E A C H Y E A R the Board of Trustees of the Federal o ld-age a n d survivors Insurance trust fund is required to subm i t to Congress a report dealing with the past and prospective operations and status of the trust fund. These reports were first required by the S o cial Security Act Amendments of 1939, and in accordance wi th these amendm e n t s the first report was submitted in January 1941...

Practitioners and researchers in health services and public health routinely estimate population health indicators from a range of data sources. These indicators are used in many settings to describe health status, monitor quality of care, and evaluate the effect of interventions. The data and knowledge necessary to calculate indicators, however, are scattered across different health settings, ...

Smartphones were used in an online Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) design to test prodromal functioning relative to the interictal state in migraine patients. Eighty-seven participants completed an electronic diary 4 times daily during 3-6 weeks to monitor their migraine attacks. Twice daily the diary additionally included 16 multi-answer questions covering physical symptoms (30 items), c...

To understand ecological systems and environmental impact, techniques can be used which combine thermodynamics with environment and ecology. Most assessments consider thermodynamics via energy, but it many feel that ecological and environmental factors are better understood through exergy. One rationale is that exergy, not energy, is often a measure of the potential for ecological and environme...

Much of the research on relapse crises in dieting has focused on isolated lapse events and relied heavily on retrospective self-report data. The present study sought to overcome these limitations by using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) techniques to examine situations of dietary temptation and lapse with a sample of obese, formerly sedentary, postmenopausal women (N = 37) during the fina...

Ecological traps are habitat sinks that are preferred by dispersing animals but have higher mortality or reduced fecundity compared to source habitats. Theory suggests that if mortality rates are sufficiently high, then ecological traps can result in extinction. An ecological trap may be created when pest animals are controlled in one area, but not in another area of equal habitat quality, and ...

Abstract: In this paper, a type-2 fuzzy adaptive controller of a Lotak-Volterra system is considered. For bettering the active system properly, the approximated error is introduced into the design of the controller. By using Lyapunov synthesis approach, we attain an adaptive law adjusting the free parameters in the controller such that the closed-loop system follows a desired trajectory. The no...

Geographic and ecological analysis may provide investigators useful ecological information for the control of shigellosis. This paper provides distribution of individual Shigella species in space, and ecological covariates for shigellosis in Nha Trang, Vietnam. Data on shigellosis in neighborhoods were used to identify ecological covariates. A Bayesian hierarchical model was used to obtain join...