Patient considerations in the treatment of COPD: focus on the new combination inhaler umeclidinium/vilanterol.

Medication adherence among patients with chronic diseases, such as COPD, may be suboptimal, and many factors contribute to this poor adherence. One major factor is the frequency of medication dosing. Once-daily dosing has been shown to be an important variable in medication adherence in chronic diseases, such as COPD. New inhalers that only require once-daily dosing are becoming more widely available. Combination once-daily inhalers that combine any two of the following three agents are now available: 1) a long-acting muscarinic antagonist; 2) a long acting beta2 agonist; and 3) an inhaled corticosteroid. A new once-daily inhaler with both a long-acting muscarinic antagonist, umeclidinium bromide, and a long acting beta2 agonist, vilanterol trifenatate, is now available worldwide for COPD treatment. It provides COPD patients convenience, efficacy, and a very favorable adverse-effects profile. Additional once-daily combination inhalers are available or will soon be available for COPD patients worldwide. The use of once-daily combination inhalers will likely become the standard maintenance management approach in the treatment of COPD because they improve medication adherence

Performance evaluation of different CRL distribution schemes embedded in WMN authentication

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising technology to provide low cost and scalable solutions for high speed Internet access and additional services. In hybrid WMNs, where mesh clients also act as relaying agents and form a mesh client network, it is important to provide users with an efficient anonymous and accountable authentication scheme. Accountability is required for the malicious users that are to be identified and revoked from the network access and related services. Promising revocation schemes are based on Certification Revocation Lists (CRLs). Since in hybrid WMNs mesh clients also authenticate other clients, distribution of these CRLs is an important task. In this paper, we propose and examine the performance of different distribution schemes of CRLs and analyze authentication performance in two scenarios: in one scenario all mesh routers and mesh clients obtain CRLs and in the second one, CRLs are held only by the mesh routers and mesh clients acting as relaying agents require CRL checking to be performed from the router in authenticating another client

A model for cross-cultural reciprocal interactions through mass media

We investigate the problem of cross-cultural interactions through mass media in a model where two populations of social agents, each with its own internal dynamics, get information about each other through reciprocal global interactions. As the agent dynamics, we employ Axelrod's model for social influence. The global interaction fields correspond to the statistical mode of the states of the agents and represent mass media messages on the cultural trend originating in each population. Several phases are found in the collective behavior of either population depending on parameter values: two homogeneous phases, one having the state of the global field acting on that population, and the other consisting of a state different from that reached by the applied global field; and a disordered phase. In addition, the system displays nontrivial effects: (i) the emergence of a largest minority group of appreciable size sharing a state different from that of the applied global field; (ii) the appearance of localized ordered states for some values of parameters when the entire system is observed, consisting of one population in a homogeneous state and the other in a disordered state. This last situation can be considered as a social analogue to a chimera state arising in globally coupled populations of oscillators.Comment: 8 pages and 7 figure

Homogeneous P Colonies

We study P colonies introduced in \cite{kel2} as a class of abstract computing devices composed of independent membrane agents, acting and evolving in a shared environment. In the present paper especially P colonies are considered, which are homogeneous with respect to the type of rules in each program of agents. The number of agents, as well as the number of programs in each agent are bounded, which are sufficient to guarantee computational completeness of homogeneous P colonies. We present results for P colonies with one and with two objects inside each agent

Leadership and Overcoming Coordination Failure with Asymmetric Costs

We study how the heterogeneity of agents affects the extent to which changes in financial incentives can pull a group out of a situation of coordination failure. We focus on the connections between cost asymmetries and leadership. Experimental subjects interact in groups of four in a series of weak-link games. The treatment variable is the distribution of high and low effort cost across subjects. We present data for one, two and three low-cost subjects as well as control sessions with symmetric costs. The overall pattern of coordination improvement is common across treatments. Early coordination improvements depend on the distribution of high and low effort costs across subjects, but these differences disappear with time. We find that initial leadership in overcoming coordination failure is not driven by low-cost subjects but by subjects with the most frequent cost. This conformity effect can be due to a kind of group identity or to the cognitive simplicity of acting with identical others.Experiments, Coordination, Organizational change, Heterogeneous agents, Leadership

