Why physicians switch electronic health record vendors

There are many factors involved when a physician chooses to switch Electronic Health Record [EHR.] vendors including system functionality, cost, poor customer service, company reputation, platform of software, meaningful use certification, and various others. The purpose of this research study was to locate the various reasons that lead to switching vendors and the barriers and benefits associated with doing so. System functionality and cost were the two largest deciding factors in switching vendors. Shifting regulatory standards require additional functionality to fulfill quality reporting measures including the Meaningful Use and Physician Quality Reporting Systems standards and many physicians and health systems have decided to switch vendors in order to accommodate these requirements. Despite the associated costs with switching, many physicians and health systems have decided to switch vendors in order to receive the additional functionality, reporting, and platform benefits associated with a new vendor or records system

Intermediate Representations for Controllers in Chip Generators

Creating parameterized “chip generators” has been proposed as one way to decrease chip NRE costs. While many approaches are available for creating or generating flexible data path elements, the design of flexible controllers is more problematic. The most common approach is to create a microcoded engine as the controller, which offers flexibility through programmable table-based lookup functions. This paper shows that after “programming” the hardware for the desired application, or applications, these flexible controller designs can be easily converted to efficient fixed (or less programmable) solutions using partial evaluation capabilities that are already present in most synthesis tools

Hybrid Architecture Performance and Evaluation for Quantitative and Comparative Analysis

As space becomes an increasingly heterogeneous blend of multi-national commercial, civil, and government systems, additional capability can be leveraged by taking a hybrid approach to space-based services. The choice of service provider must be weighed against requirements such as timeliness, quality, and confidence in the results. We present a method to quantitatively evaluate the overall performance of any space architecture from traditional monolithic systems to fully hybrid systems-of-systems that blend contributions from multiple providers with distinct capabilities. The results can inform operational, planning, and acquisition decisions for both current and future space missions

Contagion of Self-Fulfilling Financial Crises due to diversification of investment portfolios’,

ABSTRACT We explore a model with two countries. Each might be subject to a self-fulfilling crisis, induced by agents withdrawing their investments in the fear that others will do so. While the fundamentals of the two countries are independent, the fact that they share the same group of investors may generate a contagion of crises. The realization of a crisis in one country reduces agents' wealth and thus makes them more risk averse (we assume decreasing absolute risk aversion). This reduces their incentive to maintain their investments in the second country since doing so exposes them to the strategic risk associated with the unknown behavior of other agents. Consequently, the probability of a crisis in the second country increases. This yields a positive correlation between the returns on investments in the two countries even though they are completely independent in terms of fundamentals. We discuss the effect of diversification on the probabilities of crises and on welfare. Finally, we discuss the applicability of the model to real world episodes of contagion

Nighttime chemical transformation in biomass burning plumes : A box model analysis initialized with aircraft observations

Biomass burning (BB) is a large source of reactive compounds in the atmosphere. While the daytime photochemistry of BB emissions has been studied in some detail, there has been little focus on nighttime reactions despite the potential for substantial oxidative and heterogeneous chemistry. Here, we present the first analysis of nighttime aircraft intercepts of agricultural BB plumes using observations from the NOAA WP-3D aircraft during the 2013 Southeast Nexus (SENEX) campaign. We use these observations in conjunction with detailed chemical box modeling to investigate the formation and fate of oxidants (NO3, N2O5, O3, and OH) and BB volatile organic compounds (BBVOCs), using emissions representative of agricultural burns (rice straw) and western wildfires (ponderosa pine). Field observations suggest NO3 production was approximately 1 ppbv hr–1, while NO3 and N2O5 were at or below 3 pptv, indicating rapid NO3/N2O5 reactivity. Model analysis shows that >99% of NO3/N2O5 loss is due to BBVOC + NO3 reactions rather than aerosol uptake of N2O5. Nighttime BBVOC oxidation for rice straw and ponderosa pine fires is dominated by NO3 (72, 53%, respectively) but O3 oxidation is significant (25, 43%), leading to roughly 55% overnight depletion of the most reactive BBVOCs and NO2

Assessing agro-ecological practices using a combination of three sustainability assessment tools

This paper is based on results from the research project UNISECO, which is funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 773901.We would like to thank all the farmers, farm organisations and stakeholders of the multi-actor platforms of the UNISECO project who contributed to the data collection. We also like to thank Andreas Basler whose corrections improved the comprehensibility of the paper.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Episodic liquidity crises: cooperative and predatory trading,”

ABSTRACT We describe how episodic illiquidity arises from a breakdown in cooperation between market participants. We first solve a one-period trading game in continuous-time, using an asset pricing equation that accounts for the price impact of trading. Then, in a multi-period framework, we describe an equilibrium in which traders cooperate most of the time through repeated interaction and provide 'apparent liquidity' to each other. Cooperation breaks down when the stakes are high, leading to predatory trading and episodic illiquidity. Equilibrium strategies involving cooperation across markets lead to less frequent episodic illiquidity, but cause contagion when cooperation breaks down. * Bruce Ian Carlin, Miguel Sousa Lobo, and S. Viswanathan are from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. The authors would like to than