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Campylobacter is a human food-borne pathogen frequently associated with poultry and poultry products and can be found in high numbers within the gut contents of colonized broilers. The number of Campylobacter on broiler carcasses increases markedly during automated defeathering as rubber picker fingers press on the abdomen and can force gut contents out of the cloaca. One method to prevent this increase is to plug the cloaca and prevent escape of gut contents. For a plug to be effective, it must resist expulsion during picking. In the current work, we test shredded sponge or paper as a means to plug broiler carcass cloacae during automated feather removal. Broiler carcass cloacae were plugged before scalding and carcasses were sampled to determine the bacterial numbers present on breast skin after scalding (before feather picking) and again after feather picking. Neither 50 cc of shredded paper nor 25 cc of shredded sponge was effective as a cloacal plug. However, a plug made of 50 cc shredded sponge material was effective to occlude broiler carcass vents during automated defeathering. Significantly fewer Campylobacter cells were detected on the breast skin of post pick carcasses plugged with 50 mL of shredded sponge than on post pick unplugged control carcasses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents a personal narrative of his experiences as a psychologist, topics including pediatric psychology as a career choice, educational experience at University of North Dakota, and research on children behaviour psychology.

This paper presents a second-generation Schumpeterian growth model to investigate the existence of possible links between firms' size, competition stiffness and the effectiveness of R&D policy. In the model, the step size of innovation is randomly drawn from a Pareto distribution, and firms are heterogeneous in terms of market power. The paper finds that the optimal R&D policy is to subsidize R&D and not to tax it, and that more intense competition enlarges the gap between free-market R&D investment and the optimal outcome. However, the paper also finds that the short-run impact on welfare of R&D policy is always negative, and that the recovery time of the welfare loss as a result of the subsidy is negatively related to firms' market power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Some of the inappropriate use of antibiotics is related to the dispensing of antibiotics without a medical prescription.Objectives: To identify the intrinsic factors (socio-demographic characteristics and attitudes) and extrinsic factors (patient-related factors and health-system-related factors) related to the dispensing or selling of antibiotics without a medical prescription (DAwMP) by workers at retail pharmacies, when this should be done by prescription according to the legislation in force in each country.Methods: We conducted a search of the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases, with studies being required to meet the following inclusion criteria: (i) they were published in English or Spanish; (ii) the designated study objective was to explore factors linked to dispensing without prescription; (iii) the study population was defined as pharmacy workers.Results: Thirty-three papers were included. While pharmacy workers' socio-demographic characteristics had no influence on dispensing without prescription (only 2/9 of the quantitative studies that statistically evaluated gender showed a relationship, 2/7 with respect to age and 0/3 with respect to professional status), training (5/8), knowledge and attitudes did however prove significant (12/13). In the case of qualitative or mixed studies, patient-related factors [lack of knowledge (7/13), high demand (9/13), self-medication (6/13) and low socio-economic status (5/13)] and health-system-related factors [lack of rigour in antibiotic policies (7/13) and pressure from pharmacy owners (5/13)] are mentioned in relation to dispensing without a prescription.Conclusions: The results of this review appear to indicate that factors associated with dispensing without prescription are all modifiable. This may be of use when it comes to designing interventions aimed at curtailing this practice and thereby reducing antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance levels worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Schizophrenia is a chronic disease associated with significant and long-lasting effects on health, and it is also a social and financial burden, not only for patients but also for families, other caregivers, and the wider society. It is essential to conduct the assessment of indirect costs, to understand all the effects of the disease on society. Our aim is to gain a better understanding of the indirect costs of schizophrenia in Europe. Methods We conducted a comprehensive systematic literature review covering EMBASE, Medline, and PsycINFO as well as reviewing Health Technology Assessment databases from different countries. We used a qualitative research synthesis for presenting information, as most of the studies were methodologically diverse, a quantitative analysis would have been impractical. Results Indirect cost adjusted to inflation ranged vastly between studies included in the review from 119 Euros to 62, 034 Euros annually. The average proportion of indirect costs of total costs was 44%. Studies highlighted important cost drivers as age, gender, and disease severity, explaining the variation in costs between treatment and patient groups. Conclusions Regardless of the methodological heterogeneity of the reviewed studies, there was an agreement about the significance of indirect costs of schizophrenia on the society. Considering the relatively high prevalence of schizophrenia in Europe, a need for more cost of illness studies especially from Central Eastern and Southern Europe is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces and studies jumping pure grammars, which are conceptualized just like classical pure grammars except that during the applications of their productions, they can jump over symbols in either direction within the rewritten strings. The paper compares the generative power of jumping pure grammars with that of classical pure grammars while distinguishing between their versions with and without erasing productions. Apart from sequential versions, the paper makes an analogical study in terms of parallel versions of jumping pure grammars represented by 0L grammars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the comparative literature on divorce by theorizing how international institutions and norms influence societal divorce rates. Drawing on developmental idealism and world society theory, the paper argues that global institutions legitimize cultural principles such as individualism, human rights, and gender equality, which reshape "modern" understandings of marriage and family relations. Formal international institutions and treaties do not explicitly proclaim or codify the right to divorce, but we suggest that new norms regarding divorce emerge from the "penumbras" of world culture and diffuse globally. Panel regression models covering 84 countries between 1970 and 2008 find a strong association between global cultural influence and divorce rates, controlling for other factors. Results highlight the effects of world society on the private lives of individuals, and suggest that world society affects a wider set of outcomes than the conventional literature would