We give new general methods for constructing small non-deterministic 4nite automata (NFA) from arbitrary ones. Given an NFA, we compute the largest right-invariant equivalence on the set of states and then merge the equivalent states to obtain a smaller automaton. When applying this method to position automata, we get a way to convert regular expressions into NFAs which are always smaller than ...

The variety DQD of semi-Heyting algebras with a weak negation, called dually quasi-De Morgan operation, and several of its subvarieties were investigated in the series [31], [32], [33], and [34]. In this paper we define and investigate a new subvariety JID of DQD, called “JI-distributive, dually quasi-De Morgan semi-Heyting algebras”, defined by the identity: x ∨ (y → z) ≈ (x ∨ y) → (x ∨ z), as...

In this paper we define and study a family of codes which come close to be MRD codes, so we call them AMRD codes (almost MRD). An AMRD code is a code with rank defect equal to 1. AMRD codes whose duals are AMRD are called dually AMRD. Dually AMRD codes are the closest to the MRD codes given that both they and their dual codes are almost optimal. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the codes...

Administrative data were used to compare lengths of stay, Medicare payment, total and average daily costs, discharge destinations, rehospitalizations, and emergency room (ER) use of dually eligible and non-dually eligible Medicare inpatients admitted for a psychiatric diagnosis. Regressions controlled for State buy-in coverage as a proxy for dual eligibility, hospital type, and beneficiary soci...

Social Security's special minimum primary insurance amount (PIA) provision was enacted in 1972 to increase the adequacy of benefits for regular long-term, low-earning covered workers and their dependents or survivors. At the time, Social Security also had a regular minimum benefit provision for persons with low lifetime average earnings and their families. Concerns were rising that the low life...

In this article, we propose an axiomatic system for fuzzy “cardinality” measures (referred to as fuzzy c-measures for short) assigning to each finite fuzzy set a generalized cardinal that expresses the number of elements that the fuzzy set contains. The system generalizes an axiomatic system introduced by J. Casasnovas and J. Torrens (2003). We show that each fuzzy c-measure is determined by tw...

We conducted a descriptive study examining the health status of dually eligible beneficiaries using a sample from the Medicare Health Outcomes Survey (HOS), a measure of health status administered to enrollees in Medicare managed care (MMC). Overall, we found that dually eligible beneficiaries were sicker, more depressed, and reporting more pain than Medicare-only beneficiaries. Our results sug...

Many architectural languages have been proposed in the last fifteen years, each one with the chief aim of becoming the ideal language for specifying software architectures. What is evident nowadays, instead, is that architectural languages are defined by stakeholder concerns. Capturing all such concerns within a single, narrowly focused notation is impossible. At the same time it is also imprac...