Atlanta Eds and Meds: Collaboration or Competition

Metropolitan Atlanta’s universities and hospitals (“Eds and Meds”), with more than 340,000 jobs created, make a larger contribution to the metro area economy than its Fortune 500 headquarters. Its universities have many joint research projects, but major hospitals are much more competitive. Best practice cities showed much more collaboration across the board. This study describes the eleven significant collaborative projects in detail, how and when they were started, the university and medical partners, federal, state and other funding sources. Surprisingly with less than half the hospitals and many major universities participating, significant breakthroughs for global health including COVID-19, EBOLA, HIV-AIDS, cancer, infectious disease, and transplants have been achieved. The pandemic showed major weaknesses in the relationship between public health agencies, hospitals and the public necessary to detect and treat the disease’s impact resulting in Georgia being among the lowest vaccinated states. This research, which includes the collection and analysis of proprietary institutional data and more than 125 interviews with Atlanta stakeholders, finds that more collaboration among Eds and Meds institutions would greatly increase Atlanta’s innovative synergy, economic development and resilience. It includes analysis of best practice cities such as Pittsburgh, San Diego, Baltimore and others that have created a “Grand Plan” between local governments, Eds and Meds and private companies committing to investment and collaboration. The paper closes with several recommendations. Public health agencies, state and local government, university medical and public health schools must learn from the pandemic and develop a strong working relationship in anticipation of the next crisis. State and local governments and chambers of commerce should recognize Eds & Meds as a business cluster similar to supply chain, film and financial technology to promote collaboration, research and job growth. An existing or new organization should take the lead in bringing together potential collaborators. State investment in the Georgia Research Alliance should be restored to prior year levels. Atlanta should learn from best practice cities and create a “grand plan” creating a partnership with Eds & Meds committing to significant expansion of collaborative projects and recruit private partners. Eds & Meds can cooperate to recruit, train and hire citizens for entry level jobs and purchase more goods and services locally to reduce income disparities in the region

Correlation functions of the One-Dimensional Random Field Ising Model at Zero Temperature

We consider the one-dimensional random field Ising model, where the spin-spin coupling, $J$, is ferromagnetic and the external field is chosen to be $+h$ with probability $p$ and $-h$ with probability $1-p$. At zero temperature, we calculate an exact expression for the correlation length of the quenched average of the correlation function $\langle s_0 s_n \rangle - \langle s_0 \rangle \langle s_n \rangle$ in the case that $2J/h$ is not an integer. The result is a discontinuous function of $2J/h$. When $p = {1 \over 2}$, we also place a bound on the correlation length of the quenched average of the correlation function $\langle s_0 s_n \rangle$.Comment: 12 pages (Plain TeX with one PostScript figure appended at end), MIT CTP #220

Community detection in temporal multilayer networks, with an application to correlation networks

Networks are a convenient way to represent complex systems of interacting entities. Many networks contain "communities" of nodes that are more densely connected to each other than to nodes in the rest of the network. In this paper, we investigate the detection of communities in temporal networks represented as multilayer networks. As a focal example, we study time-dependent financial-asset correlation networks. We first argue that the use of the "modularity" quality function---which is defined by comparing edge weights in an observed network to expected edge weights in a "null network"---is application-dependent. We differentiate between "null networks" and "null models" in our discussion of modularity maximization, and we highlight that the same null network can correspond to different null models. We then investigate a multilayer modularity-maximization problem to identify communities in temporal networks. Our multilayer analysis only depends on the form of the maximization problem and not on the specific quality function that one chooses. We introduce a diagnostic to measure \emph{persistence} of community structure in a multilayer network partition. We prove several results that describe how the multilayer maximization problem measures a trade-off between static community structure within layers and larger values of persistence across layers. We also discuss some computational issues that the popular "Louvain" heuristic faces with temporal multilayer networks and suggest ways to mitigate them.Comment: 42 pages, many figures, final accepted version before typesettin

The Distribution and Origin of Bottom Sediments in Timbalier Bay, Louisiana, and the Adjacent Offshore Area

Paper by James I. Jones and Sam E. William

A Schwartz Round for Clinical Librarians – a case study

The authors, based on their involvement in supporting Schwartz Rounds at their hospital, presented and facilitateda Schwartz Round at the 9th International Clinical Librarians Conference in 2017. The paper discusses thepreparations for the Schwartz Round, and the logistical and emotional issues encountered beforehand and onthe day. They plan to hold future Schwartz Rounds on a regional basis

The Mirage of Triangular Arbitrage in the Spot Foreign Exchange Market

We investigate triangular arbitrage within the spot foreign exchange market using high-frequency executable prices. We show that triangular arbitrage opportunities do exist, but that most have short durations and small magnitudes. We find intra-day variations in the number and length of arbitrage opportunities, with larger numbers of opportunities with shorter mean durations occurring during more liquid hours. We demonstrate further that the number of arbitrage opportunities has decreased in recent years, implying a corresponding increase in pricing efficiency. Using trading simulations, we show that a trader would need to beat other market participants to an unfeasibly large proportion of arbitrage prices to profit from triangular arbitrage over a prolonged period of time. Our results suggest that the foreign exchange market is internally self-consistent and provide a limited verification of market efficiency

Characteristics of Ten Tropical Hardwoods from Certified Forests in Bolivia Part I Weathering Characteristics and Dimensional Change

Ten tropical hardwoods from Bolivia were evaluated for weathering performance (erosion rate, dimensional stability, warping, surface checking, and splitting). The wood species were Amburana cearensis (roble), Anadenanthera macrocarpa (curupau), Aspidosperma cylindrocarpon (jichituriqui), Astronium urundeuva (cuchi), Caesalpinia cf. pluviosa (momoqui), Diplotropis purpurea (sucupira), Guibourtia chodatiana (sirari), Phyllostylon rhamnoides (cuta), Schinopsis cf. quebracho-colorado (soto), and Tabebuia spp. (lapacho group) (tajibo or ipe). Eucalyptus marginata (jarrah) from Australia and Tectona grandis (teak), both naturally grown from Burma and plantation-grown from Central America, were included in the study for comparison. The dimensional change for the species from Bolivia, commensurate with a change in relative humidity (RH) from 30% to 90%, varied from about 1.6% and 2.0% (radial and tangential directions) for Amburana cearensis to 2.2% and 4.1% (radial and tangential) for Anadenanthera macrocarpa. The dimensional change for teak was 1.3% and 2.5% (radial and tangential) for the same change in relative humidity. None of the Bolivian species was completely free of warp or surface checks; however, Anadenanthera macrocarpa, Aspidosperma cylindrocarpon, and Schinopsis cf. quebracho-colorado performed almost as well as teak. The erosion rate of several of the wood species was considerably slower than that of teak, and there was little correlation between wood density and erosion rate. Part 2 of this report will include information on the decay resistance (natural durability) of these species