Review of economic evidence in the prevention and early detection of colorectal cancer.

This paper aims to systematically review the cost-effectiveness evidence, and to provide a critical appraisal of the methods used in the model-based economic evaluation of CRC screening and subsequent surveillance. A search strategy was developed to capture relevant evidence published 1999-November 2012. Databases searched were MEDLINE, EMBASE, National Health Service Economic Evaluation (NHS EED), EconLit, and HTA. Full economic evaluations that considered costs and health outcomes of relevant intervention were included. Sixty-eight studies which used either cohort simulation or individual-level simulation were included. Follow-up strategies were mostly embedded in the screening model. Approximately 195 comparisons were made across different modalities; however, strategies modelled were often simplified due to insufficient evidence and comparators chosen insufficiently reflected current practice/recommendations. Studies used up-to-date evidence on the diagnostic test performance combined with outdated information on CRC treatments. Quality of life relating to follow-up surveillance is rare. Quality of life relating to CRC disease states was largely taken from a single study. Some studies omitted to say how identified adenomas or CRC were managed. Besides deterministic sensitivity analysis, probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA) was undertaken in some studies, but the distributions used for PSA were rarely reported or justified. The cost-effectiveness of follow-up strategies among people with confirmed adenomas are warranted in aiding evidence-informed decision making in response to the rapidly evolving technologies and rising expectations

Heterogeneity of Southern Countries and Southern Intellectual Property Rights Policy

We develop a model with one innovating northern firm and heterogeneous southern firms that compete in a final product market. We assume southern firms differ in their ability to adapt technology and study southern incentives to protect intellectual property rights. We find that, in a non-cooperative equilibrium, governments resist IPR protection, but collectively southern countries benefit from some protection. We show that, in general, countries with more efficient firms prefer higher collective IPR protection than those with less efficient firms. Given the aggregate level of IPR protection, it is more efficient if the more efficient countries have weaker IPR protection.

Mirage cosmology with an unstable probe D3-brane

We consider the mirage cosmology by an unstable probe brane whose action is represented by BDI action with tachyon. We study how the presence of tachyon affects the evolution of the brane inflation. At the early stage of the brane inflation, the tachyon kinetic term can play an important role in curing the superluminal expansion in mirage cosmology.Comment: 11 pages, improved presentation with some clarifications, typos corrected, references adde

Classification of scale-free networks

While the emergence of a power law degree distribution in complex networks is intriguing, the degree exponent is not universal. Here we show that the betweenness centrality displays a power-law distribution with an exponent \eta which is robust and use it to classify the scale-free networks. We have observed two universality classes with \eta \approx 2.2(1) and 2.0, respectively. Real world networks for the former are the protein interaction networks, the metabolic networks for eukaryotes and bacteria, and the co-authorship network, and those for the latter one are the Internet, the world-wide web, and the metabolic networks for archaea. Distinct features of the mass-distance relation, generic topology of geodesics and resilience under attack of the two classes are identified. Various model networks also belong to either of the two classes while their degree exponents are tunable.Comment: 6 Pages, 6 Figures, 1 tabl

Welfare Effects of Intellectual Property Rights Under Asymmetric Spillovers

We develop a model with one innovating northern firm and several heterogeneous Southern firms that compete in a final product market. We assume the southern firms differ in their ability to adapt technology and use this heterogeneity to study the differing incentives of southern governments to protect intellectual property rights. We find that governments representing more efficient firms have greater incentive to protect IPR than do those representing less efficient firms. However, efficiency considerations imply that, given policies resulting in the same overall innovation rate, it would be better to have weaker IPR protection for the more efficient southern firms.innovation; imperfect competition; commercial policy; intellectual property rights protection; trade

An LMI Approach to Discrete-Time Observer Design with Stochastic Resilience

Much of the recent work on robust control or observer design has focused on preservation of stability of the controlled system or the convergence of the observer in the presence of parameter perturbations in the plant or the measurement model. The present work addresses the important problem of stochastic resilience or non-fragility of a discrete-time Luenberger observer which is the maintenance of convergence and/or performance when the observer is erroneously implemented possibly due to computational errors i.e. round off errors in digital implementation or sensor errors, etc. A common linear matrix inequality framework is presented to address the stochastic resilient design problem for various performance criteria in the implementation based on the knowledge of an upper bound on the variance of the random error in the observer gain. Present results are compared to earlier designs for stochastic robustness. Illustrative examples are given to complement the theoretical results

Resilient Observer Design for Discrete-Time Nonlinear Systems with General Criteria

A class of discrete-time nonlinear system and measurement equations having incrementally conic nonlinearities and finite energy disturbances is considered. A linear matrix inequality based resilient observer design approach is presented to guarantee the satisfaction of a variety of performance criteria ranging from simple estimation error boundedness to dissipativity in the presence of bounded perturbations on the gain. Some simulation examples are included to illustrate the proposed design methodology

Stochastically Resilient Observer Design for a Class of Continuous-Time Nonlinear Systems

This work addresses the design of stochastically resilient or non-fragile continuous-time Luenberger observers for systems with incrementally conic nonlinearities. Such designs maintain the convergence and/or performance when the observer gain is erroneously implemented due possibly to computational errors i.e. round off errors in computing the observer gain or changes in the observer parameters during operation. The error in the observer gain is modeled as a random process and a common linear matrix inequality formulation is presented to address the stochastically resilient observer design problem for a variety of performance criteria. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the theoretical results