9,567 research outputs found
The role of regulation in influencing income-generating activities among public sector doctors in Peru.
OBJECTIVE: To examine in Peru the nature of dual practice (doctors holding two jobs at once - usually public sector doctors with private practices), the factors that influence individuals' decisions to undertake dual practice, the conditions faced when doing so and the potential role of regulatory intervention in this area. METHODS: The study entailed qualitative interviews with a sample of twenty medical practitioners based in metropolitan Lima, representing a cross-section of those primarily employed in either the private or public sectors and engaged in clinical practice or policy making. The interviews focused on: 1. individuals' experience with dual practice; 2. the general underlying pressures that influence the nature and extent of such activities; and 3. attitudes toward, and the influence of, regulation on such activities. RESULTS: Dual practice is an activity that is widespread and well-accepted, and the prime personal motivation is financial. However, there are also a number of important broad macroeconomic influences on dual practice particularly the oversupply of medical services, the deregulated nature of this market, and the economic crisis throughout the country, which combine to create major hardships for those attempting to make a living through medical practice. There is some support among doctors for tighter regulation. CONCLUSION: Research findings suggest appropriate policy responses to dual practice involve tighter controls on the supply of medical practitioners; alleviation of financial pressures brought by macro-economic conditions; and closer regulation of such activities to ensure some degree of collective action over quality and the maintenance of professional reputations. Further research into this issue in rural areas is needed to ascertain the geographical generalizability of these policy responses
Conservative collision prediction and avoidance for stochastic trajectories in continuous time and space
Existing work in multi-agent collision prediction and avoidance typically
assumes discrete-time trajectories with Gaussian uncertainty or that are
completely deterministic. We propose an approach that allows detection of
collisions even between continuous, stochastic trajectories with the only
restriction that means and variances can be computed. To this end, we employ
probabilistic bounds to derive criterion functions whose negative sign provably
is indicative of probable collisions. For criterion functions that are
Lipschitz, an algorithm is provided to rapidly find negative values or prove
their absence. We propose an iterative policy-search approach that avoids prior
discretisations and yields collision-free trajectories with adjustably high
certainty. We test our method with both fixed-priority and auction-based
protocols for coordinating the iterative planning process. Results are provided
in collision-avoidance simulations of feedback controlled plants.Comment: This preprint is an extended version of a conference paper that is to
appear in \textit{Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on
Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2014)
Building Alliances: Collaboration between CAUSA and the Rural Organizing Project in Oregon
This ethnography examines the components that allow quality solidarity work to happen between organizations with leadership and constituencies that are primarily people of color and primarily white, respectively. CAUSA (an immigrant rights coalition) and the Rural Organizing Project (ROP) of Oregon have developed a working relationship over ten years that has contributed to numerous victories for immigrant and farm worker rights, as well as greater consciousness among white rural activists of what it means to provide support as anti-racist allies. Because Oregon has a relatively small population (three million), and progressive organizations tend to know each other, the relationship provides an opportunity to study how such organizations manage power and historical inequalities in a manner suited for success. Ethnographer Lynn Stephen has conducted in-depth interviews with organizational leaders and members as a way to explore the history and lessons learned from the collaborative work between the two organizations. Key findings include the importance of both in-depth and sustained dialogue around the key values of work, and staff training around the issues involved with connecting to the other organization. The organizations use these techniques to build common ground. Hence, collaborative capacity can be mobilized quickly to support each other's actions as needed
IMEX evolution of scalar fields on curved backgrounds
Inspiral of binary black holes occurs over a time-scale of many orbits, far
longer than the dynamical time-scale of the individual black holes. Explicit
evolutions of a binary system therefore require excessively many time steps to
capture interesting dynamics. We present a strategy to overcome the
Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy condition in such evolutions, one relying on modern
implicit-explicit ODE solvers and multidomain spectral methods for elliptic
equations. Our analysis considers the model problem of a forced scalar field
propagating on a generic curved background. Nevertheless, we encounter and
address a number of issues pertinent to the binary black hole problem in full
general relativity. Specializing to the Schwarzschild geometry in Kerr-Schild
coordinates, we document the results of several numerical experiments testing
our strategy.Comment: 28 pages, uses revtex4. Revised in response to referee's report. One
numerical experiment added which incorporates perturbed initial data and
adaptive time-steppin
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