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Masteroppgave i administrasjon og organisasjonsvitenskap AORG350 MASV-AORG

The purpose of central bank minutes is to give an account of monetary policy meeting discussions to outside observers, thereby enabling them to draw informed conclusions about future policy. However, minutes are by necessity a shortened and edited representation of a broader discussion. Consequently, they may omit information that is predictive of future policy decisions. To investigate this, we compare the information content of the FOMC's minutes and transcripts, focusing on three dimensions which are likely to be excluded from the minutes: 1) the committee’s degree of hawkishness; 2) the chairperson’s degree of hawkishness; and 3) the level of agreement between committee members. We measure committee and chairperson hawkishness with a novel dictionary that is constructed using the FOMC’s minutes and transcripts. We measure agreement by performing deep transfer learning, a technique that involves training a deep learning model on one set of documents – U.S. congressional debates – and then making predictions on another: FOMC transcripts. Our findings suggest that transcripts are more informative than minutes and heightened committee agreement typically precedes policy rate increases.

This theoretical essay explores three publications by Jürgen Habermas from the 1960s. The author deals with the critique of science, the production of knowledge and universities democratization. The objective was to extract from them clipings of reflections that can contribute to the studies of public communication of science. We consolidated the considerations into a graphic representation that summarizes the factors to be considered when thinking about the practice of science communication in society: the importance of considering the three interests that drive the production of knowledge - technical, practical and emancipatory, of promoting self-reflection of sciences in politicized and democratized universities, and the mediation of society in the interaction between science and politics, to subsidize decision-making based on social interests. We argue that the basis for a public communication idea of dialogical science - now widely defended - emerged in the German philosopher’s thinking in books published more than 50 years ago. However, that was not his central motivation at that time. Resumo: Este ensaio teórico explora três publicações de Jürgen Habermas da década de 1960, nas quais o autor trata da crítica da ciência, da produção do conhecimento e da democratização das universidades. O objetivo foi extrair delas recortes de reflexões que podem contribuir para os estudos da comunicação pública da ciência. Consolidam-se as reflexões em uma representação gráfica que resume os fatores a serem considerados, ao se pensar a prática de comunicação da ciência, na sociedade: a importância de levar em conta os três interesses que movem a produção do conhecimento - técnico, prático e emancipatório -, de promover a autorreflexão das ciências em universidades politizadas e democratizadas, e de haver a mediação da sociedade na interação entre ciência e política, de forma a subsidiar a tomada de decisões com base em interesses sociais. Argumenta-se que as bases para uma ideia de comunicação pública da ciência dialógica - hoje amplamente defendida - despontaram no pensamento do filósofo alemão, em livros publicados há mais de 50 anos, embora essa não fosse sua motivação central, naquele momento.

Due to the growing emphasis on the importance of the rights and entitlements of non-human animals, horseracing has come in for renewed and, in many instances, justifiable scrutiny. This has led to an ongoing public debate concerning the use of the padded whip in particular – a debate which has been reasonably open and well contested. However, the scientific/academic debate has been disappointingly one-sided and, to date, the views of anyone other than those opposed to the continued use of the padded whip have not been given an airing. This paper seeks to redress the imbalance in the academic debate by revisiting some of the key arguments deployed by authors who express grave concerns over the use of the padded whip in racing, challenging what are taken to be significant weaknesses in many of them. For the sport to be able to make informed policy decisions on this important issue, a number of things are needed. First, a critical review of the studies available is needed. And, secondly, gaps in the literature and research need to be flagged. As things stand, the jury is still out from a scientific and philosophical point of view on the issue of whether the padded whip is painful, despite the claims of some of the more vocal critics of the practice. This paper will further look to identify the challenges ahead and the kind of research urgently needed.

During the Cold War, Strategic Warning Intelligence (SWI) was a necessary and recognized function within the intelligence community given the threats posed by conventional Warsaw Pact forces in Western Europe and Soviet ballistic missiles. With the end of the Cold War, the focus of intelligence shifted to tactical or operational issues against known threats, and the SWI function and expertise atrophied as a result. With today’s expanding and more complex threat environment, this article examines whether SWI capacities should be reintroduced in order to apprise decision makers of trending threats to national security, albeit based on faint signals, so the necessary policy decisions can be made and prioritized to mitigate said threats in a timely manner.

Hydrological impacts of climate change are prompting water resource and flood hazard management to adapt to non-stationary conditions. Among the factors influencing these policy decisions is the qu...

