3,687 research outputs found
Measurement and analysis of rural household income in a dualistic economy: The case of South Africa
Government Departments in South Africa utilise a number of different data sets on income of rural households. These include the Population Census, the October Household Survey of 1995 and 2000, the Rural Household Survey of 1997 and the various agricultural censuses (1996 and 2003). All of these use different approaches in obtaining household income. The agricultural census, for example, only reports on farm income – excluding the non-farm income. This paper reviews the different sources of household income data, their measurement techniques and the utilisation thereof. The difference in application of various surveys in the former homeland areas and the so-called commercial farming areas are also shown. In the case of the former homeland areas integrated rural household data are used for poverty measurement purposes. The context and methodologies of these surveys are discussed in detail.Consumer/Household Economics,
Strangeness enhancement at LHC
We study production of strangeness in the hot QGP fireball in conditions
achieved at LHC, and use these results to obtain soft (strange) hadron
multiplicities. We compare the chemical equilibrium and non-equilibrium
conditions and identify characteristic experimental observables.Comment: Presented at SQM07, to appear in JPG special issue. One table with
prediction
Spectra of Particles from Laser-Induced Vacuum Decay
The spectrum of electrons and positrons originating from vacuum decay
occurring in the collision of two non-colinear laser pulses is obtained. It
displays high energy, highly-collimated particle bunches traveling in a
direction separate from the laser beams. This result provides an unmistakable
signature of the vacuum decay phenomenon and could suggest a new avenue for
development of high energy electron and/or positron beams.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; typos corrected and references added; version
appearing in Physical Review
Law and Learning Revisited: Discourse, Theory and Research
The article first reviews the major lines of discussion following the publication of Law and Learning It then focuses on the position of theory and research in legal education and scholarship and attempts to argue that law proper can neither be derived inductively from empirical positions, nor deductively from universal propositions but is a constituted account, a form of discourse, a pure theory; or in its negative expression a simulacrum dependent on recognition rather than reference. Its autonomy is thus purely formal and cannot be used to distinguish law substantively from other forms of discourse, such as science and politics which indeed give law its content
CAIR: Using Formal Languages to Study Routing, Leaking, and Interception in BGP
The Internet routing protocol BGP expresses topological reachability and
policy-based decisions simultaneously in path vectors. A complete view on the
Internet backbone routing is given by the collection of all valid routes, which
is infeasible to obtain due to information hiding of BGP, the lack of
omnipresent collection points, and data complexity. Commonly, graph-based data
models are used to represent the Internet topology from a given set of BGP
routing tables but fall short of explaining policy contexts. As a consequence,
routing anomalies such as route leaks and interception attacks cannot be
explained with graphs.
In this paper, we use formal languages to represent the global routing system
in a rigorous model. Our CAIR framework translates BGP announcements into a
finite route language that allows for the incremental construction of minimal
route automata. CAIR preserves route diversity, is highly efficient, and
well-suited to monitor BGP path changes in real-time. We formally derive
implementable search patterns for route leaks and interception attacks. In
contrast to the state-of-the-art, we can detect these incidents. In practical
experiments, we analyze public BGP data over the last seven years
Designing for Economies of Scale vs. Economies of Focus in Hospital Departments
Subject/Research problem: Hospitals traditionally segregate resources into centralized functional departments such as diagnostic departments, ambulatory care centres, and nursing wards. In recent years this organizational model has been challenged by the idea that higher quality of care and efficiency in service delivery can be achieved when services are organized around patient groups. Examples are specialized clinics for breast cancer patients and clinical pathways for diabetes patients. Hospitals are struggling with the question whether to become more centralized to achieve economies of scale or more decentralized to achieve economies of focus. In this paper service and patient group characteristics are examined to determine conditions where a centralized model is more efficient and conversely where a decentralized model is more efficient. - Research Question: When organizing hospital capacity what service and patient group characteristics indicate efficiency can be gained through economies of scale vs. economies of focus? - Approach: Using quantitative Queueing Theory and Simulation models the performance of centralized and decentralized hospital clinics is compared. This is done for a variety of services and patient groups. - Result: The study results in a model measuring the tradeoffs between economies of scale and economies of focus. From this model management guidelines are derived. - Application: The general results support strategic planning for a new facility at the Netherlands Cancer Institute - Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital. A model developed during this research is also applied in the Chemotherapy Department of the same hospital
