7,715 research outputs found
Cultural Influence and the Effective Use of Security Awareness in Congolese Organizations
In todayâs global economy, there is a growing need to apply technological advancements as well as training and awareness materials from western countries on information security programs in developing nations. To understand the underlying drivers of employeesâ effective use behaviors in relation to security awareness programs in organizations, this study examines the extrinsic and intrinsic motivation factors that influence employees located in developing nations. The results indicate that influencing employeesâ attitudes toward security is a better predictor of employeesâ effective use of security awareness programs than their intention to comply. Cultural effects has also proven to have an influence on employeesâ effective use of security awareness programs
Framing Climate Policy Debates: Science, Network, and U.S. Congress, 1976-2007
Debates on global climate change (GCC) have been heavily influenced by such factors as scientific evidence, media coverage, public concerns, partisan interest, and so forth. Focusing on the linkages among the congressional committees, hearings, and invited witnesses (and their sectors), this study investigates the relational conditions under which congressional committees have mobilized climate expertise to discuss climate change issues for the past decades in U.S. Congress. Our findings show that agenda setting and witness selection by the committees significantly differed across the party lines: more environmental scientists were invited to define GCC as a threat in Democratic Congresses, whereas industrial scientists, to search for solutions in Republican Congresses. Except for a few proactive committees, committee jurisdiction was limitedly exercised. Our findings presents strong evidence along which climate policy debates have been framed based on a biased input of climate expertise
Isolating Triggered Star Formation
Galaxy pairs provide a potentially powerful means of studying triggered star
formation from galaxy interactions. We use a large cosmological N-body
simulation coupled with a well-tested semi-analytic substructure model to
demonstrate that the majority of galaxies in close pairs reside within cluster
or group-size halos and therefore represent a biased population, poorly suited
for direct comparison to ``field'' galaxies. Thus, the frequent observation
that some types of galaxies in pairs have redder colors than ``field'' galaxies
is primarily a selection effect. We select galaxy pairs that are isolated in
their dark matter halos with respect to other massive subhalos (N=2 halos) and
a control sample of isolated galaxies (N=1 halos) for comparison. We then apply
these selection criteria to a volume-limited subset of the 2dF Galaxy Redshift
Survey with M_Bj <= -19 and obtain the first clean measure of the typical
fraction of galaxies affected by triggered star formation and the average
elevation in the star formation rate. We find that 24% (30.5%) of these L^\star
and sub-L^{\star} galaxies in isolated 50 (30) kpc/h pairs exhibit star
formation that is boosted by a factor of >~ 5 above their average past value,
while only 10% of isolated galaxies in the control sample show this level of
enhancement. Thus, 14% (20 %) of the galaxies in these close pairs show clear
triggered star formation. The isolation criteria we develop provide a means to
constrain star formation and feedback prescriptions in hydrodynamic simulations
and a very general method of understanding the importance of triggered star
formation in a cosmological context. (Abridged.)Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, emulateapj format, accepted by Ap
Cellular Automata and Ultra-Discrete Painlev\'e Equations
Starting from integrable cellular automata we present a novel form of
Painlev\'e equations. These equations are discrete in both the independent
variable and the dependent one. We show that they capture the essence of the
behavior of the Painlev\'e equations organizing themselves into a coalescence
cascade and possessing special solutions. A necessary condition for the
integrability of cellular automata is also presented.Comment: 8 pages, plainTeX, 2 figure
Internal Thoracic Artery Collateral to the External Iliac Artery in Chronic Aortoiliac Occlusive Disease
Objective To evaluate the incidence and angiographic findings of the collateral pathway involving the internal thoracic artery in patients with chronic aortoiliac occlusive disease. Materials and Methods Between March 2000 and Februrary 2001, 124 patients at our hospital underwent angiographic evaluation of chronic aortoiliac occlusive disease, and in 15 of these complete obstruction or severe stenosis of the aortoiliac artery was identified. The aortograms and collateral arteriograms obtained, including internal thoracic arteriograms, as well as the medical records of the patients involved, were evaluated. Results In nine patients there was complete occlusion of the infrarenal aorta, or diffuse stenosis of 75% or more in the descending thoracic aorta, and in the other six, a patent aorta but complete occlusion or stenosis of 75% or more of the common iliac artery was demonstrated. Collateral perfusion via hypertrophied internal thoracic arteries and rich anastomoses between the superior and inferior epigastric arteries, reconstituting the external iliac artery, were noted in all fifteen patients, regardless of symptom duration, which ranged from six months to twelve years. Conclusion In patients with chronic aortoiliac occlusive disease, the internal thoracic artery, along with visceral collaterals and those from the contralateral side, is one of the major parietal collateral pathways.ope
