Solution-phase inhibition is a promising strategy for controlling the corrosion of the aluminum fuel in alkaline aluminum/air batteries. Development of effective inhibitors would permit the use of scrap aluminum as fuel and thereby significantly improve the economics of the battery, because the cost of the fuel would have been partly or wholly defrayed by its previous use. In this study, we explored the discharge characteristics of aluminum in inhibited and uninhibited 4 M KOH at 50/degree/C and compared the performance of the fuel with that for two leading alloy fuels that had been evaluated in our previous work, Alloy BDW (Al-1Mg-0.1In-0.2Mn) and Alloy 21 (Al-0.2Ga-0.1In-0.1Tl). The inhibitors employed in this study, SnO/sub 3//sup 2/minus//, In(OH)/sub 3/, Ga(OH)/sub 4//sup /minus//, MnO/sub 4//sup 2/minus//, and binary combinations thereof, are either alloying elements of Alloys BDW and 21 or have been investigated previously. We found that potassium manganate and Na/sub 2/SnO/sub 3/ + In(OH)/sub 3/ are effective inhibitor systems. Particularly at high discharge rates, but at low discharge rates only manganate offers a significant advantage in coulombic efficiency over the uninhibited solution. Alloy BDW exhibits a very low open circuit (standby) corrosion rate, but its coulombic efficiency under discharge, as determined by delineating the particle anodic and cathodic reactions, was found to be no better than that of aluminum in the same uninhibited solution. Alloy 21 was found to exhibit a comparable performance to Alloy BDW under open circuit conditions and a much higher coulombic efficiency at low discharge rates, but the performance of this alloy under high discharge rate conditions was not determined. Alloy 21 has the significant disadvantage that it contains thallium. 36 refs., 14 figs., 2 tabs.
Background: Patient-engagement strategies are increasingly recognized for enriching traditional medical care and improving population health. Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) may be well positioned to leverage multi-sector organizational partnerships to improve the reach of their patient-engagement strategies, particularly given incentives to meet cost, quality and population health goals. Little is currently known about the relation of multi-sector partnerships and patient engagement in ACOs. Purpose: To examine the relation of patient-engagement strategies and breadth of multi-sectoral organizational partnerships in 71 primary care practices affiliated with one of two ACOs. Methods: Clinical and administrative leaders from each practice were surveyed. Questions assessed practice use of 12 different partnership sectors and the adoption of 14 patient-engagement strategies. Bivariate tests examined associations between patient-engagement strategies and practice use of partnership sectors. Multivariate linear regression estimated the extent to which practices with a greater number of multi-sector organizational partnerships had greater adoption of patient-engagement strategies. Results: Practices reported partnering with a mean of 3.2 (standard deviation, SD= 2.1) out of 12 sectors and implementing a mean of 7.1 (SD=3.4) out of 14 patient-engagement strategies. Each additional type of multi-sector partnership was associated with greater adoption of patient-engagement strategies (β = 0.59, 95% CI = 0.23–0.95, for all partnerships and β = 0.92, 95% CI = 0.42–1.43, when restricted to nonmedical partnerships) Implications: Practices with a greater breadth of multi-sector partnerships, particularly nonmedical partnerships, use a wider range of strategies to engage patients in their own care.
A procedure based on rigorous nonlinear analysis that estimates the deformation and force of an isolator due to strong ground motion is presented. The procedure offers an alternative to the iterative equivalent-linear methods used by current U.S. building codes. The governing equation is reduced to a form such that the median normalized deformation of the system due to an ensemble of ground motions with a given corner period Td is found to depend on only two parameters: the natural period, defined from the postyield stiffness, and the normalized strength, or strength normalized by peak ground velocity. The dispersion of normalized deformation for an ensemble of ground motions is shown to be small, implying that the median normalized deformation is a meaningful estimate of response. The simple trends shown by the median normalized deformation led to the development of suitable design equations for isolator deformation. These design equations reflect a 13% increase when the excitation includes two lateral components of ground motion instead of just one component. For comparison, deformations estimated by the equivalent-linear method are unconservative by up to 50% compared to those found from the more accurate nonlinear spectrum, and building codes include at most a 4.4% increase for a second component.
