Protection and trade in services : a survey

Until recently, trade in services was mostly ignored by iinternational economists, reflecting a perception that services were nontradable. This has never been true. Transportation and travel, for example, have always been important economic activities. In 1995, services trade climbed to a 20-percent share of global trade -no doubt an underestimate, as the most dynamic component of trade in services is telecommunications, which is not being properly captured in conventional balance of payment statistics. The authors survey the literature on trade in services, focusing on thepolicies used to restrict such trade, the gains from liberalization, and the institutional mechanisms adopted in pursuit of liberalization. They argue that technological progress (which makes services more tradable) and iinternational trade negotiations are likely to keep liberalization of trade in services a high-profile policy issue. They suggest that research focus on developing better estimates of the welfare costs of protectionism in the service sector. This will require quantifying barriers to the international exchange of services.Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Decentralization,Health Economics&Finance,ICT Policy and Strategies,Knowledge Economy,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research

High-ISO long-exposure image denoising based on quantitative blob characterization

Blob detection and image denoising are fundamental, sometimes related tasks in computer vision. In this paper, we present a computational method to quantitatively measure blob characteristics using normalized unilateral second-order Gaussian kernels. This method suppresses non-blob structures while yielding a quantitative measurement of the position, prominence and scale of blobs, which can facilitate the tasks of blob reconstruction and blob reduction. Subsequently, we propose a denoising scheme to address high-ISO long-exposure noise, which sometimes spatially shows a blob appearance, employing a blob reduction procedure as a cheap preprocessing for conventional denoising methods. We apply the proposed denoising methods to real-world noisy images as well as standard images that are corrupted by real noise. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed methods over state-of-the-art denoising methods

Towards a transparent, credible, evidence-based decision-making process of new drug listing on the Hong Kong Hospital Authority Drug Formulary: challenges and suggestions

The aim of this article is to describe the process, evaluation criteria, and possible outcomes of decision-making for new drugs listed in the Hong Kong Hospital Authority Drug Formulary in comparison to the health technology assessment (HTA) policy overseas. Details of decision-making processes including the new drug listing submission, Drug Advisory Committee (DAC) meeting, and procedures prior to and following the meeting, were extracted from the official Hong Kong Hospital Authority drug formulary management website and manual. Publicly-available information related to the new drug decision-making process for five HTA agencies [the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC), the Australia Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC), the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH), and the New Zealand Pharmaceutical Management Agency (PHARMAC)] were reviewed and retrieved from official documents from public domains. The DAC is in charge of systemically and critically appraising new drugs before they are listed on the formulary, reviewing submitted applications, and making the decision to list the drug based on scientific evidence to which safety, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness are the primary considerations. When compared with other HTA agencies, transparency of the decision-making process of the DAC, the relevance of clinical and health economic evidence, and the lack of health economic and methodological input of submissions are the major challenges to the new-drug listing policy in Hong Kong. Despite these challenges, this review provides suggestions for the establishment of a more transparent, credible, and evidence-based decision-making process in the Hong Kong Hospital Authority Drug Formulary. Proposals for improvement in the listing of new drugs in the formulary should be a priority of healthcare reforms

Six Open String Disk Amplitude in Pure Spinor Superspace

The tree-level amplitude of six massless open strings is computed using the pure spinor formalism. The OPE poles among integrated and unintegrated vertices can be efficiently organized according to the cohomology of pure spinor superspace. The identification and use of these BRST structures and their interplay with the system of equations fulfilled by the generalized Euler integrals allow the full supersymmetric six-point amplitude to be written in compact form. Furthermore, the complete set of extended Bern-Carrasco-Johansson relations are derived from the monodromy properties of the disk world-sheet and explicitly verified for the supersymmetric numerator factors.Comment: 44pp, harvmac; v2: Final version to appear in NP

Slipping interfaces: A possible source of S radiation from explosive sources

We consider the problem of reflection and refraction of purely compressional waves incident on an interface separating identical solid half-spaces in which the condition of continuity of shear displacement at the boundary is generalized to one that allows slippage. The problem is solved using the Cagniard-de Hoop technique. It is found that the generation of reflected P and S waves, as well as transmitted S waves, is most effective in the case of perfectly unbounded half-spaces. We discuss the implications of this model for the generation of S waves by block movement in the vicinity of an underground explosion