As an Autistic student in a master’s degree, I focused on the way expertise is understood. I was specifically interested in how policy decisions in education were made without Autistic involvement. I looked at the literature that was used to make these decisions and interviewed Autistic people as to their thoughts on who should be considered experts when it comes to autism. I found that policy was driven by experts who had little to no direct experience with autism or Autistics and who had no personal connections to the approaches they recommended. I argue that Autistic people must be involved in research design, execution, implementation, dissemination, and policy decisions.

Összefoglaló. Bevezetés: A ritka betegséggel élők ellátásában fontos előrelépések történtek az elmúlt években. Egy következő lépés lehetne hazánkban a Ritka Betegségek Nemzeti Erőforrás (Uni-Versum) Központjának (a továbbiakban: Központ) létrehozása, amely az egészségügyi, szociális és köznevelési szolgáltatásokat összehangolva és kiegészítve személyközpontú ellátást nyújtana a betegek és támogatóik részére. Célkitűzés: Célunk az volt, hogy egy nemzetközi tudományos módszertan alapján javaslatokat tegyünk arra, hogy milyen eszközökkel lehet feloldani a Központ megvalósításának lehetséges korlátozó tényezőit. Módszer: A Központ megvalósíthatóságának értékelésére interdiszciplináris szakmai egyeztetést szerveztünk különböző érintett érdekcsoportok részvételével, a SELFIE H2020 kutatási projekt által kidolgozott módszertan alapján. Az előzetesen rangsorolt legfontosabb korlátozó tényezőkre lehetséges megoldási javaslatokat tettünk. Eredmények: A lehetséges korlátozó tényezőket a résztvevők relevánsnak tartották a Központ létrehozásával kapcsolatban, és ezekre összesen 17 olyan konkrét javaslat született, amelyben a résztvevők között egyetértés alakult ki. A javaslatok kiterjedtek az ellátás tartalmára, az alkalmazott technológiák támogató szerepére, a humánerőforrás-korlátok megoldására, a hatékony vezetés és szervezés kialakítására, az összetett finanszírozási struktúra kialakítására és a kutatási lehetőségek megteremtésére is. Megbeszélés: A Központ megvalósítása esetén a ritka betegséggel élők ellátása az egészségügyi, szociális és köznevelési tevékenységeket integráló megközelítés felé mozdulna el. A kutatás során megfogalmazott javaslatok hozzájárulhatnak a Központ létrehozásához, amennyiben megvan az ehhez szükséges szakpolitikai támogatás is. Ezen túlmutatóan, a leírt munkamódszer más integrált ellátási modellek bevezethetőségének elemzéséhez is mintaként szolgálhat. Következtetés: Összefoglalva megállapíthatjuk, hogy a Központ létrehozásához számos, előzetesen is látható korlátozó tényezőt kell feloldani. Az érdekcsoportok közös javaslatai alapján kialakítható egy olyan működési forma, amely az ellátórendszerek kiegészítésével és összehangolásával jelentős társadalmi értéktöbbletet eredményezhet. Orv Hetil. 2021; 162(45): 1818–1825. Summary. Introduction: In Hungary, significant achievements have been made in the care of patients with rare diseases in recent years. A next step could be the establishment of the National Resource Centre for Rare Diseases (hereinafter: Centre) to facilitate patient-centered complex care by the integration and supplementation of existing health, social and educational services. Objective: This research aimed to develop recommendations based on international scientific methodology to overcome potential implementation barriers of the aforementioned Centre. Method: To evaluate the feasibility of the implementation, we organized an interdisciplinary workshop with representatives of different stakeholder groups, adopting the methodology developed in the SELFIE H2020 research project. During the workshop, we discussed the previously ranked, most significant implementation barriers and made recommendations for potential solutions. Results: The potential implementation barriers were considered relevant by the participants and, reflecting on these barriers, altogether 17 recommendations were developed by consensus. These recommendations were related to the content of service delivery, use of supportive technologies, overcoming workforce issues, establishing effective leadership, implementing a complex financing structure and creating research opportunities. Discussion: Implementation of the Centre would shift the care of rare diseases towards personalized and integrated health, social and educational services. Our recommendations will contribute to the establishment of the Centre, subject to positive policy decision. Furthermore, our methodological approach could support the feasibility assessment of future integrated care solutions and programs. Conclusion: Several predictable barriers must be overcome to establish the Centre. Recommendations developed by representatives of relevant stakeholders could support successful implementation and societal value generation. Orv Hetil. 2021; 162(45): 1818–1825.