Efficiency evaluation for pooling resources in health care
Hospitals traditionally segregate resources into centralized functional departments such as diagnostic departments, ambulatory care centers, and nursing wards. In recent years this organizational model has been challenged by the idea that higher quality of care and efficiency in service delivery can be achieved when services are organized around patient groups. Examples include specialized clinics for breast cancer patients and clinical pathways for diabetes patients. Hospitals are struggling with the question of whether to become more centralized to achieve economies of scale or more decentralized to achieve economies of focus. In this paper we examine service and patient group characteristics to study the conditions where a centralized model is more efficient, and conversely, where a decentralized model is more efficient. This relationship is examined analytically with a queuing model to determine themost influential factors and then with simulation to fine-tune the results. The tradeoffs between economies of scale and economies of focus measured by these models are used to derive general management guidelines
Efficiency evaluation for pooling resources in health care: An interpretation for managers
Subject/Research problem\ud
Hospitals traditionally segregated resources into centralized functional departments such as diagnostic departments, ambulatory care centres, and nursing wards. In recent years this organizational model has been challenged by the idea that higher quality of care and efficiency in service delivery can be achieved when services are organized around patient groups. Examples are specialized clinics for breast cancer patients and clinical pathways for diabetes patients. Hospitals are grappling more and more with the question, should we become more centralized to achieve economies of scale or more decentralized to achieve economies of focus. In this paper service and patient group characteristics are examined to determine conditions where a centralized model is more efficient and conversely where a decentralized model is more efficient.\ud
Research Question\ud
When organizing hospital capacity what service and patient group characteristics indicate that efficiency can be gained through economies of scale vs. economies of focus?\ud
Approach\ud
Using quantitative models from the Queueing Theory and Simulation disciplines the performance of centralized and decentralized hospital clinics are compared. This is done for a variety of services and patient groups. \ud
Result\ud
The study results in a model measuring the tradeoffs between economies of scale and economies of focus. From this model “rules of thumb” for managers are derived.\ud
Application\ud
The general results support strategic planning for a new facility at the Netherlands Cancer Institute - Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital. A model developed during this study is also applied in the Chemotherapy Department of the same hospital.\u
A survey of health care models that encompass multiple departments
In this survey we review quantitative health care models to illustrate the extent to which they encompass multiple hospital departments. The paper provides general overviews of the relationships that exists between major hospital departments and describes how these relationships are accounted for by researchers. We find the atomistic view of hospitals often taken by researchers is partially due to the ambiguity of patient care trajectories. To this end clinical pathways literature is reviewed to illustrate its potential for clarifying patient flows and for providing a holistic hospital perspective
Efficiency evaluation for pooling resources in health care
Hospitals traditionally segregate resources into centralized functional departments such as diagnostic departments, ambulatory care centres, and nursing wards. In recent years this organizational model has been challenged by the idea that higher quality of care and efficiency in service delivery can be achieved when services are organized around patient groups. Examples include specialized clinics for breast cancer patients and clinical pathways for diabetes patients. Hospitals are struggling with the question of whether to become more centralized to achieve economies of scale or more decentralized to achieve economies of focus. Using quantitative Queueing Theory and Simulation models, we examine service and patient group characteristics to determine the conditions where a centralized model is more efficient and conversely where a decentralized model is more efficient. The results from the model measure the tradeoffs between economies of scale and economies of focus from which management guidelines are derived
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