predict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alasdair MacIntyre is often interpreted as a wholesale skeptic of human rights. Although understandable, given his caustic criticism of rights discourse and theory, this misunderstanding overlooks his openness to subjective moral rights within the context of social practices. This paper traces the roots of his skepticism to the practical embodiment of rights discourse within liberal modernity. In MacIntye's view, the modes of claiming rights in practice presuppose the existence of natural rights, which commits the "individualist fallacy": the potential value of the right for the individual right-holder is presumed to ground an adequate reason to impose duties on others, without due consideration of the constitutive social commitments necessary to make that value a matter for common action. And, any proposed theory of human rights runs the risk of justifying that use and institutional embodiment of the human rights concept in practice. Despite his negativity, this paper interrogates the extent to which MacIntyre's thought remains open to justificatory foundations for some concept of "human rights" within the Thomist-Aristotelian tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely accepted that people migrate to seek better living opportunities, and migration experiences affect life conditions considerably upon return. Research focused on gendered perspectives has illustrated that men and women experience migration differently and that this difference clearly affects their living conditions upon return. However, few studies have sought to further examine the factors that determine the differences in men and women's perceptions upon return. This paper investigates the case of Ethiopian returnees by exploring three sets of independent variables: (1) the migration experience, (2) the return experience, and (3) the post-return conditions in Ethiopia. For this analysis, we utilize a subsample of returnees based on a household survey conducted among 1,284 households in five regions of Ethiopia in 2011. The subsample consists of 146 returnees and provides valuable information on the diverse experiences of returnees. Both the descriptive and logistic regression analyses demonstrate that: first, women have significantly worse perceptions of their living conditions upon return to Ethiopia than men do; second, migration experiences are the most significant variables that influence perceptions of living conditions upon return. Considering this latter result, we conclude by highlighting the importance of situating return experiences within the wider context of the entire migration cycle and recognizing the long-term effects of migration experiences that persist after return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new unreliable failure detector, called the Impact failure detector (FD), that, contrarily to the majority of traditional FDs, outputs a trust level value which expresses the degree of confidence in the system. An impact factor is assigned to each process and the trust level is equal to the sum of the impact factors of the processes not suspected of failure. Moreover, a threshold parameter defines a lower bound value for the trust level, over which the confidence in the system is ensured. In particular, we defined a flexibility property that denotes the capacity of the Impact FD to tolerate a certain margin of failures or false suspicions, i.e. its capacity of considering different sets of responses that lead the system to trusted states. The Impact FD is suitable for systems that present node redundancy, heterogeneity of nodes, clustering feature and allow a margin of failures which does not degrade the confidence in the system. The paper also includes a timer-based distributed algorithm which implements an Impact FD, as well as its proof of correctness, for systems whose links are lossy asynchronous or for those whose all (or some) links are eventually timely. Performance evaluation results, based on PlanetLab (Planetlab. http://www.planet-lab.org. 'Online. Access date: 16 September 2016') traces, confirm the degree of flexible applicability of our FD and that, due to the accepted margin of failure, both failures and false suspicions are more tolerated when compared to traditional unreliable FDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the access to a cloud computing environment is provided on-demand, offering transparent services to clients. Although the cloud allows an abstraction of the behavior of the infrastructure in the service providers (involving logical and physical resources), the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) fulfilment remain a challenge, because depending on the service demand and the system configuration, the providers may not be able to meet the clients requirements. In this way, mechanisms that take account of load balancing and resource provisioning algorithms to provide an efficient load distribution in the available resources are necessary. However, the studies in the literature do not effectively address the problem of the resource provisioning to meet clients requirements using optimization techniques, restricting the analysis to a limited set of objectives. This paper proposes algorithms to address the computational resource provisioning problem using optimization techniques on-the-fly. The techniques optimize the use of the resources available in the cloud infrastructure, aiming to fulfill the clients requirements defined in the SLAs, and ensuring the efficient use of resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural realists might reasonably predict that foreign policy elites in countries like Japan and Australia would view China's economic and military rise as a potential threat and seek to balance against it. However, the actual policy behaviour of Japanese and Australian policy elites has been quite complex—pushing forward at times, hesitating at others and generally uncertain if an explicit counter-coalition against China through bilateral security cooperation is the right policy path. Why is this? This paper explains the puzzle by focusing on the perceptions of policy-makers regarding the risk of provoking China; entrapment with the other; and entrapment with the United States. The paper demonstrates how policy-makers' concerns regarding entrapment or abandonment related to their mutual US ally—as well as concerns about potentially provoking China—have had an instrumental effect on the degree to which Japan and Australia have strengthened their security commitments to each other. While the rise of China—and the relative decline of US power—has shaped the overall direction of Japan–Australia security ties, such structural imperatives are of course also complicated by how domestic actors think about the tactical aspects of understanding and surviving these structural features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing social expectation regarding the joint realisation of scientific and societal impact from publicly funded research. Achieving this goal involves facing important challenges, which affect individual researchers, research performing organisations, and the science governance system as a whole. This special section includes conceptual, methodological, and empirical papers that aim to contribute to the building of an improved appreciation of the factors and dynamics shaping the intertwined quest for scientific quality and societal impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Recession