Disease surveillance systems

Recent advances in information and communication technologies have made the development and operation of complex disease surveillance systems technically feasible, and many systems have been proposed to interpret diverse data sources for health-related signals. Implementing these systems for daily use and efficiently interpreting their output, however, remains a technical challenge. This thesis presents a method for understanding disease surveillance systems structurally, examines four existing systems, and discusses the implications of developing such systems. The discussion is followed by two papers. The first paper describes the design of a national outbreak detection system for daily disease surveillance. It is currently in use at the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control. The source code has been licenced under GNU v3 and is freely available. The second paper discusses methodological issues in computational epidemiology, and presents the lessons learned from a software development project in which a spatially explicit micro-meso-macro model for the entire Swedish population was built based on registry data

Country-of-origin misclassification awareness and consumers’ behavioral intentions: Moderating roles of consumer affinity, animosity, and product knowledge

Purpose: Extant research shows that consumers regularly misclassify country-of-origin (COO) associated with brands. The purpose of this paper is to examine changes in behavioral intentions (i.e. purchase intentions for self and others and brand judgments) when consumers are made aware that they have misclassified the COO and then are informed of the brand’s correct origin. Drawing on cognitive dissonance theory, the authors also explore the moderating roles of consumer affinity, animosity, and product knowledge. Design/methodology/approach: Two experiments test the direct and moderating effects of COO misclassification awareness on behavioral intentions. Findings: The findings show detrimental effects of misclassification on behavioral intentions when consumers have high affinity with misclassified COO. Moreover, the experiments demonstrate a significantly greater decrease in behavioral intentions among experts than novices in the low-affinity condition and the reverse effect in the high-affinity condition. Practical implications: The negative effects of COO misclassification on consumer behavioral intentions highlight the need for managers to proactively avoid misclassification. The findings should also aid managers in developing responsive marketing campaigns that consider consumer affinity, animosity, and level of product knowledge. Originality/value: This research is the first to compare consumer behavioral responses before and after COO misclassification awareness. The study demonstrates that cognitive dissonance underpins the process of misclassification. It also contributes to COO literature by examining the interaction of consumer affinity and animosity with product knowledge and their influence on consumer behavior in the case of COO misclassification

INVESTIGATION OF HABITABILITY INDICES OF YTU GULET SERIES IN VARIOUS SEA STATES

This paper presents habitability indices of gulet-type boats for the vertical plane motions in specified sea states. Gulets are commonly used in the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea as pleasure boats. Therefore, it is very important to obtain their habitability indices. Thus, 21 different gulet forms developed as a result of iterative studies are used for analyses. The ISO 2631 standard that defines the effect of different levels of vertical accelerations on humans is used as the first seakeeping criterion. Other seakeeping criteria are obtained from NATO Standardization Agreement (STANAG) documents for pitch motion. Seakeeping analyses are carried out by using commercial software which is based on the strip theory and statistical short term response prediction method. The effect of displacement forces, selected criteria and sea conditions on habitability indices is presented

Default Risk Premium and Aggregate Fluctuations in a Small Open Economy

This study investigates the implications of risk premium shocks for aggregate fluctuations in a small open economy with financial and informational frictions. A dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium framework is developed, where the informational asymmetries among the agents in the model and the uncertainty in the production process necessitate financial intermediation in the economy. The Holmstrom-Tirole type of uncertainty in the production process also leads to collateralized borrowing by firms, with the physical capital stock of firms serving as the collateral as well as the factor of production. There is also a government sector in the economy that borrows domestically with a partial default risk. In order to compensate the lenders for the default risk included in the government bonds, the government has to offer them some risk premium in addition to the exogenously given world interest rate offered by the foreign bond issuers. It is shown that, under certain circumstances, it is possible for the government to reduce its debt and increase its spending in response to a positive, temporary risk premium shock.default risk premium, dynamic stochastic general equilibrium, aggregate fluctuations

Numerical prediction of total resistance using full similarity technique

Model tests are often conducted by researchers in a real or a numerical towing tank to calculate residuary resistance of a ship by the aid of Froude similarity. Common ITTC-1957 formula is usually employed to calculate frictional resistance. As computer technologies develop over time, CFD tools are used for calculating total resistance of a ship at full scale without establishing any dynamic similarities. In this paper, it is numerically implemented both Froude and Reynolds similarities at four different model scales by using virtual fluids. The total resistance at different Fr numbers calculated by the numerical study is validated against the experimental data of DTMB 5512 (L=3.048 m) model hull. The results show that establishing Froude and Reynolds similarities together in numerical simulation is possible in principle. To determine whether it has advantages for prediction of full-scale ship total resistance by employing this method, it is also examined the model scale with the same number of elements and Reynolds number of the full-scale ship. Results show that numerical calculation of total resistance for a full-scale ship in a model scale by defining virtual fluids has only slight advantages on the prediction of residuary resistance. Additionally, no advantage in the calculation of frictional resistance is observed

INVESTIGATION OF HABITABILITY INDICES OF YTU GULET SERIES IN VARIOUS SEA STATES

This paper presents habitability indices of gulet-type boats for the vertical plane motions in specified sea states. Gulets are commonly used in the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea as pleasure boats. Therefore, it is very important to obtain their habitability indices. Thus, 21 different gulet forms developed as a result of iterative studies are used for analyses. The ISO 2631 standard that defines the effect of different levels of vertical accelerations on humans is used as the first seakeeping criterion. Other seakeeping criteria are obtained from NATO Standardization Agreement (STANAG) documents for pitch motion. Seakeeping analyses are carried out by using commercial software which is based on the strip theory and statistical short term response prediction method. The effect of displacement forces, selected criteria and sea conditions on habitability indices is presented

Maxing Out: Stocks as Lotteries and the Cross-Section of Expected Returns

Motivated by existing evidence of a preference among investors for assets with lottery-like payoffs and that many investors are poorly diversified, we investigate the significance of extreme positive returns in the cross-sectional pricing of stocks. Portfolio-level analyses and firm-level cross-sectional regressions indicate a negative and significant relation between the maximum daily return over the past one month(MAX) and expected stock returns. Average raw and risk-adjusted return differences between stocks in the lowest and highest MAX deciles exceed 1% per month. These results are robust to controls for size, book-to-market, momentum, short-term reversals, liquidity, and skewness. Of particular interest, including MAX generally subsumes or reverses the puzzling negative relation between returns and idiosyncratic volatility recently documented in Ang et al. (2006, 2008)

Peopling Europe through Data Practices: Introduction to the Special Issue

Politically, Europe has been unable to address itself to a constituted polity and people as more than an agglomeration of nation-states. From the resurgence of nationalisms to the crisis of the single currency and the unprecedented decision of a member state to leave the European Union (EU), core questions about the future of Europe have been rearticulated: Who are the people of Europe? Is there a European identity? What does it mean to say, “I am European?” Where does Europe begin and end? and Who can legitimately claim to be a part of a “European” people? The special issue (SI) seeks to contest dominant framings of the question “Who are the people of Europe?” as only a matter of government policies, electoral campaigns, or parliamentary debates. Instead, the contributions start from the assumption that answers to this question exist in data practices where people are addressed, framed, known, and governed as European. The central argument of this SI is that it is through data practices that the EU seeks to simultaneously constitute its population as a knowable, governable entity, and as a distinct form of peoplehood where common personhood is more important than differences