With the purpose of improving the PDP (policy decision point) evaluation performance, a novel and efficient evaluation engine, namely XDNNEngine, based on neural networks and an SGDK-means (stochastic gradient descent K-means) algorithm is proposed. We divide a policy set into different clusters, distinguish different rules based on their own features and label them for the training of neural networks by using the K-means algorithm and an asynchronous SGDK-means algorithm. Then, we utilize neural networks to search for the applicable rule. A quantitative neural network is introduced to reduce a server's computational cost. By simulating the arrival of requests, XDNNEngine is compared with the Sun PDP, XEngine and SBA-XACML. Experimental results show that 1) if the number of requests reaches 10,000, the evaluation time of XDNNEngine on the large-scale policy set with 10,000 rules is approximately 2.5 ms, and 2) in the same condition as 1), the evaluation time of XDNNEngine is reduced by 98.27%, 90.36% and 84.69%, respectively, over that of the Sun PDP, XEngine and SBA-XACML.

This paper aims at demonstrating how and that model predictive control (MPC) strategies can be used to determine optimal intervention policies against the COVID-19 pandemic. Especially for the time after a first wave of infection and before a vaccine can be safely distributed to a sufficient extent, the intervention experience from the first outbreak can be utilized to guide the policy decision in this period. The MPC problem in this paper takes the pandemic in different regions of a country and its neighboring countries into account, while policies such as wearing masks or social distancing are selected as inputs to be optimized. This optimized policy balances the risk of a second outbreak and socio-economic costs, while considering that the measure should not be too severe to be rejected by the population. Effectiveness of this policy compared to standard intervention policies is compared through numerical simulations.

The Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) represent the world's first effort toward the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global temperature increase well below 2 °C and pursuing 1.5 °C. Little is known about how much the proposed mitigation efforts can reduce the risks and economic damages from unabated climate change and about the consequences if key emitters drop the Paris Agreement. Here, we use CLIMRISK, an integrated assessment model designed to support climate policy at the global, national, and subnational scales where mitigation and adaptation policy decisions are made. We characterize the consequences of unabated climate change and the benefits of current climate policy proposals by means of probabilistic estimates of the economic damages of climate change and uni- and multivariate dynamic climate risk indices at a detailed spatial resolution. The results presented reveal that the economic costs and risks are highly unequally distributed between and within countries and larger than previously estimated when warming in urban areas and temporal persistence of impacts are accounted for. Costs and risks can be significantly limited by strict implementation of NDCs, but increase noticeably under noncompliance by large emitters, like the United States.

Promoting the construction of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area is a major policy decision and national strategy made by the central government of China, which significantly supports the Belt and Road Initiative and maintains the long-term prosperity for the whole country. As an important part of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, Foshan needs to find its own position and direction in order to accelerate the joint development with other cities through five measures.

Thean Singh, Jawahar SK Pillai, Mukunda C Sahoo Department of Hospital Administration, AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, IndiaCorrespondence: Jawahar SK Pillai Email jawahardr@yahoo.comIntroduction: Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing technique that identifies the activities in an organization and assigns the cost to the activities based on the actual resources consumed for each activity. The method was used to ascertain the cost of surgical intensive care unit (SICU) bed in an institute of national importance, such as All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhubaneswar, from June 2019 to February 2021.Objective: The present study aimed to ascertain the cost of SICU beds per day by the ABC technique. The different elements of cost were analyzed. The cost for selected patients in the SICU unit was calculated by preparing a cost sheet based on the elements of cost and studying the existing charging system.Methods: A total of 38 cases were selected from the departments of General Surgery, Urology, Orthopedics, and Plastic surgery. Based on the ABC technique, the activity map was developed for SICU (cost center), and the time consumed together with resources for each activity was calculated with respect to human resources, consumables, medicines, and overheads. Thus, the total cost incurred by the hospital for SICU beds per day was estimated using the cost sheet analysis.Results: The cost was calculated to be Rs. 11,241/- per day (155 USD) against the hospital charge of Rs. 35/- (< 0.5 USD) for general patients and Rs. 1000/- for private ward patients. Exchange Conversion Rate used is 1 USD = 72.60 INR (2020– 21).Conclusion: The public sector hospitals in India provide health-care services for free and at a subsidized rate; hence, ascertaining the cost incurred by the hospital is necessary for policy decisions.Keywords: activity-based costing, SICU, costing, cost accounting, facility management costing

