States are reacting to increased Medicaid drug costs by implementing cost-control policies, such as preferred drug lists (PDLs) and prior authorization. PDLs have risks as well as benefits. Targeting essential drug classes with heterogeneous patient responses and side effects could reduce appropriate care, adversely affect health status, and cause shifts to more costly types of care. Assessing ...

The benchmark for computation is typically given as Turing computability; the ability for a computation to be performed by a Turing Machine. Many languages exploit (indirect) encodings of Turing Machines to demonstrate their ability to support arbitrary computation. However, these encodings are usually by simulating the entire Turing Machine within the language, or by encoding a language that d...

In this paper, a Branch-and-Bound (B&B) algorithm is presented to solve the problem of minimizing the maximum completion time Cmax on unrelated parallel machines with machine eligibility restrictions when job preemption is not allowed. A customized lower bound, a search and a branching strategy are developed for the B&B. A machine eligibility factor is also introduced to represent the percentag...

CONTEXT Contraceptive prevalence is very low in Senegal, particularly among young women. Greater knowledge is needed about the barriers young women face to using contraceptives, including barriers imposed by health providers. METHODS Survey data collected in 2011 for the evaluation of the Urban Reproductive Health Initiative in Senegal were used to examine contraceptive use, method mix, unmet...

The Generalized Assignment Problem (GAP) is the problem of finding the minimal cost assignment of jobs to machines such that each job is assigned to exactly one machine, subject to capacity restrictions on the machines. We propose a class of greedy algorithms for the GAP. A family of weight functions is defined to measure a pseudo-cost of assigning a job to a machine. This weight function in tu...

One potential advantage of the application of superconducting materials in electrical machines is the possibility to build lighter and compact devices by removing iron. These machines find applications, e.g., in systems where cryogenics is already available, or in naturally cryogenic environments. The design of motors with high temperature superconductors (HTS) presents issues unconsidered in c...

Recently, blind multi-user detection has become an important topic in code division multiple access (CDMA) systems. Direct-Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) signals are well-known due to their low probability of detection, and secure communication. In this article, the problem of blind multi-user detection is studied in variable processing gain direct-sequence code division multiple access (VPG D...

We describe a method to axiomatize computations in deterministic Turing machines. When applied to computations in non-deterministic Turing machines, this method may produce contradictory (and therefore trivial) theories, considering classical logic as the underlying logic. By substituting in such theories the underlying logic by a paraconsistent logic we define a new computation model, the para...