that followed the financial crisis of 2007 is not only the largest economic crisis after the Great Depression of the 1930s, it also signals a crisis of economics as a discipline. This is not only the consequence of the inadequacy of mainstream macroeconomics, and specifically the Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) workhorse model, to forecast such a huge event, or at least to detect the worrying tendencies towards it. Even more relevant is the choice to explicitly avoid the modeling of large crises (that for someone is a motivation for not attacking pre-crisis DSGE models focused on the analysis of small deviations from the steady-state), so denying the intrinsic nature of capitalism, a system that necessarily proceeds through cycles and (extended) crises. The replies of the DSGE approach to critics have led to extensions regarding for instance the role of financial frictions, heterogeneous agents, and bounded rationality (though typically in the form of quasi-rational expectations). The alternative paradigm of agent-based (AB) macroeconomics can take into account all these elements at once within an evolutionary modeling framework based on heterogeneity and interaction, so capable to endogenously reproduce complex dynamics, from small fluctuations to large crises, due to innovation and industrial dynamics, rising inequality and financial instability, and so on. The integration between AB macroeconomics and the (post-Keynesian) stock–flow consistent approach represents a promising way for the future development of this research field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the global dynamics of an age-structured human immunodeficiency virus infection model which incorporates a logistic growth term for the target cells and antiretroviral therapy. We perform some rigourous analyses for the model, including presenting an explicit formula for the reproductive number of the model, addressing the persistence of the solution semi-flow and the existence of a global attractor. Based on these analyses we establish some results on stability and instability for the system. The existence of Hopf bifurcation is also obtained around the positive equilibrium. Finally, some numerical examples are provided to illustrate our obtained results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sliced inverse regression is a popular tool for sufficient dimension reduction, which replaces covariates with a minimal set of their linear combinations without loss of information on the conditional distribution of the response given the covariates. The estimated linear combinations include all covariates, making results difficult to interpret and perhaps unnecessarily variable, particularly when the number of covariates is large. In this paper, we propose a convex formulation for fitting sparse sliced inverse regression in high dimensions. Our proposal estimates the subspace of the linear combinations of the covariates directly and performs variable selection simultaneously. We solve the resulting convex optimization problem via the linearized alternating direction methods of multiplier algorithm, and establish an upper bound on the subspace distance between the estimated and the true subspaces. Through numerical studies, we show that our proposal is able to identify the correct covariates in the high-dimensional setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time-to-event outcomes are often evaluated on the hazard scale, but interpreting hazards may be difficult. Recently in the causal inference literature concerns have been raised that hazards actually have a built-in selection bias that prevents simple causal interpretations. This is a problem even in randomized controlled trials, where hazard ratios have become a standard measure of treatment effects. Modelling on the hazard scale is nevertheless convenient, for example to adjust for covariates; using hazards for intermediate calculations may therefore be desirable. In this paper we present a generic method for transforming hazard estimates consistently to other scales at which these built-in selection biases are avoided. The method is based on differential equations and generalizes a well-known relation between the Nelson–Aalen and Kaplan–Meier estimators. Using the martingale central limit theorem, we show that covariances can be estimated consistently for a large class of estimators, thus allowing for rapid calculation of confidence intervals. Hence, given cumulative hazard estimates based on, for example, Aalen's additive hazard model, we can obtain many other parameters without much more effort. We give several examples and the associated estimators. Coverage and convergence speed are explored via simulations, and the results suggest that reliable estimates can be obtained in real-life scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Determinants of hypertension diagnosis and/or awareness and control among older adults are understudied in Albania, a former communist country in South Eastern Europe, which is experiencing rapid demographic, socioeconomic and epidemiological transition. This paper examines the association of individual, interpersonal, organizational and community factors with hypertension awareness and control among older adults in Tirana, the Albanian capital. Methods Using 2012 International Mobility in Aging Study data on older adults from Albania's capital city (n = 393) and the socioecological model as a conceptual framework, multinomial regression models identified factors associated with controlled, uncontrolled and undiagnosed hypertension. Results For hypertension, 17.3% participants had none, 23.4% were controlled, 48.4% were uncontrolled and 10.9% were undiagnosed/unaware. Compared to those with controlled hypertension, in multivariable models, a high level of friend support was negatively associated with uncontrolled (OR: 0.4; 95% CI: 0.2–0.9) and undiagnosed (OR: 0.2; 95% CI: 0.1–0.6) hypertension. A high level of perceived neighbourhood safety was negatively associated with uncontrolled (OR: 0.6; 95% CI: 0.3–1.0) and undiagnosed (OR: 0.4; 95% CI: 0.2–1.0) hypertension. Compared to those with no hypertension, children's social support was positively associated with uncontrolled (OR: 2.2; 95% CI: 1.1–4.3) and undiagnosed (OR: 3.6; 95% CI: 1.3–9.6) hypertension. Conclusion This study provides new insights about distinct risk factors for inadequate hypertension management in Albania. It highlights the importance of community-level factors (safety) and interpersonal factors (family and friend ties) to hypertension diagnosis/awareness and control, which may provide novel intervention opportunities for hypertension programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread proliferation of location-acquisition techniques and GPS -embedded mobile devices have resulted in the generation of geo-tagged data at unprecedented scale and have essentially enhanced the user experience in location-based services associated with social networks. Such location-based social networks allow people to record and share their location and are a rich source of information which can be exploited to study people's various attributes and characteristics to provide various Geo-Social (GS) services. In this paper, we propose two new types of queries called Top-k famous places T k F P and Socio-Spatial Skyline Query S S S Q query, which enrich the semantics of the conventional spatial queries by introducing a social relevance component. In addition, three approaches