128 research outputs found
Hot Streaks in Artistic, Cultural, and Scientific Careers
The hot streak, loosely defined as winning begets more winnings, highlights a
specific period during which an individual's performance is substantially
higher than her typical performance. While widely debated in sports, gambling,
and financial markets over the past several decades, little is known if hot
streaks apply to individual careers. Here, building on rich literature on
lifecycle of creativity, we collected large-scale career histories of
individual artists, movie directors and scientists, tracing the artworks,
movies, and scientific publications they produced. We find that, across all
three domains, hit works within a career show a high degree of temporal
regularity, each career being characterized by bursts of high-impact works
occurring in sequence. We demonstrate that these observations can be explained
by a simple hot-streak model we developed, allowing us to probe quantitatively
the hot streak phenomenon governing individual careers, which we find to be
remarkably universal across diverse domains we analyzed: The hot streaks are
ubiquitous yet unique across different careers. While the vast majority of
individuals have at least one hot streak, hot streaks are most likely to occur
only once. The hot streak emerges randomly within an individual's sequence of
works, is temporally localized, and is unassociated with any detectable change
in productivity. We show that, since works produced during hot streaks garner
significantly more impact, the uncovered hot streaks fundamentally drives the
collective impact of an individual, ignoring which leads us to systematically
over- or under-estimate the future impact of a career. These results not only
deepen our quantitative understanding of patterns governing individual
ingenuity and success, they may also have implications for decisions and
policies involving predicting and nurturing individuals with lasting impact
A Survey on Continuous Time Computations
We provide an overview of theories of continuous time computation. These
theories allow us to understand both the hardness of questions related to
continuous time dynamical systems and the computational power of continuous
time analog models. We survey the existing models, summarizing results, and
point to relevant references in the literature
A promising method for identifying cross-cultural differences in patient perspective: the use of Internet-based focus groups for content validation of new Patient Reported Outcome assessments
OBJECTIVES: This proof of concept (POC) study was designed to evaluate the use of an Internet-based bulletin board technology to aid parallel cross-cultural development of thematic content for a new set of patient-reported outcome measures (PROs). METHODS: The POC study, conducted in Germany and the United States, utilized Internet Focus Groups (IFGs) to assure the validity of new PRO items across the two cultures – all items were designed to assess the impact of excess facial oil on individuals' lives. The on-line IFG activities were modeled after traditional face-to-face focus groups and organized by a common 'Topic' Guide designed with input from thought leaders in dermatology and health outcomes research. The two sets of IFGs were professionally moderated in the native language of each country. IFG moderators coded the thematic content of transcripts, and a frequency analysis of code endorsement was used to identify areas of content similarity and difference between the two countries. Based on this information, draft PRO items were designed and a majority (80%) of the original participants returned to rate the relative importance of the newly designed questions. FINDINGS: The use of parallel cross-cultural content analysis of IFG transcripts permitted identification of the major content themes in each country as well as exploration of the possible reasons for any observed differences between the countries. Results from coded frequency counts and transcript reviews informed the design and wording of the test questions for the future PRO instrument(s). Subsequent ratings of item importance also deepened our understanding of potential areas of cross-cultural difference, differences that would be explored over the course of future validation studies involving these PROs. CONCLUSION: The use of IFGs for cross-cultural content development received positive reviews from participants and was found to be both cost and time effective. The novel thematic coding methodology provided an empirical platform on which to develop culturally sensitive questionnaire content using the natural language of participants. Overall, the IFG responses and thematic analyses provided a thorough evaluation of similarities and differences in cross-cultural themes, which in turn acted as a sound base for the development of new PRO questionnaires
Patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) in primary care: an observational pilot study of seven generic instruments
Long-term effects of a web-based cancer aftercare intervention on moderate physical activity and vegetable consumption among early cancer survivors: a randomized controlled trial
Standards of Evidence for Efficacy, Effectiveness, and Scale-up Research in Prevention Science: Next Generation
Japan Unified Protocol Clinical Trial for Depressive and Anxiety Disorders (JUNP study): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial
The Effect of Ramadan Fasting on Hypothalamic Pituitary Ovarian (HPO) Axis in Women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
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