Use Of Bills Research Articles

Using Common Themes: Cost-Effectiveness of Permanent Supported Housing for People With Mental Illness

This article examines the cost-effectiveness of providing permanent supported housing to homeless people with mental illness. Through the use of billing records and frequency of use charts, researchers were able to map the service usage of a cohort of 268 homeless individuals from both urban and rural communities. The results suggest that significant cost savings can be achieved by establishing supportive housing programs from the homeless rather than forcing them to rely on emergency services. Data from this study can inform policy changes at both the State and Federal level. It can also provide for the introduction of common themes of money and cost-effectiveness which all of the stakeholders in the service funding debate can use. Further recommendations and uses for the data are described and discussed.

Bills of Quantities: nemesis or nirvana?

PurposeTraditional Lump Sum (TLS) methods have been the primary procurement method within Australia. Yet, their use is beginning to wane in states such as: Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria where Design and Construct, Construction Management and hybrids thereof have become the norm. Considering the demands of clients, the increasing propensity to use non‐traditional methods, the quality of drawings that are being produced, and the role of software applications such as Computer‐Aided Design in directly generating quantities, this paper seeks to examine the role Bills of Quantities (BoQs) serve and how effective they are as a pre‐contract and post‐contract tool.Design/methodology/approachOnly limited empirical research has addressed the role and effectiveness of BoQs, particularly in Australia. With this in mind, the research adopted an exploratory approach to gain insights from industry practitioners about BoQs. A questionnaire survey was developed from the literature and used to solicit the opinions of practitioners about their role and effectiveness as a pre‐contract and post‐contract tool.FindingsThe distributed questionnaire survey resulted in 86 responses from industry practitioners – quantity surveyors, building contractors, and project managers. The findings fundamentally reveal that the use of Bill of Quantities prepared in accordance with the standard method of measurement is on the decline and only useful as a tool for post‐contract control.Originality/valueThe research has revealed that there is a need for industry to embrace alternative forms of measuring quantities in building projects. Abridged bills and builders' quantities are being increasingly demanded in Australia. Thus, it is suggested that this demand could drive the need for alternative forms of pricing in building projects and lead to the increasing use of non‐traditional methods of measurement.

Opinions on provider profiling: telephone survey of stakeholders.

The views of producers, purchasers, and users of provider profiling concerning this practice were studied. A snowball sample of individuals representing seven groups with a stake in retrospective provider profiling were interviewed by telephone over a 12-week period in 1997. Participants were asked what they believed were the most important uses for profiles, who should receive copies of profiles, and what the limitations of profiles are. A semi-structured format was used to ensure that each interview was comparable and complete. The responses were aggregated, and qualitative research approaches were used to analyze them. A total of 40 people were interviewed. A majority of the respondents cited physician education, changing physician behavior, and monitoring and improving the quality of care as valid uses of provider profiles. A majority believed that the recipients of profile data should include the individual providers being profiled, medical administrative staff, people directly involved in the profiling program, pharmacists, and health plan administrators. The respondents acknowledged many limitations of profiles, with the top concern being inherent problems in the use of billing and administrative databases for profiling. Interviews with stakeholders in provider profiling yielded insights into the strengths and weaknesses of profiling, as well as echoing findings reported elsewhere. Health system administrators and health care professionals need to be aware of these issues as they use and modify profiling.

The friction of currency bills

The friction of paper currency in several conditions of use in contact with a variety of machine components is reported. With increasing interest in designing highly reliable automatic handling and sorting machines it is necessary to increase the amount of knowledge of operating parameters such as friction. These machines are required to operate for long periods without attention and this, in conjunction with a need to accommodate a wider range of bill quality, creates a need for the information contained in this study. The study includes friction of single bills ‘in plane’ and moving ‘on edge’ in a pack relative to the subject surface. Friction coefficients are seen to change with bill use and significant increase is noted in certain cases. There is an interesting contrast in the friction values observed of old and new bills against elastomeric and hard plastic surfaces.

THE NEGOTIABILITY OF BILLS OF LADING AND THEIR CONTRACTUAL ROLE UNDER GREEK, ENGLISH AND UNITED STATES LAW

As early as 1818 in Marseilles merchants were asking the courts to recognise the legal character of the maritime sale of goods, which was a sale of a bill of lading representing goods at sea in a ship. The courts of Marseilles found suitable to hear and decide cases in accordance with the law merchant despite the lack of authority in the French Commercial Codes. Merchants everywhere began to deal with documents representing goods without waiting to check the goods as it was the practice under the Napoleonic Code. Thus, the transition of the bill of lading from a mere receipt to a negotiable instrument developed by the practice of merchants arranging the sale of goods in transit. The success of the use of bills of lading in international trade is attributable to its negotiable character and its feature as a document of title.

