In 1977, an estimated $28.2 billion in wage and salary payments was lost by civilian workers in the United States because of short-term sickness. Of this amount, $10.3 billion was made up under benefit plans for workers, either through sick-leave payments or insurance benefits. These figures represent increases of 7 percent above the corresponding totals for the previous year. In contrast, bene...

This paper reports a study that evaluated a methodology and tool for eliciting the emotional experience of language learning. It has looked at the relative rate of change of different emotions over the course of a lesson and also the differences between self-report and observer reports of changes in emotion. Implications for the design of affectively intelligent systems are discussed.

BACKGROUND The Department of Health introduced a new deprivation payments system for general practitioners (GPs) on 1 April 1999. Following a three-year phasing-in process, registered patients will attract deprivation payments based on the underprivileged area (UPA) score of their enumeration district (ED) of residence, rather than their electoral ward, changing the pattern and distribution of ...

In the UK, current health care policy is focused on increasing choice and control for people who use services , and on developing more effective support for people with long-term conditions. As part of these agendas, there is talk of 'personalisation', of the 'expert patient' (who is able to use their knowledge of their condition to support others) and of 'contestability' (creating more of a ge...

We study the problem of allocating a single item repeatedly among multiple competing agents, in an environment where monetary transfers are not possible. We design (Bayes-Nash) incentive compatible mechanisms that do not rely on payments, with the goal of maximizing expected social welfare. We first focus on the case of two agents. We introduce an artificial payment system, which enables us to ...

 One of the complex matters in banking law is the problems and mistakes which occur in the process of bank payments. Mistake of banker or error in processing of information in bank networks may result in payment delay or paying money to the account of a person other than who was really intended. This article is about rules for allocation of losses between account holders implicated and t...

Informal payments for health care services are common in many transition countries, including Russia. While the Russian government proclaims its policy goal of improving access to and quality of free-of-charge health services, it has approved regulations that give local authorities the right to provide services against payment. This paper reports the results of a population-based survey (n = 20...