Does responsibility affect the public valuation of health care interventions? A relative valuation approach to health care safety

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright © 2012, International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR).Objective - Health services often spend more on safety interventions than seems cost-effective. This study investigates whether the public value safety-related health care improvements more highly than the same improvements in contexts where the health care system is not responsible. Method - An online survey was conducted to elicit the relative importance placed on preventing harms caused by 1) health care (hospital-acquired infections, drug administration errors, injuries to health care staff), 2) individuals (personal lifestyle choices, sports-related injuries), and 3) nature (genetic disorders). Direct valuations were obtained from members of the public by using a person trade-off or “matching” method. Participants were asked to choose between two preventative interventions of equal cost and equal health benefit per person for the same number of people, but differing in causation. If participants indicated a preference, their strength of preference was measured by using person trade-off. Results - Responses were obtained from 1030 people, reflecting the sociodemographic mix of the UK population. Participants valued interventions preventing hospital-acquired infections (1.31) more highly than genetic disorders (1.0), although drug errors were valued similarly to genetic disorders (1.07), and interventions to prevent injury to health care staff were given less weight than genetic disorders (0.71). Less weight was also given to interventions related to lifestyle (0.65) and sports injuries (0.41). Conclusion - Our results suggest that people do not attach a simple fixed premium to “safety-related” interventions but that preferences depend more subtly on context. The use of the results of such public preference surveys to directly inform policy would therefore be premature.Brunel University

Number of adaptive steps to a local fitness peak

We consider a population of genotype sequences evolving on a rugged fitness landscape with many local fitness peaks. The population walks uphill until it encounters a local fitness maximum. We find that the statistical properties of the walk length depend on whether the underlying fitness distribution has a finite mean. If the mean is finite, all the walk length cumulants grow with the sequence length but approach a constant otherwise. Experimental implications of our analytical results are also discussed

Making judgements about students making work : lecturers’ assessment practices in art and design.

This research study explores the assessment practices in two higher education art and design departments. The key aim of this research was to explore art and design studio assessment practices as lived by and experienced by art and design lecturers. This work draws on two bodies of pre existing research. Firstly this study adopted innovative methodological approaches that have been employed to good effect to explore assessment in text based subjects (think aloud) and moderation mark agreement (observation). Secondly the study builds on existing research into the assessment of creative practice. By applying thinking aloud methodologies into a creative practice assessment context the authors seek to illuminate the ‘in practice’ rather than espoused assessment approaches adopted. The analysis suggests that lecturers in the study employed three macro conceptions of quality to support the judgement process. These were; the demonstration of significant learning over time, the demonstration of effective studentship and the presentation of meaningful art/design work

Wound frp for concrete beams with optimised geometries

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018. Fabric formwork is a casting system that uses woven fabrics as the mould for concrete, utilising the fluidity of concrete to create optimised structural geometries. Fabric formed beams normally have variable depth along their longitudinal axis which makes it extremely time and labour consuming to install steel shear links because of this changing geometry. We propose the use of Wound Fibre Reinforced Polymer (WFRP) in which carbon fibres tows coated in wet epoxy matrix are wound around the longitudinal reinforcement to create uniquely shaped reinforcement cages as a practical alternative to steel shear links. In this work, eight tapered beams with varying reinforcement ratios were tested. All the specimens have same clear span and shear span/depth ratio. The influence of the shear reinforcement ratio and the shear reinforcement pattern were investigated. A Modified Compression Field Theory (MCFT) model was built to simulate the performance of the tests. The design codes (ACI 440 2007 and CSA S806 2012) as well as the MCFT model were assessed by the testing results. It is found that the application of WFRP in concrete beams is successful. The fabrication process of the reinforcement cage was easy to construct and enables the fabrication of reinforcement for optimised beam geometries. The test specimens failed in the predicted failure modes and the WFRP can increase shear capacity up to 250%. The MCFT model works more accurately than the two design codes. The shear reinforcement pattern plays an important role in the shear design and there is great potential to optimise the WFRP pattern

Shear Behavior of Variable-Depth Concrete Beams with Wound Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Shear Reinforcement

A novel shear reinforcing system, Wound Fiber Reinforced Polymer (W-FRP), is proposed that capitalizes on the flexibility of carbon fiber to create durable reinforcement cages for geometrically optimized concrete structures, thereby unlocking new potential to minimize carbon emissions associated with new concrete structures. FRP shear design methods have been extensively validated against prismatic beam tests, but variations in geometry are not yet considered. This paper proposes revised design methods, validated against tests on eight W-FRP reinforced variable-depth concrete beams, to examine the contributing factors to shear capacity. It is shown that the corner strength, orientation, and compression concrete confinement provided by W-FRP links, along with the contribution to shear of longitudinal bars are key design parameters. Optimizing the W-FRP pattern is found to provide as much as 50% shear capacity enhancement. The variable-depth geometry tested in this paper use 19% less concrete than an equivalent strength prismatic beam. Both reinforcement and geometry optimizations are the key steps towards achieving minimal material use for concrete structure

Jet Algorithms and Top Quark Mass Measurement

Mass measurements of objects that decay into hadronic jets, such as the top quark, are shown to be improved by using a variant of the $k_t$ jet algorithm in place of standard cone algorithms. The possibility and importance of better estimating the neutrino component in tagged $b$ jets is demonstrated. These techniques will also be useful in the search for Higgs boson $\to b \bar b$.Comment: 35 pages, REVTeX, 14 figures (epsf) Final expanded version to appear in Physical Review

Nonlinear optical response in doped conjugated polymers

Exciton effects on conjugated polymers are investigated in soliton lattice states. We use the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model with long-range Coulomb interactions. The Hartree-Fock (HF) approximation and the single-excitation configuration- interaction (single-CI) method are used to obtain optical absorption spectra. The third-harmonic generation (THG) at off-resonant frequencies is calculated as functions of the soliton concentration and the chain length of the polymer. The magnitude of the THG at the 10 percent doping increases by the factor about 10^2 from that of the neutral system. This is owing to the accumulation of the oscillator strengths at the lowest exciton with increasing the soliton concentration. The increase by the order two is common for several choices of Coulomb interaction strengths.Comment: Accepted for publication in J. Phys.: Condens. Matte

Response to a rabies epidemic in Bali, Indonesia

Emergency vaccinations and culling failed to contain an outbreak of rabies in Bali, Indonesia, during 2008–2009. Subsequent island-wide mass vaccination (reaching 70% coverage, >200,000 dogs) led to substantial declines in rabies incidence and spread. However, the incidence of dog bites remains high, and repeat campaigns are necessary to eliminate rabies in Bali