Controllability of Social Networks and the Strategic Use of Random Information

This work is aimed at studying realistic social control strategies for social networks based on the introduction of random information into the state of selected driver agents. Deliberately exposing selected agents to random information is a technique already experimented in recommender systems or search engines, and represents one of the few options for influencing the behavior of a social context that could be accepted as ethical, could be fully disclosed to members, and does not involve the use of force or of deception. Our research is based on a model of knowledge diffusion applied to a time-varying adaptive network, and considers two well-known strategies for influencing social contexts. One is the selection of few influencers for manipulating their actions in order to drive the whole network to a certain behavior; the other, instead, drives the network behavior acting on the state of a large subset of ordinary, scarcely influencing users. The two approaches have been studied in terms of network and diffusion effects. The network effect is analyzed through the changes induced on network average degree and clustering coefficient, while the diffusion effect is based on two ad-hoc metrics defined to measure the degree of knowledge diffusion and skill level, as well as the polarization of agent interests. The results, obtained through simulations on synthetic networks, show a rich dynamics and strong effects on the communication structure and on the distribution of knowledge and skills, supporting our hypothesis that the strategic use of random information could represent a realistic approach to social network controllability, and that with both strategies, in principle, the control effect could be remarkable

The Value Transformation of Betty Warren in Mona Lisa Smile

This study analyzes a movie entitled Mona Lisa Smile. It is interesting that the movie contains the message about women's liberation movement reflected through the value transformation done by one of the characters, Betty Warren, which is why we decided to emphasize on the transformation as our main focus. We attempt to reveal the process of Betty Warren's value transformation by applying two concepts, which are the concept of Angel in the House and the concept of New Woman. We find out that Warren's experience of value transformation goes through several stages, which are from believing in her old values, going against the new modern values, finding disappointment toward her old values, then having a conflict within herself, and as the result, starting to consider and absorb the new values. The analysis leads to the fact that patriarchal values can be so strong because sometimes, women themselves are subconsciously acting as the agents

Corporate Governance, Reputation Concerns, and Herd Behavior

This paper offers an explanation for audit committee failures within a corporate governance context. We consider a setting in which the management of a firm sets up financial statements that are possibly biased. These statements are reviewed/audited by an external auditor and by an audit committee. Both agents report the result of their audit, the auditor acting first. The auditor and the audit committee use an imperfect auditing technology. As a result of their work they privately observe a signal regarding the quality of the financial statements. The probability for a correct signal in the sense that an unbiased report is labelled correct and a biased one incorrect, depends on the type of the agent. Good as well as bad agents exist in the economy. Importantly, two good agents observe identical informative signals while the signal observed by a bad agent is uninformative and uncorrelated to those of other good or bad agents. The audit committee as well as the auditor are anxious to build up reputation regarding their ability in the labor market. Given this predominate goal they report on the signal in order to maximize the market’s assessment of their ability. At the end of the game the true character of the financial statements is publicly learned and the market uses this information along with the agents’ reports to update beliefs about the agents’ type. We show that herding equilibria exist in which the auditor reports based on his signal but the audit committee .herds. and follows the auditor’s judgement no matter what its own insights suggest.corporate governance, audit committee, game theory, herding

The Concept of Entrapment

Our question is this: What makes an act one of entrapment? We make a standard distinction between legal entrapment, which is carried out by parties acting in their capacities as (or as deputies of) law- enforcement agents, and civil entrapment, which is not. We aim to provide a definition of entrapment that covers both and which, for reasons we explain, does not settle questions of permissibility and culpability. We explain, compare, and contrast two existing definitions of legal entrapment to commit a crime that possess this neutrality. We point out some problems with the extensional correctness of these definitions and propose a new definition that resolves these problems. We then extend our definition to provide a more general definition of entrapment, encompassing both civil and legal cases. Our definition is, we believe, closer to being extensionally correct and will, we hope, provide a clearer basis for future discussions about the ethics of entrapment than do the definitions upon which it improves