The use of Bills of Quantities in building contractor organizations

The prime purpose of the Bill of Quantities (BQ) is to enable all contractors tendering for a contract to price on exactly the same information. Subsequent to this, it is widely used for post-tender work such as: material scheduling; construction planning; cost analysis; and cost planning. Due to the re-work involved in the post-tender use of the BQ, the ‘extent of use’ of the BQ is important. The ‘re-work’ is any work such as; modification, or grouping, or breaking up of data when used for a particular task by a management group. The ‘extent of use’ is defined as the direct use, after subtracting the re-work from the total use. This paper identifies the contractor's current use of the BQ for post-tender work based on eight case studies, and establishes the ‘extent of use’ thus highlighting the re-working of the bill. By establishing the ‘extent of use’, the true picture of the direct use and the repetition work can be shown. The average extent of use of the BQ for post-tender work in the industry was fou...

Preventive care in diabetes mellitus. Current practice in urban health-care system.

Early identification and treatment of complications of diabetes mellitus may reduce the severity of the complications. As part of a program to reduce these complications in the Denver Department of Health and Hospitals patient population, our study determined how frequently preventive care, e.g., fundoscopic examinations, referral to an ophthalmologist, foot examinations, and assessment of cardiovascular risk factors, was provided to diabetic patients. With the use of billing records to identify a large sample of diabetic patients, a chart review of 544 patients was conducted. During the study year, the mean +/- SE number of visits to primary-care clinics was 5.7 +/- 0.22, with 86.4% having at least one visit. Most diabetic patients were seen by primary-care physicians; only 9% received care in a specialized diabetes clinic. Despite frequent primary-care visits, most diabetic patients in this county health-care system did not have documentation of care to detect complications of diabetes mellitus, and referral services for detection and treatment of these complications were infrequently used. Moreover, among patients seen on greater than or equal to 10 occasions in a primary-care setting, preventive care was not provided to 30% of the patients. Preventive care does not appear to be a regular part of a primary-care visit for most of the diabetic patients in this study.

Hotz versus Muḥammad Shafīʿ A Case Study in Commercial Litigation in Qājār Iran, 1888–1894

With the growth of the volume of foreign trade in nineteenth-century Iran, as well as the direct participation of European merchants, the use of bills of exchange, promissary notes, and drafts increased. In fact, toward the end of the nineteenth century, trade in Iran would have been greatly hampered without trade bills, due to the fact that all the flow of capital was to Tehran.

The Search for Information: Specialists and Nonspecialists in the U. S. House of Representatives

This study ties together an understanding of the committee system in Congress and an understanding of the factors affecting one aspect of legislative decision making. The major question is whether those legislators who sit on the subcommittee reporting a bill use different sources of information than their colleagues who are not on the subcommittee. The study demonstrates that specialists undertake a much wider search; they rely on many noncongressional sources such as the executive branch and interest groups. Nonspecialists, in contrast, rely almost entirely on colleagues and constituents. These differences suggest that specialization is an important variable in legislative decision making.

A study of Paridae community in Japan

1. In the sympatric congeneric tits (Paridae and Aegithalidae), some comparative studies of the methods in the use of bills and the structure of the among the bill species were made and the ecological separation, as related with the spaces for each species were discussed. The vegetation of the studied area is a mixed deciduous woods in central Japan, as detailed by T. Nakamura (1970, 1975).2. The species features in the morphological characters shown by body length, wing length, tail length, tarsus length, toe length, bill length, bill width and bill depth are as follows:Long-tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus) has a smaller body but a longer tail, wing, and tarsus in relative length than Parus species. The bill of Long-tailed Tit is shorter and has a more curved shape than Parus species.In Parus, the relative length of tail is smaller than that of the Long-tailed Tit and the relative length of toes is greater than that of Long-tailed Tit. The shape of the bill in Parus is more similar to the simple cone than that of Long-tailed Tit. Great Tit (Parus major) has larger toes and their bill is not specialized as compared with other three species of Parus. Coal Tit (Parus ater) has a smaller body but has a relatively long wing than other Parus species. The shape of the bill of Coal Tit is thin and pointed. Willow Tit (Parus montanus) has the toes with large claws, and the length of the hind and the midde toes is almost the same. The bill of Willow Tit has a larger relative depth (ratio of depth to width or length) than the other three species of Parus. Varried Tit (Parus varius) has a larger body length and a pointed bill. The shape of the bill of this species is flattened at the tip like a flat chisel.3. The species features as represented the methods of using the bill in attacking the preys and picking seeds are as follows:Long-tailed Tit often takes the hunging posture on a twig of larch and deciduous trees, and quick picking and pecking are the most simple methods of using the bill. However, Parus species have more varied methods in the use of the bill and more varied attacking sites than Long-tailed Tit. Especially, it is characteristic of Parus species that they have methods of processing by their bill on the sites or objects where they suppose available food existed and they often hammer them and remove the food. Great Tit removes a piece of bark on the branch or the trunk or a fallen leaf on the ground. Coal Tits destroy the buds or a lump of dead leaves clung to twigs by bitting or thrusting by their bill. Willow Tit digs up dead parts in trees, often while hunging under the branches or twigs. Varried Tit holds seeds, acorns, insect galls or other ball like matters on perch by their toes and crushes them pecking by the bill.4. The methods in the use of the bill well correspond with the morphological characteristics of the bill in each species. Due to the large differences in the use of the bill, in the structure of the bill and in the sites for attacking preys between Long-tailed Tit and Parus species, their coexistence will be possible in various locations in Japan. I think that the ecological differences between Long-tailed Tit and Parus species are larger than such interspecific differences within genus Parus, such as the differences in the shape of bills. These congeneric interspecific differences may not allow the coexistance of species within Parus completely but only uncompletely. Therefore, the species compositions of Parus in sympatric ranges vary from site to site.5. The methods in the use of bills well correspond with the micro-structure in a microhabitas.

