The development of a new measure of quality of life for children with congenital cardiac disease

The purpose of the study was to develop a questionnaire measuring health-related R1 quality of life for children and adolescents with congenital heart disease, the ConQol, that would have both clinical and research applications. We describe here the process of construction of a questionnaire, the piloting and the development of a weighted scoring system, and data on the psychometric performance of the measure in a sample of 640 children and young people recruited via 6 regional centres for paediatric cardiology from across the United Kingdom. The ConQol has two versions, one designed for children aged from 8 to 11 years, and the other for young people aged from 12 to 16 years. Initial findings suggest that it is a valid and reliable instrument, is acceptable to respondents, and is simple to administer in both a research and clinical context

Does sustainability sell? The impact of sustainability claims on the success of national brands’ new product introductions

In the hope of benefiting from the increasing focus on sustainability in Western markets, national brands are introducing new sustainable products. We investigate the success of new sustainable products with a unique dataset combining household panel data, consumer survey data, expert panel survey data, and advertising expenditure data. We show that sustainable new product introductions achieve lower sales than their conventional counterparts. Investing in corporate social responsibility activities compensates for this negative effect and is therefore a viable strategy to boost sales of new sustainable products. Importantly, making sustainable new products clearly innovative mitigates the negative effect of a sustainability claim on new product sales, whereas price promotions aggravate the negative effect. We furthermore caution that the negative effect of sustainability may not decrease as sustainability becomes more mainstream, even if our data covers a period before the currently increased interest in sustainability

Relationship between petal abscission and programmed cell death in Prunus yedoensis and Delphinium belladonna

Depending on the species, the end of flower life span is characterized by petal wilting or by abscission of petals that are still fully turgid. Wilting at the end of petal life is due to programmed cell death (PCD). It is not known whether the abscission of turgid petals is preceded by PCD. We studied some parameters that indicate PCD: chromatin condensation, a decrease in nuclear diameter, DNA fragmentation, and DNA content per nucleus, using Prunus yedoensis and Delphiniumbelladonna which both show abscission of turgid petals at the end of floral life. No DNA degradation, no chromatin condensation, and no change in nuclear volume was observed in P. yedoensis petals, prior to abscission. In abscising D.belladonna petals, in contrast, considerable DNA degradation was found, chromatin was condensed and the nuclear volume considerably reduced. Following abscission, the nuclear area in both species drastically increased, and the chromatin became unevenly distributed. Similar chromatin changes were observed after dehydration (24 h at 60°C) of petals severed at the time of flower opening, and in dehydrated petals of Ipomoea nil and Petunia hybrida, severed at the time of flower opening. In these flowers the petal life span is terminated by wilting rather than abscission. It is concluded that the abscission of turgid petals in D. belladonna was preceded by a number of PCD indicators, whereas no such evidence for PCD was found at the time of P. yedoensis petal abscission. Dehydration of the petal cells, after abscission, was associated with a remarkable nuclear morphology which was also found in younger petals subjected to dehydration. This nuclear morphology has apparently not been described previously, for any organism

On the speed of convergence to stationarity of the Erlang loss system

We consider the Erlang loss system, characterized by $N$ servers, Poisson arrivals and exponential service times, and allow the arrival rate to be a function of $N.$ We discuss representations and bounds for the rate of convergence to stationarity of the number of customers in the system, and display some bounds for the total variation distance between the time-dependent and stationary distributions. We also pay attention to time-dependent rates

Good, better, engaged? The effect of company-initiated customer engagement behavior on shareholder value

In today’s connected world, customer engagement behaviors are very important. Many companies launch initiatives to stimulate customer engagement. However, despite evidence that customer engagement behavior also matters to share-holders, academic research on the firm value consequences of customer engagement campaigns is limited. This study is the first to investigate the value-related consequences of firm-initiated customer engagement behaviors, using shareholder evaluations of the public announcements of such initiatives. We find that companies’ customer engagement initiatives, on average, decrease market value, which is likely because the shareholders are sensitive to the risk of these initiatives backfiring.Nevertheless, initiatives that stimulate word-of-mouth are viewed less negatively than initiatives that solicit customer feedback, as are initiatives that are supported by social media. Companies that operate in a competitive environment or do not advertise much can create value by stimulating customer engagement, while companies with a strong corporate reputation are likely to not benefit from it

Analytic Solution for the Ground State Energy of the Extensive Many-Body Problem

A closed form expression for the ground state energy density of the general extensive many-body problem is given in terms of the Lanczos tri-diagonal form of the Hamiltonian. Given the general expressions of the diagonal and off-diagonal elements of the Hamiltonian Lanczos matrix, $\alpha_n(N)$ and $\beta_n(N)$, asymptotic forms $\alpha(z)$ and $\beta(z)$ can be defined in terms of a new parameter $z\equiv n/N$ ($n$ is the Lanczos iteration and $N$ is the size of the system). By application of theorems on the zeros of orthogonal polynomials we find the ground-state energy density in the bulk limit to be given in general by ${\cal E}_0 = {\rm inf}\,\left[\alpha(z) - 2\,\beta(z)\right]$.Comment: 10 pages REVTex3.0, 3 PS figure