String Effective Actions and Cosmological Stability of Scalar Potentials
The cosmology of the string effective action, including one loop string
threshold corrections, is analyzed for static compactifications. The stability
of the minima of a general supersymmetry breaking potential is studied in the
presence of radiation. In particular, it is shown that the radiation bath makes
the minima with negative cosmological constant unstable.Comment: 10 pages + 7 figures (not included but available upon request
NEQAIR96,Nonequilibrium and Equilibrium Radiative Transport and Spectra Program: User's Manual
This document is the User's Manual for a new version of the NEQAIR computer program, NEQAIR96. The program is a line-by-line and a line-of-sight code. It calculates the emission and absorption spectra for atomic and diatomic molecules and the transport of radiation through a nonuniform gas mixture to a surface. The program has been rewritten to make it easy to use, run faster, and include many run-time options that tailor a calculation to the user's requirements. The accuracy and capability have also been improved by including the rotational Hamiltonian matrix formalism for calculating rotational energy levels and Hoenl-London factors for dipole and spin-allowed singlet, doublet, triplet, and quartet transitions. Three sample cases are also included to help the user become familiar with the steps taken to produce a spectrum. A new user interface is included that uses check location, to select run-time options and to enter selected run data, making NEQAIR96 easier to use than the older versions of the code. The ease of its use and the speed of its algorithms make NEQAIR96 a valuable educational code as well as a practical spectroscopic prediction and diagnostic code
A strategy to identify event specific hospitalizations in large health claims databases
Background: Health insurance claims data offer a unique opportunity to study disease distribution on a large scale. Challenges arise in the process of accurately analyzing these raw data. One important challenge to overcome is the accurate classification of study outcomes. For example, using claims data, there is no clear way of classifying hospitalizations due to a specific event. This is because of the inherent disjointedness and lack of context that typically come with raw claims data.
Methods: In this paper, we propose a framework for classifying hospitalizations due to a specific event. We then tested this framework in a private health insurance claims database (Symphony) with approximately 4 million US adults who tested positive with COVID-19 between March and December 2020. Our claims specific COVID-19 related hospitalizations proportion is then compared to nationally reported rates from the Centers for Disease Control by age.
Results: Across all ages (18 +) the total percentage of Symphony patients who met our definition of hospitalized due to COVID-19 was 7.3% which was similar to the CDCâs estimate of 7.5%. By age group, defined by the CDC, our estimates vs. the CDCâs estimates were 18â49: 2.7% vs. 3%, 50â64: 8.2% vs. 9.2%, and 65 + : 14.6% vs. 28.1%.
Conclusions: The proposed methodology is a rigorous way to define event specific hospitalizations in claims data. This methodology can be extended to many different types of events and used on a variety of different types of claims databases
Use of groundwater lifetime expectancy for the performance assessment of a deep geologic waste repository: 1. Theory, illustrations, and implications
Long-term solutions for the disposal of toxic wastes usually involve
isolation of the wastes in a deep subsurface geologic environment. In the case
of spent nuclear fuel, if radionuclide leakage occurs from the engineered
barrier, the geological medium represents the ultimate barrier that is relied
upon to ensure safety. Consequently, an evaluation of radionuclide travel times
from a repository to the biosphere is critically important in a performance
assessment analysis. In this study, we develop a travel time framework based on
the concept of groundwater lifetime expectancy as a safety indicator. Lifetime
expectancy characterizes the time that radionuclides will spend in the
subsurface after their release from the repository and prior to discharging
into the biosphere. The probability density function of lifetime expectancy is
computed throughout the host rock by solving the backward-in-time solute
transport adjoint equation subject to a properly posed set of boundary
conditions. It can then be used to define optimal repository locations. The
risk associated with selected sites can be evaluated by simulating an
appropriate contaminant release history. The utility of the method is
illustrated by means of analytical and numerical examples, which focus on the
effect of fracture networks on the uncertainty of evaluated lifetime
expectancy.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures; Water Resources Research, Vol. 44, 200
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