Comparative ontogeny of behaviour in several Passerines: A tentative study

The comparative study of the ontogeny of behaviour should be of evolutionary interest, as in the morphological characters. Here some reported data of observations of this sort are extracted for comparison from the works of Barrand (Great Tit, Chaffinch), Blase (Red-backed Shrike), Kuroda (Grey Starling), Messmer (European Blackbird. Original was not available) and Sauer (Garden Warbler).Twenty four behaviour items classified into sight development, physical behaviours (preening, etc.), self protection (crouching, fleeing, etc.), social behaviours (aggressiveness, juvenile song, juvenile nesting, etc.) and food getting (oriented gaping, pecking, species-specific use of bill, self foraging and drinking, etc.) were selected for comparison.It could tentatively be concluded that: 1. The duration from hatching to self foraging does not differ much by species with different habits and duration of nestling life. This should there-fore be the evolutionary basic Passerine character. 2. The hole and open nesters would have developed later adaptively. The nestling life was lengthened in the hole nesters (about 20 days) and shortened in the open nesters (10-15 days) as the result of natural selection against predators, but the basic growth pace was not changed. Thus hole nest chicks that stay longer in the nest are fed by parents shorter time after flying since they are well grown and open nest chicks fly precociously and are fed longer (Thus they retain incomplete adaptation against the danger of predation when flying). 3. This difference of the nestling period caused the difference in the timing of physiological and behavioural growth of early nestling life, such as eye-opening, lateral sight, preening and self protection, etc. These were accerelated in open nest chicks so as they have developed by the time of their precocious flying from the nest. 4. But, this accerelation of the occurrence of behaviours seems to have not influenced the basic timing of the final completion of self foraging. However, at the time when self foraging becomes established species-specific use of the bill (and feet) occurs similarly at around 20-25 days after hatching irrespective of the difference of habit by species. 5. The social habits occur first as an aggressiveness against each other (head forward posture, maintenance of individual distance) at different period by species (this occurs early at about 20 days in strongly territorial species), but always after or when the self foraging is established. 6. These species-specific behaviours (4 and 5) which occur latest during the ontogeny should be the ethological characters which have evolved recently.

BRITAIN AND WORLD TRADE, 1870–1914

T HE chief aim of this article is to carry further the analysis of the pre1914 pattern of world trading settlements attempted in the League of Nations study The Network of World Trade.' In order to avoid unreasonable length we have omitted all but the most essential details of the calculations made and it must be freely admitted that the statistics used are subject to a fairly wide margin of error, especially those relating to the export of capital between individual countries.2 Nevertheless, this need not be too serious a disadvantage; all that is required is a reasonable indication of the comparative size and direction of international payments for the purpose of drawing broad conclusions as to the significance of the evolution of the pattern of world trade to Britain in particular.3 The multilateral settlement of world trade-i.e. payments involving a third party or even more-was no new phenomenon of the latter half of the nineteenth century; indeed it had been for centuries a major feature of world economic relations. In its most simple form the transfer of precious metals provided the mechanism of settlement; later the use of bills of exchange greatly reduced the size of these flows and during the last half of the nineteenth century the system worked in a still more simple manner through fluctuations in the size of sterling balances held by foreign banks in London. The most significant of the older settlement patterns are known well enough. The triangle between Britain, Western Europe and the Baltic countries had for long dominated the trade of Northern Europe-Britain settling her deficit on the Baltic trade through her favourable balance with Holland and by the bullion earned from the Portuguese trade. The 'slaving' triangle between Britain, Africa and the West Indies and similar patterns through the American colonies hardly need more elaboration here. Yet we must take care to make the essential distinction between this kind of multilateralism and that which grew up in the years just before the First World War. In the earlier period the patterns were simple and confined to groups of countries where particular economic or political advantages favoured the growth of such a means of settlement. With Europe as a whole, for example, Britain's trade was mainly bilateral although multi-