4,823 research outputs found
PATENT LICENSING BY MEANS OF AN AUCTION: INTERNAL VS. EXTERNAL PATENTEE
An independent research laboratory owns a patented process innovation that can be licensed by means of an auction to two Cournot duopolists producing differentiated goods. For large innovations and close enough substitute goods the patentee auctions o¤ only one license, preventing the full diffusion of the innovation. For this range of parameters, however, if the laboratory merged with one of the firms in the industry, full technology diffusion would be implemented as the merged entity would always license the innovation to the rival firm. This explains that, in this context, a vertical merger is both profitable and welfare improving.Patent licensing, two-part tariff contracts, vertical mergers
Economic evaluation of the routine use of echocardiography versus natriuretic peptide and ECG-targeted echocardiography in the diagnosis of heart failure
Objectives: To investigate the most efficient use of echocardiography and natriuretic peptide testing in the diagnosis of heart failure.
Design: An economic model comparing two strategies: (A) provide echocardiography and electrocardiogram (ECG) for all individuals who present to a GP with symptoms that may be due to heart failure; (B) carry out B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) blood test and ECG on all such individuals and provide echocardiography only where an abnormality is detected in one of more of these tests.
Setting: Primary care in the UK NHS.
Subjects: Individuals who present to a GP with new symptoms of heart failure.
Main outcome measures: Cost per life year gained.
Results: Baseline cost per life year gained by strategy A compared with strategy B is £3,987.
Conclusions: Immediate echocardiography is the most cost-effective option. Where echocardiography is a scarce resource, efficient use can be obtained by using BNP and ECG tests to identify patients most likely to have heart failure
Faintest Galaxy Morphologies from WFPC2 Imaging of the Hawaii Survey Fields
We present very deep WFPC2 images in the F814W filter of two Hawaii
Survey fields, SSA13 and SSA22. Using these data with previous ground-based
imaging and spectroscopy, we compare the colors, star-forming properties and
morphologies of the faintest galaxies with a reference sample of bright nearby
galaxies and analyze the changes in field galaxy morphology with magnitude. Our
principal result is the identification of a new morphological class of
``chain'' galaxies at the faintest magnitudes. Based on limited spectroscopy,
we tentatively conclude that these are linearly organized giant star-forming
regions at and, if this is correct, that these are large galaxies
in the process of formation.Comment: 18 pages + 1 table of text as 1 LaTeX file (uses aastex style macros:
aaspp.sty, flushrt.sty) plus 1 uuencoded compressed tar file of 12 PostScript
figures (Figs. 3-9, 16-17, and 21-23). The remaining gray-scale plots are
available by anonymous ftp at
ftp://hubble.ifa.hawaii.edu/pub/preprints/plates To appear in the October
1995 Astronomical Journa
Are the virial masses of clusters smaller than we think?
The constraints that the available X-ray spectral and imaging data place on the mass distribution and mass to light ratio of rich clusters are considered. It was found for the best determined cases that the mass to light ratio is less than 125 h sub 50 at radii exceeding 1 h sub 50 Mpc. The mass to light ratio is approximately constant at radii exceeding 1 h sub 50 Mpc but may rise to values of roughly 200 h sub 50 in the central regions. The fraction of the total mass that is in baryons, primarily the hot X-ray emitting gas, is roughly 30% thus setting the mass to light ratio of the dark material to roughly 70. The model that fits the X-ray data for Coma is in good agreement with the observed optical velocity dispersion vs. radius data
An Extremely Luminous Galaxy at z=5.74
We report the discovery of an extremely luminous galaxy lying at a redshift
of z=5.74, SSA22-HCM1. The object was found in narrowband imaging of the SSA22
field using a 105 Angstrom bandpass filter centered at 8185 Angstroms during
the course of the Hawaii narrowband survey using LRIS on the 10 m Keck II
Telescope, and was identified by the equivalent width of the emission
W_lambda(observed)=175 Angstroms, flux = 1.7 x 10^{-17} erg cm^{-2} s^{-1}).
