Background World Health Organization has committed universal health coverage (UHC) in 2005 in order to protect people from catastrophic health expense. Since 2009, China has invested 850 billion into health care reform and reached the expansion of health insurance coverage, up to 95% of total population in China. However, it is highly unlikely to find systematic reviews of researches on the financial protection by universal health coverage in China. Therefore, this article intends to focus on the financial effect of urban residents’ basic medical insurance, figure out how URBMI in China health care system affect the household health care expenditure and protect some population from catastrophic health payment. Finally, this article would recommend several measurements which might improve the effectiveness of universal health coverage on financial protection in China health system. Methods The key words, like “financial burden”, “financial risk”, “catastrophic health expense” AND “universal health coverage”, “urban residents’ basic medical insurance” were searched in several databases, including PubMed, China Journal Net, Science Direct and Google Scholar. Both English and Chinese languages were used for searching these studies. The quality evaluation of the studies would be based on the guidelines of Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE). Results Totally 240 articles were identified via the four databases, 198 articles have been excluded because they themselves were literature reviews which concentrated on specific diseases, and were not related to URBMI and financial burden, and not the case studied in China. Through screening and excluding the articles, 6 articles studying on the effect of URBMI in China on financial protection are included in this review. It was found that URBMI has slightly reduced the incidences of catastrophic health expenditure but it has insufficient impact on financial protection. Conclusion Through the systematic review on financial protection from catastrophic health expenditure by URBMI in China, it could be concluded that URBMI has slight effect on reduction of catastrophic health expenditure rate, but it do not significantly make differences in financial protection. Moving towards universal coverage, financial protection could be improved by the expansion of coverage in population, health services and cost sharing. However, due to the low quality of studies and lack of sufficient quantization researches, more studies on the effect of URBMI are required. / published_or_final_version / Public Health / Master / Master of Public Health

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-162) and index.

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Resumo: A proposta dessa pesquisa foi apresentar um procedimento metodológico para aplicação de um banco de dados de eventos severos em estudos de problemas geoambientais. Sua eficácia foi avaliada considerando ocorrências de movimentos de massa significativos em 15 municípios paulistas, cobrindo o período de setembro de 2009 a fevereiro de 2010. As características geológicas, geomorfológicas, hidrológicas e de ocupação foram consideradas e confrontadas com as situações de tempo atmosférico que contribuíram para a deflagração dos eventos calamitosos. observou-se que o domínio da Zona de Convergência do Atlântico Sul está associado às ocorrências mais catastróficas, especialmente em locais de relevo de morros, saprólitos ou contatos solo-rocha, no Complexo Cristalino também relacionado à ocupação desordenada. O estudo também aplicou os índices de risco e vulnerabilidade proposto por Marcelino et al. (2006), que apontou maior risco nos municípios com reincidências de escorregamentos e maior vulnerabilidade em locais com alta densidade demográfica, elevado índice de pobreza e grande número de idosos. Dessa maneira, a aplicação do banco de dados de eventos severos para problemas de geotecnia ambiental, mostrou-se uma importante ferramenta na determinação de áreas de risco, podendo assim, servir de suporte logístico para órgãos que trabalham com a assistência aos vitimados / Abstract: The research aimed to present a methodology for implementing a database of severe weather events for geo-environmental evaluations. Its efficiency was assessed by considering significant mass movements occurrences in 15 municipalities of São Paulo state between September 2009 and February 2010. The geological, geomorphological, hydrological, as well as the occupation characteristics of selected areas were compared with the previling weather that contributed to the outbreak of calimitous events. Most of the episodes accurred in hills, saprolits or soil-rock contacts in the Crystalline Complex. The unplanned occupational pattern was also an important contributor to the calamitous occurences. The risk and vulnerability index proposed by Marcelino et al. (2006) was applied and lead to high risk in the municipalities with repeated landslides. The vulnerability was greater in area with high population density, poverty rates end number of elderly people. The study enhanced the importance of a database of calamitous events to evaluate geotechnical problems and proved to be an important tool for determining risk areas. Thus, it may serve as logistical support for agencies that work with the assistance to victims / Orientador: Anna Silvia Palcheco Peixoto / Coorientador: Luci Hidalgo Nunes / Banca: Ana Maria Gomes Held / Banca: George de Paula Bernardes / Mestre

It is important to be able to quantify potential seismic damage to structures and communicate risk in a comprehendible way to all stakeholders. The risks involved with damage to constructed facilities due to catastrophic disasters can be hedged using financial instruments such as Catastrophic (CAT) bonds. This work uses the loss ratio (Lr), which is the ratio of the repair cost to the total replacement cost, to represent structural and non-structural damage caused by earthquakes. A loss estimation framework is presented that directly relates seismic hazard to seismic response to damage and hence to losses. A key feature of the loss estimation approach is the determination of losses without the need for fragility curves. A Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) approach towards assessing the seismic vulnerability of structures relating an intensity measure (IM) to its associated engineering demand parameter (EDP) is used to define the demand model. An empirically calibrated tripartite loss model in the form of a power curve with upper and lower cut-offs is developed and used in conjunction with the previously defined demand model in order to estimate loss ratios. The loss model is calibrated and validated for different types of bridges and buildings. Loss ratios for various damage states take into account epistemic uncertainty as well as an effect for price surge following a major hazardous event. The loss model is then transformed to provide a composite seismic hazard-loss relationship which is used to estimate financial losses from expected structural losses. The seismic hazard-loss model is then used to assess the expected spread, that is the interest rate deviation above the risk-free (prime) rate in order to price two types of CAT bonds: indemnity CAT bonds and parametric CAT bonds. It is concluded that CAT bonds has the ability to play a major role in hedging financial risk associated with damage to a civil engineering facility as a result of a catastrophe. However, it is seen that a potential investor seeks a high degree of confidence when investing in CAT bonds as there is huge uncertainty surrounding the probability of occurrence of an event.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-130).