namely, (1) Social-First, (2) Spatial-First and (3) Hybrid are proposed to efficiently process T k F P and S S S Q queries. Finally, we conduct an extensive evaluation of the proposed schemes using real and synthetic datasets and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Judgment aggregation models a group of agents having to collectively decide over a number of logically interconnected issues starting from their individual opinions. In recent years, a growing literature has focused on the design of logical systems for social choice theory, and for judgment aggregation in particular, making use of logical languages designed ad hoc for this purpose. In this paper we deploy the existing formalism of Dynamic Logic of Propositional Assignments (DL-PA), an instance of Propositional Dynamic Logic where atomic programs affect propositional valuations. We show that DL-PA is a well-suited formalism for modeling the aggregation of binary judgments from multiple agents, by providing logical equivalences in DL-PA for some of the best-known aggregation procedures, desirable axioms coming from the literature on judgment aggregation and properties for the safety of the agenda problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile crowd sensing, also called crowd sensing over smartphones, has been an appealing paradigm for collecting sensory data over a vast urban area, due to advantages of low deployment cost and widely spatial coverage of geographically distributed smartphones or other smart devices. In the paper, we focus on a nontrivial problem of making an agreement between crowdsourcers and smartphone users to find the most efficient assignment of sensing tasks to smartphone users. However, there exist several technical challenges such as the incentive issue to encourage participation of smartphone users, preserving private information and distributed implementation in practice. Existing approaches usually have several limitations, e.g. the absence of proper incentives, the assumption of a centralized auctioneer or platform. To this end, we propose a distributed auction framework that explicitly models the interaction between crowdsourcers and smartphone users, achieving the optimal social profit and providing proper incentives to entities without disclosing their privacy as well. We demonstrate that the proposed distributed auction algorithm satisfies a lot of good properties, including optimality of social profit, computation efficiency, convergence, individual rationality through both solid theoretical analysis and extensive experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the quality of human–computer interaction, it is important for computers to be able to identify the images quickly that can trigger pleasant feelings and create a good user experience. To reach this goal, the affective classification of images is an important prerequisite. Prior research into affective image classification used image features as categorical measurable signals. However, these techniques failed to provide a good correlation between the signal properties of image features and the expected affective experience of the viewer, leaving the research unable to bridge the affective gap. To solve this problem, in this paper we propose a method of affective image classification based on information about the user's experience collected through measurable eye movements and electroencephalography (EEG) signals. This approach bridges the affective gap by establishing an association between experience information (measurable signal properties) and the expected affective experience of the viewer. First, we screened eye movement indexes and EEG indexes to provide an affective correlation index. Then we built an experience space based on participants' physiological data obtained using an eye tracker and EEG recorder simultaneously. Next, physiological experience data from the experience space were extracted, analyzed mathematically and normalized to obtain parametric physiological experience data. Using a multiple linear regression technique, we connected the participants' affective states and physiological experience data. We developed a quantitative mapping between the affective experience states and the sample images to acquire the classification of affective images. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed classification method, we conducted a study in which 16 abstract art paintings were classified as positive, negative or neutral based on subjects' physiological responses. The results showed that the proposed affective image classification method was accurate and successful in identifying images that can lead to a pleasurable experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is commonly believed that human-centred design (HCD) approach is very beneficial to interactive systems development. However, not much is known about the state of HCD practice in developing countries, especially the sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores the state of HCD practice in three Nigerian software companies. We used the interview technique to explore two key issues. First, the perception of humans as a component of sociotechnical systems, and second, how HCD process is being approached in software companies. A cross-case analysis of the three companies was performed and the usability maturity model-human-centredness scale was used to determine the state of maturity of the three companies. The outcomes of this study reveal that HCD practice is currently at the least stage of maturity in the three companies and user involvement is not practiced in the right manner. The outcomes of the study suggest the need for reflective HCD practice and localizing human–computer interaction approaches to contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been observed that converting scFv formatted antibodies to full-length IgG often associates with loss of affinity. We aim to address this issue in this paper by establishing an integrated affinity maturation method applying yeast display technology platform. To demonstrate that, we employed a human thrombopoietin receptor targeting antibody named 3D9 which was identified previously from a combinational antibody library in scFv-Fc fusion protein form. We have observed that significant potency loss happened when 3D9 was transformed to full-length IgG form. In this study, we tested whether the potency of the full-length IgG can be improved by affinity maturation of 3D9 using a modified Fab yeast display platform. An efficient CDR3 targeted mutagenesis strategy was designed for Fab library with pre-designed CDR diversity. Next generation sequencing was also used for evaluation of the enrichment process and investigation of sequence-function relationship of the antibody. A variant with improved affinity and higher potency was identified. The study demonstrates that the strategy we used here are efficient for optimizing affinity and activity of full-length IgGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on a solar jet phenomenon associated with the C5.4 class flare on 2014 November 11. The data of the jet was provided by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the X-Ray Telescope (XRT) aboard Hinode, and the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph and Domeless Solar Telescope (DST) at Hida Observatory, Kyoto University. These plentiful data enabled us to present this series of papers to discuss all the processes of the observed phenomena, including energy storage, event trigger, and