Organizational Risk Perception of Disasters: Do Risk Managers Matter?

Previous research on risk perception suggests that individual neglect of disasters is likely due to an inability to process information about low-probability, high-consequence threats and moral hazard. As a result, it is important to study the quality of organizational responses to disasters, since they may be crucial to compensating for the frailty of individual choice. Preliminary evidence suggests that an organizational risk manager is important in disaster planning, but there is no empirical evidence (to our knowledge) that having a designated risk manager leads to the adoption of risk-reducing measures in organizations. Additionally, there is limited research on the relationship between risk perception and the adoption of risk-reducing measures at the organizational level. The goal of this study is to empirically answer two questions. (1) “Does having a risk manager in an organization predict the adoption of risk-reducing measures?” (2) “What is the relationship between risk perception and the adoption of risk-reducing measures at the organizational level?” Using data collected from a sample of public, private, and non-profit organizations in the Memphis/Shelby County area, Tennessee in 2006, we find that organizations with risk managers adopted more risk-reducing measures than organizations without risk managers and that risk perception is a significant predictor of risk-reducing measures. This study builds on a small, but growing literature on how organizations perceive risks and respond to them.National Science Foundation and the Mid-America Earthquake Cente

Exploring the Relationship between Hazard Adjustments and Risk Managers in Organizations

There is little empirical evidence on the relationship between organizational risk managers and the adoption of hazard adjustments (measures taken to reduce risks from extreme events). Similarly, the risk perception literature is mixed on the relationship between risk perception and the adoption of hazard adjustments in organizations. This study empirically addresses these two gaps using data collected from 227 public, private and non-profit organizations in the Memphis/Shelby County area, Tennessee, in 2006. This study finds a significant positive relationship between risk managers and the adoption of hazard adjustments. The results also indicate that organizational risk perception has a small positive influence on the adoption of hazard adjustments

Facial landmark detection via attention-adaptive deep network

Facial landmark detection is a key component of the face recognition pipeline as well as facial attribute analysis and face verification. Recently convolutional neural network-based face alignment methods have achieved significant improvement, but occlusion is still a major source of a hurdle to achieve good accuracy. In this paper, we introduce the attentioned distillation module in our previous work Occlusion-adaptive Deep Network (ODN) model, to improve performance. In this model, the occlusion probability of each position in high-level features are inferred by a distillation module. It can be learnt automatically in the process of estimating the relationship between facial appearance and facial shape. The occlusion probability serves as the adaptive weight on high-level features to reduce the impact of occlusion and obtain clean feature representation. Nevertheless, the clean feature representation cannot represent the holistic face due to the missing semantic features. To obtain exhaustive and complete feature representation, it is vital that we leverage a low-rank learning module to recover lost features. Considering that facial geometric characteristics are conducive to the low-rank module to recover lost features, the role of the geometry-aware module is, to excavate geometric relationships between different facial components. The role of attentioned distillation module is, to get rich feature representation and model occlusion. To improve feature representation, we used channel-wise attention and spatial attention. Experimental results show that our method performs better than existing methods

FEMA versus local governments: Influence and reliance in disaster preparedness

This study uses an experimental approach to examine whether disaster information sourced to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) influences intentions to adopt hazard adjustments. Survey questions are also used to determine whether individuals rely more on FEMA or local governments when preparing for disasters. Using an online sample of 2008 US employees, the results indicate that information sourced to FEMA is no more influential than information sourced to local governments and that individuals rely less on FEMA than on local agencies during disaster preparedness. These results have significant implications for practice and future research on natural hazard preparedness

Effects of ozone-vegetation coupling on surface ozone air quality via biogeochemical and meteorological feedbacks

