Figure 1: Top row: The regularity of the input texture is being manipulated along color and geometry dimensions, regularities decrease from left to right. Bottom row: Texture replacement where extracted geometric and lighting deformation fields from an input texture are applied to new textures. AbstractA near-regular texture deviates geometrically and photometrically from a regular congruent tiling. Although near-regular textures are ubiquitous in the man-made and natural world, they present computational challenges for state of the art texture analysis and synthesis algorithms. Using regular tiling as our anchor point, and with user-assisted lattice extraction, we can explicitly model the deformation of a near-regular texture with respect to geometry, lighting and color. We treat a deformation field both as a function that acts on a texture and as a texture that is acted upon, and develop a multimodal framework where each deformation field is subject to analysis, synthesis and manipulation. Using this formalization, we are able to construct simple parametric models to faithfully synthesize the appearance of a near-regular texture and purposefully control its regularity.

Objectives. We studied 6494 Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) patients to understand the disease burden and health care utilization patterns for a group of insured homeless individuals. Methods. We studied merged BHCHP data and MassHealth eligibility, claims, and encounter data from 2010. MassHealth claims and encounter data provided a comprehensive history of health care utilization and expenditures, as well as associated diagnoses, in both general medical and behavioral health services sectors and across a broad range of health care settings. Results. The burden of disease was high, with the majority of patients experiencing mental illness, substance use disorders, and a number of medical diseases. Hospitalization and emergency room use were frequent and total expenditures were 3.8 times the rate of an average Medicaid recipient. Conclusions. The Affordable Care Act provides a framework for reforming the health care system to improve the coordination of care and outcomes for vulnerable populations. However, improved health care coverage alone may not be enough. Health care must be integrated with other resources to address the complex challenges presented by inadequate housing, hunger, and unsafe environments.

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A Near-regular texture (NRT) is a geometric and photometric deformation from its regular origin -a congruent wallpaper pattern formed by 2D translations of a single tile. A dynamic NRT is an NRT under motion. Correspondingly, the basic unit of a dynamic NRT is a well-defined texton, as a geometrically and photometrically deformed tile, moving through a 3D spatiotemporal space. Although NRTs are pervasive in man-made and natural environments, effective computational algorithms for NRTs are few. Through a systematic and quantitative comparison study of multiple texture synthesis algorithms, we are able to show that faithful NRT synthesis has challenged most of the state of the art texture synthesis algorithms. Our recent work on static NRTs analysis and manipulation is the first algorithmic treatment aimed specifically to preserve the regularity and randomness in real-world near regular textures.The theme of this thesis is to address computational issues in modeling, tracking and manipulating dynamic NRTs. One basic observation on dynamic NRT is its topology invariance property: the lattice structure of a dynamic NRT remains invariant despite its drastic geometry or appearance variations. We propose a lattice-based MarkovRandom-Field (MRF) model for dynamic NRT in a 3D spatiotemporal space. Our dynamic NRT model consists of a global lattice structure that characterizes the topological constraint among multiple textons and an image observation model that handles local geometry and appearance variations. Our model behaves like a network of statistically varied springs. Based on our dynamic NRT model, we develop a tracking algorithm that can effectively handle the special challenges of dynamic NRT tracking, including: ambiguous correspondences, occlusions, illumination variations, and appearance variations. Our algorithm does not assume the type of motion that a dynamic NRT may undergo. Furthermore, we implement a dynamic NRT manipulation system that can replace and superimpose images on a dynamic NRT from an unknown environment.The main contributions of this thesis are: First, a novel and general quadrilateral lattice-based MRF model is proposed for dynamic NRT.Second, we implement a dynamic NRT tracking algorithm that can effectively handle real-world dynamic NRT with occlusions.Third, the proposed dynamic NRT framework makes it possible to accomplish several video editing and manipulation tasks, including real-world dynamic NRT synthesis, replacement, and superimposition.

Despite having insurance coverage, homeless Medicaid members experienced frequent hospitalizations and ED visits. States could consider provisions under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (e.g., Medicaid expansion and Health Homes) jointly with housing programs to meet the needs of homeless individuals, which may improve the quality and cost effectiveness of care.

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Microwave sensors on Skylab collected data as part of the Earth Resources Experiment Package (EREP). An investigation was designed to obtain field observations of soil moisture content for comparison with data from Skylab. The 21‐cm radiometer has been shown to be highly responsive to the moisture content of the upper 2.5‐cm layer of soil. A composite relationship between the radiometric temperature and soil moisture content has been determined from five data sets obtained over Kansas and Texas. This relationship, having a correlation index of −0.96, has been used as a basis for calculating the soil moisture content of large areas across the United States.

Research demonstrates that homelessness is associated with frequent use of emergency department (ED) services, yet prior studies have not adequately examined the relationship between frequent ED use and utilization of non-ED health care services among those experiencing homelessness. There has also been little effort to assess heterogeneity among homeless individuals who make frequent use of ED services. To address these gaps, the present study used Medicaid claims data from 2010 to estimate the association between the number of ED visits and non-ED health care costs for a cohort of 6,338 Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program patients, and to identify distinct subgroups of persons in this cohort who made frequent use of ED services based on their clinical and demographic characteristics. A series of gamma regression models found more frequent ED use to be associated with higher non-ED costs, even after adjusting for demographic and clinical characteristics. Latent class analysis was used to examine heterogeneity among frequent ED users, and the results identified 6 characteristically distinct subgroups among these persons. The subgroup of persons with trimorbid illness had non-ED costs that far exceeded members of all 5 other subgroups. Study findings reinforce the connection between frequent ED use and high health care costs among homeless individuals and suggest that different groups of homeless frequent ED users may benefit from interventions that vary in terms of their composition and intensity.