energy release. In this paper, we focus on the energy release process of the observed jet, and mainly describe our spectral analysis on the Hα data of DST to investigate the internal structure of the Hα jet and its temporal evolution. This analysis reveals that in the physical quantity distributions of the Hα jet, such as line-of-sight velocity and optical thickness, there is a significant gradient in the direction crossing the jet. We interpret this internal structure as the consequence of the migration of the energy release site, based on the idea of ubiquitous reconnection. Moreover, by measuring the horizontal flow of the fine structures in the jet, we succeeded in deriving the three-dimensional velocity field and the line-of-sight acceleration field of the Hα jet. The analysis result indicates that part of the ejecta in the Hα jet experienced additional acceleration after it had been ejected from the lower atmosphere. This secondary acceleration was found to occur in the vicinity of the intersection between the trajectories of the Hα jet and the X-ray jet observed by Hinode/XRT. We propose that a fundamental cause of this phenomenon is magnetic reconnection involving the plasmoid in the observed jet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yule and Burnell's famous Anglo-Indian glossary Hobson-Jobson was first published in 1886 and thence updated by William Crooke in 1903. It is still widely available today, and despite the fact that its contents are over a century out of date, it is still used as a reference work for Indian English. Since its publication it has generally received positive reviews and very little in the way of critical comment or analysis of the text. Moreover, the literature on Hobson-Jobson is beset by inaccurate statements or is otherwise couched in hedges due to a lack of precise knowledge about the dictionary's contents. This paper provides an overview of the critical attention Hobson-Jobson has received, summarises the editing and printing history, and then presents a wholly new analysis of the dictionary, bringing to light many previously unknown facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an application of recent management theories concerning the effect of pre-entry experience and knowledge transfer within the context of creative industries. The setting of the empirical research is the television situation comedy (sitcom) industry in the United States between 1949 and 2011. Specifically, we explore the factors that explain the survival rate of sitcoms and their spin-offs. We develop two sets of indicators to explore the effect of pre-entry experience: team similarity and star power based on the character/actor. Our findings show that spin-offs, or sitcoms that inherit character/actors and theme elements from a successful parent sitcom, have a greater likelihood to survive than de novo sitcoms. Even further, the greater the number of team members that not only worked with each other on previous shows but worked together on the same parent show, the better the performance of the spin-off. By contrast, star power, or the fame of the character/actor(s) that passes from the parent to the spin-off, shows no significant correlation with performance. We suggest that these results provide initial evidence that, consistent with the literature on spinouts in manufacturing industries, knowledge endowments represent an important source of performance heterogeneity in project-based industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies coordination between firms in a multi-sectoral macroeconomic model with endogenous business cycles. Firms are both in competition and interdependent, and set their prices with a markup over unit costs. Markups are heterogeneous and evolve under market pressure. We observe a systematic coordination between firms of each sector, and between each sector. The resulting pattern of relative prices is fairly consistent with the labor theory of value. These emerging features are robust to technology shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was formed in 1958 as a research and development (R&D) agency within the US Department of Defense, while the two newer but closely comparable R&D agencies, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA), were formed within the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2009 and 2007, respectively. The three share an ambitious innovation organization model, operating as public sector intermediaries between science and industry to pursue mission-oriented, high-risk/high-reward, breakthrough research. They also actively promote the follow-on development and implementation of technologies they support in their mission areas, achieving what has been termed mission innovation. They are therefore much more activist than more standard American R&D agencies, which do not pursue conscious technology strategies oriented to specific mission technology challenges. The three "ARPA" agencies tend to operate as change agents within the often conservative "legacy" sectors they operate within—defense, energy, and intelligence. Within the context of the overall US innovation system, DARPA and IARPA are leading examples of what can be termed the "extended pipeline" model, while ARPA-E is located within a more traditional R&D "pipeline" model agency, the DOE, trying to reach further down the innovation pipeline. All face the types of innovation barriers common to legacy sectors, which further challenge their efforts to implement their innovations. Despite these challenges, this ARPA model has proven quite dynamic; DARPA has an unparalleled record of technological advance, and the other two are rapidly building their own records. ARPA-E and IARPA show that the DARPA model is now a proven one in the innovation space, clearly relevant for consideration in other technology development mission sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Story-based learning is well recognized as an effective strategy for adult health education. However, there is a scarcity of research on story-based health education among women in South Asian diasporic communities. To address this gap, we undertook a pilot study in Toronto to explore how South Asian women respond to the use of fact-based and story-based materials for HIV/STI prevention. A total of 78 women were recruited from across the city. We engaged nearly half of the women (n =40) using fact sheets on HIV/STIs, and the remainder (n =38) using stories written by South Asian women on HIV/STIs. Surveys and focus groups were used to explore participants' responses in terms of knowledge, attitudes and perspectives. Results indicated that both approaches were effective in increasing participants' knowledge of HIV/STIs. Participants in the fact-based sessions tended to distance themselves from the idea of personal HIV/STI risks. Participants in the story-based groups were emotionally engaged, expressing personal commitments to take a stand against HIV stigma. In summary, within-culture stories are potentially effective tools that enable women to make sense of their own life situations and contextual vulnerabilities. Story-based materials are useful for breaking the silence of taboo topics, addressing stigma and discrimination and raising awareness about collective empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore the understandings of and engagement with e-cigarettes, of young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds, and how these may have an impact on existing smoking