Tropospheric ozone is one of the most hazardous air pollutants as it harms both human health and plant productivity. Foliage uptake of ozone via dry deposition damages photosynthesis and causes stomatal closure. These foliage changes could lead to a cascade of biogeochemical and biogeophysical effects that not only modulate the carbon cycle, regional hydrometeorology and climate, but also cause feedbacks onto surface ozone concentration itself. In this study, we implement a semi-empirical parameterization of ozone damage on vegetation in the Community Earth System Model to enable online ozone-vegetation coupling, so that for the first time ecosystem structure and ozone concentration can coevolve in fully coupled land-Atmosphere simulations. With ozone-vegetation coupling, present-day surface ozone is simulated to be higher by up to 4-6ĝ€ppbv over Europe, North America and China. Reduced dry deposition velocity following ozone damage contributes to ĝ1/4 40-100ĝ€% of those increases, constituting a significant positive biogeochemical feedback on ozone air quality. Enhanced biogenic isoprene emission is found to contribute to most of the remaining increases, and is driven mainly by higher vegetation temperature that results from lower transpiration rate. This isoprene-driven pathway represents an indirect, positive meteorological feedback. The reduction in both dry deposition and transpiration is mostly associated with reduced stomatal conductance following ozone damage, whereas the modification of photosynthesis and further changes in ecosystem productivity are found to play a smaller role in contributing to the ozone-vegetation feedbacks. Our results highlight the need to consider two-way ozone-vegetation coupling in Earth system models to derive a more complete understanding and yield more reliable future predictions of ozone air quality

Atherosclerosis of cavernosal arteries as a cause of erectile dysfunction in an adult: our findings on triplex doppler sonography

A sixty year old man presented to our health facility with a year history of severe erectile dysfunction (International Index of Erectile Function Score of 5 (IIEF-5)). He was also a known hypertensive and currently being managed for hypertensive heart disease by the Cardiologist. Colour Doppler interrogation of the Cavernosal Arteries showed multiple areas of narrowing in both arteries, giving beaded appearance. The peak systolic velocities of the arteries were less than 25cm/s, and there was persistent diastolic flow in the entire spectral recordings, prompting the diagnosis of arteriogenic erectile dysfunction (ED) secondary to atherosclerosis of the cavernosal arteries. He had medical treatment with PGE5-I, and intracavernosal injection of prostaglandin E1 (Caverjet), but all to no avail. He was counselled for penile implant and he is favourably disposed to that but largely being limited by funds

Coherent states for polynomial su(1,1) algebra and a conditionally solvable system

In a previous paper [{\it J. Phys. A: Math. Theor.} {\bf 40} (2007) 11105], we constructed a class of coherent states for a polynomially deformed $su(2)$ algebra. In this paper, we first prepare the discrete representations of the nonlinearly deformed $su(1,1)$ algebra. Then we extend the previous procedure to construct a discrete class of coherent states for a polynomial su(1,1) algebra which contains the Barut-Girardello set and the Perelomov set of the SU(1,1) coherent states as special cases. We also construct coherent states for the cubic algebra related to the conditionally solvable radial oscillator problem.Comment: 2 figure

High Prevalence of Antibiotic-Resistant Mycoplasma genitalium in Nongonococcal Urethritis: The Need for Routine Testing and the Inadequacy of Current Treatment Options.

Background. Empirical antibiotic therapy for nongonococcal urethritis (NGU) and cervicitis is aimed at Chlamydia trachomatis, but Mycoplasma genitalium, which also commonly causes undiagnosed NGU, necessitates treatment with macrolides or fluoroquinolones rather than doxycycline, the preferred chlamydia treatment. Prevalence of M. genitalium and associated genotypic markers of macrolide and fluoroquinolone resistance among men symptomatic of urethritis were investigated. Genetic diversity of M. genitalium populations was determined to infer whether findings were applicable beyond our setting. Methods. Mycoplasma genitalium and other NGU pathogens were detected using nucleic acid amplification methods, and DNA sequencing was used to detect genotypic resistance markers of macrolide and fluoroquinolone antibiotics in 23S ribosomal RNA, gyrA, gyrB, and parC genes. MG191 single-nucleotide polymorphism typing and MG309 variable number tandem analysis were combined to assign a dual locus sequence type (DLST) to each positive sample. Results. Among 217 men, M. genitalium prevalence was 16.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 9.5%-24.0%) and C. trachomatis prevalence was 14.7% (95% CI, 7.8%-21.6%) in NGU cases. Nine of 22 (41%; 95% CI, 20%-62%) patients with M. genitalium were infected with DLSTs possessing genotypic macrolide resistance and 1 patient was infected with a DLST having genotypic fluoroquinolone resistance. Typing assigned M. genitalium DLSTs to 2 major clusters, broadly distributed among previously typed international strains. Genotypic macrolide resistance was spread within these 2 clusters. Conclusions. Mycoplasma genitalium is a frequent undiagnosed cause of NGU in this population with rates of macrolide resistance higher than those previously documented. Current guidelines for routine testing and empirical treatment of NGU should be modified to reduce treatment failure of NGU and the development of further resistance