Governments all over the world make their best to fight with Covid-19 pandemic as effectively as possible. Therefore, we observed a growing need of trustworthy data-intensive systems supporting administration in validating their policy decisions. ProMES, the Covasim-based multiagent pandemic simulator, may serve as such a system, adjusted to the specificity of living, working and social conditions in Poland. The main role of ProMES is to evaluate and compare strategies for reducing Covid-19 transmissions. The strategies include time- and region-dependent combinations of nonpharmaceutical coronavirus-related individual and state interventions, tests and vaccinations. Ultimately, ProMES is meant to serve as a part of data/knowledge intensive decision support system, enhancing administrative reactivity as well as pro-activity in preventing the spread of the coronavirus. This paper reports a work in progress.

Research in rapidly evolving policy contexts can lead to the following ethical challenges for sponsors and researchers: the study’s standard of care can become different than what patients outside the study receive, there may be political or other pressure to move ahead with unproven interventions, and new findings or revised policies may decrease the relevance of ongoing studies. These ethical challenges are considerable, but not unprecedented. In this article, we review the case of a multinational, randomized, controlled perinatal HIV prevention trial, the “PROMISE” (Promoting Maternal Infant Survival Everywhere) study. PROMISE compared the relative efficacy and safety of interventions to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV. The sponsor engaged an independent international ethics panel to address controversy about the study’s standard of care and relevance as national and international guidelines changed. This ethics panel concluded that continuing the PROMISE trial as designed was ethically permissible because: (1) participants in all arms received interventions that were effective, and there was insufficient evidence about whether one intervention was more effective or safer than the other, and (2) data from PROMISE could be useful for a diverse range of stakeholders. In general, trials designed to inform rapidly evolving policy issues should develop mechanisms to revisit social value while recognizing that the value of research varies for diverse stakeholders with legitimate reasons to weigh evidence differently. We conclude by providing four reasons that trials may depart from the standard of care after a change in policy, while remaining ethically justifiable, and by suggesting how to improve existing trial oversight mechanisms to address evolving social value.

In the summer of 2018–19 mass fish kills occurred in the Lower Darling (Baaka) River in south-eastern Australia. The fish kills received national and international attention and have been the focus of numerous government agency and independent assessments. Although fish kills have previously been recorded in the Lower Darling region, the size and rapid succession of the 2018–19 ‘Menindee’ fish kills made them unprecedented in the Murray–Darling Basin, placing significant pressure on the native fish community. Although the deaths of millions of fish were documented, the significant negative effect that the fish kills had on local communities, particularly the traditional Baakandji people, was largely ignored. The social and cultural aspects of such events can have major non-economic effects on local communities. In this paper we document heart-felt feelings conveyed by local community members. Their sense of loss, despair and helplessness is compounded by frustration regarding water management and policy decision making in the Murray–Darling Basin. However, these tragic events have increased understanding of traditional Baakandji connection to the river and its fish and, together with local recovery efforts, now provide prospects for enhanced community and agency cooperation to improve the health of the lower Darling Baaka River and restore its native fish populations.

Trade unions have received little attention in sustainability transitions research, despite their capacity to influence policy decisions. This article presents a study of how key unions in Norway a country with a large petroleum sector as well as high union level density – have moved their preferences on transition issues in the period 2007–2019. With a document-based process analysis of trade unions’ changing policy preferences and interpretations of a just transition, a concept that aims to bridge the apparent gap between destruction and creation policies, we show how trade unions have used this concept to reconcile different positions among unions. While unions from petroleumrelated sectors are more opposed to phase-out policies compared to non-petroleum unions, the solidarity principle among unions has caused some movement towards a joint support of a just transition. Yet, different unions promote different ideas of what a just transition means depending on their sector affiliation.

