Constructing an Index for Brand Equity: A Hospital Example

If two hospitals are providing identical services in all respects, except for the brand name, why are customers willing to pay more for one hospital than the other? That is, the brand name is not just a name, but a name that contains value (brand equity). Brand equity is the value that the brand name endows to the product, such that consumers are willing to pay a premium price for products with the particular brand name. Accordingly, a company needs to manage its brand carefully so that its brand equity does not depreciate. Although measuring brand equity is important, managers have no brand equity index that is psychometrically robust and parsimonious enough for practice. Indeed, index construction is quite different from conventional scale development. Moreover, researchers might still be unaware of the potential appropriateness of formative indicators for operationalizing particular constructs. Towards this end, drawing on the brand equity literature and following the index construction procedure, this study creates a brand equity index for a hospital. The results reveal a parsimonious five-indicator brand equity index that can adequately capture the full domain of brand equity. This study also illustrates the differences between index construction and scale development

A Two-stage Architecture for Stock Price Forecasting by Integrating Self-Organizing Map and Support Vector Regression

Stock price prediction has attracted much attention from both practitioners and researchers. However, most studies in this area ignored the non-stationary nature of stock price series. That is, stock price series do not exhibit identical statistical properties at each point of time. As a result, the relationships between stock price series and their predictors are quite dynamic. It is challenging for any single artificial technique to effectively address this problematic characteristics in stock price series. One potential solution is to hybridize different artificial techniques. Towards this end, this study employs a two-stage architecture for better stock price prediction. Specifically, the self-organizing map (SOM) is first used to decompose the whole input space into regions where data points with similar statistical distributions are grouped together, so as to contain and capture the non-stationary property of financial series. After decomposing heterogeneous data points into several homogenous regions, support vector regression (SVR) is applied to forecast financial indices. The proposed technique is empirically tested using stock price series from seven major financial markets. The results show that the performance of stock price prediction can be significantly enhanced by using the two-stage architecture in comparison with a single SVR model

Indirect Targeting of Subthalamic Deep Brain Stimulation Guided by Stereotactic Computed Tomography and Microelectrode Recordings in Patients With Parkinson’s Disease

Objective: Magnetic resonance imaging fusion techniques guided by frame-based stereotactic computed tomography and microelectrode recordings are widely used to target the subthalamic nucleus. However, MRI is not always available. The aim of this study was to determine whether the indirect targeting of the subthalamic nucleus for deep brain stimulation using frame-based stereotactic computed tomography and microelectrode recording guidance in patients with advanced idiopathic Parkinson’s disease was an effective and safe treatment and to determine the factors that contributed to outcome.Methods: Thirty-four consecutive patients with Parkinson’s disease who were treated from 2010 to 2012 were enrolled in this retrospective cohort study. The patients were assessed with the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale-part III (UPDRS-III) and other clinical profiles peri- and post-operatively. The horizontal and vertical distances between the midpoint of the head frame and the brain midline at the septum pellucidum level and the upper edge of the bilateral lens, respectively, on a thin-section brain computed tomography scan were defined as the horizontal and vertical deviations, respectively.Results: After the deep brain stimulation surgery, the patients’ UPDRS-III scores improved 48 ± 2.8% (range, 20–81%) compared to the patients’ baseline off-levodopa scores. No surgery-associated complications were found. The mean recorded length difference of the subthalamic nucleus between the initial and final single microelectrode recording trajectories was 5.37 ± 0.16 mm (range, 3.99–7.50). Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that the increased lengths of the vertical (regression coefficient [B]: -0.0626; 95% confidence interval [CI]: -0.113 to -0.013) and horizontal deviations (B: -0.0497; 95% CI: -0.083 to -0.017) were associated with less improvement in the patients’ UPDRS scores.Conclusion: These results showed that the indirect targeting of the subthalamic nucleus for deep brain stimulation using frame-based stereotactic computed tomography and microelectrode recording guidance in patients with advanced idiopathic Parkinson’s disease was effective and safe. Greater symmetry of the head frame fixation resulted in better outcomes of the deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus in patients with Parkinson’s disease, especially when the horizontal deviation was 2 mm or less and the vertical deviation was 1 mm or less

Taiwanese Dermatological Association consensus for the management of atopic dermatitis

