If my partner and I have been monogamous for three years (and I was a virgin before we met) and my partner tested negative for the HIV virus (twice, about two years ago, with a six-month gap between the tests) is it safe for us to use a birth control method other than a condom? That is, are there still any STDs that my partner might have without knowing it, that we should be worried about, even...

©FFPRHC J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care 2007: 33(1) Background It used to be called ‘impotence’: a double-edged label, with its implication not only that the man is unable to persuade blood into his penis, but also that he’s powerless in sexual situations, in the relationship arena, and in life. The word was never just a medical description; it always held undertones of accusation – a word to be...

Naïve Bayes (NB) is an efficient and effective classifier in many cases. However, NB might suffer from poor performance when its conditional independence assumption is violated. While most recent research focuses on improving NB by alleviating the conditional independence assumption, we propose a new Meta learning technique to scale up NB by assuming an altered strategy to the traditional Casca...

If my partner and I have been monogamous for three years (and I was a virgin before we met) and my partner tested negative for the HIV virus (twice, about two years ago, with a six-month gap between the tests) is it safe for us to use a birth control method other than a condom? That is, are there still any STDs that my partner might have without knowing it, that we should be worried about, even...

.......To what kinds of thing should the patent system apply is a question that has troubled the US courts since the middle of the 19th century. The grandiose dreams or delusions of Samuel Morse brought the question to the Supreme Court in 1850, when the validity of his patent on the telegraph was challenged. The Court upheld most, but not all, of Morse’s patent. Morse’s achievement, as the Sup...

Individuals eligible in both Medicaid and Medicare, the dually eligible enrollees, account for a disproportionate share of Medicaid utilization and payments. While comprising 14.7 percent of the Medicaid population, they accounted for 40.5 percent of Medicaid payments in 2002. Mean reimbursement for the dually eligible enrollees was nearly four times that of non-dually eligible Medicaid enrolle...

Care coordination has been identified as a potential method of achieving the triple aim in health care—improving outcomes and care quality while reducing costs. Well-designed, targeted care coordination entails comprehensive coverage of services across a coordinated provider team working together to provide high-quality, patient-centered care. This model, however, faces significant challenges a...