Cascade genetic testing is the identification of individuals at risk for a hereditary condition by genetic testing in relatives of people known to possess particular genetic variants. Cascade testing has health system implications, however cascade costs and health effects are not considered in health technology assessments (HTAs) that focus on costs and health consequences in individual patients. Cascade health service use must be better understood to be incorporated in HTA of emerging genetic tests for children. The purpose of this review was to characterise published research related to patterns and costs of cascade health service use by relatives of children with any condition diagnosed through genetic testing. To this end, a scoping literature review was conducted. Citation databases were searched for English-language papers reporting uptake, costs, downstream health service use, or cost-effectiveness of cascade investigations of relatives of children who receive a genetic diagnosis. Included publications were critically appraised, and findings were synthesised. Twenty publications were included. Sixteen had a paediatric proband population; four had a combined paediatric and adult proband population. Uptake of cascade testing varied across diseases, from 37% for cystic fibrosis, 39% to 65% for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and 90% for rare monogenic conditions. Two studies evaluated costs. It was concluded that cascade testing in the child-to-parent direction has been reported in a variety of diseases, and that understanding the scope of cascade testing will aid in the design and conduct of HTA of emerging genetic technologies to better inform funding and policy decisions.

Previous studies of the geographical and temporal features of serial sex offenses are limited by small samples and/or geographical areas, and are dated. We address a significant gap in the literature by investigating the temporal and geographical proximity of the crimes of 402 serial stranger sex offenders in the UK. Periods of incarceration were extracted from calculations of temporal proximity giving a more accurate picture of series duration and time elapsed between offenses from the same series. A notable minority of serial stranger sex offenders commit their offenses within very close geographic proximity and the same was found for temporal proximity. There were also occurrences of series spanning large distances and many years. The implications of these findings for the use of geography and time in the behavioral linking of crimes, and what they mean for policy decisions regarding financial investment in law enforcement technology, are discussed.

Global concern over widely documented declines in pollinators1–3 has led to the identification of anthropogenic stressors that, individually, are detrimental to bee populations4–7. Synergistic interactions between these stressors could substantially amplify the environmental effect of these stressors and could therefore have important implications for policy decisions that aim to improve the health of pollinators3,8,9. Here, to quantitatively assess the scale of this threat, we conducted a meta-analysis of 356 interaction effect sizes from 90 studies in which bees were exposed to combinations of agrochemicals, nutritional stressors and/or parasites. We found an overall synergistic effect between multiple stressors on bee mortality. Subgroup analysis of bee mortality revealed strong evidence for synergy when bees were exposed to multiple agrochemicals at field-realistic levels, but interactions were not greater than additive expectations when bees were exposed to parasites and/or nutritional stressors. All interactive effects on proxies of fitness, behaviour, parasite load and immune responses were either additive or antagonistic; therefore, the potential mechanisms that drive the observed synergistic interactions for bee mortality remain unclear. Environmental risk assessment schemes that assume additive effects of the risk of agrochemical exposure may underestimate the interactive effect of anthropogenic stressors on bee mortality and will fail to protect the pollinators that provide a key ecosystem service that underpins sustainable agriculture. A meta-analysis of studies in which bees were exposed to combinations of agrochemicals, nutritional stressors and/or parasites revealed evidence for synergistic effects on mortality when bees were exposed to multiple agrochemicals at field-realistic levels.

Water policy decisions are sensitive in countries like Egypt suffering from water shortage, such decisions directly affect the development in all sectors. The problem of not linking water policy decisions to trade priorities and water security is negatively affecting the efficient water use of the country. In this regard, this paper’s objective is to study and evaluate water resources utilization in Egypt as case study using the footprint process compared to available water resources performing detailed analysis of the effect of considering water footprint approach in developing water policies and water strategies. Egypt’s water footprint was calculated in novel methodology merging different international and national data, then compared to water footprint of different water uses. The results showed that the average Egyptian national water footprint for the years (2012–2016) was 111.05 billion m3, while the average available water resources was 75.66 billion m3, and the average water deficit was 47% of the available water resources and 32% of the total national water footprint. These findings necessitate the need to integrate water resources management policies, agricultural and trade policies to feed in a comprehensive country water accounting system.

Recent studies in nuclear deterrence show that nuclear punishment is infeasible in most cases due to the opponent’s second-strike capability, tactical redundancy, and the logic of self-deterrence. However, if the challenge against nuclear deterrence is expected to go unpunished, the deterrent policy is not credible and will likely fail. Can the defender violently punish the challenger possessing nuclear weapons? If it can, under what conditions? Thanks to President Kennedy’s tape recordings, the Cuban Missile Crisis provides researchers an exceptional laboratory for testing various theories on the defender’s policy choices after deterrence failure. This article derives a research hypothesis and its competing counterpart and examines their respective explanatory power via a process-tracing analysis of key members within the Executive Committee during the crisis. The study finds that the challenger’s feasibility of retaliating with atomic weapons is a crucial predictor for the defender’s policy choices.

