69,882 research outputs found
Discrimination in the Workplace: Evidence from a Civil War in Peru
Few events give the opportunity to observe the full range of human behavior as wars do. In the case of civil wars in ethnically-mixed societies, the distribution of violence across various segments of the population can provide evidence on the extent and nature of discrimination. As in the case of markets, identifying discrimination in the warplace is challenging. There is uncertainty on the reconstruction of events as well as the rationale behind the violence. We use a unique data set collected by the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission on war crimes during the 1980's to show that there is evidence of taste-based discrimination by agents of the state towards ethnic minorities and women. The evidence is robust to different assumptions on the logic of repression and missing data problems. Working Paper 07-3
Discrimination in the Warplace: Evidence from a Civil War in Peru
Few events give the opportunity to observe the full range of human behavior as wars do. In the case of civil wars in ethnically-mixed societies, the distribution of violence across various segments of the population can provide evidence on the extent and nature of discrimination. As in the case of markets, identifying discrimination in the warplace is challenging. There is uncertainty on the reconstruction of events as well as the rationale behind the violence. We use a unique data set collected by the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission on war crimes during the 1980â??s to show that there is evidence of taste-based discrimination by agents of the state towards ethnic minorities and women. The evidence is robust to different assumptions on the logic of repression and missing data problems.
Classification of Systematic Measurement Errors within the Framework of Robust Data Reconciliation
A robust data reconciliation strategy provides unbiased variable estimates in the presence of a moderate quantity of atypical measurements. However, estimates get worse if systematic measurement errors that persist in time (e.g., biases and drifts) are undetected and the breakdown point of the robust strategy is surpassed. The detection and classification of those errors allow taking corrective actions on the inputs of the robust data reconciliation that preserve the instrumentation system redundancy while the faulty sensor is repaired. In this work, a new methodology for variable estimation and systematic error classification, which is based on the concepts of robust statistics, is presented. It has been devised to be part of the real-time optimization loop of an industrial plant; therefore, it runs for processes operating under steady-state conditions. The robust measurement test is proposed in this article and used to detect the presence of sporadic and continuous systematic errors. Also, the robust linear regression of the data contained in a moving window is applied to classify the continuous errors as biases or drifts. Results highlight the performance of the proposed methodology to detect and classify outliers, biases, and drifts for linear and nonlinear benchmarks.Fil: Llanos, Claudia Elizabeth. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientÃficas y Técnicas. Centro CientÃfico Tecnológico Conicet - BahÃa Blanca. Planta Piloto de IngenierÃa QuÃmica. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Planta Piloto de IngenierÃa QuÃmica; ArgentinaFil: Sanchez, Mabel Cristina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientÃficas y Técnicas. Centro CientÃfico Tecnológico Conicet - BahÃa Blanca. Planta Piloto de IngenierÃa QuÃmica. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Planta Piloto de IngenierÃa QuÃmica; ArgentinaFil: Maronna, Ricardo Antonio. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Departamento de Matemáticas; Argentin
Assessing the robustness of parsimonious predictions for gene neighborhoods from reconciled phylogenies
The availability of a large number of assembled genomes opens the way to
study the evolution of syntenic character within a phylogenetic context. The
DeCo algorithm, recently introduced by B{\'e}rard et al. allows the computation
of parsimonious evolutionary scenarios for gene adjacencies, from pairs of
reconciled gene trees. Following the approach pioneered by Sturmfels and
Pachter, we describe how to modify the DeCo dynamic programming algorithm to
identify classes of cost schemes that generates similar parsimonious
evolutionary scenarios for gene adjacencies, as well as the robustness to
changes to the cost scheme of evolutionary events of the presence or absence of
specific ancestral gene adjacencies. We apply our method to six thousands
mammalian gene families, and show that computing the robustness to changes to
cost schemes provides new and interesting insights on the evolution of gene
adjacencies and the DeCo model.Comment: Accepted, to appear in ISBRA - 11th International Symposium on
Bioinformatics Research and Applications - 2015, Jun 2015, Norfolk, Virginia,
United State
A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness of pharmacist-led medication reconciliation in the community after hospital discharge
BACKGROUND
Pharmacists’ completion of medication reconciliation in the community after hospital discharge is intended to reduce harm due to prescribed or omitted medication and increase healthcare efficiency, but the effectiveness of this approach is not clear. We systematically review the literature to evaluate intervention effectiveness in terms of discrepancy identification and resolution, clinical relevance of resolved discrepancies and healthcare utilisation, including readmission rates, emergency department attendance and primary care workload.
DESIGN
Systematic literature review and meta-analysis of extracted data.
METHODS
Medline, CINHAL, EMBASE, AMED, ERIC, SCOPUS, NHS evidence and the Cochrane databases were searched using a combination of Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms and free text search terms. Controlled studies evaluating pharmacist-led medication reconciliation in the community after hospital discharge were included. Study quality was appraised using CASP. Evidence was assessed through meta-analysis of readmission rates. Discrepancy identification rates, emergency department attendance and primary care workload were assessed narratively.
RESULTS
Fourteen studies were included comprising five RCTs, six cohort studies and three pre-post intervention studies. Twelve studies had a moderate or high risk of bias. Increased identification and resolution of discrepancies was demonstrated in the four studies where this was evaluated. Reduction in clinically relevant discrepancies was reported in two studies. Meta-analysis did not demonstrate a significant reduction in readmission rate. There was no consistent evidence of reduction in emergency department attendance or primary care workload.
CONCLUSIONS
Pharmacists can identify and resolve discrepancies when completing medication reconciliation after hospital discharge but patient outcome or care workload improvements were not consistently seen. Future research should examine the clinical relevance of discrepancies and potential benefits on reducing healthcare team workload
Reconciling Graphs and Sets of Sets
We explore a generalization of set reconciliation, where the goal is to
reconcile sets of sets. Alice and Bob each have a parent set consisting of
child sets, each containing at most elements from a universe of size .
They want to reconcile their sets of sets in a scenario where the total number
of differences between all of their child sets (under the minimum difference
matching between their child sets) is . We give several algorithms for this
problem, and discuss applications to reconciliation problems on graphs,
databases, and collections of documents. We specifically focus on graph
reconciliation, providing protocols based on set of sets reconciliation for
random graphs from and for forests of rooted trees
Quantum Cryptography Approaching the Classical Limit
We consider the security of continuous-variable quantum cryptography as we
approach the classical-limit, i.e., when the unknown preparation noise at the
sender's station becomes significantly noisy or thermal (even by as much as
10,000 times the variance of the vacuum mode). We show that, provided the
channel transmission losses do not exceed 50%, the security of quantum
cryptography is not dependent on the channel transmission, and is therefore,
incredibly robust against significant amounts of excess preparation noise. We
extend these results to consider for the first time quantum cryptography at
wavelengths considerably longer than optical and find that regions of security
still exist all the way down to the microwave.Comment: Letter (4 pages) followed by appendix (4 pages). Updated from
published version with some minor correction
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