Analysis from the first year of this pilot program demonstrates that by providing enhanced, coordinated, primary care access to Medicaid children, the utilization of the ED was significantly lowered among healthy children, whereas the overall cost of care remained the same.

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Based on a semi-empirical derivation of the Paris fatigue law, the fatigue crack length a is related to the yield limit or flow stress, which ultimately is related to the hardness of the material. The analysis considers together the cyclic loading, which tends to increase the surface crack length, and the wear, which tends to decrease the crack length at the surface, and shows that under certain conditions a stable crack length may be developed. Experiments conducted on two test groups ((i) Rc = 58.5 and (ii) Rc = 62.7) tend to support the present analysis.

In a blend of four or more components, the mixing entropy diversifies the chemical compositions of each phase. This reduces interfacial interactions, enhances inter-phase miscibility, weakens the dependence on specific pair interactions for self-assembly, and removes diffusion barriers to forming large-scale structures. When this design principle is applied to blends containing nanoparticles, colloidal particles, small molecules, and supramolecules, hierarchically-structured composites can be obtained with enhanced formulation flexibility in the filler selection and blend composition. Here, detailed characterization and simulations confirm entropy-driven phase behavior, where each component is distributed to locally mediate unfavorable interactions, and nanostructures form near or in a miscible state. Kinetically, this facilitates molecular diffusion across microdomains and through different phases, and ultimately leads to the facile fabrication of photonic crystals in minutes and nanocomposites with tunable microstructures. Besides advancing capabilities to engineer functional materials, the present study provides molecular insights into how entropy-driven complex blends navigate variations and uncertainties without compromising structural fidelity, as commonly seen in high-entropy alloys and biological blends.

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