The performance of local government in the execution of public works

This paper aims at analysing the procurement of public works paying attention to the level of government involved. Such an issue has not received so far attention in the literature on fiscal federalism nor in the public works procurement literature. We focus the attention upon the execution stage of public works: indeed, their efficient provision and their capability to deliver the planned benefits are severely affected by the problems arising at the execution stage because of the incompleteness of the underlying contract. The main result is that local governments seem to be less efficient in the management of the execution process, suffering from longer delays than central government. This phenomenon is more severe for small municipalities and when the contract is mainly financed with external resources.public procurement; local government; soft budget

Autothermal slow pyrolysis of poplar wood chips in an auger reactor

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Rhinoplasty in Context of Head and Neck Malignancy

Head and neck tumors comprise of multiple epithelial and solid tumors which include nasal cavity and paranasal sinus tumors. Occasionally, the surgical treatment strategy incorporates rhinoplasty procedure in order to achieve better tumor control, preserve function, and attain better cosmetic outcomes. The rhinoplasty is mainly involved with the surgical procedures that intervene with the nasal structure in order to improve the function of the nose along with optimal cosmetic objective acquisition. Multiple surgical procedures and approaches have been introduced in the past decades in refining techniques of rhinoplasty, and it continues to evolve. Most of the times, the procedure is combined with usage of synthetic products, grafts, and biomaterials, in order to ascertain the best outcomes for each of these procedures. In the head and neck oncology arena, rhinoplasty is often performed in combination with other surgical procedures, and it is mainly to improve patient’s nasal and sinus functions and cosmesis as well as to enhance quality of life of any given head and neck patients

The performance of local government in the execution of public works

This paper aims at analysing the procurement of public works paying attention to the level of government involved. Such an issue has not received so far attention in the literature on fiscal federalism nor in the public works procurement literature. We focus the attention upon the execution stage of public works: indeed, their efficient provision and their capability to deliver the planned benefits are severely affected by the problems arising at the execution stage because of the incompleteness of the underlying contract. The main result is that local governments seem to be less efficient in the management of the execution process, suffering from longer delays than central government. This phenomenon is more severe for small municipalities and when the contract is mainly financed with external resources

The performance of local government in the execution of public works

This paper aims at analysing the procurement of public works paying attention to the level of government involved. Such an issue has not received so far attention in the literature on fiscal federalism nor in the public works procurement literature. We focus the attention upon the execution stage of public works: indeed, their efficient provision and their capability to deliver the planned benefits are severely affected by the problems arising at the execution stage because of the incompleteness of the underlying contract. The main result is that local governments seem to be less efficient in the management of the execution process, suffering from longer delays than central government. This phenomenon is more severe for small municipalities and when the contract is mainly financed with external resources

Known and unknown event detection in OTDR traces by deep learning networks

Optical fiber links are customarily monitored by Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR), an optoelectronic instrument that measures the scattered or reflected light along the fiber and returns a signal, namely the OTDR trace. OTDR traces are typically analyzed by experts in laboratories or by hand-crafted algorithms running in embedded systems to localize critical events occurring along the fiber. In this work, we address the problem of automatically detecting optical events in OTDR traces through a deep learning model that can be deployed in embedded systems. In particular, we take inspiration from Faster R-CNN and present the first 1D object-detection neural network for OTDR traces. Thanks to an ad-hoc preprocessing pipeline for OTDR traces, we can also identify unknown events, namely events that are not represented in training data but that might indicate rare and unforeseen situations that need to be reported. The resulting network brings several advantages with respect to existing solutions, as these typically classify fixed-size windows of OTDR traces, thus are less accurate in the localization. Moreover, existing solutions do not report events that cannot be safely associated to any label in the training set. Our experiments, performed on real OTDR traces, show very promising performance, and can be directly executed on embedded OTDR devices

Prevention and treatment of infectious complications after urogenital prosthesis surgery

Prostheses are widely used in urogenital surgery for many decades and have gained a fundamental role in the management of multiple diseases with good results in terms of functionality, aesthetic outcomes and patients\u2019 satisfaction. It is remarkable that prosthetic device vary in term of mechanical sophistication, costs and surgical implantation techniques ranging from simple device widely used in urological practice like testicular prosthesis to highly sophisticated devices as Inflatable Penile Prosthesis (IPP) and Artificial Urinary Sphincter (AUS). Despite continuous implementations of the devices and improvements of surgical implantation techniques infective complications are still fearful and not uncommon events. Risk of infection depends on patients\u2019 individual features, perioperative strategies, implantation techniques and prosthetic devices. Prevent these complications is imperative because the management of prosthesis infection requires removal of the device in most cases. Centres that plan prosthetic implantations should based on these strategies protocols in order to prevent as far as possible infective complications

Outcomes of hepatocellular carcinoma patients treated with sorafenib: A meta-analysis of Phase III trials

Aim: To benchmark overall survival (OS) and time to radiological progression (TTP) of patients enrolled in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assessing sorafenib in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma using individual participant survival data, and to meta-analyze prognostic factors for OS and TTP. Methods: RCTs were identified through literature search until December 2018. Individual participant survival was reconstructed with an algorithm from published Kaplan–Meier curves. Results: Ten RCTs were included. Median OS was 10.0 months (95% CI: 9.6–10.5), and median TTP was 4.1 months (95% CI: 3.8–4.3). Multivariable analyses showed HCV positivity, absence of macrovascular invasion and extra-hepatic disease as predictors of longer OS. Conclusion: We provided a benchmark for future studies on sorafenib. The present results can be used in the decision making for the early shift to second-line strategy