The measured luminosity distances of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) as a function of redshift have shown that the expansion of the Universe is currently accelerating, probably due to the presence of repulsive dark energy such as Einstein's cosmological constant (Lambda). From about 200 SNe Ia, we find that H_0t_0 = 0.96 +/ 0.04, and Omega_Lambda - 1.4 Omega_M = 0.35 +/- 0.14. Combining our data with the results of large-scale structure surveys, we find a best fit for Omega_M and Omega_Lambda of 0.28 and 0.72, respectively -- essentially identical to the recent WMAP results (and having comparable precision). The sum of the densities, ~1.0, agrees with extensive measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation, including WMAP, and coincides with the value predicted by most inflationary models for the early Universe. A number of possible systematic effects (dust, SN evolution) thus far do not seem to eliminate the need for Omega_Lambda > 0. Recently, analyses of SNe Ia at z = 1.0-1.7 provide further support for current acceleration, and give tentative evidence for an early epoch of deceleration. The dynamical age of the Universe is 13.1 +/- 1.5 Gyr, consistent with the ages of globular star clusters and with the WMAP result of 13.7 +/- 0.2 Gyr. Current projects include the search for additional SNe Ia at z > 1 to confirm the early deceleration, and the measurement of a few hundred SNe Ia at z = 0.2-0.8 to determine the equation of state of the dark energy, w = P/(rho c^2).
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act establishes a national voluntary program for accountable care organizations (ACOs) by January 2012 under the auspices of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The act also creates a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation in the CMS. We propose that the CMS allow flexibility and tiers in ACOs based on their specific circumstances, such as the degree to which they are or are not fully integrated systems. Further, we propose that the CMS assume responsibility for ACO provisions and develop an ordered system for learning how to create and sustain ACOs. Key steps would include setting specific performance goals, developing skills and tools that facilitate change, establishing measurement and accountability mechanisms, and supporting leadership development.
Abstract For Abstract see ChemInform Abstract in Full Text.
We describe how quantum information may be transferred from photon polarization to electron spin in a semiconductor device. The transfer of quantum information relies on selection rules for optical transitions, such that two superposed photon polarizations excite two superposed spin states. Entanglement of the electron spin state with the spin state of the remaining hole is prevented by using a single, non-degenerate initial valence band. The degeneracy of the valence band is lifted by the combination of strain and a static magnetic field. We give a detailed description of a semiconductor structure that transfers photon polarization to electron spin coherently, and allows electron spins to be stored and to be made available for quantum information processing.
E ach year, thousands of papers are published with the phrase “photonic crystal” in the title or as a keyword. Some have questioned whether “photonic crystal” is merely a clever new name for a long-standing field of research that goes back 120 years. After all, wave scattering from periodic structures has been known for a long time. Or does the name represent a distinct physical regime that was only recognized when the name emerged about two decades ago?
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes* This is the edited text of an article that originally appeared in Daedalus, vol. 140, no. 3, summer 2010.1. See Smith (Citation1996: 42) for a stimulating discussion of the notion of revanche as an extended and multiform “visceral reaction in the public discourse against the liberalism of the post-1960s period and an all-out attack on the social policy structure that emanated from the New Deal and the immediate postwar era,” and Flamm (Citation2005) for a painstaking account of how the conflation of racial tumult, anti-war protest, civil disorder and street crime laid the social foundation for the political demand for “law and order” in the wake of the class and racial dislocations of the sixties.2. The spiteful tenor of Giuliani's campaign of “class cleansing” of the streets and its strident racial overtones are captured by Neil Smith's (Citation1998) “Giuliani Time”.3. The sheer scale of American jails puts them in a class of their own. In 2000, the three largest custodial complexes in the Western world were the jails of Los Angeles (23,000 inmates), New York (18,000) and Chicago (10,000). By contrast, the largest penitentiary center in Europe, the Fleury-Mérogis prison just south of Paris, held 3900 and is considered grotesquely oversized by European standards.4. The last close-up study of the daily functioning of a big-city jail and its impact on the urban poor, John Irwin's (Citation1985) fine ethnography of San Francisco's jail, dates from 30 years ago.5. The national DNA database from crime scenes, persons “known-to-the-police,” and (former) convicts compiled by the FBI (under the Combined DNA Index System [CODIS] program) more than