identities.Methods: Twenty-two small group and 11 individual qualitative interviews were conducted in Central Scotland with 72 16-24 year olds between September 2015 and April 2016. Participants were mostly smokers and ex-smokers from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.Results: Although most participants had tried e-cigarettes, they generally held ambivalent views about e-cigarettes and vaping. Two overarching themes were identified which helped in understanding this. Firstly, e-cigarettes were understood by the participants in relation to their existing smoking identities. Vaping was viewed as less controllable and more addictive than smoking, which did not fit with their self-identity as controlled smokers. Secondly, they felt that vaping could not replace the social and cultural importance that smoking had in their lives.Conclusion: This study suggests that though young adults from disadvantaged areas are trying e-cigarettes for various reasons, vaping is rarely sustained. Through their own experiences of vaping and their observations of others vaping, the participants perceive the behavior as endangering an existing acceptable and controlled smoking identity. Additionally, e-cigarettes were considered to be a jarring presence in existing social situations where smoking was valued. This study, therefore, provides insights into how young adults may be rationalizing their continued smoking in the face of potentially less harmful alternatives.Implications: As new and novel nicotine delivery devices, and due to their similarity to smoking, e-cigarettes have the potential to help smokers in their quit attempts. However, the findings from this study raise questions about whether e-cigarettes are regarded as having this potential by young adult smokers from disadvantaged socioeconomic environments where smoking is more commonplace and acceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small area ecological studies are commonly used in epidemiology to assess the impact of area level risk factors on health outcomes when data are only available in an aggregated form. However, the resulting estimates are often biased due to unmeasured confounders, which typically are not available from the standard administrative registries used for these studies. Extra information on confounders can be provided through external data sets such as surveys or cohorts, where the data are available at the individual level rather than at the area level; however, such data typically lack the geographical coverage of administrative registries. We develop a framework of analysis which combines ecological and individual level data from different sources to provide an adjusted estimate of area level risk factors which is less biased. Our method (i) summarizes all available individual level confounders into an area level scalar variable, which we call ecological propensity score (EPS), (ii) implements a hierarchical structured approach to impute the values of EPS whenever they are missing, and (iii) includes the estimated and imputed EPS into the ecological regression linking the risk factors to the health outcome. Through a simulation study, we show that integrating individual level data into small area analyses via EPS is a promising method to reduce the bias intrinsic in ecological studies due to unmeasured confounders; we also apply the method to a real case study to evaluate the effect of air pollution on coronary heart disease hospital admissions in Greater London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instrumental variable (IV) analysis is an increasingly popular tool for inferring the effect of an exposure on an outcome, as witnessed by the growing number of IV applications in epidemiology, for instance. The majority of IV analyses of time-to-event endpoints are, however, dominated by heuristic approaches. More rigorous proposals have either sidestepped the Cox model, or considered it within a restrictive context with dichotomous exposure and instrument, amongst other limitations. The aim of this article is to reconsider IV estimation under a structural Cox model, allowing for arbitrary exposure and instruments. We propose a novel class of estimators and derive their asymptotic properties. The methodology is illustrated using two real data applications, and using simulated data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of media exposure differ when people are given the opportunity to choose content compared to when they are forced to view it. Contemporary explanations propose that differences between forced and selected exposure occur because of between-subject differences. We propose that differences also result from within-subject psychological reactions. Using a novel experimental design, a representative sample of U.S. adults (N = 1,967) provided their content preferences in a first session and then, in a second session, were randomly assigned to choose content or to view randomly-assigned content. Results confirm that forced exposure yields different psychological reactions than selected exposure, even in some cases among participants forced to view their preferred content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of indicators in research policy and evaluation is widely perceived as problematic. Responding to demands for explicit normative framings in STI governance, I propose an agenda for transforming the place and role of indicators in policy. Given that expert advice should not separate knowledge formation from decision-making under conditions of uncertainty and lack of value consensus, I argue that current scientometrics is too focused on technical issues, too reductionist, and too isolated from the contexts and values of its use. Using Callon's analytical framework of 'secluded research' vs. 'research in the wild', I propose three moves for improving design and use of science, technology, and innovation (STI) indicators. First, to continue ongoing trends towards pluralizing the data sources, processing and visualization techniques, and expand the research communities involved in scientometrics. Second, to develop forms of quantitative evidence that can be contextualized with the participation of a more diverse set of stakeholders. Third, to open up the policy framings implicit in measurement, and use quantitative analyses to reveal more balanced perspectives of existing and alternative STI options. I conclude by arguing that these shifts are necessary to preserve epistemic diversity and pluralism in the face of ongoing managerial push for standardization via 'platforms' run by commercial oligopolies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Challenge-led interdisciplinary research is a relatively new way of bringing together disciplinary expertise in response to complex societal and environmental problems. Common difficulties include how to define 'interdisciplinary research'; how to improve the participation and flourishing of early-career researchers; and how to manage projects with disparate teams of researchers while deepening external collaborations. This article reports from a major initiative of this type. It interrogates qualitative data generated from program evaluation among participating researchers, identifying insights on beneficial structural (program design) and 'soft' infrastructure (human capital) variables, as well as on-going barriers and tensions. Notwithstanding the difficulties of communicating and collaborating across epistemic domains, the program in question exceeded expectations in building