of attention research have been recognized for millenia, we do not know as much about attention as we should. I argue that the reasons for this failure are (1) we create spurious dichotomies, (2) we reify attention, treating it as a cause, when it is an effect, and (3) we equate a collection of facts with a theory. In order to correct these errors, we need a new techn...

OBJECTIVE To explore and describe primary care physicians' experiences in providing care to depressed patients and to increase understanding of the possibilities and constraints around diagnosing and treating depression in primary care. DESIGN Qualitative study using personal interviews. SETTING A hospital region in eastern Canada. PARTICIPANTS A purposely diverse sample of 20 physicians ...

The Onsager regression hypothesis states that the regression of fluctuations is governed by macroscopic equations describing the approach to equilibrium. It is here asserted that this hypothesis fails in the quantum case. This is shown first by explicit calculation for the example of quantum Brownian motion of an oscillator and then in general from the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. It is ass...

Indirect assays have claimed to quantify phytate (InsP6) levels in human biofluids, but these have been based on the initial assumption that InsP6 is there, an assumption that our more direct assays disprove. We have shown that InsP6 does not and cannot (because of the presence of an active InsP6 phosphatase in serum) exist in mammalian serum or urine. Therefore, any physiological effects of di...