Executive Incentive Compensation and Economic Prosperity

This paper analyzes the existence of a potential link between the prevalence of long term incentive compensation schemes and the economic prosperity of a country. This issue is previously not addressed in the literature. In a panel regression with fixed effects a strongly significant, positive effect is found between growth of GDP/capita in real terms and this prevalence, while controlling for general investment and institutional variables. However, when the 22 countries of the study are divided into European and non-European, the growth effect found for the entire material accrues only to the non-European countries. It is concluded that long term incentive contracts seem to have no effect in the European countries due to labor market and cultural reasons

The effectiveness of the Liverpool care pathway in improving end of life care for dying cancer patients in hospital. A cluster randomised trial

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Most cancer patients still die in hospital, mainly in medical wards. Many studies in different countries have shown the poor quality of end-of-life care delivery in hospitals. The Program "Liverpool Care Pathway for the dying patient" (LCP), developed in the UK to transfer the hospice model of care into hospitals and other care settings, is a complex intervention to improve the quality of end-of-life care. The results from qualitative and quantitative studies suggest that the LCP Program can improve significantly the quality of end-of-life care delivery in hospitals, but no randomised trial has been conducted till now.</p> <p>Methods and design</p> <p>This is a randomized cluster trial, stratified by regions and matched for assessment period. Pairs of eligible medical wards from different hospitals will be randomized to receive the LCP-I Program or no intervention until the end of the trial. The LCP-I Program will be implemented by a Palliative Care Unit.</p> <p>The assessment of the end-points will be performed for all cancer deaths occurred in the six months after the end of the LCP-I implementation in the experimental wards and, in the same period of time, in the matched control wards. The primary end-point is the overall quality of end-of-life care provided on the ward to dying cancer patients and their families, assessed using the Global Scale of the Italian version of the Toolkit <it>"After-death Bereaved Family Member Interview</it>".</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>This study can be interpreted as a Phase III trial according to the Medical Research Council Framework. In this study, the effectiveness of a fully defined intervention is assessed by comparing the distribution of the endpoints in the experimental and in the control arm.</p> <p>Research ID</p> <p>RFPS-2006-6-341619</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: <a href="http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01081899">NCT01081899</a></p

Improved Biomedical and Psychological Outcomes 1 Year After Structured Education in Flexible Insulin Therapy for People With Type 1 Diabetes: The U.K. DAFNE experience

OBJECTIVEdDAFNE (Dose Adjustment For Normal Eating), a structured education program in flexible insulin therapy, has been widely adopted in the U.K. after validation in a randomized trial. To determine benefits in routine practice, we collected biomedical and psychological data from all participants attending during a 12-month period. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODSdHbA1c, weight, self-reported hypoglycemia awareness, severe hypoglycemia frequency, PAID (Problem Areas In Diabetes), HADS (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale), and EuroQol Group 5-Dimension Self-Report Questionnaire scores were recorded prior to DAFNE and after 1 year. RESULTSdComplete baseline and follow-up HbA1c data were available for 639 (54.9%) of 1,163 attendees. HbA1c fell from 8.51 6 1.41 (mean 6 SD) to 8.24 6 1.29% (difference 0.27 [95% CI 0.16–0.38]; P , 0.001), with a greater mean fall of 0.44% from baseline HbA1c .8.5%. Severe hypoglycemia rate fell from 1.7 6 8.5 to 0.6 6 3.7 episodes per person per year (1.1 [0.7– 1.4]) and hypoglycemia recognition improved in 43% of those reporting unawareness. Baseline psychological distress was evident, with a PAID score of 25.2 and HADS scores of 5.3 (anxiety) and 4.8 (depression), falling to 16.7 (8.5 [6.6–10.4]), 4.6 (0.7 [0.4–1.0]), and 4.2 (0.6 [0.3–0.8]), respectively (all P , 0.001 at 1 year). Clinically relevant anxiety and depression (HADS $8) fell from 24.4 to 18.0% and 20.9 to 15.5%, respectively. CONCLUSIONSdA structured education program delivered in routine clinical practice not only improves HbA1c while reducing severe hypoglycemia rate and restoring hypoglycemia awareness but also reduces psychological distress and improves perceived well-being

Genetic variation at MECOM, TERT, JAK2 and HBS1L-MYB predisposes to myeloproliferative neoplasms

Clonal proliferation in myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) is driven by somatic mutations in JAK2, CALR or MPL, but the contribution of inherited factors is poorly characterized. Using a three-stage genome-wide association study of 3,437 MPN cases and 10,083 controls, we identify two SNPs with genome-wide significance in JAK2V617F-negative MPN: rs12339666 (JAK2; meta-analysis P=1.27 × 10−10) and rs2201862 (MECOM; meta-analysis P=1.96 × 10−9). Two additional SNPs, rs2736100 (TERT) and rs9376092 (HBS1L/MYB), achieve genome-wide significance when including JAK2V617F-positive cases. rs9376092 has a stronger effect in JAK2V617F-negative cases with CALR and/or MPL mutations (Breslow–Day P=4.5 × 10−7), whereas in JAK2V617F-positive cases rs9376092 associates with essential thrombocythemia (ET) rather than polycythemia vera (allelic χ2 P=7.3 × 10−7). Reduced MYB expression, previously linked to development of an ET-like disease in model systems, associates with rs9376092 in normal myeloid cells. These findings demonstrate that multiple germline variants predispose to MPN and link constitutional differences in MYB expression to disease phenotype

Singularities In Scalar-Tensor Cosmologies

In this article, we examine the possibility that there exist special scalar-tensor theories of gravity with completely nonsingular FRW solutions. Our investigation in fact shows that while most probes living in such a Universe never see the singularity, gravity waves always do. This is because they couple to both the metric and the scalar field, in a way which effectively forces them to move along null geodesics of the Einstein conformal frame. Since the metric of the Einstein conformal frame is always singular for configurations where matter satisfies the energy conditions, the gravity wave world lines are past inextendable beyond the Einstein frame singularity, and hence the geometry is still incomplete, and thus singular. We conclude that the singularity cannot be entirely removed, but only be made invisible to most, but not all, probes in the theory.Comment: 23 pages, latex, no figure

The Western English Channel contains a persistent microbial seed bank

Robust seasonal dynamics in microbial community composition have previously been observed in the English Channel L4 marine observatory. These could be explained either by seasonal changes in the taxa present at the L4 site, or by the continuous modulation of abundance of taxa within a persistent microbial community. To test these competing hypotheses, deep sequencing of 16S rRNA from one randomly selected time point to a depth of 10 729 927 reads was compared with an existing taxonomic survey data covering 6 years. When compared against the 6-year survey of 72 shallow sequenced time points, the deep sequenced time point maintained 95.4% of the combined shallow OTUs. Additionally, on average, 99.75%±0.06 (mean±s.d.) of the operational taxonomic units found in each shallow sequenced sample were also found in the single deep sequenced sample. This suggests that the vast majority of taxa identified in this ecosystem are always present, but just in different proportions that are predictable. Thus observed changes in community composition are actually variations in the relative abundance of taxa, not, as was previously believed, demonstrating extinction and recolonization of taxa in the ecosystem through time