The Perspectives of Women and Their Health-Care Providers Regarding Using an ECA to Support Mode of Birth Decisions     

Somphit Chinkam  Courtney Steer-Massaro  Ivan Herbey  Zhe Zhang  Timothy Bickmore  Allison Shorten 《The Journal of perinatal education》2021,30(3):135

This study used focus groups to assess the feasibility and acceptability of adapting an Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) to support decision-making about mode of birth after previous cesarean. Twelve women with previous cesareans, and eight prenatal providers at an academic, tertiary-care medical center, viewed a prototype ECA and were asked to share feedback on the potential role in helping women prepare for decision-making. Both groups felt that although it was somewhat “robot-like,” the ECA could provide easy access to information for patients and could augment the visit with providers. Future work is needed to improve ECA visual appeal and clarify the role and timing for utilization of decision aids using ECA technology to enhance the shared decision-making process.  相似文献   

Superstar effects on royalty income in a performing rights organization     

Ivan L. Pitt 《Journal of Cultural Economics》2010,34(3):219-236

This paper examines the economic accomplishments of individual members in a Performing Rights Organization (PRO), sometimes referred to as a Performing Rights Society. Today, there is the growing importance of intellectual property and copyright protection for authors and creators of literary, dramatic, musical, artistic and other intellectual works. The digital age has placed added pressure on songwriters, lyricists and composers in their ability to derive economic benefits from their intellectual creativity in the form of a copyright. Copyright laws protect and enable the creation of music by allowing authors and composers to license the control and use of their creations, and receive compensation in the form of royalty payments for their work. The PROs license, collect and distribute royalty payments for non-dramatic public performances of copyrighted musical works created and owned by its members or affiliates. In this paper, skewness and heavy tail of returns in the form of member royalty payments are estimated using the skew-normal and skew-t distributions in a parametric approach. We found strong evidence of the so-called ‘superstar effect’ in which the average royalty payment made by a PRO is still dominated by extreme outcomes, and relatively few members earned a substantial share of royalty payments from blockbuster hits that have endured over time. There is little evidence of smaller niche members dominating or replacing the ‘superstars.’ Economists and others will benefit from this empirical study which emphasizes a new understanding of the music industry from a PRO, member royalty payment and performance copyright perspective.  相似文献   

The Academic Spin-Offs as an Engine of Economic Transition in Eastern Europe. A Path-Dependent Approach     

Ivan Tchalakov  Tihomir Mitev  Venelin Petrov 《Minerva》2010,48(2):189-217

The paper questions some of the premises in studying academic spin-offs in developed countries, claiming that when taken as characteristics of ‘academic spin-offs per se,’ they are of little help in understanding the phenomenon in the Eastern European countries during the transitional and post-transitional periods after 1989. It argues for the necessity of adopting a path-dependent approach, which takes into consideration the institutional and organisational specificities of local economies and research systems and their evolution, which strongly influence the patterns of spin-off activity. The paper provides new findings and original arguments in support of Balazs’ seminal theses (Balazs 1995, 1996) about the emergence of academic spin-offs during the early transition. It reveals key economic and policy mechanisms bearing on academic entrepreneurship in Eastern Europe, such as the tensions between economic and political nomenclatures of former Communist Parties, where the dismantling or preservation of the power of political nomenclature resulted in different patterns of development—rapid reforms in the ‘first wave’ of EU accession countries or the establishment of rent-seeking and assets-stripping economies in countries like Bulgaria and Romania, making the transition period especially difficult. In the latter, a specific economic environment emerged, unknown in Western Europe and in the ‘champions’ of transition—such as suppression of the authentic entrepreneurship in a number of economic sectors, disintegration of corporate structures, etc. Thus, the paper reveals the common ground behind the two conflicting tendencies in post-socialist academic spin-offs, partially outlined in other research (Simeonova 1995; Pavlova 2000): as an authentic form of academic entrepreneurship grasping the opportunities opened up by the economic crisis and compensating failures in science and technology policy on the one hand, and as specific rent-seeking strategy draining valuable public assets on the other (the latter, in turn, boosting the negative attitudes in local scientific communities). The paper provides new findings about the evolution of the academic spin-offs in Bulgaria along the two polar trends and their positive and negative repercussions on parent research institutions. The results were achieved in the PROKNOW Project, EC 6th Framework Program.  相似文献   

Identification of a nonlinear dynamic biological model using the dominant parameter selection method     

Ilya Ioslovich  Marco Ivan Ramirez-Sosa Moran 《Journal of The Franklin Institute》2010,347(6):1001-1014

The identification of nonlinear models sometimes encounters problems because of the limited amount of available measurements in combination with a large number of uncertain model parameters to be identified. E.g., the determination of the chemical composition of a lettuce crop is a rather expensive procedure; thus the number of experimental measurements is limited. As a result, the number of parameters of the dynamic model that can be successively identified is also limited, and the subset of the parameters to be identified must be chosen in a reasonable way.Parameter estimation for an extended nonlinear three-state model for lettuce growth in greenhouses is presented in this paper. The varying structural nitrogen concentration and water contents are the new elements included in the model. The dominant parameter selection (DPS) method was used to select a suitable set of identifiable parameters. The resulting calibrated model predicts quite well the experimental data which also include observations with severe nitrogen stress.  相似文献   

Guest Editorial     

Ivan Gibson 《European Journal of Engineering Education》2002,27(1):1-3

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The breakdown of schools: A problem or a symptom?     

