Consolidated List of Requirements

This document is a consolidated catalogue of requirements for the Electronic Health Care Record (EHCR) and Electronic Health Care Record Architecture (EHCRA), gleaned largely from work done in the EU Framework III and IV programmes and CEN, but also including input from other sources including world-wide standardisation initiatives. The document brings together the relevant work done into a classified inventory of requirements to inform the on-going standardisation process as well as act as a guide to future implementation of EHCRA-based systems. It is meant as a contribution both to understanding of the standard and to the work that is being considered to improve the standard. Major features include the classification into issues affecting the Health Care Record, the EHCR, EHCR processing, EHCR interchange and the sharing of health care information and EHCR systems. The principal information sources are described briefly. It is offered as documentation that is complementary to the four documents of the ENV 13606 Parts I-IV produced by CEN Pts 26,27,28,29. The requirements identified and classified in this deliverable are referenced in other deliverables

Firms write contracts to exploit consumer overconfidence

Competition may not protect consumers but simple market statistics tell us when policy can, writes Michael D. Grub

Dynamic nonlinear pricing: Biased expectations, inattention, and bill shock

Recent research highlights the importance of biased expectations and inattention for nonlinear pricing in dynamic environments. Findings are: (1) Three-part tariffs, such as cellular service contracts, exploit consumer overconfidence. (2) Surprise penalty fees may be used to further exploit biased beliefs or alternatively to price discriminate more efficiently whenever consumers are inattentive. (3) Implementing the recent bill-shock agreement between cellular carriers and the FCC is predicted to harm rather than help consumers when endogenous price changes are taken into account

The Final Hurdle?: Security of supply, the Capacity Mechanism and the role of interconnectors

The UK Government has developed a carefully designed Capacity Mechanism to ensure security of supply in the GB electricity system. This paper criticises the methods used to determine the amount of capacity to procure, and argues that the amount finally proposed is likely to be excessive, particularly (but not exclusively) in ignoring the contribution from interconnectors. More broadly, there has been too little attention to either the political economy, or the option value aspects. Procuring too little is risky, but fear of'the lights going out' can easily become a catch-all argument for excessive procurement, and associated subsidy. The risk of over-procurement, particularly of new capacity on long-term contracts, is that it drives up the costs to consumers; undermines renewable energy by transferring capped resources from renewable to fossil fuel producers; and impedes the Single Market including by weakening the business case for future interconnectors. The paper argues that the development of technologies and markets, particularly on the demand- side and of potentially available – 'latent' – capacity - further lowers the risks and increases options. This implies greater potential to defer more capacity procurement – and enhances the value of a more appropriate treatment of interconnectors in security assessments

Boundary Operators in Quantum Field Theory

The fundamental laws of physics can be derived from the requirement of invariance under suitable classes of transformations on the one hand, and from the need for a well-posed mathematical theory on the other hand. As a part of this programme, the present paper shows under which conditions the introduction of pseudo-differential boundary operators in one-loop Euclidean quantum gravity is compatible both with their invariance under infinitesimal diffeomorphisms and with the requirement of a strongly elliptic theory. Suitable assumptions on the kernel of the boundary operator make it therefore possible to overcome problems resulting from the choice of purely local boundary conditions.Comment: 23 pages, plain Tex. The revised version contains a new section, and the presentation has been improve

Future monitoring of charged particle energy deposition into the upper atmosphere and comments on possible relationships between atmospheric phenomena and solar and/or geomagnetic activity

Monitoring of earth's atmosphere was conducted for several years utilizing the ITOS series of low-altitude, polar-orbiting weather satellites. A space environment monitoring package was included in these satellites to perform measurements of a portion of earth's charged particle environment. The charged particle observations proposed for the low-altitude weather satellite TIROS N, are described which will provide the capability of routine monitoring of the instantaneous total energy deposition into the upper atmosphere by the precipitation of charged particles from higher altitudes. Such observations may be of use in future studies of the relationships between geomagnetic activity and atmospheric weather pattern developments. Estimates are given to assess the potential importance of this type of energy deposition. Discussion and examples are presented illustrating the importance of distinguishing between solar and geomagnetic activity as possible causative sources. Such differentiation is necessary because of the widely different spatial and time scales involved in the atmospheric energy input resulting from these various sources of activity

Fractional-order operators: Boundary problems, heat equations

The first half of this work gives a survey of the fractional Laplacian (and related operators), its restricted Dirichlet realization on a bounded domain, and its nonhomogeneous local boundary conditions, as treated by pseudodifferential methods. The second half takes up the associated heat equation with homogeneous Dirichlet condition. Here we recall recently shown sharp results on interior regularity and on $L_p$-estimates up to the boundary, as well as recent H\"older estimates. This is supplied with new higher regularity estimates in $L_2$-spaces using a technique of Lions and Magenes, and higher $L_p$-regularity estimates (with arbitrarily high H\"older estimates in the time-parameter) based on a general result of Amann. Moreover, it is shown that an improvement to spatial $C^\infty$-regularity at the boundary is not in general possible.Comment: 29 pages, updated version, to appear in a Springer Proceedings in Mathematics and Statistics: "New Perspectives in Mathematical Analysis - Plenary Lectures, ISAAC 2017, Vaxjo Sweden

Smeared heat-kernel coefficients on the ball and generalized cone

We consider smeared zeta functions and heat-kernel coefficients on the bounded, generalized cone in arbitrary dimensions. The specific case of a ball is analysed in detail and used to restrict the form of the heat-kernel coefficients $A_n$ on smooth manifolds with boundary. Supplemented by conformal transformation techniques, it is used to provide an effective scheme for the calculation of the $A_n$. As an application, the complete $A_{5/2}$ coefficient is given.Comment: 23 pages, JyTe

ROS/TRPA1/CGRP signaling mediates cortical spreading depression

Abstract Objectives The transient receptor potential ankyrin A 1 (TRPA1) channel and calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) are targets for migraine prophylaxis. This study aimed to understand their mechanisms in migraine by investigating the role of TRPA1 in cortical spreading depression (CSD) in vivo and exploring how reactive oxygen species (ROS)/TRPA1/CGRP interplay in regulating cortical susceptibility to CSD. Methods Immunohistochemistry was used for detecting TRPA1 expression. CSD was induced by K+ on the cerebral cortex, monitored using electrophysiology in rats, and intrinsic optical imaging in mouse brain slices, respectively. Drugs were perfused into contralateral ventricle of rats. Lipid peroxidation (malondialdehyde, MDA) analysis was used for indicating ROS level. Results TRPA1 was expressed in cortical neurons and astrocytes of rats and mice. TRPA1 deactivation by an anti-TRPA1 antibody reduced cortical susceptibility to CSD in rats and decreased ipsilateral MDA level induced by CSD. In mouse brain slices, H2O2 facilitated submaximal CSD induction, which disappeared by the antioxidant, tempol and the TRPA1 antagonist, A-967079; Consistently, TRPA1 activation reversed prolonged CSD latency and reduced magnitude by the antioxidant. Further, blockade of CGRP prolonged CSD latency, which was reversed by H2O2 and the TRPA1 agonist, allyl-isothiocyanate, respectively. Conclusions ROS/TRPA1/CGRP signaling plays a critical role in regulating cortical susceptibility to CSD. Inhibition ROS and deactivation of TRPA1 channels may have therapeutic benefits in preventing stress-triggered migraine via CGRP