9,606 research outputs found
Organizational Strategies for the Adoption of Electronic Medical Records: Toward an Understanding of Outcome Variation in Nursing Homes
[Excerpt] An important element in president-elect Obama\u27s economic stimulus proposal is his plan to invest a significant proportion of federal dollars in installing electronic medical records (EMR) in U.S. healthcare institutions. In emphasizing the need for EMR, Obama is following the advice of numerous healthcare experts who have pointed out that the healthcare sector lags behind other industries in the use of computer technology. They believe the widespread use of EMR would help reduce medical errors, control the costs of healthcare, and lead to significant improvements in the quality of care Americans receive.
In this paper we present preliminary results of an ongoing study of the introduction of EMR in 20 nursing homes in the New York City area. Although most observers believe EMR holds great promise for the improvement of healthcare, in fact recent studies have found mixed evidence regarding the effect of EMR on patient outcomes. The evidence we have gathered to date suggests that whether EMR has beneficial effects on the costs and quality of healthcare depends very much on the purposes and objectives nursing home managers and administrators intend to achieve through its use. That is, management strategy and style, we believe, strongly influences healthcare outcomes associated with technological innovation
Simplicity in simplicial phase space
A key point in the spin foam approach to quantum gravity is the
implementation of simplicity constraints in the partition functions of the
models. Here, we discuss the imposition of these constraints in a phase space
setting corresponding to simplicial geometries. On the one hand, this could
serve as a starting point for a derivation of spin foam models by canonical
quantisation. On the other, it elucidates the interpretation of the boundary
Hilbert space that arises in spin foam models.
More precisely, we discuss different versions of the simplicity constraints,
namely gauge-variant and gauge-invariant versions. In the gauge-variant
version, the primary and secondary simplicity constraints take a similar form
to the reality conditions known already in the context of (complex) Ashtekar
variables. Subsequently, we describe the effect of these primary and secondary
simplicity constraints on gauge-invariant variables. This allows us to
illustrate their equivalence to the so-called diagonal, cross and edge
simplicity constraints, which are the gauge-invariant versions of the
simplicity constraints. In particular, we clarify how the so-called gluing
conditions arise from the secondary simplicity constraints. Finally, we discuss
the significance of degenerate configurations, and the ramifications of our
work in a broader setting.Comment: Typos and references correcte
Evidence of a Plasmoid-Looptop Interaction and Magnetic Inflows During a Solar Flare/CME Eruptive Event
Observational evidence is presented for the merging of a downward-propagating
plasmoid with a looptop kernel during an occulted limb event on 2007 January
25. RHESSI lightcurves in the 9-18 keV energy range, as well as that of the 245
MHz channel of the Learmonth Solar Observatory, show enhanced nonthermal
emission in the corona at the time of the merging suggesting that additional
particle acceleration took place. This was attributed to a secondary episode of
reconnection in the current sheet that formed between the two merging sources.
RHESSI images were used to establish a mean downward velocity of the plasmoid
of 12 km/s. Complementary observations from the SECCHI suite of instruments
onboard STEREO-Behind showed that this process occurred during the acceleration
phase of the associated CME. From wavelet-enhanced EUVI, images evidence of
inflowing magnetic field lines prior to the CME eruption is also presented. The
derived inflow velocity was found to be 1.5 km/s. This combination of
observations supports a recent numerical simulation of plasmoid formation,
propagation and subsequent particle acceleration due to the tearing mode
instability during current sheet formation.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, ApJ (Accepted
False discovery rate regression: an application to neural synchrony detection in primary visual cortex
Many approaches for multiple testing begin with the assumption that all tests
in a given study should be combined into a global false-discovery-rate
analysis. But this may be inappropriate for many of today's large-scale
screening problems, where auxiliary information about each test is often
available, and where a combined analysis can lead to poorly calibrated error
rates within different subsets of the experiment. To address this issue, we
introduce an approach called false-discovery-rate regression that directly uses
this auxiliary information to inform the outcome of each test. The method can
be motivated by a two-groups model in which covariates are allowed to influence
the local false discovery rate, or equivalently, the posterior probability that
a given observation is a signal. This poses many subtle issues at the interface
between inference and computation, and we investigate several variations of the
overall approach. Simulation evidence suggests that: (1) when covariate effects
are present, FDR regression improves power for a fixed false-discovery rate;
and (2) when covariate effects are absent, the method is robust, in the sense
that it does not lead to inflated error rates. We apply the method to neural
recordings from primary visual cortex. The goal is to detect pairs of neurons
that exhibit fine-time-scale interactions, in the sense that they fire together
more often than expected due to chance. Our method detects roughly 50% more
synchronous pairs versus a standard FDR-controlling analysis. The companion R
package FDRreg implements all methods described in the paper
Integrative genomic mining for enzyme function to enable engineering of a non-natural biosynthetic pathway.
The ability to biosynthetically produce chemicals beyond what is commonly found in Nature requires the discovery of novel enzyme function. Here we utilize two approaches to discover enzymes that enable specific production of longer-chain (C5-C8) alcohols from sugar. The first approach combines bioinformatics and molecular modelling to mine sequence databases, resulting in a diverse panel of enzymes capable of catalysing the targeted reaction. The median catalytic efficiency of the computationally selected enzymes is 75-fold greater than a panel of naively selected homologues. This integrative genomic mining approach establishes a unique avenue for enzyme function discovery in the rapidly expanding sequence databases. The second approach uses computational enzyme design to reprogramme specificity. Both approaches result in enzymes with >100-fold increase in specificity for the targeted reaction. When enzymes from either approach are integrated in vivo, longer-chain alcohol production increases over 10-fold and represents >95% of the total alcohol products
Barriers to innovation and knowledge generation: The challenges of conducting business and social research in an emerging country context
© 2018 Journal of Innovation & Knowledge The Middle East, as a region, contributes proportionally less to new knowledge generation than other parts of the world. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has sought to correct this imbalance through efforts to promote a knowledge-based economy and through educational investment. In light of these advances, significant challenges still remain in the promotion and production of high quality research in the social sciences, including business. The current monograph highlights the vital importance of such research to the social and economic development of the UAE. Reflecting on nearly a decade of conducting research in the UAE with varying degrees of success the authors highlight critical incidents, experiences and observations which serve to illustrate the challenges of new knowledge creation in the business and social sciences. Discussions focus on identifiable barriers to high quality research at both the micro and macro levels, within and outside the UAE, with specific recommendations on how such barriers can be overcome
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