Silicon (Si) serves as bioactive beneficial element. Si is highly abundant in soil, and occurs ubiquitously in all organisms including plants and humans. During the last three decades, nutritional significance of Si for plant and human health has received increasing attention. Plant Si plays a pivotal role in growth and development, and this beneficial effect depends usually on accumulation in ...

OBJECTIVES To demonstrate a threat to validity in using claims-based risk tools with chronically ill, underinsured populations. STUDY DESIGN We tracked disease burden of high-risk pool beneficiaries with potentially disabling health conditions receiving enhanced health insurance benefits through a federally funded research demonstration. At baseline, beneficiaries paid high premiums and cost ...

Sickness Absence and Local Benefit Cultures In many countries, sickness absence financed by generous insurance benefits has become an important concern in the policy debate. It turns out that there are strong variations in absence behavior between local geographical areas, and it has been difficult to explain these variations by observable socioeconomic factors. In this paper we investigate whe...

McPheeters et al1 provided a systematic review of the evidence thatwas used by theUSPreventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) to make its recent recommendations on universal autism screening.2 The USPSTF concluded that there is currently insufficientevidenceto assess the benefits of universal screening for autismspectrumdisorder (ASD) inyoung children. Inparticular, theUSPSTFnoted that no studyha...

Health Insurance Benefit Mandates and the Firm-Size Distribution By 2010, the average US state had passed 37 health insurance benefit mandates (laws requiring health insurance plans to cover certain additional services). Previous work has shown that these mandates likely increase health insurance premiums, which in turn could make it more costly for firms to compensate employees. Using 1996–201...