Smoking and Mortality Among US Astronauts

Astronauts have lower age-specific mortality risk than the U.S. general population from all natural causes of death, particularly cardiovascular disease and cancer. Yet, understanding if they are as healthy as their backgrounds predict they should be, requires that epidemiologists understand (and measure) all potentially confounding exposures in this cohort. Tobacco smoking prevalence has been measured in the U.S. astronaut cohort, but its impact on mortality has not been previously assessed. If smoking history has a negative impact on mortality, this could confound attempts to measure the relative health of astronauts

Drivers and barriers to product-service system consumer adoption in a fashion subscription case

Product-service systems (PSS) have been proposed as one mechanism through which corporate, consumer, and environmental interests may be aligned. The drivers for and barriers to consumer adoption, however, have remained largely unknown. This has impeded the diffusion of PSS and delayed the transitition to a more sustainable consumption paradigm. The role of trust in the PSS provider, one factor that is assumed to be critical to consumer adoption, remains similarly underexplored. This study borrows a consumer decision-making model derived from prospect theory as a theoretical lens. This lens is better suited to predicting adoption than explaining acceptance, on which previous theories in PSS research have focused. A PSS from the area of fashion, which features use- and result-oriented PSS attributes, is chosen as the context. The drivers for and barriers to the adoption of this PSS are quantitatively investigated (n=524) by combining experimental research design with structural equation modelling. Perceived value and risks are hypothesised to predict purchase intention, and product information treatments are presented to study participants to assess whether product information from a trusted provider can reduce uncertainty. The findings indicate that only cost savings potential will motivate consumers to purchase the PSS. Various perceived risks, including concerns about the product’s physical condition, fears that the PSS may render enjoyable shopping activities redundant, and the fear of being held financially liable for product returns, detract from purchase intentions, even if the provider is highly trusted. Four specific product information types are explored and the results indicate that trusted PSS providers have some scope to shift consumer perceptions in favour of adoption. The exception here remains the assurance that consumers can save money by purchasing the PSS instead of alternatives. This, combined with the relatively weak effects of the other product information types, indicates a) that several dimensions of trust are at work and b) that providers will struggle to transfer trust gained in regular business models to the effective marketing of PSS. This study extends current knowledge by first quantitively assessing the predictors of adoption in a PSS case combining various sustainability mechanisms under more realistic conditions to determine which are impactful. Second, knowledge from consumer decision-making is transferred to the area of PSS research. Third, the role of trust is specified to greater detail. Several avenues for future research emerge from these contributions. Keywords: PSS; B2C; consumer adoption; fashion; circular economy; sharing economy

A multi-point performance matched aerofoil design algorithm for a scaled wind turbine rotor model

A search-based multi-point aerofoil design algorithm is presented which optimises a profile for a prescribed CL-α distribution and Reynolds number, Re. A real-coded genetic algorithm is used in conjunction with XFOIL and a geometrically constrained shape parameterisation method to produce smooth, manufacturable aerofoils given the required aerodynamic performance. The validated tool is used to produce a family of aerofoils to define a model rotor blade for a wind turbine with a similar axial induction factor along its length in a small scale laboratory environment to a full scale reference. It is hypothesised that given the similar axial induction and similar non-dimensional geometry, the model rotor will have a similar unsteady aerodynamic response to the full scale

