Recurrent Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Multi-slice MRI Cardiac Segmentation

In cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, fully-automatic segmentation of the heart enables precise structural and functional measurements to be taken, e.g. from short-axis MR images of the left-ventricle. In this work we propose a recurrent fully-convolutional network (RFCN) that learns image representations from the full stack of 2D slices and has the ability to leverage inter-slice spatial dependences through internal memory units. RFCN combines anatomical detection and segmentation into a single architecture that is trained end-to-end thus significantly reducing computational time, simplifying the segmentation pipeline, and potentially enabling real-time applications. We report on an investigation of RFCN using two datasets, including the publicly available MICCAI 2009 Challenge dataset. Comparisons have been carried out between fully convolutional networks and deep restricted Boltzmann machines, including a recurrent version that leverages inter-slice spatial correlation. Our studies suggest that RFCN produces state-of-the-art results and can substantially improve the delineation of contours near the apex of the heart.Comment: MICCAI Workshop RAMBO 201

Supply Chains and Porous Boundaries: The Disaggregation of Legal Services

The economic downturn has had significant effects on law firms, and is causing many of them to rethink some basic assumptions about how they operate. In important respects, however, the downturn has simply intensified the effects of some deeper trends that preceded it, which are likely to continue after any recovery that may occur. This paper explores one of these trends, which is corporate client insistence that law firms “disaggregate” their services into discrete tasks that can be delegated to the least costly providers who can perform them. With advances in communications technology, there is increasing likelihood that some of these persons may be located outside the formal boundaries of the firm. This means that law firms may need increasingly to confront the make or buy decision that their corporate clients have regularly confronted for some time. The potential for vertical disintegration is a relatively recent development for legal services, but is well-established in other sectors of the global economy. Empirical work in several disciplines has identified a number of issues that arise for organizations as the make or buy decision becomes a potentially more salient feature of their operations. Much of this work has focused in particular on the implications of relying on outsourcing as an integral part of the production process. This paper discusses research on: (1) the challenges of ensuring that work performed outside the firm is fully integrated into the production process; (2) coordinating projects for which networks of organizations are responsible; (3) managing the transfer of knowledge inside and outside of firms that are participants in a supply chain; and (4) addressing the impact of using contingent workers on an organization’s workforce, structure, and culture. A review of this research suggests considerations that law firms will need to assess if they begin significantly to extend the process of providing services beyond their formal boundaries. Discussing the research also is intended to introduce concepts that may become increasingly relevant to law firms, but which currently are not commonly used to analyze their operations. Considering how these concepts are applicable to law firms may prompt us to rethink how to conceptualize these firms and what they do. This paper therefore is a preliminary attempt to explore: (1) the extent to which law firms may come to resemble the vertically disintegrated organizations that populate many other economic sectors and (2) the potential implications of this trend for the provision of legal services,the trajectory of legal careers, and lawyers’ sense of themselves as members of a distinct profession

Application of Tuncay's language teacher model to business-customer relations

It seems that what has been said by now about market and competitiveness do not fit perfectly with competences of getting the best of profit. Sometimes, the classical methods of fundamentals of management do not apply to individual companies that face irregular accommodation on the market. It is high time to replace the perfect business with the right one. New approaches and models may help in identifying new competition trends, changes for better application of purposes and proposals.Comment: 5 pages, no figures, to be published in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

Crossing Organizational Boundaries in Palliative Care: The Promise and Reality of Community Partnerships

This report presents the first of a series of findings from the Community-Oriented Palliative Care Initiative (COPCI), an innovative program testing new approaches to caring for individuals with progressive, life threatening illness. Developed and supported by the United Hospital Fund, the project was designed to initiate collaborations among health care and social service organizations, with the goal of reaching seriously ill individuals and their caregivers earlier in the course of illness and providing a broad range of coordinated services. Six such networks of diverse partners received a total of $2.1 million in grants over the two-year period from mid-2000 into 2002.The urgency to provide alternatives to current standard practice is underscored by the number of individuals affected: in New York City alone, in the year 2000, some 46,000 people died of diseases typically marked by a lengthy course from diagnosis to death. While many could have benefited from appropriate and timely palliative care services, most did not receive them.The Fund reasoned that networks including not only hospitals and hospices but also social services agencies and other community resources could collectively respond, earlier and more fully, to the complex combination of medical, social, psychological, and spiritual needs that typify the months and years leading to death. Local expertise and resources should determine the structure of each network, the partners involved, and the specific model for service delivery. Drawing on the experiences of the six pioneering projects, this report focuses on the challenges of creating such new networks

The NLRB’s Social Media Guidelines a Lose-Lose: Why the NLRB’s Stance on Social Media Fails to Fully Address Employer’s Concerns and Dilutes Employee Protections

[Excerpt] The expanding use of both personal and professional social media sites has resulted in its growing impact in the workplace. Recently, many examples have emerged where an individual’s use of social media for communicating frustrations or sharing personal information resulted in significant conflict between the individual and their employer. Employment actions arising from an employee’s social media use have become so contentious that a number of employers have been charged with unfair labor practices for overly broad social media policies or implementation of unfair policies. Following several important Board decisions the NLRB issued guidelines, identifying acceptable employer-initiated social media policies. As social media’s popularity will likely only continue to grow, it is important to understand how employer policies impact employees’ social media use and the potential invasion these policies may have on employees’ rights. This article concludes that the NLRB’s issued guidance fails to adequately address social media concerns raised by employers and dilutes employees’ rights to communicate workplace concerns. This is because even though the guidance permits employer developed social media policies, the NLRB’s stance permits employers to monitor and analyze employees’ social media use and does not clarify when an employer can act on social media information

Global public policy, transnational policy communities, and their networks

Public policy has been a prisoner of the word "state." Yet, the state is reconfigured by globalization. Through "global public–private partnerships" and "transnational executive networks," new forms of authority are emerging through global and regional policy processes that coexist alongside nation-state policy processes. Accordingly, this article asks what is "global public policy"? The first part of the article identifies new public spaces where global policies occur. These spaces are multiple in character and variety and will be collectively referred to as the "global agora." The second section adapts the conventional policy cycle heuristic by conceptually stretching it to the global and regional levels to reveal the higher degree of pluralization of actors and multiple-authority structures than is the case at national levels. The third section asks: who is involved in the delivery of global public policy? The focus is on transnational policy communities. The global agora is a public space of policymaking and administration, although it is one where authority is more diffuse, decision making is dispersed and sovereignty muddled. Trapped by methodological nationalism and an intellectual agoraphobia of globalization, public policy scholars have yet to examine fully global policy processes and new managerial modes of transnational public administration