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This article offers four key lessons learned from a set of seven studies undertaken as part of the collection entitled, "Improving Maternal Health Measurement to Support Efforts toward Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality". These papers were aimed at validating ten of the Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality initiative indicators that capture information on distal causes of maternal mortality. These ten indicators were selected through an inclusive consultative process, and the research designs adhere to global recommendations on conducting indicator validation studies. The findings of these papers are timely and relevant given growing recognition of the role of macro-level social, political, and economic factors in maternal and newborn survival. The four key lessons include: 1) Strengthen efforts to capture maternal and newborn health policies to enable global progress assessments while reducing multiple requests to countries for similar data; 2) Monitor indicator "bundles" to understand degree of policy implementation, inconsistencies between laws and practices, and responsiveness of policies to individual and community needs; 3) Promote regular monitoring of a holistic set of human resource metrics to understand how to effectively strengthen the maternal and newborn health workforce; and 4) Develop and disseminate clear guidance for countries on how to assess health system as well as broader social and political determinants of maternal and newborn health. These lessons are consistent with the Kirkland principles of focus, relevance, innovation, equity, global leadership, and country ownership. They stress the value of indicator sets to understand complex phenomenon related to maternal and newborn health, including small groupings of complementary indicators for measuring policy implementation and health workforce issues. They also stress the fundamental ethos that maternal and newborn health indicators should only be tracked if they can drive actions at global, regional, national, or sub-national levels that improve lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is an experimental study of the most crucial parameters of the received acoustic signals (e.g. signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), side-lobes level (SLL), axial resolution) obtained as a result of simultaneous emission of mutually orthogonal Golay complementary sequences (MOGCS) to demonstrate their feasibility of being used in ultrasound diagnostics. Application of the MOGCS in ultrasound measurements allows the image reconstruction time to be shortened without decreasing the resulting quality of reconstructed images in comparison with regular complementary Golay coded sequences (CGCS). In this paper two sets of 16-bits long MOGCS were implemented in the Verasonics Vantage™ (Verasonics Inc., Kirkland, WA, USA) scanner. Ultrasound data were generated using a perfect reflector, a custom-made nylon wire phantom and tissue mimicking phantom. Parameters of the detected MOGCS echoes like SNR, SLL and axial resolution were determined and compared to that of the standard CGCS and the short two-sine cycles pulse. It was evidenced that applying MOGCS did not compromise the parameters of the separated and compressed echoes in comparison to the other types of transmitted signal - the CGCS and the short pulse. Concretely, both the MOGCS and CGCS yield similar SNR increase in comparison to the short pulse. Almost similar values of the axial resolution estimated at the full width at the half maximum level for all types of the transmitted signals were also obtained. At the same time, using the MOGCS the data acquisition speed can be increased twice in comparison with the CGCS signal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myopia is a significant cause of visual impairment which may lead to many complications. However, the understanding of the mechanisms of myopia is still limited. In this paper, in order to investigate the development and the treatment of myopia, we analyzed the biological structure parameters of mice eyes, obtained from optical coherence tomography (OCT), and the optical performance of mice eyes calculated using ZEMAX software (ZEMAX Development Corporation, Kirkland, WA, USA) in which the optical model was built on the segment-by-segment optically corrected OCT 3D-images. Time-serial evaluation of three groups of mice eyes (form-deprivation myopia mice eyes, normal mice eyes, and atropine-treated myopia mice eyes) was performed. In addition to the biological structure parameters, imaging performance with the development of root-mean-square wavefront aberration at six filed angles was compared and analyzed. Results show that the biological structure parameters of the eye are closely related to the development of myopia. The peripheral defocus of the retina has a significant impact on inducing myopia, which verifies the new theory of myopia development. The delaying effect of atropine solution on myopia development is shown to verify the therapeutic effect of the medicine. This study provides technical support for the investigation of the myopia mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research question: This paper, on the example of strategic alliances in the automotive industry, investigates how diagrams could be useful in studying complex power relationships. Motivation: The relative power of individuals and institutions is a crucial driving force of their interactions. It is however hard to evaluate because the interactions can take place simultaneously or sequentially in different