Cosmic acceleration: Inhomogeneity versus vacuum energy

In this essay, I present an alternative explanation for the cosmic acceleration which appears as a consequence of recent high redshift Supernova data. In the usual interpretation, this cosmic acceleration is explained by the presence of a positive cosmological constant or vacuum energy, in the background of Friedmann models. Instead, I will consider a Local Rotational Symmetric (LRS) inhomogeneous spacetime, with a barotropic equation of state for the cosmic matter. Within this framework the kinematical acceleration of the cosmic fluid or, equivalently, the inhomogeneity of matter, is just the responsible of the SNe Ia measured cosmic acceleration. Although in our model the Cosmological Principle is relaxed, it maintains local isotropy about our worldline in agreement with the CBR experiments.Comment: LATEX, 7 pags, no figs, Honorable Mention in the 1999 Essay Competition of the Gravity Research Foundatio

Ramy prawne referendum w irańskim kontekście konstytucyjnym

In democratic regimes, the participation of citizens in the enforcement of political power constitutes the keystone of the legitimacy of sovereignty. Allowing and valuing the popular will in the political management of a country is necessary for the continuation of the legitimacy of sovereignty. Hence, political systems are still exploring the methods of establishing direct democracy in parallel to representative democracy. Referendum is a form of establishing direct democracy that is based on public votes on political and legal affairs. The legal organization of different kinds of direct democracy is explained in the constitutions. Among the methods of direct democracy, only referendums on the amendment of the constitution, political referendums, and legislative referendums have been recognized in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although a referendum on the establishment of the Islamic Republic political system and a referendum on the amendment of the Constitution have been held in the legal history of Iran, no legislative referendum has been conducted so far. Senior state officials may propose a referendum and referendums can be held on special and critically important occasions. Regarding the theocratic nature of the Iranian political system, the validity of referendums is contingent upon non-contradiction between the subject of the referendum and the principles of Islamic law. This article explores the legal dimensions of conducting referendums in the Iranian constitutional context with a descriptive-analytical approach.W reżimach demokratycznych udział obywateli w egzekwowaniu władzy politycznej stanowi podstawę suwerenności. Zezwolenie i docenienie woli ludu w politycznym zarządzaniu krajem jest konieczne dla utrzymania legitymacji suwerenności. Dlatego systemy polityczne wciąż badają metody ustanowienia demokracji bezpośredniej równolegle z demokracją przedstawicielską. Referendum jest formą ustanowienia demokracji bezpośredniej opartej na głosowaniu publicznym w sprawach politycznych i prawnych. Prawna organizacja różnych rodzajów demokracji bezpośredniej jest wyjaśniona w konstytucjach. Wśród metod demokracji bezpośredniej tylko referenda w sprawie zmiany konstytucji, referendum polityczne i referendum legislacyjne zostały uznane w Konstytucji Islamskiej Republiki Iranu. Chociaż w prawnej historii Iranu odbyło się referendum w sprawie ustanowienia systemu politycznego Republiki Islamskiej i referendum w sprawie zmiany Konstytucji, jak dotąd nie przeprowadzono referendum legislacyjnego. Wyżsi urzędnicy państwowi mogą zaproponować referendum, a referenda mogą odbywać się w wyjątkowych i niezwykle ważnych sytuacjach. Jeśli chodzi o teokratyczny charakter irańskiego systemu politycznego, ważność referendum zależy od braku sprzeczności między przedmiotem referendum a zasadami prawa islamskiego. W tym artykule zbadano prawne wymiary przeprowadzania referendów w irańskim kontekście konstytucyjnym, stosując podejście opisowo-analityczne

M3^3TN: Multi-gate Mixture-of-Experts based Multi-valued Treatment Network for Uplift Modeling

Uplift modeling is a technique used to predict the effect of a treatment (e.g., discounts) on an individual's response. Although several methods have been proposed for multi-valued treatment, they are extended from binary treatment methods. There are still some limitations. Firstly, existing methods calculate uplift based on predicted responses, which may not guarantee a consistent uplift distribution between treatment and control groups. Moreover, this may cause cumulative errors for multi-valued treatment. Secondly, the model parameters become numerous with many prediction heads, leading to reduced efficiency. To address these issues, we propose a novel \underline{M}ulti-gate \underline{M}ixture-of-Experts based \underline{M}ulti-valued \underline{T}reatment \underline{N}etwork (M$^3$TN). M$^3$TN consists of two components: 1) a feature representation module with Multi-gate Mixture-of-Experts to improve the efficiency; 2) a reparameterization module by modeling uplift explicitly to improve the effectiveness. We also conduct extensive experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our M$^3$TN.Comment: ICASSP 202

Private Property Vehicles: The Valuation of Interests in Limited Partnerships

This paper examines the extent to which the valuation of partial interests in private property vehicles should be closely aligned to the valuation of the underlying assets.    A sample of vehicle managers and investors replied to a questionnaire on the qualities of private property vehicles relative to direct property investment. Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique the relative importance of the various advantages and disadvantages of investment in private property vehicles relative to acquisition of the underlying assets are assessed.  The results suggest that the main drivers of the growth of the this sector have been the ability for certain categories of investor to acquire interests in assets that are normally inaccessible due to the amount of specific risk.  Additionally, investors have been attracted by the ability to ‘outsource’ asset management in a manner that minimises perceived agency problems.  It is concluded that deviations from NAV should be expected given that investment in private property vehicles differs from investment in the underlying assets in terms of liquidity, management structures, lot size, financial structure inter alia.  However, reliably appraising the pricing implications of these variations is likely to be extremely difficult due to the lack of secondary market trading and vehicle heterogeneity. Private Property Vehicles, PPV, Valuation

