A Recurrent Cooperative/Competitive Field for Segmentation of Magnetic Resonance Brain Imagery

The Grey-White Decision Network is introduced as an application of an on-center, off-surround recurrent cooperative/competitive network for segmentation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain images. The three layer dynamical system relaxes into a solution where each pixel is labeled as either grey matter, white matter, or "other" matter by considering raw input intensity, edge information, and neighbor interactions. This network is presented as an example of applying a recurrent cooperative/competitive field (RCCF) to a problem with multiple conflicting constraints. Simulations of the network and its phase plane analysis are presented

Survivor-complier effects in the presence of selection on treatment, with application to a study of prompt ICU admission

Pre-treatment selection or censoring (`selection on treatment') can occur when two treatment levels are compared ignoring the third option of neither treatment, in `censoring by death' settings where treatment is only defined for those who survive long enough to receive it, or in general in studies where the treatment is only defined for a subset of the population. Unfortunately, the standard instrumental variable (IV) estimand is not defined in the presence of such selection, so we consider estimating a new survivor-complier causal effect. Although this effect is generally not identified under standard IV assumptions, it is possible to construct sharp bounds. We derive these bounds and give a corresponding data-driven sensitivity analysis, along with nonparametric yet efficient estimation methods. Importantly, our approach allows for high-dimensional confounding adjustment, and valid inference even after employing machine learning. Incorporating covariates can tighten bounds dramatically, especially when they are strong predictors of the selection process. We apply the methods in a UK cohort study of critical care patients to examine the mortality effects of prompt admission to the intensive care unit, using ICU bed availability as an instrument

Eco-transformation: a global sustainability wake-up call

A vital opportunity and responsibility exist for firms to devise new sustainable business models that tackle the pressing social and ecological challenges of our time. The global stakes involved requires scientists and business practitioners to work more closely than ever to innovate, and deliver effective solutions that simultaneously create social, ecological and commercial value. This is very much the mission of the Centre for Eco-Transformation

A lot of icing but little cake?:taking integrated reporting forward

Integrated reporting has fast emerged as a new accounting practice to help firms understand how they create value and be able to effectively communicate this to external stakeholders. While insightful experiences from the early-adopters of integrated reporting start to accumulate, the development of the field and how integrated reporting may be successfully implemented remains challenging and contested. Several issues are still controversial with no consensus reached on the central purpose about integrated reporting. This paper relies upon a qualitative approach to accomplish two objectives. First, we provide a review of the embryonic academic literature in the integrated reporting field in order to summarize extant knowledge. Second, in response to a gap in the literature on managerial perceptions concerning integrated reporting, we present the sensemaking approaches of three key experts impacting integrated reporting practices at the global level using semi-structured interviews. Our findings suggest that experts perceive the field to be fragmented and believe that most companies currently have weak understanding of the business value of integrated reporting. The experts give insights into how they perceive the field to be progressing despite challenges and on where they see improvements in the diffusion of practices in integrated reporting. Our study contributes to this special issue by reframing the existing implementation challenges of integrated reporting into promising and inclusive research opportunities that align the priorities of both academia and business

Interface of the Environment and Occurrence of Botrytis cinerea in Pre-symptomatic Tomato Crops

Botrytis cinerea (Grey mould) is a necrotrophic fungus infecting over 230 plant species worldwide. It can cause major pre- and post-harvest diseases of many agronomic and horticultural crops. Botrytis cinerea causes annual economic losses of 10–100 billion US dollars worldwide and instability in the food supply (Jin and Wu, 2015). Grey mould losses, either at the farm gate or later in the food chain, could be reduced with improved knowledge of inoculum availability during production. In this paper, we report on the ability to monitor Botrytis spore concentration in glasshouse tomato production ahead of symptom development on plants. Using a light weight and portable air sampler (microtitre immunospore trap) it was possible to quantify inoculum availability within hours. Also, this study investigated the spatial aspect of the pathogen with an increase of B. cinerea concentration in bio-aerosols collected in the lower part of the glasshouse (0.5 m) and adjacent to the trained stems of the tomato plants. No obvious relationship was observed between B. cinerea concentration and the internal glasshouse environmental parameters of temperature and relative humidity. However the occurrence of higher outside wind speeds did increase the prevalence of B. cinerea conidia in the cropping environment of a vented glasshouse. Knowledge of inoculum availability at time periods when the environmental risk of pathogen infection is high should improve the targeted use and effectiveness of control inputs

