996 resultados para United States. Federal Grain Inspection Service
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Objectives Our objective in this study was to compare assistance received by individuals in the United States and Sweden with characteristics associated with low, moderate, or high 1-year placement risk in the United States. Methods We used longitudinal nationally representative data from 4,579 participants aged 75 years and older in the 1992 and 1993 waves of the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) and cross-sectional data from 1,379 individuals aged 75 years and older in the Swedish Aging at Home (AH) national survey for comparative purposes. We developed a logistic regression equation using U.S. data to identify individuals with 3 levels (low, moderate, or high) of predicted 1-year institutional placement risk. Groups with the same characteristics were identified in the Swedish sample and compared on formal and informal assistance received. Results Formal service utilization was higher in Swedish sample, whereas informal service use is lower overall. Individuals with characteristics associated with high placement risk received more formal and less informal assistance in Sweden relative to the United States. Discussion Differences suggest formal services supplement informal support in the United States and that formal and informal services are complementary in Sweden.
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Biotechnology refers to the broad set of techniques that allow genetic manipulation of organisms. The techniques of biotechnology have broad implications for many industries, however it promises the greatest innovations in the production of products regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Like many other powerful new technologies, biotechnology may carry risks as well as benefits. Several of its applications have engendered fervent emotional reactions and raised serious ethical concerns, especially internationally. ^ First, in my paper I discuss the historical and technical background of biotechnology. Second, I examine the development of biotechnology in Europe, the citizens' response to genetically modified (“GM”) foods and the governments' response. Third, I examine the regulation of bioengineered products and foods in the United States. ^ In conclusion, there are various problems with the current status of regulation of GM foods in the United States. These are four basic flaws: (1) the Coordinated Framework allows for too much jurisdictional overlap of biotechnological foods, (2) GM foods are considered GRAS and consequently, are placed on the market without pre-market approval, (3) federal mandatory labeling of GM foods cannot occur until the question of whether or not nondisclosure of a genetic engineering production processes is misleading or material information and (4) an independent state-labeling scheme of GM foods will most likely impede interstate commerce. ^
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For over 75 years housing cooperatives have been a source of affordable housing. Currently, the 376,000 dwelling units of affordable cooperatives is equivalent to seventeen percent of the rent reduction units owned by publichousing authorities. Understanding that affordable cooperatives have been developed under varying historical circumstances provides insights on how they could play a role in the future supply of affordable housing. The history of affordable co-ops starts during the 1920s and after World War II with the ethnic, union, and New York government financed co-ops. Through the 1960s and the early 1970s cooperatives were financed by various federal direct assistance programs. Since the late 1970s co-ops have been sponsored by nonprofit organizations and by federal and municipal government privatization programs. A workable institutional structure for affordable cooperatives has developed as a result of this historical evolution.
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The Right to Die Debate is a recent but highly controversial moral matter. In particular, physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is an issue that has been evaded by the medical community for years. As of 1990, most states had never encountered the issue before and therefore did not have any laws in place to prohibit PAS (Strate et. al, 2005). Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a retired pathologist from Royal Oak Michigan was the first to publicly address PAS. He brought the issue into the limelight through a bizarre and crude series of assisted deaths that had a lasting impact on not only the Right to Die Debate as whole, but on public policy and both federal and state governmental agendas. This study focuses on the way in which the media, in particular the New York Times (NYT) has portrayed Dr. Jack Kevorkian as incompetent, morally culpable and in an overall negative light in the past twenty years. Applying Stanley Cohen’s 1972 theory of moral panic, a content analysis of NYT media publications between 1990 and 1999 supports Cohen’s theory and reveals that the media has created a moral panic surrounding Kevorkian. This has in turn led to public policy that prevents both terminally ill individuals and their doctors from having a desirable choice; that of voluntary euthanasia and PAS.