Thesis (M.N.)--University of Sydney, 2004. / Title from title screen (viewed 6 May 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Nursing to the Dept. of Clinical Nursing, Faculty of Nursing. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Complex networks appear in almost every aspect of our daily life and are widely studied in the fields of physics, mathematics, finance, biology and computer science. This work utilizes percolation theory in statistical physics to explore the percolation properties of complex networks and develops a reinforcement scheme on improving network resilience. This dissertation covers two major parts of my Ph.D. research on complex networks: i) probe—in the context of both traditional percolation and k-core percolation—the resilience of complex networks with tunable degree distributions or directed dependency links under random, localized or targeted attacks; ii) develop and propose a reinforcement scheme to eradicate catastrophic collapses that occur very often in interdependent networks. We first use generating function and probabilistic methods to obtain analytical solutions to percolation properties of interest, such as the giant component size and the critical occupation probability. We study uncorrelated random networks with Poisson, bi-Poisson, power-law, and Kronecker-delta degree distributions and construct those networks which are based on the configuration model. The computer simulation results show remarkable agreement with theoretical predictions. We discover an increase of network robustness as the degree distribution broadens and a decrease of network robustness as directed dependency links come into play under random attacks. We also find that targeted attacks exert the biggest damage to the structure of both single and interdependent networks in k-core percolation. To strengthen the resilience of interdependent networks, we develop and propose a reinforcement strategy and obtain the critical amount of reinforced nodes analytically for interdependent Erdős-Rényi networks and numerically for scale-free and for random regular networks. Our mechanism leads to improvement of network stability of the West U.S. power grid. This dissertation provides us with a deeper understanding of the effects of structural features on network stability and fresher insights into designing resilient interdependent infrastructure networks.

Shallowly-buried channel systems have been imaged on the New Jersey Shelf with high-resolution seismic imaging. These channels formed as riverine systems that occupied the exposed shelf during the Last Glacial Maximum, ~18 ka. Subsequent sea level rise ~15-12 ka modified the valleys, forming estuaries and filling the channels with estuarine sediments. The infill sediments within the channel provide evidence for the response of the shelf to the Late Pleistocene glacio-eustatic sea level rise, but little work has been done on samples from these strata. This study aids in the ground-truthing of previous stratigraphic results by analyzing the cores collected within the infill sediments. The seismic stratigraphy of fill sediments from the mid-shelf and outer-shelf channels are structurally dissimilar. The mid-shelf channel fill stratigraphy is dominated by finely-laminated U-shaped reflectors throughout the section, with cut and fill geometries. In contrast, the outer shelf channel fill stratigraphy is a well-ordered sequence of 4 identifiable, primarily flat-lying seismic units. We collected five cores in mid-shelf channels (~30 m water depth), one in an outer shelf channel (~80 m of water depth) and one core in the trangressive ravinement surface. Cores were logged for density and seismic velocity. Grain size analysis was conducted by settling column and laser particle size analyzer. Radiocarbon analysis of the stratigraphy was conducted with the shell fragments and organic mud within the samples. The foraminiferal assemblages aided in determining the depositional environment. Using these data I investigated the differences in depositional environment of the mid- and outer-shelf channels systems, and consider these results in the context of sedimentary models for estuarine processes. The radiocarbon dates and foraminiferal are consistent with channel infill in an estuarine environment. Grain size and density log data indicate that the mid-shelf channel fills are sandier than the outer-shelf channel fills, which leads me to infer that the sediment from the mid-shelf channels was deposited in a higher energy environment than that of the sediment in the outer shelf channels. The stratigraphic differences and locations of the channel systems are similar to the Zaitlin (1994) model of incised valley infill, but infill of the mid-shelf channel system could possibly be the result of a catastrophic meltwater flood event occurring ~14 ka as glacial lakes to the north broke their dams and flooded the mid-shelf. / text

General intelligence is the exhibition of intelligent behavior across multiple problems in a variety of settings, however intelligence is defined and measured. Endemic in approaches to realize such intelligence in machines is catastrophic forgetting, in which sequential learning corrupts knowledge obtained earlier in the sequence or in which tasks antagonistically compete for system resources. Methods for obviating catastrophic forgetting have either sought to identify and preserve features of the system necessary to solve one problem when learning to solve another, or enforce modularity such that minimally overlapping sub-functions contain task-specific knowledge. While successful in some domains, both approaches scale poorly because they require larger architectures as the number of training instances grows, causing different parts of the system to specialize for separate subsets of the data. Presented here is a method called developmental compression that addresses catastrophic forgetting in the neural networks of embodied agents. It exploits the mild impacts of developmental mutations to lessen adverse changes to previously evolved capabilities and `compresses' specialized neural networks into a single generalized one. In the absence of domain knowledge, developmental compression produces systems that avoid overt specialization, alleviating the need to engineer a bespoke system for every task permutation, and does so in a way that suggests better scalability than existing approaches. This method is validated on a robot control problem and may be extended to other machine learning domains in the future.