Cross-Scale Systemic Resilience:Implications for Organization Studies

In this article, we posit that a cross-scale perspective is valuable for studies of organizational resilience. Existing research in our field primarily focuses on the resilience of organizations, that is, the factors that enhance or detract from an organization’s viability in the face of threat. While this organization level focus makes important contributions to theory, organizational resilience is also intrinsically dependent upon the resilience of broader social-ecological systems in which the firm is embedded. Moreover, long-term organizational resilience cannot be well managed without an understanding of the feedback effects across nested systems. For instance, a narrow focus on optimizing organizational resilience from one firm’s perspective may come at the expense of social-ecological functioning and ultimately undermine managers’ efforts at long-term organizational survival. We suggest that insights from natural science may help organizational scholars to examine cross-scale resilience and conceptualize organizational actions within and across temporal and spatial dynamics. We develop propositions taking a complex adaptive systems perspective to identify issues related to focal scale, slow variables and feedback, and diversity and redundancy. We illustrate our theoretical argument using an example of Unilever and palm oil production in Borneo

Social enterprise emergence from social movement activism:the Fairphone case

Effectuation theory invests agency—intention and purposeful enactment—for a new venture creation in the entrepreneurial actor(s). Based on the results of a 15-month in-depth longitudinal case study of Amsterdam-based social enterprise Fairphone, we argue that effectual entrepreneurial agency is co-constituted by distributed agency, the proactive conferral of material resources and legitimacy to an eventual entrepreneur by heterogeneous actors external to a new venture. In the context of social movement activism, we show how an effectual network pre-committed resources to an inchoate social enterprise to produce a material artefact because it symbolised moral values of network members. We develop a model of social enterprise emergence based on these findings. We theorise the role of material artefacts in effectuation theory and suggest that, in the case, the artefact served as a boundary object, present in multiple social words and triggering commitment from actors not governed by hierarchical arrangements

Extinction and the Dimming of KIC 8462852

To test alternative hypotheses for the behavior of KIC 8462852, we obtained measurements of the star over a wide wavelength range from the UV to the mid-infrared from October 2015 through December 2016, using Swift, Spitzer and at AstroLAB IRIS. The star faded in a manner similar to the long-term fading seen in Kepler data about 1400 days previously. The dimming rate for the entire period reported is 22.1 +\- 9.7 milli-mag/yr in the Swift wavebands, with amounts of 21.0 +\- 4.5 mmag in the groundbased B measurements, 14.0 +\- 4.5 mmag in V, and 13.0 +\- 4.5 in R, and a rate of 5.0 +\- 1.2 mmag/yr averaged over the two warm Spitzer bands. Although the dimming is small, it is seen at >= 3 sigma by three different observatories operating from the UV to the IR. The presence of long-term secular dimming means that previous SED models of the star based on photometric measurements taken years apart may not be accurate. We find that stellar models with T_{eff} = 7000 - 7100 K and A_V ~ 0.73 best fit the Swift data from UV to optical. These models also show no excess in the near-simultaneous Spitzer photometry at 3.6 and 4.5 microns, although a longer wavelength excess from a substantial debris disk is still possible (e.g., as around Fomalhaut). The wavelength dependence of the fading favors a relatively neutral color (i.e., R_V >= 5, but not flat across all the bands) compared with the extinction law for the general ISM (R_V = 3.1), suggesting that the dimming arises from circumstellar material.Comment: accepted by the Astrophysical Journal; acknowledgements revised 9/1/201