Deriving modified rankin scores from medical records

<p><b>Background and Purpose:</b> Modified Rankin score (mRS) is traditionally graded using a face-to-face or telephone interview. Certain stroke assessment scales can be derived from a review of a patient’s case-record alone. We hypothesized that mRS could be successfully derived from the narrative within patient case-records.</p> <p><b>Methods:</b> Sequential patients attending our cerebrovascular outpatient clinic were included. Two independent, blinded clinicians, trained in mRS, assessed case-records to derive mRS. They scored “certainty” of their grading on a 5-point Likert scale. Agreement between derived and traditional face-to-face mRS was calculated using attribute agreement analysis.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> Fifty patients with a range of disabilities were included. Case-record appraisers were poor at deriving mRS (k=0.34 against standard). Derived mRS grades showed poor agreement between observers (k=0.33). There was no relationship between certainty of derived mRS and proportion of correct grades (P=0.727).</p> <p><b>Conclusion:</b> Accurate mRS cannot be derived from standard hospital records. Direct mRS interview is still required for clinical trials.</p&gt

Purchasing Efficiency Measurement of Selected Electric Vehicles in the United States Utilizing Data Envelopment Analysis

Consumers today face an ever-increasing number of choices when deciding what purchases to make. Nowhere is this more apparent than the market for vehicles. Many factors affect a consumer’s ultimate decision of what vehicle to purchase or lease. Further, electric vehicles present the consumer with additional unique considerations. This study evaluates the decision making process used by consumers in purchasing an electric vehicle. The decision making units (DMUs) used in this research include manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), range in miles, miles per gallon equivalent (MPGe), cargo space in cubic feet, and charge time in hours. These variables are factors commonly of interest to consumers. Further, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been applied to determine the relative efficiencies of twelve consumer electric vehicles currently on the market; eight electric vehicles were found to be efficient choices and four were found to be inefficient. Included in this study are suggestions on how auto manufacturers can improve the efficiency of vehicles deemed inefficient

Energy Quantisation and Time Parameterisation

We show that if space is compact, then trajectories cannot be defined in the framework of quantum Hamilton--Jacobi equation. The starting point is the simple observation that when the energy is quantized it is not possible to make variations with respect to the energy, and the time parameterisation t-t_0=\partial_E S_0, implied by Jacobi's theorem and that leads to group velocity, is ill defined. It should be stressed that this follows directly form the quantum HJ equation without any axiomatic assumption concerning the standard formulation of quantum mechanics. This provides a stringent connection between the quantum HJ equation and the Copenhagen interpretation. Together with tunneling and the energy quantization theorem for confining potentials, formulated in the framework of quantum HJ equation, it leads to the main features of the axioms of quantum mechanics from a unique geometrical principle. Similarly to the case of the classical HJ equation, this fixes its quantum analog by requiring that there exist point transformations, rather than canonical ones, leading to the trivial hamiltonian. This is equivalent to a basic cocycle condition on the states. Such a cocycle condition can be implemented on compact spaces, so that continuous energy spectra are allowed only as a limiting case. Remarkably, a compact space would also imply that the Dirac and von Neumann formulations of quantum mechanics essentially coincide. We suggest that there is a definition of time parameterisation leading to trajectories in the context of the quantum HJ equation having the probabilistic interpretation of the Copenhagen School.Comment: 11 pages. The main addition concerns a discussion on the variational principle in the case of discrete energy spectra (Jacobi's Theorem). References adde

Analysis of the Literature on Emergency Department Throughput

Introduction: The purpose of this paper was to review and analyze all the literature concerning ED patient throughput. The secondary goal was to determine if certain factors would significantly alter patients’ ED throughput.Methods: A MEDLINE search was performed from 1966 to 2007 using the terms “turnaround,” “emergency departments,” “emergency medicine,” “efficiency,” “throughput,” “overcrowding” and “crowding.” Studies were graded using a scale of one to four based on the ACEP paper quality criteria. Inclusion criteria were English language and at least a level four or better on the quality scale. An analysis of successful procedures and techniques was performed.Results: Literature search using the key terms found 29 articles on turnaround times, 129 on ED efficiency, 3 on throughput, 64 on overcrowding and 52 on crowding. Twenty-six articles were found to meet the inclusion criteria. There were three level I studies, thirteen level II studies, five level III studies and five level IV studies. The studies were categorized into five areas: determinants (7), laboratories processes (4), triage process (3), academic responsibilities (2), and techniques (10). Few papers used the same techniques or process to examine or reduce patient throughput precluding a meta-analysis.Conclusions: An analysis of the literature was difficult because of varying study methodologies and less than ideal quality. EDs with combinations of low inpatient census, in-room registration, point of care testing and an urgent care area demonstrated increased patient throughput. [WestJEM. 2009;10:104-109.