A phase type survival tree model for clustering patients’ hospital length of stay

Clinical investigators, health professionals and managers are often interested in developing criteria for clustering patients into clinically meaningful groups according to their expected length of stay. In this paper, we propose phase-type survival trees which extend previous work on exponential survival trees. The trees are used to cluster the patients with respect to length of stay where partitioning is based on covariates such as gender, age at the time of admission and primary diagnosis code. Likelihood ratio tests are used to determine optimal partitions. The approach is illustrated using nationwide data available from the English Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) database on stroke-related patients, aged 65 years and over, who were discharged from English hospitals over a 1-year period.peer-reviewe

Mozambique : administrative districts of Niassa, Cabo Delgado, Nampula and Zambezia Province (SER A)

This is a map of the administrative districts of Niassa, Cabo Delgado, Nampula and Zambezia Province

Exploring the feasibility of private micro flood-insurance provision in Bangladesh

This article was published in Disasters [ © 2011 The Author(s) ] and the definite version is available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7717.2010.01218.xThis paper aims to contribute to the debate on the feasibility of the provision of micro flood insurance as an effective tool for spreading disaster risks in developing countries and examines the role of the institutional-organisational framework in assisting the design and implementation of such a micro flood insurance market. In Bangladesh, a private insurance market for property damage and livelihood risk due to natural disasters does not exist. Private insurance companies are reluctant to embark on an evidently unprofitable venture. Testing two different institutional-organisational models, this research reveals that the administration costs of micro-insurance play an important part in determining the long-term viability of micro flood insurance schemes. A government-facilitated process to overcome the differences observed in this study between the nonprofit micro-credit providers and profit-oriented private insurance companies is needed, building on the particular competence each party brings to the development of a viable micro flood insurance market through a public-private partnership.Publishe

Who Drives Climate-Relevant Policies in the Rising Powers?

The future of human life on our planet is influenced increasingly by what goes on in the rising powers. This paper provides a political economy analysis of the climate-relevant policies of China, India, Brazil and South Africa. It shows that alliances play a key role in driving such policies. However, most actors who support such policies have priorities other than climate change mitigation. Their support for such policies comes from concerns with securing energy, building competitive green industries, creating jobs or providing a basis for future public revenue. This insight is not just of analytical but also of political importance. It means that climate-relevant policies can draw on support from a wide constituency – not just those with green convictions. Such analysis provides the stepping-stone for understanding the political feasibility of low-carbon transformations. PLEASE NOTE: this article supersedes IDS Evidence Report: Who Drives Climate-relevant Policies in the Rising Powers? http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/123456789/993

Agriculture and resource availability in a changing world: The role of irrigation

Fertile land and freshwater constitute two of the most fundamental resources for food production. These resources are affected by environmental, political, economic, and technical developments. Regional impacts may transmit to the world through increased trade. With a global forest and agricultural model, we quantify the impacts of increased demand for food due to population growth and economic development on potential land and water use until 2030. In particular, we investigate producer adaptation regarding crop and irrigation choice, agricultural market adjustments, and changes in the values of land and water. In the context of resource sustainability and food security, this study accounts for the spatial and operational heterogeneity of irrigation management to globally assess agricultural land and water use. Agricultural responses to population and economic growth include considerable increases in irrigated area and water use but reductions in the average water intensity. Different irrigation systems are preferred under different exogenous biophysical and socioeconomic conditions. Negligence of these adaptations would bias the burden of development on land and water scarcity. Without technical progress, substantial price adjustments for land, water, and food would be required to equilibrate supply and demand

Study of the doubly charmed tetraquark T+cc

Quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong force, describes interactions of coloured quarks and gluons and the formation of hadronic matter. Conventional hadronic matter consists of baryons and mesons made of three quarks and quark-antiquark pairs, respectively. Particles with an alternative quark content are known as exotic states. Here a study is reported of an exotic narrow state in the D0D0π+ mass spectrum just below the D*+D0 mass threshold produced in proton-proton collisions collected with the LHCb detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The state is consistent with the ground isoscalar T+cc tetraquark with a quark content of ccu⎯⎯⎯d⎯⎯⎯ and spin-parity quantum numbers JP = 1+. Study of the DD mass spectra disfavours interpretation of the resonance as the isovector state. The decay structure via intermediate off-shell D*+ mesons is consistent with the observed D0π+ mass distribution. To analyse the mass of the resonance and its coupling to the D*D system, a dedicated model is developed under the assumption of an isoscalar axial-vector T+cc state decaying to the D*D channel. Using this model, resonance parameters including the pole position, scattering length, effective range and compositeness are determined to reveal important information about the nature of the T+cc state. In addition, an unexpected dependence of the production rate on track multiplicity is observed