Ivan Illich 《Interchange》1971,2(4):1-10

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Why Here and Why Now? Teacher Motivations for Unionizing in a New Orleans Charter School     

Brian R. Beabout  Ivan Gill 《Journal of School Choice》2015,9(4):486-502

The rigidity of teachers unions has been given as a primary reason for their lack of representation among America’s rapidly growing, although still relatively small, charter school sector. In the case of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, the city rapidly converted from a union-backed teacher workforce to a largely nonunionized charter school workforce in the years following state takeover and charter conversion. This makes the recent emergence of two single-school unions in charter schools there worthy of study. As the teachers attempt to organize single-school unions in a nearly all charter school system, what are their motivations? This case study of one of New Orleans’ emerging charter school unions found that pay inequities, job insecurity, a lack of teacher voice in school-level decisions, and a culture of compliance, all motivated teachers to seek unionization. Teachers hoped to promote equity and teacher involvement with their union, but the organizing effort did strain some relationships, particularly those involving middle management.  相似文献   

Systematic characterization of degas-driven flow for poly(dimethylsiloxane) microfluidic devices   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Liang DY  Tentori AM  Dimov IK  Lee LP 《Biomicrofluidics》2011,5(2):24108

Degas-driven flow is a novel phenomenon used to propel fluids in poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS)-based microfluidic devices without requiring any external power. This method takes advantage of the inherently high porosity and air solubility of PDMS by removing air molecules from the bulk PDMS before initiating the flow. The dynamics of degas-driven flow are dependent on the channel and device geometries and are highly sensitive to temporal parameters. These dependencies have not been fully characterized, hindering broad use of degas-driven flow as a microfluidic pumping mechanism. Here, we characterize, for the first time, the effect of various parameters on the dynamics of degas-driven flow, including channel geometry, PDMS thickness, PDMS exposure area, vacuum degassing time, and idle time at atmospheric pressure before loading. We investigate the effect of these parameters on flow velocity as well as channel fill time for the degas-driven flow process. Using our devices, we achieved reproducible flow with a standard deviation of less than 8% for flow velocity, as well as maximum flow rates of up to 3 nL∕s and mean flow rates of approximately 1-1.5 nL∕s. Parameters such as channel surface area and PDMS chip exposure area were found to have negligible impact on degas-driven flow dynamics, whereas channel cross-sectional area, degas time, PDMS thickness, and idle time were found to have a larger impact. In addition, we develop a physical model that can predict mean flow velocities within 6% of experimental values and can be used as a tool for future design of PDMS-based microfluidic devices that utilize degas-driven flow.  相似文献   

Glycogen phosphorylase isoenzyme BB in the diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction: a meta-analysis     

Giuseppe Lippi  Camilla Mattiuzzi  Ivan Comelli  Gianfranco Cervellin 《Biochemia medica : ?asopis Hrvatskoga dru?tva medicinskih biokemi?ara / HDMB》2013,23(1):78-82

Background

Early diagnosis is crucial for management of patients with suspected acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Among innovative and promising biomarkers, the recent interest raised on glycogen phosphorylase isoenzyme BB (GPBB) has prompted us to perform a meta-analysis of published studies.

Materials and methods:

A systematic electronic search was carried out on PubMed, Web of Science and Google Scholar, with no date restriction, to retrieve all articles that have investigated the early diagnostic performance of GPBB in patients with suspected AMI, and directly reported or allowed calculation of sensitivity and specificity. A meta-analysis of the reported sensitivity and specificity of each study and pooled area under the curve (AUC) was then performed by random effect approach. Heterogeneity was assessed by I-square statistics.

Results:

Eight studies were finally selected for analysis (941 subjects; 506 cases and 435 controls), with a high heterogeneity (I-squared, 86.3%). The resulting pooled estimates and 95% confidence interval were 0.854 (0.801–0.891) for sensitivity, 0.767 (0.713–0.815) for specificity, 0.826 (0.774–0.870) for negative predictive value, 0.802 (0.754–0.844) for positive predictive value, and 0.754 (0.602–0.907) for AUC. In those studies that have simultaneously assessed GPBB and a troponin immunoassay, the combination of these biomarkers did not significantly improve the performance of troponin alone.

Conclusion:

GPBB does not meet the current requirements for an efficient diagnosis of AMI when used as a stand-alone test, whereas its combination with troponin merits further investigation in larger trials.  相似文献   

THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION: A POINT OF VIEW FROM A DEVELOPING COUNTRY     

Ivan Ivić 《Higher Education in Europe》1991,16(2):10-22

This article takes a close analytical look at the internationalization of higher education, asking penetrating questions with regard to its basis, its forms, and its results. The author is particularly concerned with problems of asymmetry with regard to the educational links, particularly at higher education level, between the developed western democracies and the developing countries. Going beyond the question of brain drain, the article probes the problem of the alienation of third world academics trained in the higher education institutions of developed countries. While on the balance the author praises the results of the internationalization of higher education and, at any rate, recognizes that it is here to stay, he cautions all those involved in it be aware of who in fact gains and who loses as a result of it.  相似文献