Leseprobe ----- Zusammenfassung Gegenstand der vorliegenden Untersuchung sind diskursive Verhandlungen von Krisen in digitalen Raumen im Kontext der pandemiebedingten Schulschliesungen. Die Analyse ausgewahlter Kommunikationsbeitrage des virtuellen Lehrerzimmers innerhalb der Plattform ‚Twitter‘ mithilfe der Dokumentarischen Methode zeigt, dass das schriftsprachliche Handeln von Akteur*innen im virtuellen Raum auf eine Form von Solidarisierungsbewegung verweist. Diese kann fur das interagierende Subjekt in Anbetracht fehlender Handlungsroutinen im Zusammenhang mit den Schulschliesungen bei der Bearbeitung von Ungewissheit relevant sein. Der zugrundeliegende Orientierungsrahmen deutet zumindest auf ein kollektives Bewusstsein der Beitragenden fur die Krisenhaftigkeit des padagogisch-schulischen Geschehens. Dabei ist die Suche nach geteilten Einschatzungen, etwa im Umgang mit Elternkritik, auffallig. Ob dadurch allerdings eine reflexive Berufskrisenbearbeitung stattfindet oder sich lediglich ein Klagen der Akteure gegenuber bildungspolitischen Entscheidungen ausdruckt, musste weitergehend untersucht werden. Schlagworter: Corona-Krise, Netzwerkgesellschaften, Kontingenz, virtuelle Kommunikation, Dokumentarische Methode ----- Contingency management in the crisis. A documentary reconstruction of communication contributions in the #twitterlehrerzimmer at the time of the pandemicrelated school closures Abstract The subject of this study is the discursive negotiation of crises in digital spaces in the context of pandemic-related school closures. The analysis of selected communication posts of the virtual teachers’ room within the platform ‚Twitter‘ using the documentary method shows that the written language actions of actors in virtual space refer to a form of solidarity movement. This can be relevant for the interacting subject in the context of dealing with uncertainty in the absence of action routines in the context of school closures. At the very least, the underlying frame of orientation points to a collective awareness on the part of the contributors of the crisis nature of the pedagogicalschool event. In this context, the search for shared assessments, for example in dealing with parental criticism, is striking. However, it would have to be investigated further whether this leads to a reflexive handling of the professional crisis or whether the actors are merely complaining about educational policy decisions. Keywords: corona crisis, network societies, contingency, virtual communication, documentary method ----- Bibliographie: Hovels, Barbara/Herzmann, Petra: Kontingenzbearbeitung in der Krise. Eine dokumentarische Rekonstruktion von Kommunikationsbeitragen im #twitterlehrerzimmer zu Zeiten der pandemiebedingten Schulschliesungen, ZQF – Zeitschrift fur Qualitative Forschung, 1-2021, S. 139-158. https://doi.org/10.3224/zqf.v22i1.11

This study aims to see the density of patient visits at the Raden Mattaher Regional Hospital by using the National Emergency Department Overcrowded Scale (Nedocs). The method used in this study is an analytical survey to assess the role and function of an emergency room management and to analyze the management of patients in the emergency room at the Raden Mattaher Regional General Hospital (RSUD), Jambi Province. The results of this study indicate the average overcrowded rating in the ER at Raden Mattaher Hospital Jambi, which is in the range of 61-100 with the assessment category Very busy but not too full (extremely busy but not overcrowded). According to the Ministry of Health, the calculation of the need for human resources for nurses, the number of nurses in the ER at Raden Mattaher Hospital is short of 4 people, and not all of them are emergency certified. Based on the research results, it can be concluded that the policy decision making has been implemented but it has not been implemented properly. Furthermore, regarding the density in the emergency room during patient visits, the Raden Mattaher Regional Hospital provides a step solution to hospital management.

Many policy decisions take input from collections of scientific models. Such decisions face significant and often poorly understood uncertainty. We rework the so-called confidence approach to tackle decision-making under severe uncertainty with multiple models, and we illustrate the approach with a case study: insurance pricing using hurricane models. The confidence approach has important consequences for this case and offers a powerful framework for a wide class of problems. We end by discussing different ways in which model ensembles can feed information into the approach, appropriate to different collections of models.