AbstractBackground/ObjectiveThis report describes the 2014 consensus of the Taiwanese Dermatological Association (TDA) regarding the treatment of atopic dermatitis (AD). The TDA consensus is distributed to practices throughout Taiwan to provide recommendations for therapeutic approaches for AD patients to improve their quality of life.MethodsThe information in the consensus was agreed upon by a panel of national experts at TDA AD consensus meetings held on March 16, May 4, and June 29, 2014. The consensus was in part based on the 2013 Asia–Pacific AD guidelines and the guidelines of the American Academy of Dermatology, with modification to reflect the clinical practice in Taiwan.ResultsThe amendments were drafted after scientific discussions focused on the quality of evidence, risk, and benefits; all the consensus contents were voted on by the participating dermatologists, with approval by at least 75% for inclusion.ConclusionThe consensus provides a comprehensive overview of treatment for AD, with some local and cultural considerations for practitioners in Taiwan, especially the use of wet dressings/wraps, systemic immunomodulatory agents, and complementary therapies

Women with endometriosis have higher comorbidities: Analysis of domestic data in Taiwan

AbstractEndometriosis, defined by the presence of viable extrauterine endometrial glands and stroma, can grow or bleed cyclically, and possesses characteristics including a destructive, invasive, and metastatic nature. Since endometriosis may result in pelvic inflammation, adhesion, chronic pain, and infertility, and can progress to biologically malignant tumors, it is a long-term major health issue in women of reproductive age. In this review, we analyze the Taiwan domestic research addressing associations between endometriosis and other diseases. Concerning malignant tumors, we identified four studies on the links between endometriosis and ovarian cancer, one on breast cancer, two on endometrial cancer, one on colorectal cancer, and one on other malignancies, as well as one on associations between endometriosis and irritable bowel syndrome, one on links with migraine headache, three on links with pelvic inflammatory diseases, four on links with infertility, four on links with obesity, four on links with chronic liver disease, four on links with rheumatoid arthritis, four on links with chronic renal disease, five on links with diabetes mellitus, and five on links with cardiovascular diseases (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, etc.). The data available to date support that women with endometriosis might be at risk of some chronic illnesses and certain malignancies, although we consider the evidence for some comorbidities to be of low quality, for example, the association between colon cancer and adenomyosis/endometriosis. We still believe that the risk of comorbidity might be higher in women with endometriosis than that we supposed before. More research is needed to determine whether women with endometriosis are really at risk of these comorbidities

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis

Impacts of the Tropical Pacific/Indian Oceans on the Seasonal Cycle of the West African Monsoon

The current consensus is that drought has developed in the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of remote effects of oceanic anomalies amplified by local land–atmosphere interactions. This paper focuses on the impacts of oceanic anomalies upon West African climate and specifically aims to identify those from SST anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Oceans during spring and summer seasons, when they were significant. Idealized sensitivity experiments are performed with four atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). The prescribed SST patterns used in the AGCMs are based on the leading mode of covariability between SST anomalies over the Pacific/Indian Oceans and summer rainfall over West Africa. The results show that such oceanic anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Ocean lead to a northward shift of an anomalous dry belt from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel as the season advances. In the Sahel, the magnitude of rainfall anomalies is comparable to that obtained by other authors using SST anomalies confined to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. The mechanism connecting the Pacific/Indian SST anomalies with West African rainfall has a strong seasonal cycle. In spring (May and June), anomalous subsidence develops over both the Maritime Continent and the equatorial Atlantic in response to the enhanced equatorial heating. Precipitation increases over continental West Africa in association with stronger zonal convergence of moisture. In addition, precipitation decreases over the Gulf of Guinea. During the monsoon peak (July and August), the SST anomalies move westward over the equatorial Pacific and the two regions where subsidence occurred earlier in the seasons merge over West Africa. The monsoon weakens and rainfall decreases over the Sahel, especially in August.Peer reviewe

Search for heavy resonances decaying to two Higgs bosons in final states containing four b quarks

A search is presented for narrow heavy resonances X decaying into pairs of Higgs bosons (H) in proton-proton collisions collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at root s = 8 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb(-1). The search considers HH resonances with masses between 1 and 3 TeV, having final states of two b quark pairs. Each Higgs boson is produced with large momentum, and the hadronization products of the pair of b quarks can usually be reconstructed as single large jets. The background from multijet and t (t) over bar events is significantly reduced by applying requirements related to the flavor of the jet, its mass, and its substructure. The signal would be identified as a peak on top of the dijet invariant mass spectrum of the remaining background events. No evidence is observed for such a signal. Upper limits obtained at 95 confidence level for the product of the production cross section and branching fraction sigma(gg -> X) B(X -> HH -> b (b) over barb (b) over bar) range from 10 to 1.5 fb for the mass of X from 1.15 to 2.0 TeV, significantly extending previous searches. For a warped extra dimension theory with amass scale Lambda(R) = 1 TeV, the data exclude radion scalar masses between 1.15 and 1.55 TeV