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Public health efforts were initiated in the United States with legislative actions for enhancing food safety and ensuring pure drinking water. Some additional policy initiatives during the early 20th century helped organize and coordinate relief efforts for victims of natural disasters. By 1950's the federal government expanded its role for providing better health and safety to the communities, and its disaster relief activities became more structured. A rise in terrorism related incidents during the late 1990's prompted new proactive policy directions. The traditional policy and program efforts for rescue, recovery, and relief measures changed focus to include disaster preparedness and countermeasures against terrorism.^ The study took a holistic approach by analyzing all major disaster related policies and programs, in regard to their structure, process, and outcome. Study determined that United States has a strong disaster preparedness agenda and appropriate programs are in place with adequate policy support, and the country is prepared to meet all possible security challenges that may arise in the future. The man-made disaster of September 11th gave a major thrust to improve security and enhance preparedness of the country. These new efforts required large additional funding from the federal government. Most existing preparedness programs at the local and national levels are run with federal funds which is insufficient in some cases. This discrepancy arises from the fact that federal funding for disaster preparedness programs at present are not allocated by the level of risks to individual states or according to the risks that can be assigned to critical infrastructures across the country. However, the increased role of the federal government in public health affairs of the states is unusual, and opposed to the spirit of our constitution where sovereignty is equally divided between the federal government and the states. There is also shortage of manpower in public health to engage in disaster preparedness activities, despite some remarkable progress following the September 11th disaster.^ Study found that there was a significant improvement in knowledge and limited number of studies showed improvement of skills, increase in confidence and improvement in message-mapping. Among healthcare and allied healthcare professionals, short-term training on disaster preparedness increased knowledge and improved personal protective equipment use with some limited improvement in confidence and skills. However, due to the heterogeneity of these studies, the results and interpretation of this systematic review may be interpreted with caution.^
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Since the tragic events of September, 11 2001 the United States bioterrorism and disaster preparedness has made significant progress; yet, numerous research studies of nationwide hospital emergency response have found alarming shortcomings in surge capacity and training level of health care personnel in responding to bioterrorism incidents. The primary goals of this research were to assess hospital preparedness towards the threat of bioterrorist agents in the Southwest Region of the United States and provide recommendations for its improvement. Since little formal research has been published on the hospital preparedness of Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas and New Mexico, this research study specifically focused on the measurable factors affecting the respective states' resources and level of preparedness, such as funding, surge capacity and preparedness certification status.^ Over 300 citations of peer-reviewed articles and 17 Web sites were reviewed, of which 57 reports met inclusion criteria. The results of the systematic review highlighted key gaps in the existing literature and the key targets for future research, as well as identified strengths and weaknesses of the hospital preparedness in the Southwest states compared to the national average. ^ Based on the conducted research, currently, the Southwest states hospital systems are unable fully meet presidential preparedness mandates for emergency and disaster care: the staffed beds to 1,000 population value fluctuated around 1,5 across the states; funding for the hospital preparedness lags behind hospital costs by millions of dollars; and public health-hospital partnership in bioterrorism preparedness is quite weak as evident in lack of joint exercises and training. However, significant steps towards it are being made, including on-going hospital preparedness certification by the Joint Commission of Health Organization. Variations in preparedness levels among states signify that geographic location might determine a hospital level of bioterrorism preparedness as well, tending to favor bigger states such as Texas.^ Suggested recommendations on improvement of the hospital bioterrorism preparedness are consistent with the existing literature and include establishment and maintenance of solid partnerships between hospitals and public health agencies, conduction of joint exercises and drills for the health care personnel and key partners, improved state and federal funding specific to bioterrorism preparedness objectives, as well as on-going training of the clinical personnel on recognition of the bioterrorism agents.^
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A study of the patterns of height loss with age in the Anglo, black, and Mexican-American populations of the United States has been undertaken. The study was based on data gathered by the United States Public Health Service in the Second National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and the Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Estimates of height loss were obtained by subtracting present stature from a calculated maximum attained height derived from sex- and race/ethnic-specific regression equations relating stature to subischial length. Anglo women have greater height losses than Anglo, black, or Mexican-American males, and black or Mexican-American females. Between 24 and 74 years of age, Anglo women average 3.8 cm. loss in stature. The black populations lose less height than Anglos or Mexican-Americans. Mexican-Americans lose less height than Anglos from 24 to 54 years and then have a greatly increased height loss so that by age 74 their total height loss is the same as Anglos. Standing height, sitting height, body mass index, and the Poverty Index were found to be negatively correlated with height loss. Age was positively correlated to height loss. The most important determinants of the magnitude of height loss with age were sex and ethnicity. ^