Patent Law and the Emigration of Innovation

Legislators and industry leaders claim that patent strength in the United States has declined, causing firms to innovate in foreign countries. Because, however, patent law is bound by strict territorial limitations, one cannot strengthen patent protection by innovating abroad; as a result, scholarship has largely dismissed the theory that foreign patents have any effect on where firms invent. In essence, then, there is a debate pitting industry leaders against scholarship about whether firms can use offshore innovation to secure stronger patent rights, influencing the rate of innovation. To resolve this puzzle, we offer a novel theory of patent rights—which we empirically test—to dispel the positions taken by both scholarship and industry leaders. Given that technology is generally developed in one country, the innovation process exposes the typical inventor to infringement claims only in that jurisdiction. In turn, we demonstrate that inventors have powerful, counterintuitive incentives to develop technology where patent rights are weaker and enforcement is cheaper. Specifically, it typically costs more to defend a patent infringement claim in the United States than to lose one in another country (the cost to litigate a patent in the United States averages about $3.5 million and royalty awards have surpassed$2.5 billion). Our findings suggest that industry advocates and patent scholars overestimate how much innovation strong patent protection generates while underestimating the deterrent effect of these high costs of patent enforcement. This empirical research contributes to the theoretical understanding of patent rights by shedding new light on this important, yet largely dismissed, dimension of where innovation takes place. We received invaluable support from international research organizations and patent attorneys working for top-tier law firms. Notably, the Global IP Project, a multinational research group spearheaded by Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP, the leading global intellectual property law firm, and Darts-ip, an international organization dedicated to the study of global IP litigation, provided proprietary data. This enabled us to explore whether firms optimize value by placing research and innovation in countries with “better” patent laws. To verify our models, we interviewed notable patent attorneys practicing in the United States, Europe, and Asia

ATLAS: A flexible and extensible architecture for linguistic annotation

We describe a formal model for annotating linguistic artifacts, from which we derive an application programming interface (API) to a suite of tools for manipulating these annotations. The abstract logical model provides for a range of storage formats and promotes the reuse of tools that interact through this API. We focus first on ``Annotation Graphs,'' a graph model for annotations on linear signals (such as text and speech) indexed by intervals, for which efficient database storage and querying techniques are applicable. We note how a wide range of existing annotated corpora can be mapped to this annotation graph model. This model is then generalized to encompass a wider variety of linguistic ``signals,'' including both naturally occuring phenomena (as recorded in images, video, multi-modal interactions, etc.), as well as the derived resources that are increasingly important to the engineering of natural language processing systems (such as word lists, dictionaries, aligned bilingual corpora, etc.). We conclude with a review of the current efforts towards implementing key pieces of this architecture.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

Mortality of major league baseball players from Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean

Professional baseball players have lower mortality rates than the US general population, but whether this is true of foreign-born players is not known. Using data on ballplayers from six nations, we compare mortality rates with those of US players via standardized mortality ratios. After controlling for confounders, four countries had statistically insignificant SMRs while two nations had significantly elevated SMRs. In the two nations with elevated SMRs, low average ages at death and high crime rates suggest the increased mortality may be linked to violent crime. A full understanding of the causes of disparity in mortality will require further research

Cationic Alkylaluminum-Complexed Zirconocene Hydrides: NMR-Spectroscopic Identification, Crystallographic Structure Determination, and Interconversion with Other Zirconocene Cations

The ansa-zirconocene complex rac-Me_2Si(1-indenyl)_2ZrCl_2 ((SBI)ZrCl_2) reacts with diisobutylaluminum hydride and trityl tetrakis(perfluorophenyl)borate in hydrocarbon solutions to give the cation [(SBI)Zr(μ-H)_3(Al^iBu_2)_2]^+, the identity of which is derived from NMR data and supported by a crystallographic structure determination. Analogous reactions proceed with many other zirconocene dichloride complexes. [(SBI)Zr(μ-H)_3(Al^iBu2)_2]^+ reacts reversibly with ClAl^iBu_2 to give the dichloro-bridged cation [(SBI)Zr(μ-Cl)_2Al^iBu_2]^+. Reaction with AlMe_3 first leads to mixed-alkyl species [(SBI)Zr(μ-H)_3(AlMe_x^iBu_(2−x))_2^]+ by exchange of alkyl groups between aluminum centers. At higher AlMe_3/Zr ratios, [(SBI)Zr(μ-Me)_2AlMe_2]^+, a constituent of methylalumoxane-activated catalyst systems, is formed in an equilibrium, in which the hydride cation [(SBI)Zr(μ-H)_3(AlR_2)_2]^+ strongly predominates at comparable HAl^iBu_2 and AlMe_3 concentrations, thus implicating the presence of this hydride cation in olefin polymerization catalyst systems