Dynamic price competition with fixed capacities

Many revenue management (RM) industries are characterized by (a) fixed capacities in the short term (e.g., hotel rooms, seats on an airline flight), (b) homogeneous products (e.g., two airline flights between the same cities at similar times), and (c) customer purchasing decisions largely influenced by price. Competition in these industries is also very high even with just two or three direct competitors in a market. However, RM competition is not well understood and practically all known implementations of RM software and most published models of RM do not explicitly model competition. For this reason, there has been considerable recent interest and research activity to understand RM competition. In this paper we study price competition for an oligopoly in a dynamic setting, where each of the sellers has a fixed number of units available for sale over a fixed number of periods. Demand is stochastic, and depending on how it evolves, sellers may change their prices at any time. This reflects the fact that firms constantly, and almost costlessly, change their prices (alternately, allocations at a price in quantity-based RM), reacting either to updates in their estimates of market demand, competitor prices, or inventory levels. We first prove existence of a unique subgame-perfect equilibrium for a duopoly. In equilibrium, in each state sellers engage in Bertrand competition, so that the seller with the lowest reservation value ends up selling a unit at a price that is equal to the equilibrium reservation value of the competitor. This structure hence extends the marginal-value concept of bid-price control, used in many RM implementations, to a competitive model. In addition, we show that the seller with the lowest capacity sells all its units first. Furthermore, we extend the results transparently to n firms and perform a number of numerical comparative statics exploiting the uniqueness of the subgame-perfect equilibrium.revenue management, bid-prices, subgame-perfect equilibrium.

Impact of EHR Technology Implementation on Physicians\u27 Job Satisfaction

The concept of an electronic health record (EHR) has been the solicitous subject of researchers’ discussion in recent times. The impact that a successful implementation of EHRs can have on physicians cannot be overstated. Factors which are critical to successful implementation of EHR systems are commonly known as crucial technology implementation factors (CTIFs). The present study investigates the CTIFs of EHR systems and also their impact on physicians’ job satisfaction and characteristics in North Indian multispecialty hospitals. The questionnaire has been distributed to physicians of 12 hospitals that have been using EHR technology. It has been concluded that five CTIFs—organizational support, training, software attributes, acceptance to change, and computer knowledge—play a more important role than that played by other factors. The factors have not been considered separately on the basis of preimplementation scenario and postimplementation phase. The study attempts to analyze the impact of EHR systems on job operational performance of physicians

Lymphomatoid granulomatosis masquerading as interstitial pneumonia in a 66-year-old man: a case report and review of literature

Abstract Lymphomatoid granulomatosis (LG) is a rare, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated systemic angiodestructive lymphoproliferative disorder that may progress to a diffuse large B cell lymphoma. Pulmonary involvement may mimic other more common lung pathologies including pneumonias. Therapeutic standards have not been established for LG, but rituximab, interferon-α2b (INF-α2b), and chemotherapy have shown to improve symptoms and long term prognosis. We report a case of rapid respiratory deterioration in a 66-year-old man with clinical presentation, chest radiography, pulmonary function testing and high resolution computed tomography (HRCT) findings consistent with idiopathic interstitial pneumonia, but very poor response to antibiotics and low dose steroids. Lung biopsy showed histopathology consistent with LG that was confirmed by a positive in situ hybridization for Epstein - Barr virus encoded RNA (EBER). The patient was treated with rituximab and combination chemotherapy and showed significant initial clinical improvement with gradual resolution of abnormal findings on imaging. However, the patient developed pancytopenia as a complication of chemotherapy and died secondary to septic shock and renal failure that were refractory to medical management. Autopsy showed diffuse alveolar damage but no evidence of any residual LG within the lungs. This case demonstrates that an open lung biopsy or video-assisted thoracoscopic surgical (VATS) biopsy is often necessary to rule out the presence of LG in order to determine the appropriate therapeutic strategy early in the course of illness to improve prognosis

An exposition of resource capabilities for SMEs in the emerging markets

Emerging markets’ small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), despite having enormous growth potential and significance in the economy, have not been able to harness the advantages of internationalisation and subsequently have fallen short in facing the challenges of globalised competition. The purpose of this study was to review and explore the importance of the resource capabilities, building on the literature from the resource based view (RBV), (core) competency and dynamic capabilities theory, as the main rationale behind their significance in the SME internationalisation. This study intends to provide conceptual clarity about the resource capabilities and their importance in providing the SMEs in the emerging economies, the competitive edge to sustain themselves in today’s business environment. The study concludes with an agenda for future research

Factors Affecting Hospital Choice Decisions: an exploratory study of healthcare consumers in Northern India