Vietnam is a key player in India's Act East Policy and is distressed due to China's overarching position in the South China Sea. China's expanding infrastructural investments in India's periphery have led to a regional security dilemma in Indian Ocean Region. India is steered to pursue opportunities to counter China in the latter's periphery, to which Vietnam fits as an apt ally. Hence, this paper examines the heightened need for realigning India's Vietnam policy in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and explains how bilateral cooperation through sustainable trade, renewable energy production, and green investments can offer a "counter" to Chinese expansion in Indo-Pacific and its Belt and Road Initiative. This paper uses the theoretical framework of Balance of Power to enumerate how geostrategic policy decisions in India-Vietnam bilateral relations can create a "counterbalance" to the Chinese investments in India's neighborhood, especially in Pakistan.

Do children suffer from discriminatory structures in society and how can issues of social injustice against children be conceptualised and studied? The conceptual frame of childism is examined through everyday expressions in the aftermath of policies affecting children in Sweden, the UK and Ireland to develop knowledge of age-based and intersectional discrimination against children. While experiences in Sweden seem to indicate that young children rarely suffer severe symptoms from covid-19, or constitute a driving force in spreading the virus, policy decisions in the UK and Ireland to close down schools have had detrimental effects on children in terms of child hunger and violence against children. Policy decisions that have prioritised adults at the cost of children have unveiled a structural injustice against children, which is mirrored by individual examples of everyday societal prejudice.

Background As healthcare workers (HCWs) are at high risk for infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), they have priority for receipt of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine. The inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine has been used in Indonesia to induce an antibody response against SARS-CoV-2 infection in HCWs. However, information regarding the kinetics of antibodies induced by this vaccine remains scarce. Objective To investigate the magnitude and durability of antibodies against the spike (S) protein (anti-S) in fully-vaccinated HCWs using an electrochemiluminescence immunoassay. Results Seroconversion of anti-S antibodies was observed among 159 (99.4%) of 160 HCWs without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection 14 days after full-dose vaccination. The level of anti-S antibodies decreased significantly by day 42 post-vaccination compared with day 14 post-vaccination, but persisted for up to 98 days post-vaccination. In contrast, vaccinated HCWs with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection had significantly higher, stable levels of anti-S antibodies compared with vaccinated HCWs without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. Conclusion The remarkable decline and lower level of anti-S antibodies among HCWs without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection may indicate the need for an additional booster dose of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for protection against COVID-19. This study of antibody responses induced by the inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine among HCWs may contribute to future policy decisions regarding vaccination.

Background-The global burden of cancer continues to increase largely because of the aging and growth of the world population alongside an increasing adoption of cancer causing behaviors, particularly smoking in economically developing countries and life style changes. India exhibits heterogeneity in cancer. Since two decade changes in the pattern of cancer has been observed in various studies. So this retrospective study was done to observe the changing pattern in female cancer in our institution during last 10 years. Aims and object-To observe the changes in female malignancies during last 10 years in terms of age shifting and site of presentation. Result/observation-Ca cervix is on decreasing trend while ca breast is on increasing pattern.Ca gallbladder, ca esophagus, colorectal cancer and ca ovary are on gradually increasing trend while hematological malignancy is showing a sharp rise in trend. Conclusion- Evidence-based policy decision on steps for cancer prevention and cancer control should be formulated. More emphasis should be given on the cancer which are showing an increasing trend so that proper and effective screening and cancer control program can be implicated.

Applications of machine learning (ML) to high-stakes policy settings -- such as education, criminal justice, healthcare, and social service delivery -- have grown rapidly in recent years, sparking important conversations about how to ensure fair outcomes from these systems. The machine learning research community has responded to this challenge with a wide array of proposed fairness-enhancing strategies for ML models, but despite the large number of methods that have been developed, little empirical work exists evaluating these methods in real-world settings. Here, we seek to fill this research gap by investigating the performance of several methods that operate at different points in the ML pipeline across four real-world public policy and social good problems. Across these problems, we find a wide degree of variability and inconsistency in the ability of many of these methods to improve model fairness, but post-processing by choosing group-specific score thresholds consistently removes disparities, with important implications for both the ML research community and practitioners deploying machine learning to inform consequential policy decisions., 17 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables

