Sabotage in Contests: A Survey

A contest is a situation in which individuals expend irretrievable resources to win valuable prize(s). ‘Sabotage’ is a deliberate and costly act of damaging a rival’s' likelihood of winning the contest. Sabotage can be observed in, e.g., sports, war, promotion tournaments, political or marketing campaigns. In this article, we provide a model and various perspectives on such sabotage activities and review the economics literature analyzing the act of sabotage in contests. We discuss the theories and evidence highlighting the means of sabotage, why sabotage occurs, and the effects of sabotage on individual players and on overall welfare, along with possible mechanisms to reduce sabotage. We note that most sabotage activities are aimed at the ablest player, the possibility of sabotage reduces productive effort exerted by the players, and sabotage may lessen the effectiveness of public policies, such as affirmative action, or information revelation in contests. We discuss various policies that a designer may employ to counteract sabotage activities. We conclude by pointing out some areas of future research

Cross-sectional associations between occupational factors and musculoskeletal pain in women teachers, nurses and sonographers

A. Technical measurements of the physical workload. (DOCX 18 kb

NeOProM: Neonatal Oxygenation Prospective Meta-analysis Collaboration study protocol

Background: The appropriate level of oxygenation for extremely preterm neonates ( 90%) have been reported to have greater rates of morbidity including retinopathy of prematurity and chronic lung disease. In order to answer this clinical dilemma reliably, large scale trial evidence is needed.Methods/Design: To detect a small but important 4% increase in death or severe disability in survivors, over 5000 neonates would need to be recruited. As extreme prematurity affects 1% of births, such a project undertaken by one trial group would be prohibitively lengthy and expensive. Hence, the Neonatal Oxygenation Prospective Meta-analysis (NeOProM) Collaboration has been formed. A prospective meta-analysis (PMA) is one where studies are identified, evaluated, and determined to be eligible before the results of any included studies are known or published, thereby avoiding some of the potential biases inherent in standard, retrospective meta-analyses. This methodology provides the same strengths as a single large-scale multicentre randomised study whilst allowing greater pragmatic flexibility. The NeOProM Collaboration protocol (NCT01124331) has been agreed prior to the results of individual trials being available. This includes pre-specifying the hypotheses, inclusion criteria and outcome measures to be used. Each trial will first publish their respective results as they become available and the combined meta-analytic results, using individual patient data, will be published when all trials are complete. The primary outcome to be assessed is a composite outcome of death or major disability at 18 months - 2 years corrected age. Secondary outcomes include several measures of neonatal morbidity. The size of the combined dataset will allow the effect of the interventions to be explored more reliably with respect to pre-specified patient- and intervention-level characteristics.Discussion: Results should be available by 2014

Secure Digital Pseudonyms for Privacy and Liability

OF THE MASTER'S THESIS Author and name of the thesis: Juho Heikkili: Secure Digital Pseudonyms for Privacy and Liability Date: 28.05.2002 Number of Pages: 56 Faculty: Dep. of Electrical and Communications Engineering Professorship: Interactive Digital Media (T- 111) Supervisor: Instructor: Ursula Holmstr6m, M.Sc