Comparison with broadband colors shows the presence of an extremely strong
break (> 4.2 at the 2 sigma level) between the Z band above the line, where the
AB magnitude is 25.5, and the R band below, where the object is no longer
visible at a 2 sigma upper limit of 27.1 (AB mags). These properties are only
consistent with this object's being a high-z Ly alpha emitter. A 10,800 s
spectrum obtained with LRIS yields a redshift of 5.74. The object is similar in
its continuum shape, line properties, and observed equivalent width to the
z=5.60 galaxy, HDF 4-473.0, as recently described by Weymann et al. (1998), but
is 2-3 times more luminous in the line and in the red continuum. For H_0 = 65
km s^{-1} Mpc^{-1} and q_0 = (0.02, 0.5) we would require star formation rates
of around (40, 7) solar masses per year to produce the UV continuum in the
absence of extinction.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, Latex with emulateapj style file; to appear in
the Astrophysical Journal (Letters
Use of hospital services by age and comorbidity after an index heart failure admission in England: an observational study
© Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited.Objectives To describe hospital inpatient, emergency department (ED) and outpatient department (OPD) activity for patients in the year following their first emergency admission for heart failure (HF). To assess the proportion receiving specialist assessment within 2â €...weeks of hospital discharge, as now recommended by guidelines. Design Observational study of national administrative data. Setting All acute NHS hospitals in England. Participants 82â €...241 patients with an index emergency admission between April 2009 and March 2011 with a primary diagnosis of HF. Main outcome measures Cardiology OPD appointment within 2â €...weeks and within a year of discharge from the index admission; emergency department (ED) and inpatient use within a year. Results 15.1% died during the admission. Of the 69â €...848 survivors, 19.7% were readmitted within 30â €...days and half within a year, the majority for non-HF diagnoses. 6.7% returned to the ED within a week of discharge, of whom the majority (77.6%) were admitted. The two most common OPD specialties during the year were cardiology (24.7% of the total appointments) and anticoagulant services (12.5%). Although half of all patients had a cardiology appointment within a year, the proportion within the recommended 2â €...weeks of discharge was just 6.8% overall and varied by age, from 2.4% in those aged 90+ to 19.6% in those aged 18-45 (p<0.0001); appointments in other specialties made up only some of the shortfall. More comorbidity at any age was associated with higher rates of cardiology OPD follow-up. Conclusions Patients with HF are high users of hospital services. Postdischarge cardiology OPD follow-up rates fell well below current National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines, particularly for the elderly and those with less comorbidity
Detection of Massive Forming Galaxies at Redshifts Greater than One
The complex problem of when and how galaxies formed has not until recently
been susceptible of direct attack. It has been known for some time that the
excessive number of blue galaxies counted at faint magnitudes implies that a
considerable fraction of the massive star formation in the universe occurred at
z < 3, but, surprisingly, spectroscopic studies of galaxies down to a B
magnitude of 24 found little sign of the expected high-z progenitors of current
massive galaxies, but rather, in large part, small blue galaxies at modest
redshifts z \sim 0.3. This unexpected population has diverted attention from
the possibility that early massive star-forming galaxies might also be found in
the faint blue excess. From KECK spectroscopic observations deep enough to
encompass a large population of z > 1 field galaxies, we can now show directly
that in fact these forming galaxies are present in substantial numbers at B
\sim 24, and that the era from redshifts 1 to 2 was clearly a major period of
galaxy formation. These z > 1 galaxies have very unusual morphologies as seen
in deep HST WFPC2 images.Comment: 10 pages LaTeX + 5 PostScript figures in uuencoded gzipped tar file;
aasms4.sty, flushrt.sty, overcite.sty (the two aastex4.0 and overcite.sty
macros are available from xxx.lanl.gov) Also available (along with style
files) via anonymous ftp to ftp://hubble.ifa.hawaii.edu/pub/preprints .
E-print version of paper adds citation cross-references to other archived
e-prints, where available. To appear in Nature October 19, 199
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