interdisciplinary research and early research careers—though not necessarily in ways initially imagined. Staggered funding pools meant it was acceptable in early phases for low-cost projects to 'fail safely', while strict funding guidelines on distal interdisciplinarity compelled unlikely and novel researcher combinations and projects. Moreover, such program design features 'granted permission' to early-career researchers to approach more senior, cross-faculty researchers as potential collaborators, hence building leadership capacity. Human capital variables included a dialogic approach to project development ('curating' projects as they evolve), inclusive program leadership, and promotion of the benefits of a collaborative rather than competitive research culture. Distal interdisciplinarity not only nourishes novel and unlikely research projects that respond to complex problems; with good program design and meaningful relationships it can, we argue, also build research careers differently from an early phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide an in-depth analysis of the extent and nature of heterogeneity in willingness-to-pay (WTP) for the attributes of higher education institutions (HEIs). Using data from Ireland, mixed logit and generalized multinomial logit models are used to examine heterogeneity in WTP by region, academic ability, and socio-economic status. The analysis shows that regional variation in WTP for the attributes of HEIs is substantial, which suggests that preferences may be shaped by the characteristics of the region in which a student lives. Heterogeneity in WTP is also found based on a student's academic ability, with higher-ability students willing to pay considerably more for a higher-quality institution compared to lower-ability students. We also find that students in the highest socio-economic group are willing to pay more for all attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a corporate tournament, executive directors are motivated by the prospect of promotion to CEO, with winners receiving large increases in remuneration. Tournament losers by contrast face a discrete loss in their valuation of their position, since the prospect of them becoming CEO is substantially reduced. We argue that this offers an opportunity to test the predictions of tournament theory by observing the quit behaviour and the wages of the losing directors. We find a sharp increase in the likelihood that directors leave the firm when the tournament ends. The directors who remain receive an increase in their remuneration following a rival's promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a new class of multivariate volatility models utilizing realized measures of asset variance and covariance extracted from high-frequency data. Dimension reduction for estimation of large covariance matrices is achieved by imposing a factor structure with time-varying conditional factor loadings. Statistical properties of the model, including conditions that ensure covariance stationarity of returns, are established. The performance of the model is assessed using a panel of large U.S. financial institutions during the financial crisis, where empirical results show that the new model has both superior in- and out-of-sample properties. We show that the superior performance applies to a wide range of quantities of interest, including volatilities, covariances, betas, and scenario-based risk measures. The model's performance is particularly strong at short forecast horizons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we used age–crime statistics from India to investigate the two core tenets of Hirschi and Gottfredson's (HG) invariance thesis that the age distribution of crime is always and everywhere adolescent spiked and thereafter declines continuously into elder ages. Besides comparisons to the inverted J-shaped distribution projected by HG, we further compared Indian age–crime patterns with those in United States (Western nation; main evidential source for HG invariance projection) and Taiwan (like India, a non-Western collectivist society). Findings suggest considerable divergence in India's age–crime patterns compared with HG invariance norm and US age–crime distributions, but overall similarity with Taiwan's age–crime schedules. Implications for research and theory on the age–crime relation more broadly are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops an economic model to analyze how the risk of water shortages affects farmers' land irrigation decision and how the priority-based water sharing arrangement redistributes such a risk among farms with different water rights priorities. The analysis brings together an array of comprehensive data files on irrigation rights, water supplies, and agricultural land use from eastern Idaho. Results indicate that a more left-skewed distribution of streamflow significantly discourages land irrigation among farmers except the most senior rights holders. The priority-based water sharing arrangement redistributes the macroscale risk of water shortages and thus exposes farmers of different water rights priorities to heterogeneous levels of risk: senior water rights holders are affected the least and such a risk is instead passed mostly on to junior water rights holders. The role of water rights in risk redistribution is more significant when the probability distribution of water shortage risk is asymmetric rather than symmetric. The historical development pattern of water rights influences how the priority of water rights takes effect on land irrigation decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we employ Bayesian hierarchical modeling to better capture and communicate the uncertainties surrounding the transformation of U.S. public agricultural research and development (R&D) expenditures to knowledge capital stocks as well as its contribution to the historic growth of U.S. agricultural total factor productivity. Compared to studies based on classical statistics, analytical methods grounded in Bayesian inference explicitly incorporate existing information and permit revision of our knowledge regarding the distribution of the unknown model parameters as additional information becomes available. Bayesian hierarchical modeling is particularly useful in statistically estimating the underlying parameters of the R&D lag weight structure, as well as the R&D knowledge stocks given observed data on agricultural productivity and R&D expenditures. Our results show a significant level of uncertainty on the R&D lag weight structure, indicating that published assumptions about the R&D lag structure can now be tested and validated against available data. Estimating the R&D lag weights and knowledge stocks also make a large difference in the uncertainties surrounding economic returns from R&D investments. Indeed, our results show that the best-fit linear model yields slightly higher mean returns to R&D spending relative to the log model results and have significantly less uncertainty. This suggests that marginal returns to U.S. public agricultural research spending might have remained relatively constant despite a century of growth in expenditure. Furthermore, we find that such investments could take a longer time to bear fruit than previously realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact that misreporting adoption status has on the identification and estimation of causal effects on productivity. In particular, by comparing measurement error-ridden self-reported adoption data