doubled over the past five years alone to reach eight million offender profiles. Its explosive expansion, fed by technological innovation and organizational imperatives, is springing a new “racialized dragnet” thrown primarily at lower-class black men due to their massive overrepresentation among persons stopped by police (Duster Citation2010).6. See Comfort (Citation2007) for an extended analysis of ramifying penal disabilities outside of prison walls.7. “The war on crime – with its constituent imagery that melded the burning cities of the 1960s urban riots with the face of [Willie] Horton as (every) black man, murderer, rapist of a white woman – remade party affiliations and then remade the parties themselves, as the war came to be embraced and stridently promoted by Republicans and Democrats alike.” (Frampton et al. Citation2008: 7)8. Ironically, the generalized notion was first broached, not in the US prison debate, but in Western Europe by the justice official and scholar Jean-Paul Jean (Citation1995) in a discussion of the “mass incarceration of drug addicts” in French jails. (I used the term myself in several publications between 1997 and 2005, so this conceptual revision is in part a self-critique).9. To be sure, Garland (Citation2001) singles out two “essential features” that define mass incarceration: “sheer numbers” (that is, “a rate of imprisonment and a size of prison population that is markedly above the historical and comparative norm for societies of this type”) and “the social concentration of mass imprisonment's effects” (“when it becomes the imprisonment of whole groups of the population,” in this case “young black males in large urban centers”). But it is not clear why the first property would not suffice to characterize the phenomenon and what “markedly above” entails. Next, there is a logical contradiction between the two features of mass reach and concentrated impact. Lastly, Harcourt (Citation2006) has pointed out that the US, between 1938 and 1962, sported rates of forcible custody exceeding 600 per 100,000 residents – almost as high as the present rate of incarceration – if one merges statistics on penal confinement and mental asylums.10. The martial trope of the “War on crime” has similarly hindered analysis of the transformation and workings of criminal policy. This belligerent designation – espoused alike by advocates and critics of expanded incarceration – is triply misleading: it presents civilian measures aimed at citizens as a military campaign against foreign foes; it purports to fight “crime” generically when it targets a narrow strand of illegalities (street offenses in the segregated lower-class districts of the city); and it abstracts the criminal justice wing from the broader revamping of the state in which the expansion of prisonfare was accompanied by the cutting back of welfare.11. The only exception to this class rule turns up in those countries and periods where the prison is used extensively as an instrument of political repression (Neier Citation1995).12. Lower-class black women come next as the category with the fastest increase in incarceration over the past two decades, leading to more African American females being under lock than there are total women confined in all of Western Europe. But their capture comes largely as a by-product of the aggressive rolling out of penal policies aimed primarily at their lovers, kin and neighbors (men make up 94% of all convicts in the nation). In any case, the number of female inmates pales before the ranks of the millions of girlfriends and wives of convicts who are subjected to “secondary prisonization” due to the judicial status of their partner (Comfort Citation2008).13. The increase of this index of punitiveness is 299% for “violent crimes” as against 495% for “index crimes” (aggregating violent crime and the major categories of property crime), confirming that the penal state has grown especially more severe towards lesser offenses and thus confines many more marginal delinquents than in the past.14. In media and policy debates leading to the 1996 termination of welfare, three racialized figures offered lurid incarnations of “dependency”: the flamboyant and wily “welfare queen,” the immature and irresponsible “teenage mother,” and the aimless and jobless “deadbeat dad.” All three were stereotypically portrayed as black residents of the dilapidated inner city.15. Contrary to the dominant public vision, research has consistently shown the superiority of rehabilitation over retribution: “Supervision and sanctions, at best, show modest mean reductions in recidivism and, in some instances, have the opposite effect and increase reoffense rates. The mean recidivism effects found in studies of rehabilitation treatment, by comparison, are consistently positive and relatively large” (Lipsey and Cullen Citation2007: 297). That hardened criminals do change and turn their lives around is shown by Maruna (Citation2001); that even “lifers” imprisoned for homicide find pathways to redemption is demonstrated by Irwin (Citation2009).16. See the powerful arguments of Pattillo (Citation2008) for immediately “investing in poor black neighborhoods ‘as is',” instead of pursuing long-term strategies of dispersal or mixing that are both inefficient and detrimental to the pressing needs and distinct interests of the urban minority poor.