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A nested case-control study design was used to investigate the relationship between radiation exposure and brain cancer risk in the United States Air Force (USAF). The cohort consisted of approximately 880,000 men with at least 1 year of service between 1970 and 1989. Two hundred and thirty cases were identified from hospital discharge records with a diagnosis of primary malignant brain tumor (International Classification of Diseases, 9th revision, code 191). Four controls were exactly matched with each case on year of age and race using incidence density sampling. Potential career summary extremely low frequency (ELF) and microwave-radiofrequency (MWRF) radiation exposures were based upon the duration in each occupation and an intensity score assigned by an expert panel. Ionizing radiation (IR) exposures were obtained from personal dosimetry records.^ Relative to the unexposed, the overall age-race adjusted odds ratio (OR) for ELF exposure was 1.39, 95 percent confidence interval (CI) 1.03-1.88. A dose-response was not evident. The same was true for MWRF, although the OR = 1.59, with 95 percent CI 1.18-2.16. Excess risk was not found for IR exposure (OR = 0.66, 45 percent CI 0.26-1.72).^ Increasing socioeconomic status (SES), as identified by military pay grade, was associated with elevated brain tumor risk (officer vs. enlisted personnel age-race adjusted OR = 2.11, 95 percent CI 1.98-3.01, and senior officers vs. all others age-race adjusted OR = 3.30, 95 percent CI 2.0-5.46). SES proved to be an important confounder of the brain tumor risk associated with ELF and MWRF exposure. For ELF, the age-race-SES adjusted OR = 1.28, 95 percent CI 0.94-1.74, and for MWRF, the age-race-SES adjusted OR = 1.39, 95 percent CI 1.01-1.90.^ These results indicate that employment in Air Force occupations with potential electromagnetic field exposures is weakly, though not significantly, associated with increased risk for brain tumors. SES appeared to be the most consistent brain tumor risk factor in the USAF cohort. Other investigators have suggested that an association between brain tumor risk and SES may arise from differential access to medical care. However, in the USAF cohort health care is universally available. This study suggests that some factor other than access to medical care must underlie the association between SES and brain tumor risk. ^
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A case-control study has been conducted examining the relationship between preterm birth and occupational physical activity among U.S. Army enlisted gravidas from 1981 to 1984. The study includes 604 cases (37 or less weeks gestation) and 6,070 controls (greater than 37 weeks gestation) treated at U.S. Army medical treatment facilities worldwide. Occupational physical activity was measured using existing physical demand ratings of military occupational specialties.^ A statistically significant trend of preterm birth with increasing physical demand level was found (p = 0.0056). The relative risk point estimates for the two highest physical demand categories were statistically significant, RR's = 1.69 (p = 0.02) and 1.75 (p = 0.01), respectively. Six of eleven additional variables were also statistically significant predictors of preterm birth: age (less than 20), race (non-white), marital status (single, never married), paygrade (E1 - E3), length of military service (less than 2 years), and aptitude score (less than 100).^ Multivariate analyses using the logistic model resulted in three statistically significant risk factors for preterm birth: occupational physical demand; lower paygrade; and non-white race. Controlling for race and paygrade, the two highest physical demand categories were again statistically significant with relative risk point estimates of 1.56 and 1.70, respectively. The population attributable risk for military occupational physical demand was 26%, adjusted for paygrade and race; 17.5% of the preterm births were attributable to the two highest physical demand categories. ^
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There is currently much interest in the appropriate use of obstetrical technology, cost containment and meeting consumers' needs for safe and satisfying maternity care. At the same time, there has been an increase in professionally unattended home births. In response, a new type of service, the out-of-hospital childbearing center (CBC) has been developed which is administratively and structurally separate from the hospital. In the CBC, maternity care is provided by certified nurse-midwives to carefully screened low risk childbearing families in conjunction with physician and hospital back-up.^ It was the purpose of this study to accomplish the following objectives: (1) To describe in a historical prospective study the demographic and medical-obstetric characteristics of patients laboring in eleven selected out-of-hospital childbearing centers in the United States from May 1, 1972, to December 15, 1979. Labor is defined as the onset of regular contractions as determined by the patient. (2) To describe any differences between those patients who require transfer to a back-up hospital and those who do not. (3) To describe administrative and service characteristics of eleven selected out-of-hospital childbearing centers in the United States. (4) To compare the demographic and medical-obstetric characteristics of women laboring in eleven selected out-of-hospital childbearing centers with a national sample of women of similar obstetric risk who according to birth certificates delivered legitimate infants in a hospital setting in the United States in 1972.