markets or forums. Diagrams of power, that this study introduces, help us abstract the relative power of agents. This enables us to use insights of decision and game theory, especially those from the literature, in strategic decision making under uncertainty (Courtney, Kirkland, & Viguerie, 1997), to arrive at successful and sustainable solutions. They enable us to view relationships between firms as security dilemmas (Posen, 1993), which can explain why emerging market multinationals (EMMs) treat the acquired companies as strategic partners (Kale, Singh, & Raman, 2009). Idea: Diagrams of power and security dilemma help us better understand strategic alliances in the automotive industry. Moreover, we believe that diagrams of power could both offer new insights to scholars and represent an intuitive tool for businessmen and policy makers less experienced with advanced mathematical methods. Data: To quantify the power of several automotive producers, we have used selected contemporary data items from their annual reports and the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers. Tools: The tool we introduce to better understand power relationships between automotive producers are the diagrams of power. We then apply them to two cases from the industry to better understand the strategic interactions within alliances. Findings: We demonstrate that diagrams of power can help managers define the goals of strategic alliances, minimize the risks of their establishment and management, and recognize the problems and opportunities that arise in strategic partnerships due to security dilemmas, a concept that originated in the study of wars. Diagrams of power enrich the analytical toolkit of the existing literature, enabling faster understanding of the relationship between agents as well as decision making based on more complete information. Contribution: This paper introduces diagrams of power - a tool for study of strategic interactions - and applies the concept of security dilemma to the study of the automotive industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city of Kirkland, Washington, outside of Seattle, is a highly sought-after place to live and work in the Pacific Northwest, renowned for its quality of life and scenic geography, adorned with a publicly accessible waterfront. To its detriment, its historically rigorous retention of a low-rise identity is a questionable strategy in present times, especially given post-pandemic challenges and opportunities for evolving typologies of urban living, working, and leisure, as well as low carbon emissions initiatives. K2 is an exploratory case study undertaken to suggest alternative strategies of how responsibly orchestrated, denser, and taller developments, combined with transit connectivity, walkability, and low-carbon methodologies of construction, can set new benchmarks for urban vitality in the North American contexts, without compromising a city's inherent charm, iconography, or ambiance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kemeny's constant of a simple connected graph G is the expected length of a random walk from i to any given vertex j ≠ i . We provide a simple method for computing Kemeny's constant for 1-separable graphs via effective resistance methods from electrical network theory. Using this formula, we furnish a simple proof that the path graph on n vertices maximizes Kemeny's constant for the class of undirected trees on n vertices. Applying this method again, we simplify existing expressions for the Kemeny's constant of barbell graphs and demonstrate which barbell maximizes Kemeny's constant. This 1-separation identity further allows us to create sufficient conditions for the existence of Braess edges in 1-separable graphs. We generalize the notion of the Braess edge to Braess sets, collections of non-edges in a graph such that their addition to the base graph increases the Kemeny constant. We characterize Braess sets in graphs with any number of twin pendant vertices, generalizing work of Kirkland and Zeng (Electron J Linear Algebra 31(1):444–464, 2016) and Ciardo (Linear Algebra Appl, 2020). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities account for a disproportionate share of COVID-19 cases and fatalities worldwide. Outbreaks in US nursing homes have persisted despite nationwide visitor restrictions beginning in mid-March. An early report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified staff members working in multiple nursing homes as a likely source of spread from the Life Care Center in Kirkland, WA, to other skilled nursing facilities. The full extent of staff connections between nursing homes--and the role these connections serve in spreading a highly contagious respiratory infection--is currently unknown given the lack of centralized data on cross-facility employment. We perform a large-scale analysis of nursing home connections via shared staff and contractors using device-level geolocation data from 50 million smartphones, and find that 5.1% of smartphone users who visited a nursing home for at least 1 h also visited another facility during our 11- wk study period--even after visitor restrictions were imposed. We construct network measures of connectedness and estimate that nursing homes, on average, share connections with 7.1 other facilities. Traditional federal regulatory metrics of nursing home quality are unimportant in predicting outbreaks, consistent with recent research. Controlling for demographic and other factors, a home's staff network connections and its centrality within the greater network strongly predict COVID-19 cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]