with measurement-error-free DNA-fingerprinted adoption data, we investigate the extent to which such errors bias the causal effects of adoption on productivity. Taking DNA-fingerprinted adoption data as a benchmark, we find 25% "false negatives" and 10% "false positives" in farmers' responses. Our results show that misreporting of adoption status is not exogenous to household characteristics, and produces a bias of about 22 percentage points in the productivity impact of adoption. Ignoring inherent behavioral adjustments of farmers based on perceived adoption status has a bias of 13 percentage points. The results of this article underscore the crucial role that correct measurement of adoption plays in designing policy interventions that address constraints to technology adoption in agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: We aimed to systematically review the evidence on adverse mental health outcomes in breast cancer survivors (≥1 year) compared with women with no history of cancer.Methods: Studies were identified by searching MEDLINE, PsycINFO, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and the Social Sciences Citation Index, and through backward citation tracking. Two researchers selected the studies, extracted data, and assessed the risk of bias.Results: Sixty studies were included. Of 38 studies of depression, 33 observed more depression in breast cancer survivors; this was statistically significant in 19 studies overall, including six of seven where depression was ascertained clinically, three of four studies of antidepressants, and 13 of 31 that quantified depressive symptoms. Of 21 studies of anxiety, 17 observed more anxiety in breast cancer survivors, statistically significant in 11 studies overall, including two of four with clinical/prescription-based outcomes, and in eight of 17 of anxiety symptoms. Breast cancer survivors also had statistically significantly increased symptoms/frequency of neurocognitive dysfunction (18 of 24 studies), sexual dysfunctions (5 of 6 studies), sleep disturbance (5 of 5 studies), stress-related disorders/PTSD (2 of 3 studies), suicide (2 of 2 studies), somatisation (2 of 2 studies), and bipolar and obsessive-compulsive disorders (1 of 1 study each). Studies were heterogeneous in terms of participants' characteristics, time since diagnosis, ascertainment of outcomes, and measures reported. Approximately one-half of the studies were at high risk of selection bias and confounding by socio-economic status.Conclusions: There is compelling evidence of an increased risk of anxiety, depression and suicide, and neurocognitive and sexual dysfunctions in breast cancer survivors compared with women with no prior cancer. This information can be used to support evidence-based prevention and management strategies. Further population-based and longitudinal research would help to better characterize these associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Three-quarters of homeless people smoke cigarettes. Financial incentives for smoking abstinence have appeared promising in nonexperimental studies of homeless smokers, but randomized controlled trial (RCT) data are lacking.Methods: We conducted a pilot RCT of financial incentives for homeless smokers. Incentive arm participants (N = 25) could earn escalating $15-$35 rewards for brief smoking abstinence (exhaled carbon monoxide <8 parts per million) assessed 14 times over 8 weeks. Control arm participants (N = 25) were given $10 at each assessment regardless of abstinence. All participants were offered nicotine patches and counseling. The primary outcome was a repeated measure of brief smoking abstinence across 14 assessments. The secondary outcome was brief abstinence at 8 weeks. Exploratory outcomes were self-reported 1-day and 7-day abstinence from (1) any cigarette and (2) any puff of a cigarette. Other outcomes included 24-hour quit attempts, nicotine patch use, counseling attendance, and changes in alcohol and drug use.Results: Compared to control, incentive arm participants were more likely to achieve brief abstinence overall (odds ratio 7.28, 95% confidence interval 2.89 to 18.3) and at 8 weeks (48% vs. 8%, p = .004). Similar effects were seen for 1-day abstinence, but 7-day puff abstinence was negligible in both arms. Incentive arm participants made more quit attempts (p = .03). Nicotine patch use and counseling attendance were not significantly different between the groups. Alcohol and drug use did not change significantly in either group.Conclusions: Among homeless smokers, financial incentives increased brief smoking abstinence and quit attempts without worsening substance use. This approach merits further development focused on promoting sustained abstinence.Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02565381).Implications: Smoking is common among homeless people, and conventional tobacco treatment strategies have yielded modest results in this population. This pilot RCT suggests that financial incentives may be a safe way to promote brief smoking abstinence and quit attempts in this vulnerable group of smokers. However, further development is necessary to translate this approach into real-world settings and to promote sustained periods of smoking abstinence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Inadequate smoking cessation interventions by physicians have been attributed to lack of training, and it is generally thought that additional education will improve patient care. However, interventions aimed at increasing knowledge and practical skills only address one determinant of behavior (capability). This prospective study assessed how much a teaching session for general practitioner (GP) trainees enrolled in Vocational Training Schemes in England also affected two other determinants (motivation and opportunity) specified by the COM-B theory of behavior. Methods Between October and December 2015, GP trainees were given a 3.5-h training session in the theory and practice of smoking cessation. Questionnaires addressed motivation, capability, and opportunities to provide evidence-based brief advice to smokers at the beginning and end of the session, and 3 months later. They also looked at the recollection of previous teaching as well as knowledge, skills, intervention frequency, and perceived barriers against providing interventions. Results Participants (n = 123) remembered little previous training on the subject and self-reported presession knowledge was minimal. Motivation was high throughout while capability and opportunity increased considerably during the session. No further change in these parameters was noted at 3 months. The proportion of participants stating they provided evidence-based brief advice to >50% of smokers increased from 25.2% before the session to 57.7% at follow-up. Lack of time remained a commonly cited barrier. Conclusions Training elicited an immediate and sustained effect on capability, perceived opportunity, and behavior itself. While perceived barriers referring to capability were greatly reduced, barriers referring to opportunity (eg, lack of time) persisted. Implications This is the first study evaluating a GP training session on smoking cessation with regard to the COM-B model. In a pre-post design with 3-month follow-up, we observed substantial and sustained changes in GP trainees' perceived capability and opportunity to provide evidence-based very brief advice, and these increases were paralleled by favorable changes in practice behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]