Privacy Attitudes among Early Adopters of Emerging Health Technologies.

IntroductionAdvances in health technology such as genome sequencing and wearable sensors now allow for the collection of highly granular personal health data from individuals. It is unclear how people think about privacy in the context of these emerging health technologies. An open question is whether early adopters of these advances conceptualize privacy in different ways than non-early adopters.PurposeThis study sought to understand privacy attitudes of early adopters of emerging health technologies.MethodsTranscripts from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with early adopters of genome sequencing and health devices and apps were analyzed with a focus on participant attitudes and perceptions of privacy. Themes were extracted using inductive content analysis.ResultsAlthough interviewees were willing to share personal data to support scientific advancements, they still expressed concerns, as well as uncertainty about who has access to their data, and for what purpose. In short, they were not dismissive of privacy risks. Key privacy-related findings are organized into four themes as follows: first, personal data privacy; second, control over personal information; third, concerns about discrimination; and fourth, contributing personal data to science.ConclusionEarly adopters of emerging health technologies appear to have more complex and nuanced conceptions of privacy than might be expected based on their adoption of personal health technologies and participation in open science. Early adopters also voiced uncertainty about the privacy implications of their decisions to use new technologies and share their data for research. Though not representative of the general public, studies of early adopters can provide important insights into evolving attitudes toward privacy in the context of emerging health technologies and personal health data research

Racial Disproportionality in the Foster Care System in Texas:

This study analyzes the demographic characteristics of foster care children under the conservatorship of the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) in Texas from 2002 to 2013. Using one state as an example, the progress charting data in 12 years demonstrates the need to set up a national agenda on closing the gap in racial disproportionality. While the data reveal an increase of Hispanic children in foster care from 33.6% in 2002 to 41.3% in 2013, in terms of disproportionality, the ratio index for Hispanic children has been much lower (0.83) than that for African American children (2.33) over all of these years. The engagement of 13 state-appointed disproportionality specialists in 2007 has shown some positive outcomes after five years. This is evidenced by examining the disproportionality index for African-American children’s representation in Texas (dropping to 1.98 in both years of 2012 and 2013). Data also show that it took over six years for the state to lower the disproportionality index of the African-American children represented in the public child welfare system by only 0.02. Continuous efforts must be planned so that this reducing trend will continue and its committed workforce will expand. These demographic data analyses support the need for Texas to further examine the state’s service development to ensure that foster children and their families of all ethnicities receive services that are gender sensitive, age and development specific, and efficient

MRI Upgrades at Radiology Associates

Problem Statement: The MRI machines at Radiology Associates are limiting the company’s ability to expand and compete within the local market. After discussing with technicians and managers at Radiology Associates, we decided to focus on hardware and software upgrades for the MRI machines. With 2 of the 3 locations purchasing new machines in the near future, our focus was on upgrades at the Santa Maria facility. The two machines at this location needed hardware and/or software upgrades to remain on par competitively both within the company and with local scanning options. Flexible coils are beneficial in terms of size, weight, and both patient/technician experience. They are significantly lighter and smaller than their traditional, out-of-box counterparts.The flexible nature also allows for increased patient comfort and, potentially, image quality. Rejection rates may decrease as well. Several economic models were created to give decision makers of Radiology Associates options: rent, purchase, rent + purchase, etc. Based on this, we recommend renting the set of flexible coils for 1 year, then purchasing. This option provides the highest rate of returns taking into account learning curve and adjustment periods. The software upgrades that are proposed include cardiac imaging and blood sensitive imaging of the brain. Cardiac imaging would be a new exam type since this type of imaging is not currently offered. Both machines in Santa Maria are capable of cardiac imaging with the proposed upgrades. The blood sensitive imaging is available for the Hitachi Oasis and would help diagnose PTSD, brain hemorrhaging and strokes