^ Research concerning CBCs and supportive to the development of CBCs including studies which identified factors associated with fetal and perinatal morbidity and mortality, obstetrical risk screening, and the progress of technological development in obstetrics were reviewed. Information concerning the organization and delivery of care at each selected CBC was also collected and analyzed.^ A stratified, systematic sample of 1938 low risk women who began labor in a selected CBC were included in the study. These women were not unlike those described previously in small single center studies reported in the literature. The mean age was 25 years. Sixty-three per cent were white, 34 per cent Hispanic, 88 per cent married, 45 per cent had completed at least two years of college, nearly one-third were professionals and over a third were housewives. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of school.) UMI ^
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List of Physicians and Surgeons arranged by states and provinces, giving post office address with population and location, the School practiced, date and college of graduation, all the existing and extinct medical colleges in the United States and Canada, with locations, officers, number of professors, lecturers, demonstrators, etc., the various medical societies, state prisons, hospitals, sanitariums, dispensaries, asylums and other medical institutions, boards of health, boards of medical examiners, a synopsis of the laws of registration and other laws relating to the profession, medical journals with names of editors, frequency of publication and subscription rates, medical libraries, mineral springs, official list of officers of the medical departments of the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Hospital Service, roster of examining surgeons of the U.S. Pension Department, a descriptive sketch of each state, territory and province, embodying such matters as location, boundary, extent in miles and acres, latitude and longitude, statistics relating to climate, temperature, rate of mortality, number of deaths from consumption, etc. full particulars of all national associations and societies relating to medicine and surgery, and an INDEX TO THE PHYSICIANS OF THE UNITED STATES. Arranged alphabetically, with the number of the page on which the name appears.
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The United States imposed trade sanctions against the military regime in Myanmar in July 2003. The import ban damaged the garment industry in particular. This industry exported nearly half of its products to the United States, and more than eighty percent of United States imports from Myanmar had been clothes. The garment industry was probably the main target of the sanctions. Nevertheless, the impact on the garment industry and its workers has not been accurately evaluated or closely examined. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the sanctions and to further understand the present situation. This is done using several sources of information, including the author's field and questionnaire surveys. This paper also describes the process of selection and polarization underway in the garment industry, an industry that now has more severe competition fueled by the sanctions. Through such a process, the impact was inflicted disproportionately on small and medium-sized domestic firms and their workers.
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This paper is a review of recent trends in United States expenditures on research and development (R&D). Real expenditures by both the government and the private sector increased rapidly between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, and have since leveled off. This is true of both overall expenditures and expenditures on basic research, as well as funding of academic research. Preliminary estimates indicate that about $170 billion was spent on R&D in the United States in 1995, with ≈60% of that funding coming from the private sector and about 35% from the federal government. In comparison to other countries, we have historically spent more on R&D relative to our economy than other advanced economies, but this advantage appears to be disappearing. If defense-related R&D is excluded, our expenditures relative to the size of the economy are considerably smaller than those of other similar economies.
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The idea of a conservation easement – restrictions on the development and use of land designed to protect the land’s conservation or historic values – can be relatively easily understood. More significant and more challenging is the complex body of state and federal laws that shapes the creation, funding, tax treatment, enforcement, modification, and termination of conservation easements. The explosion in the number of conservation easements over the past four decades has made them one of the most popular land protection mechanisms in the United States. The National Conservation Easement Database estimates that the total number of acres encumbered by conservation easements exceeds 40 million.Because conservation easements are both novel and ubiquitous, understanding how they actual work is essential for practicing lawyers, policymakers, land trust professionals, and students of conservation. This article provides a “quick tour” through some of the most important aspects of the developing mosaic of conservation easement law. It gives the reader a sense of the complex inter-jurisdictional dynamics that shape conservation transactions and disputes about conservation easements. Professors of property law, environmental law, tax law, and environmental studies who wish to cover conservation easements in the context of a more general course can use the article to provide their students with a broad but comprehensive overview of the relevant legal and policy issues.