This study examines the factors affecting hospital choice decisions by patients for tertiary level healthcare services and the relationships of these factors with respondent demographics. It also categorises the decision makers involved in the selection of hospitals. Data were collected from in-patients of multispecialty hospitals located in northern India with the help of a structured questionnaire. Factor analysis, ANOVA and t-test techniques have been employed to analyse the data. The study has revealed that the factors that affect hospital choice decisions of patients are basic amenities, reputation and quality, building and infrastructure, ease and affordability, personal substances (experiences), responsiveness of services, recommendations and suggestions, clinical support, privacy and information sharing, and range of services. The study has also revealed that various categories of respondent demographics, namely, age, gender, residence, education and monthly family income are significantly different statistically (P<.05) with respect to the identified factors. It has been found that most of the time family members, doctors or a combination of family members and doctors make the decisions to choose the hospital. It has also been found that friends/ relatives and patients themselves choose the hospital in some cases

Pro-inflammatory cytokines stimulate CFTR-dependent anion secretion in pancreatic ductal epithelium

Background: Loss of CFTR-dependent anion and fluid secretion in the ducts of the exocrine pancreas is thought to contribute to the development of pancreatitis, but little is known about the impact of inflammation on ductal CFTR function. Here we used adult stem cell-derived cell cultures (organoids) obtained from porcine pancreas to evaluate the effects of pro-inflammatory cytokines on CFTR function. Methods: Organoids were cultured from porcine pancreas and used to prepare ductal epithelial monolayers. Monolayers were characterized by immunocytochemistry. Epithelial bicarbonate and chloride secretion, and the effect of IL-1β, IL-6, IFN-γ, and TNF-α on CFTR function was assessed by electrophysiology. Results:Immunolocalization of ductal markers, including CFTR, keratin 7, and zonula occludens 1, demonstrated that organoid-derived cells formed a highly polarized epithelium. Stimulation by secretin or VIP triggered CFTR-dependent anion secretion across epithelial monolayers, whereas purinergic receptor stimulation by UTP, elicited CFTR-independent anion secretion. Most of the anion secretory response was attributable to bicarbonate transport. The combination of IL-1β, IL-6, IFN-γ, and TNF-α markedly enhanced CFTR expression and anion secretion across ductal epithelial monolayers, whereas these cytokines had little effect when tested separately. Although TNF-α triggered apoptotic signaling, epithelial barrier function was not significantly affected by cytokine exposure. Conclusions: Pro-inflammatory cytokines enhance CFTR-dependent anion secretion across pancreatic ductal epithelium. We propose that up-regulation of CFTR in the early stages of the inflammatory response, may serve to promote the removal of pathogenic stimuli from the ductal tree, and limit tissue injury.</p

Correlated enhancements in Ds→ℓνD_s \to \ell\nu, (g−2)(g-2) of muon, and lepton flavor violating τ\tau decays with two R-parity violating couplings

With just two R-parity violating couplings, $\lambda'_{223}$ and $\lambda'_{323}$, we correlate several channels, namely, $D_s \to \ell \nu$ ($\ell = \mu, \tau$), $(g-2)_\mu$, and some lepton flavor violating $\tau$ decays. For $\lambda'_{223} = \lambda'_{323} \sim 0.3$ and for a common superpartner mass of 300 GeV, which explain the recently observed excesses in the above $D_s$ decay channels, we predict the following R-parity violating contributions: ${\rm Br} (\tau \to \mu \gamma) \sim 4.5 \cdot 10^{-8}$, ${\rm Br} (\tau \to \mu\mu\mu) \sim 1.2 \cdot 10^{-8}$, ${\rm Br} (\tau \to \mu\eta/\eta') \sim 4 \cdot 10^{-10}$, and $(g_\mu-2)/2 \sim 4 \cdot 10^{-11}$. We exhibit our results through observable versus observable correlation plots.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures: v2: An equation and a few comments and references added, version to appear in Nucl Phys

REMODEL. WP4. Vision Based Perception. T4_3. Cable Detection And Tracking. Electric Wires Dataset. Training and Test sets for Image Segmentation. v0

The dataset contains data for semantic segmentation of electric wires with domain independence, generated in the framework of REMODEL project. The dataset is automatically generated using chroma-key technique and contains 57300 images (where 28650 are RGB images and the other 28650 are the corresponding ground truth binary masks)

A litmus test for classifying recognition mechanisms of transiently binding proteins

Partner recognition in protein binding is critical for all biological functions, and yet, delineating its mechanism is challenging, especially when recognition happens within microseconds. We present a theoretical and experimental framework based on straight-forward nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation dispersion measurements to investigate protein binding mechanisms on sub-millisecond timescales, which are beyond the reach of standard rapid-mixing experiments. This framework predicts that conformational selection prevails on ubiquitin’s paradigmatic interaction with an SH3 (Src-homology 3) domain. By contrast, the SH3 domain recognizes ubiquitin in a two-state binding process. Subsequent molecular dynamics simulations and Markov state modeling reveal that the ubiquitin conformation selected for binding exhibits a characteristically extended C-terminus. Our framework is robust and expandable for implementation in other binding scenarios with the potential to show that conformational selection might be the design principle of the hubs in protein interaction networks