The Invariant Measures of some Infinite Interval Exchange Maps

We classify the locally finite ergodic invariant measures of certain infinite interval exchange transformations (IETs). These transformations naturally arise from return maps of the straight-line flow on certain translation surfaces, and the study of the invariant measures for these IETs is equivalent to the study of invariant measures for the straight-line flow in some direction on these translation surfaces. For the surfaces and directions for which our methods apply, we can characterize the locally finite ergodic invariant measures of the straight-line flow in a set of directions of Hausdorff dimension larger than 1/2. We promote this characterization to a classification in some cases. For instance, when the surfaces admit a cocompact action by a nilpotent group, we prove each ergodic invariant measure for the straight-line flow is a Maharam measure, and we describe precisely which Maharam measures arise. When the surfaces under consideration are finite area, the straight-line flows in the directions we understand are uniquely ergodic. Our methods apply to translation surfaces admitting multi-twists in a pair of cylinder decompositions in non-parallel directions.Comment: 107 pages, 11 figures. Minor improvement

Intra-metropolitan Office Price and Trading Volume Dynamics: Evidence from Hong Kong

Previous studies of the office market have tended to focus on either the rental market or the aggregate sales market. This paper focuses on the intra-metropolitan sales market and on office price and trading volume dynamics in Hong Kong. According to our findings, buildings trading at higher prices are not necessarily traded more often than those trading at lower prices. In addition, the price of offices in different categories does not necessarily move in tandem. The trading volumes of higher priced buildings tend to Granger cause the lower priced buildings, and this conclusion is robust to alternative classifications. The paper contrasts several existing theories. Suggestions for future research are also discussed.Commercial property; Correlation

Financial Crisis and the Comovements of Housing Sub-markets: Do relationships change after a crisis?

This study of the co-movements of the transaction prices and trading volumes reveal that the mean correlation of prices, and trading volumes alike, among different housing sub-markets increases during the market boom. After a financial crisis, the correlations drop dramatically and stay low. The distribution of the correlations changes from skewed to symmetric. All these coincide with the increase in the total variance of prices, as well as the share of the idiosyncratic component in the total variance after the crisis. These findings are consistent to a family of theories which emphasize on “regime switch” in expectation.financial crisis; hedonic pricing; structural break; evolution of valuation; rolling regression

On the Stability of the Implicit Prices of Housing Attributes: A Dynamic Theory and Some Evidence

Given the dramatic fluctuations in aggregate housing prices, this paper attempts to examine whether the implicit prices of different housing attributes are “stable.” Theoretically, this paper provides perhaps the first dynamic, general equilibrium model in which housing attributes’ implicit prices fluctuate. Empirically, this paper models the time paths of different implicit prices as auto-regressive processes by employing a hedonic pricing model on a large set of housing transaction data over a relatively long period of time. An endogenous structural break test is then performed. Except for a few attributes, structural breaks are not detected. Directions for future research are discussed.hedonic pricing; structural break; evolution of valuation; housing attributes

Does Knowledge Reuse Make a Creative Person More Creative?

Conference Theme: I.T. and Value CreationIn a business world that everything changes fast, continuous innovation become a key strategy for survival. Knowledge management, which deals with the effective transfer and reuse of knowledge and best practices within a firm, has been theorized as one of the facilitators of organizational innovation. Yet, no organizational innovation can be achieved without the creative performance of their individual employees. This paper examines the effect of the most common type of organizational knowledge management system, that is, an intranet-based knowledge repository, on the level of creative performance of an individual. A controlled experiment was conducted on more than a hundred individuals to investigate the quantitative and qualitative levels of creativity outcomes on an open-ended business task. Their levels of baseline creativity skills were also measured in order to inspect its interaction with knowledge reuse. The results suggest that knowledge reuse resulting from this repository type of knowledge management system actually inhibits the creative performance of individuals, especially on the qualitative dimension. Furthermore, this inhibiting effect is significantly stronger on an individual with higher baseline creativity skills, making a creative person performs less creatively than an otherwise unimaginative person.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

A Model for Family Preservation Case Assessment

The outcomes of family preservation practice have been researched and debated. The effectiveness of family preservation is still inconclusive and many of the findings may only be inferred to specific situations. Few studies have addressed the assessment techniques or outcome factors from a qualitative perspective. This article synthesizes current literature, research and practice, and proposes a practice framework with questioning techniques to assist practitioners in assessing the strengths and characteristics of a family, and making decisions on whether or not familybased services are appropriate for the family. Two actual cases are presented to illustrate how the worker can benefit from having the assessment data derived from this model