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Aim: Identifying the severity of neonatal respiratory distress (RD) is essential, so that resources can be appropriately allocated. We assessed the ability of nurses to grade neonatal RD in a low‐resource setting before and after they were trained to use a dedicated scoring tool. Methods: The study was conducted in the Special Care Unit of St Luke Wolisso Hospital, Ethiopia. Ten nurses reviewed nine local video recordings and graded neonatal RD without a standardised method, which was current practice, and then after they were trained to use the Silverman and Andersen score. The data were analysed using the McNemar test and Cohen's kappa. Results: Training increased the identification of mild RD from 63% to 93% (p = 0.008) and moderate RD from 40% to 73% (p = 0.03). Severe RD was 93% before and 90% after training (p = 0.99). Overall, the agreement improved from kappa 0.59 to 0.84, mainly by reducing the overestimation of milder degrees of RD. Conclusion: Being trained on how to use the Silverman and Andersen score improved the ability of nurses to identify mild and moderate neonatal RD. This improvement has the potential to optimise the use of equipment, staff and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: To evaluate the relationship between clinical assessment of infant colour and oxygen saturation at birth in a low‐resource setting. Methods: Classification of infant colour (cyanotic, pink or unclear) by midwives was compared to pulse‐oximeter data at 60‐90‐120‐300 seconds after birth in 60 neonates. Results: Overall, oxygen saturation increased over time (P <.0001) and was different according to infant colour (P <.0001). Median oxygen saturation in pink infants was 87% at 60 seconds (n = 1), 90% (IQR 83‐91) at 90 seconds (n = 5), 86% (IQR 81‐94) at 120 seconds (n = 11) and 93% (IQR 90‐96) at 300 seconds (n = 20). Median oxygen saturation in cyanotic infants was 60% (IQR 45‐70) at 60 seconds (n = 52), 64% (IQR 52‐69) at 90 seconds (n = 42), 63% (IQR 56‐68) at 120 seconds (n = 35) and 66% (IQR 62‐74) at 300 seconds (n = 22). Median oxygen saturation in unclear‐coloured infants was 57% (IQR 56‐60) at 60 seconds (n = 7), 78% (IQR 71‐81) at 90 seconds (n = 13), 81% (IQR 79‐88) at 120 seconds (n = 14) and 80% (IQR 76‐84) at 300 seconds (n = 18). The proportion of infants with unclear colour ranged from 12% to 30%. Conclusion: The variability of oxygen saturation among pink and cyanotic infants, and the substantial proportion of unclear infant colour, suggest the possible benefit of the availability of pulse oximetry in low‐resource settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a specific strategy that developers of mobile applications may use to stimulate demand: The release of updates. We develop a theoretical analysis that shows that developers have incentives to release updates when experiencing a drop in performance. The predictions of the model are then tested using an unbalanced panel of top 1,000 apps in iTunes and Google Play for five European countries. We estimate that while in iTunes the release of an update stimulates a 26% increase in download growth, in Google Play updates play a less significant role. This difference is partly due to systematic differences in apps and in developers operating in the two stores ("selection effect"), and partly to a lack of quality control on apps and updates in Google Play ("quality check effect"). These findings highlight the crucial importance of an appropriate management of updates as well as the relevance of institutional characteristics of the app stores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last few decades, the number of patents in information and communication technologies has increased considerably. An increasing number of patents and the associated fragmentation of IP rights have generated a series of potentially problematic consequences. Patent thickets, royalty stacking, the emergence of patent assertion entities, increased patent litigation – particularly around standard essential patents – and the difficulties with defining fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory licensing terms are some of the most debated issues in the literature that we review in this paper. We devote a specific section of our survey to patent quality, currently one of the most debated issues surrounding the patent system. In our analysis, we mix theoretical and empirical arguments with a more policy‐oriented reasoning. This allows us to better position the different issues in the relevant political and economic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses market competition between two different types of payment schemes: card associations and proprietary systems. The main focus is on the role of the collective setting of the interchange fee by members of the association. We describe the sterilizing role of the interchange fee: when the interchange fee is set so as to maximize the sum of issuers' and acquirers' profits, the equilibrium values of platforms' profits, of the sum of the fees charged by each platform and their market shares are independent of the competitive conditions within the associated members on the two sides of the market and are affected by the strength of inter-platform competition. We also show that the privately set interchange fee is socially inefficient, although this is not due to anti-competitive reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Despite a general trend of lower charges for mobile calls, in Europe, prices for international roaming calls have remained at levels that are surprisingly high. The apparent reluctance of mobile network operators to lower roaming tariff is generating many antitrust concerns. This paper presents in a two-country two-firm framework the functioning of the current system governing wholesale international roaming agreements based on interoperator tariffs. The focus is on the role of traffic management; thanks to the emergence of traffic direction techniques, mobile network operators are allowed to select the roaming partner. We show that, unless these techniques do not allow for perfect control on traffic flows, traffic management does not improve the market's efficiency. In line with the regulatory mechanism recently adopted by the European Commission, we show that a simple price cap mechanism may restore partial efficiency in the wholesale market. We also show that although cross-border cooperation at the wholesale level is Pareto efficient, it will not emerge as an equilibrium of a two-sided matching game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]