The current research examines the effects of external and internal factors on the decisions related to the compensation policy subsequently influence turnover intentions of Telecom sector employees of Pakistan. The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, the factors effecting the compensation policy decision are generated through an extensive review of literature. This exhaustive list was tested through a rigorous process of a number of iterations of finding the most valued and considered factors in Pakistani telecom sector. This process was done with the top tier management including the human resource practitioners, as these are the people who significantly contribute in developing and finalizing decisions on the policy relating to compensation. For meeting with the objectives of current study, second phase consisted on identification of the impact of such decisions was tested on employee’s turnover intentions. The results were significant giving an understanding that the organizations who consider the most critical internal and external factors effecting decisions related with compensation policy, will ultimately craft such a policy, which is having a positive influence on the motivation of employee to continue working with the organization. So, this will solve the major organizational problem of retaining the productive employees and hence getting a sustainable organizational performance.

Facing challenges of dealing with complex social and technical issues, Chinese government has sought to enhance social credibility of policy decisions by soliciting expert advice. One institutional...

The aim of this article is to determine whether there is opportunistic behavior in local government decisions related to contracting out, public-private partnership (PPP) and/or public externalizat...

This paper briefly reviews different debates about approaches for paths out of poverty, considering several views, from the analysis of specific policies to more general or systemic considerations. The contribution of this paper is to present a broad outline of those debates and to serve as an illustration of the complexity of analyzing paths out of poverty. It discusses in sequence, the more microeconomic approach of evaluation of individual policies for poverty alleviation; then it moves to broader issues of growth and development strategies, and macroeconomic policies, and their links to the persistence or reduction of poverty; and finally discusses the topic of institutions, related to how policy decisions are made and enforced in societies at the previous three levels. Finally, the concluding section argues that a successful program to eliminate poverty must integrate all levels of individual policies, macroeconomic programs, development strategies and good institutions. This paper hopes to contribute to that crucial work.

It is common to find multiple network interfaces connected to different Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in devices such as smartphones. Multipath TCP (MPTCP) enables TCP connections to use all these network interfaces in a single TCP connection in an application transparent manner. MPTCP schedules traffic of one TCP connection over subflows created over these network interfaces. It is evident that this requires some scheduling policy. There have been some attempts to allow applications to decide on the scheduling policy. However, this violates the application transparency of MPTCP, and applications do not have all the information required to decide on such a policy. In addition, this allows the applications to monopolize the network connection thus posing a security threat as well. We argue that only the owner of the device (the user) has the right to make that policy decision and only the user can make an informed decision on the scheduling policy. For example, the user has the information on the monetary cost of the connections through different interfaces. In this paper we present a mechanism that allows the user to provide hints to the TCP scheduler to alter its scheduling policy. While this is not a mechanism to implement generic scheduling policies, it demonstrates how a user can guide the scheduling policies. As a proof of the concept, we demonstrate how MPTCP scheduler can be influenced to select a less stable and lossy path over a stable path based on a user preference.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine trials provide valuable insight into the safety and efficacy of vaccines, with individually randomized, placebo-controlled trials being the gold standard in trial design. However, a myriad of variables must be considered as clinical trial data are interpreted and used to guide policy decisions. These variables include factors such as the characteristics of the study population and circulating severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) strains, the force of infection, the definition and ascertainment of endpoints, the timing of vaccine efficacy assessment, and the potential for performance bias. In this Viewpoints article, we discuss critical variables to consider when comparing efficacy measurements across current and future COVID-19 vaccine trials.

Background Below-normal availability of water for a considerable period of time induces occurrence of drought. This paper investigates the Spatio-temporal characteristics of meteorological drought under changing climate. The climate change was analyzed using delta based statistical downscaling approach of RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 in R software packages. The meteorological drought was assessed using the Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI). Results The result of climate change projections showed that the average annual minimum temperature will be increased by about 0.8–2.9 °C. The mean annual maximum temperature will be also increased by 0.9–3.75 °C. The rainfall projection generally showed an increasing trend, it exhibited an average annual increase of 3.5–13.4 % over the study area. The projected drought events reached its maximum severity indicated extreme drought in the years 2043, 2044, 2073, and 2074. The RDI value shows drought will occurred after 1–6 and 2–7 years under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 emission scenarios respectively over the study area. Almost more than 72 % of the current and future spatial coverage of drought in the study area will be affected by extreme drought, 22.3 % severely and 5.57 % also moderate drought. Conclusions Therefore, the study helps to provide useful information for policy decision makers to implement different adaptation and mitigation measures of drought in the region.