BACKGROUND China is actively promoting regulation of rare diseases, rare disease and orphan drugs have been formally incorporated into the national planning. However, few studies have been done to evaluate the affordability of rare disease patients in China. This study aims to provide policy recommendations for the establishment of social security mechanism for rare diseases in China, so as to ...

(Effects of nutrient impoverishment on phytoplankton biomass: a mesocosms experimental approach in a shallow eutrophic reservoir (Garças Pond), São Paulo, southeast Brazil). Nutrient impoverishment in mesocosms was carried out in a shallow eutrophic reservoir aiming to evaluate the nutrient removal technique as a method for eutrophication reduction. Garças Pond is located in the Parque Estadual...

BACKGROUND Financial risk protection and equity are major components of universal health coverage (UHC), which is defined as ensuring access to health services for all citizens without any undue financial burden. We investigated progress towards UHC financial risk indicators and assessed variability of inequalities in financial risk protection indicators by wealth quintile. We further examined ...

OBJECTIVE The study aimed to examine the effect of household and community characteristics on financial catastrophe and impoverishment due to health payment in Western and Central Rural China. METHODS A household survey was conducted in 2008 in Hebei and Shaanxi provinces and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region using a multi-stage sampling technique. Independent variables included village ch...

In indoor target tracking based on wireless sensor networks, the particle filtering algorithm has been widely used because of its outstanding performance in coping with highly non-linear problems. Resampling is generally required to address inherent degeneracy problem filter. However, traditional resampling methods cause impoverishment. This degrades positioning accuracy and robustness sometime...

Recursive Bayesian estimation using sequential Monte Carlos methods is a powerful numerical technique to understand latent dynamics of non-linear non-Gaussian dynamical systems. Classical sequential Monte Carlos suffer from weight degeneracy which is where the number of distinct particles collapse. Traditionally this is addressed by resampling, which effectively replaces high weight particles w...

People categorize objects more slowly when visual input is highly impoverished instead of optimal. While bottom-up models may explain a decision with optimal input, perceptual hypothesis testing (PHT) theories implicate top-down processes with impoverished input. Brain mechanisms and the time course of PHT are largely unknown. This event-related potential study used a neuroimaging paradigm that...

This paper investigated the gender implications of involuntary resettlement at Karimenu II Dam. The study employed Impoverishment, Risks, and Reconstruction (IRR) model developed in late 1990s by World Bank coined Michael Cernea (2002). It provides a conceptual tool for identifying inherent risks that may cause impoverishment through displacement resettlement. He identified 8 Involuntary Resett...