118,033 research outputs found
On The Future of Co-operatives
No full textTwo extensions are formulated of the analysis of the allocation ofdecision rights in Hendrikse and Veerman (2001). First, the incompletecontracts in their article can be viewed as simple long-termcontracts, i.e. it is not allowed to make the allocation of authoritycontingent on the circumstances. Contingent long-term contracts arenow considered. Second, another aspect of decision rights is thefrequency of meetings between the owners and managers of enterprises.This aspect will be addressed from a long-term contract perspective aswell as a loss aversion perspective.contingent control rights;frequency of board meetings
Estimating the impact of school-based education and restriction on television advertising to prevent childhood obesity in Thailand
No full textINTRODUCTION: The prevalence of overweight in children aged 6–14 years in Thailand has significantly increased, doubling from 5.8% to 13.9% between 1995 and 2014. The aim of this study was to estimate how many cases of childhood overweight and obesity could be prevented by implementing school-based education programs and restriction on television (TV) advertising.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: A mathematical model was developed to estimate the impact of two interventions: a school-based education program to reduce consumption of carbonated drinks and restriction of unhealthy food and beverages advertising on TV. Sex-specific body mass index (BMI) for Thai children aged 6–12 years were calculated using weight and height data from the National Health Examination Survey Round V in 2014. We used a lognormal distribution to fit the BMI data and modelled a shift in the distribution to quantify the impact of the interventions. The prevalence of overweight and obesity was then estimated by age and sex using BMI cut-offs from the International Obesity Task Force.
For the school-based education intervention, the mean BMI reduction 0.1 kg/m2 in children was adopted from an English cluster randomized controlled trial. For the intervention restricting TV advertising of unhealthy food and beverages high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS), the mean BMI reduction was calculated from change in energy intake (in Kilocalories) per minute exposed to these advertisements, followed by change in weight and then BMI. This required the following data: (1) minutes per day that Thai children spent watching HFSS food advertisements, (2) kilocalorie effect per minute exposed to TV advertisements from meta-analysis, and (3) adjustment for real world and mealtime compensation.
RESULTS: Restricting TV advertising of unhealthy food and beverages reduced BMI on average by 0.32 kg/m2. The school-based education intervention was estimated to reduce overall prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity by 3.5% (3.2% in male, 3.8% in female), lowering the number of cases with overweight and obesity from 1.10 million to 1.06 million. Restriction on TV advertising reduced overall prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity by 11% (10.0% in male, 12.3% in female), lowering the number of cases with overweight and obesity from 1.10 million to 0.98 million.
CONCLUSION: Both interventions were estimated to significantly reduce childhood overweight and obesity in Thailand, although restricting TV advertising of unhealthy food and beverages could have a much bigger impact. Intervention effects alone are insufficient for decision-making. Hence, cost-effectiveness analysis is needed to inform policy makers on the allocation of limited resources for childhood obesity prevention in Thailand.
DISCLOSURE OF INTEREST: P. Hunchangsith Grant/Research support with: Thai Health Foundation, L. Aminde: None declared, L. Veerman: None declared, W. Ngam-a-roon: None declared.No Full Tex
Minimally separating sets, mediatrices, and Brillouin spaces
No full textAbstractBrillouin zones and their boundaries were studied in [J.J.P. Veerman et al., Comm. Math. Phys. 212 (3) (2000) 725] because they play an important role in focal decomposition as first defined by Peixoto in [J. Differential Equations 44 (1982) 271] and in physics [N.W. Ashcroft, N.D. Mermin, Solid State Physics, Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, 1976; L. Brillouin, Wave Propagation in Periodic Structures, Dover, 1953]. In so-called Brillouin spaces, the boundaries of the Brillouin zones have certain regularity properties which imply that they consist of pieces of mediatrices (or equidistant sets).The purpose of this note is two-fold. First, we give some simple conditions on a metric space which are sufficient for it to be a Brillouin space. These conditions show, for example, that all compact, connected Riemannian manifolds with their usual distance functions are Brillouin spaces. Second, we exhibit a restriction on the Z2-homology of mediatrices in such manifolds in terms of the Z2-homology of the manifolds themselves, based on the fact that they are Brillouin spaces. (This will used to obtain a classification up to homeomorphism of surface mediatrices in forthcoming paper [J. Bernhard, J.J.P. Veerman, The topology of surface mediatrices, Portland State University].
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Square Dancing with the Stars to Enhance Dynamic Hirschman Linkages?
No full textIn this Presidential Address, the author takes the reader on a reconnaissance of his life and time as a regional scientist. He points out scenery he found scintillating along the way, hoping that some may pick up the banner and chew on a few of the ideas for a while. He suggests a revisit to Albert O. Hirschman’s notion of key sectors and more empirical analysis related to Marcus Berliant’s and Masahisa Fujita’s notion of knowledge creation and transfer.Presidential Address, San Antonio, Texas, March 29, 2014 (53rd Meetings of the Southern Regional Science Association
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
No full textWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Population dietary salt reduction and burden of cardiovascular disease in cameroon: A cost-effectiveness modelling study
No full textObjectives
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death among non-communicable diseases in Cameroon. Interventions that reduce dietary salt intake at population levels have been shown to be a promising strategy to reduce blood pressure and CVD burden. There is no evidence on the cost-effectiveness of such strategies in Cameroon.
Methods
A cost-utility analysis of three population salt reduction interventions: school-based salt education program, mass media campaign, and low-sodium salt substitute was conducted using a multi-state lifetable Markov model. Using a healthcare system perspective, adults (≥ 30 years) alive in 2016 were simulated over their lifetime. Outcomes were changes in mortality, health-adjusted life years (HALYs) and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER). Probabilistic sensitivity analysis was used to quantify uncertainty.
Results
For the remaining lifetime, over 10,000 CVD deaths, 79,000 CVD deaths and 84,000 CVD deaths could be averted from the mass media, school education program and salt substitute interventions respectively. Corresponding health gains over the lifetime were 46,700 (95%UI: 25,100 to 71,000) HALYs, 348,800 (95%UI: 270,600 to 433,800) HALYs and 368,400 (95%UI: 282,500 to 462,200) HALYs respectively. ICERs showed that all interventions were dominant, with probabilities of being cost-saving of 84% for school education program, 89% for mass media campaign and 99% for the salt substitute intervention.
Conclusions
All three population salt reduction strategies evaluated were highly cost-effective with very high probabilities of being cost-saving. Dietary salt reduction in Cameroon has the potential to save many lives and offers good value money.No Full Tex
- …
