The demand for skills training among Medicaid home-based caregivers.

Medicaid spends nearly 100 billion dollars annually on home and community-based care for the disabled. Much of this care is provided by personal care aides, few of whom have received training related to the services they provide. We conducted a randomized controlled trial to estimate their demand for training.

Nursing home quality, COVID-19 deaths, and excess mortality.

The COVID-19 pandemic in the US has been particularly devastating for nursing home residents. A key question is how have some nursing homes been able to effectively protect their residents, while others have not? Using data on the universe of US nursing homes, we examine whether establishment quality is predictive of COVID-19 mortality. Higher-quality nursing homes, as measured by CMS overall five-star rating, have substantially lower COVID-19 mortality through September of 2020.

Excess mortality from COVID and non-COVID causes in minority populations.

The 2020 US mortality totaled 2.8 million after early March, which is 17.3% higher than age-population-weighted mortality over the same time interval in 2017 to 2019, for a total excess death count of 413,592.

Total shutdowns, targeted restrictions, or individual responsibility: How to promote social distancing in the COVID-19 Era?

We examine the impact of early state and local COVID-19 policies to encourage social distancing. Outcomes are daily foot traffic at establishments spanning ten key industries, across which transmission risk varies substantially. Policies include state of emergency declarations, blunt general restrictions such as stay-at-home (SAH) orders, and targeted rules such as restrictions on bars, restaurants, entertainment venues, and schools.

Employment effects of healthcare policy: Evidence from the 2007 FDA black box warning on antidepressants.

Public policies aimed at improving health may have indirect effects on outcomes such as education and employment. We study the labor market effects of the US Food and Drug Administration's 2007 expanded black box warning on antidepressants. Our difference-in-differences estimates imply that the warning reduced employment by 6.

Measurement Error in Discrete Health Facility Choice Models: an Example from Urban Senegal.

We use individual-level health facility choice data from urban Senegal to estimate consumer preferences for facility characteristics related to maternal health services. We find that consumers consider a large number of quality related facility characteristics, as well as travel costs, when making their health facility choice. In contrast to the typical assumption in the literature, our findings indicate that individuals frequently bypass the facility nearest their home.

The effects of health facility access and quality on family planning decisions in urban Senegal.

Research in developing countries is rarely focused on examining how supply side factors affect family planning decisions due to a lack of facility-level data. When these data exist, analyses tend to focus on rural environments. In this paper, we study the effects that health facility access and quality have on contraceptive use and desired number of children for women in urban Senegal.

Automated Analysis of a Nematode Population-based Chemosensory Preference Assay.

The nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans' compact nervous system of only 302 neurons underlies a diverse repertoire of behaviors. To facilitate the dissection of the neural circuits underlying these behaviors, the development of robust and reproducible behavioral assays is necessary. Previous C.

The effects of prospective mate quality on investments in healthy body weight among single women.

This paper examines how a single female's investment in healthy body weight is affected by the quality of single males in her marriage market. A principle concern in estimation is the presence of market-level unobserved heterogeneity that may be correlated with changes in single male quality, measured as earning potential. To address this concern, we employ a differencing strategy that normalizes the exercise behaviors of single women to those of their married counterparts.

A modified mole cricket lure and description of Scapteriscus borellii (Orthoptera: Gryllotalpidae) range expansion and calling song in California.

Invasive mole cricket species in the genus Scapteriscus have become significant agricultural pests and are continuing to expand their range in North America. Though largely subterranean, adults of some species, such as Scapteriscus borellii Giglio-Tos 1894, are capable of long dispersive flights and phonotaxis to male calling songs to find suitable habitats and mates. Mole crickets in the genus Scapteriscus are known to be attracted to and can be caught by audio lure traps that broadcast synthesized or recorded calling songs.

Systematic profiling of Caenorhabditis elegans locomotive behaviors reveals additional components in G-protein Gαq signaling.

Genetic screens have been widely applied to uncover genetic mechanisms of movement disorders. However, most screens rely on human observations of qualitative differences. Here we demonstrate the application of an automatic imaging system to conduct a quantitative screen for genes regulating the locomotive behavior in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Systems level circuit model of C. elegans undulatory locomotion: mathematical modeling and molecular genetics.

To establish the relationship between locomotory behavior and dynamics of neural circuits in the nematode C. elegans we combined molecular and theoretical approaches. In particular, we quantitatively analyzed the motion of C.

Automated imaging of C. elegans behavior.

Automated systems for recording and analyzing behavior have many applications for the study of neurobiology in Caenorhabditis elegans. In particular, machine-based approaches allow for precise quantitative definitions of behavioral phenotypes that have traditionally been subjectively described by individual observers. Automated systems also facilitate the analysis of behaviors that occur over long time scales or are difficult to detect by eye.

Conservation rules, their breakdown, and optimality in Caenorhabditis sinusoidal locomotion.

Undulatory locomotion is common to nematodes as well as to limbless vertebrates, but its control is not understood in spite of the identification of hundred of genes involved in Caenorhabditis elegans locomotion. To reveal the mechanisms of nematode undulatory locomotion, we quantitatively analysed the movement of C. elegans with genetic perturbations to neurons, muscles, and skeleton (cuticle).

An automated system for measuring parameters of nematode sinusoidal movement.

Background: Nematode sinusoidal movement has been used as a phenotype in many studies of C. elegans development, behavior and physiology. A thorough understanding of the ways in which genes control these aspects of biology depends, in part, on the accuracy of phenotypic analysis.

An imaging system for standardized quantitative analysis of C. elegans behavior.

Background: The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is widely used for the genetic analysis of neuronal cell biology, development, and behavior. Because traditional methods for evaluating behavioral phenotypes are qualitative and imprecise, there is a need for tools that allow quantitation and standardization of C. elegans behavioral assays.