The Industrialization of "Liberal Medicine" in France: A Labor Quality Conventions Approach

This article seeks to analyze the evolution of the regulation of liberal medicine in France from the theoretical framework of the economics of convention. The recent introduction by the state of multiple management devices aimed at quantifying and evaluating the performance of physicians could be interpreted as a process of rationalization of medical practices. However, we propose to analyze the transformations in the regulation of liberal medicine as the transition from an inspired/domestic convention of healthcare quality to an industrial convention of healthcare quality. What is at stake is not improving the quality of care, but changing the conception of quality. Do doctors treat sick people or illnesses? This induces significant changes not only in the entire healthcare system but also in medical ethics. While the profession has historically been built against the market, it seems that the industrialization of healthcare opens the door to its commodification

Robot traders can prevent extreme events in complex stock markets

If stock markets are complex, monetary policy and even financial regulation may be useless to prevent bubbles and crashes. Here, we suggest the use of robot traders as an anti-bubble decoy. To make our case, we put forward a new stochastic cellular automata model that generates an emergent stock price dynamics as a result of the interaction between traders. After introducing socially integrated robot traders, the stock price dynamics can be controlled, so as to make the market more Gaussian.Stock markets; Robot traders; Financial regulation; Econophysics

Mining the genome for ‘known unknowns’

Bioinformatics is a multidisciplinary area that combines two major areas: Biology and Computer Science. It’s one of the fastest rising areas of investigation nowadays. It’s also a fundamental area for the processing of data and information from discoveries in the genetics area. One area that is prominent in the bioinformatics area is gene prediction, where various tools are available to aid researchers. Even though there are several gene prediction tools available, the most used are from several years back. They are reliable tools, but need optimization and some are not so flexible for modification. Tools created in the past years base their model on previous tools. In this dissertation work, a new model is proposed. Through ORF extraction from proteincoding sequences of a fasta-formatted file that the user inputs, these are compared to a target sequence of the user’s choice. A profile-HMM is used as the model to compare the sequences, returning a Logp value for each ORF compared with the target sequence. Match, insert and delete state probabilities were modified, to find the best scenario. The Viterbi algorithm was used to train the model, due to its speed. The results obtained were concordant with what we expected: That an ORF, which would be in the target sequence, presented a better Logp value than an ORF from a randomly selected sequence.A bioinformática é uma área multidisciplinar que combina duas áreas fundamentais: biologia e ciências da computação. É uma das áreas de investigação que mais está a crescer nos dias de hoje. É também uma área fundamental para o processamento de dados e informação na área da genética. Um ramo prominente na área da bioinformática é a predição de genes. Várias ferramentas encontram-se disponíveis para auxiliar investigadores. Estas ferramentas também se encontram disponíveis ao público em geral. Embora existam várias ferramentas, as mais utilizadas já têm muitos anos. São ferramentas fiáveis porém algumas precisam de ser otimizadas e não são muito flexíveis no que toca à sua modificação. Neste trabalho de dissertação é proposto um novo modelo. Por meio da extração de ORFs a partir de sequências de DNA que codificam para proteínas, inserido pelo usuário em formato fasta, estes são comparados com uma sequência alvo escolhida pelo utilizador. Foi utilizado um Profile-HMM como modelo para comparar as sequências, em que um valor de probabilidade logarítmica (Logp) é devolvido consoante a semelhança entre as sequências comparadas: o ORF e a sequência alvo. Quanto mais semelhantes forem as sequências comparadas, melhor será o valor da probabilidade logarítmica. Foram criados vários cenários de modo a ver qual seria a melhor forma de implementar o Profile-HMM. Nestes, os estados de correspondência, inserção e deleção foram modificados, até chegar ao melhor cenário. O algoritmo de Viterbi foi utilizado para treinar o modelo, devido à sua velocidade. Os resultados obtidos pelo modelo foram concordantes com o que esperávamos: um ORF que está presente na sequência alvo terá um valor Logp melhor que um ORF que não está presente na sequência alvo

Medical altruism in mainstream health economics: theoretical and political paradoxes

In the field of healthcare, ethical considerations are omnipresent. The problem is that it is not clear how to introduce professional ethics within the frontiers demarcated by economic rationality. In mainstream economics, medical altruism is defined as the inclusion of the patient’s welfare in the doctor’s utility function. This definition presents two serious problems that we develop in this paper. The first problem is that mainstream theory does not propose a model of authentic altruism because it reduces otherness to a source of utility like any other. The second problemis that ethical and altruistic (instrumental or otherwise) behaviour should not be conflated. By reducing ethics to altruism, mainstream theory prevents any genuine discussion of medical ethics. Then, the thesis of the paper is that the attempt tointroduce altruism into the standard framework creates theoretical paradoxes that create policy dilemma

Aerosol indirect effects on the temperature-precipitation scaling

Aerosols may impact precipitation in a complex way involving their direct and indirect effects. In a previous numerical study, the overall microphysical effect of aerosols was found to weaken precipitation through reduced precipitable water and convective instability. The present study aims to quantify the relative importance of these two processes in the reduction of summer precipitation using temperature-precipitation scaling. Based on a numerical sensitivity experiment conducted in central Europe aiming to isolate indirect effects, the results show that, all others effects being equal, the scaling of hourly convective precipitation with temperature follows the Clausius-Clapeyron (CC) relationship, whereas the decrease in convective precipitation does not scale with the CC law since it is mostly attributable to increased stability with increased aerosol concentration rather than to decreased precipitable water content. This effect is larger at low surface temperatures at which clouds are statistically more frequent and optically thicker. At these temperatures, the increase in stability is mostly linked to the stronger reduction in temperature in the lower troposphere compared to the upper troposphere, which results in lower lapse rates

Exact detection of direct links in networks of interacting dynamical units

Authors NR, EB-M, CG, and MSB acknowledge the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA). EB-M and MSB also acknowledge the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) project Ref. EP/I032 606/1. ACM and CM acknowledge the LINC project (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-ITN, grant no. 289447). ACM also aknowledges PEDECIBA and CSIC(Uruguay). CM also acknowledges grant FIS2012–37655-C02–01 from the Spanish MCI, grant 2009 SGR 1168, and the ICREA Academia programme from the Generalitat de Catalunya.Peer reviewedPublisher PD