Public Articles
Exploring the relationship between the usage of the CitiBike(s) when used by Customers and Subscribers
and 5 collaborators
Stellar Ultrasound
7 ways on how to differentiate your small business from the competition
Welcome to Authorea!
Leighton-Linslade and the new energy landscape
What are the green credentials of South Bedfordshire? I’ve been spurred into researching this question and to compare how that fits with national requirements, because of a new wind turbine application happening near Leighton-Linslade. The town has been formed and built its personality about substantial national infrastructure - Watling St; the Grand Union Canal; the West Coast Main Line Railway. Personally I see that we have an opportunity to help tackle the next infrastructure change and to lead on the realisation of Britain’s future energy landscape.
wordpress_basic_esame_finale_Scimone_Veronica
and 1 collaborator
Ieee Transactions On Wireless Communications Template
A comment on the value of screening1
Everybody’s talking about screening again, with good reason. Research seems to suggest that screening for breast cancer, using mammography, is not effective (let alone cost-effective)\cite{Miller_2014}. Here I present a view on the value of screening; the validity of which I am yet to fully convince myself.
Review: Thrive (Richard Layard, David Clark)
Mental illness reduces national income by about 4%, and yet we only spend about 13% of our health budget and about 5% of our medical research funds on tackling the problem.
As an economist who writes a fair bit on mental health, I regularly trot out statements like this about how costly mental health problems are to society and how the under-provision of services is grossly inefficient. To some the point may now seem obvious and trite. As evidence grows ever more compelling, government policy slowly shifts in response. One success story is the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) initiative, which has greatly improved the availability of evidence-based treatment for some of the most prevalent mental health problems in the UK. Yet in many cases we still await adequate action from the government and decision-makers. Two key players in getting IAPT into government policy were Richard Layard - an economist - and David Clark - a psychologist. In their new book Thrive: The Power of Evidence-Based Psychological Therapies, Layard and Clark demonstrate the need for wider provision of cost-effective mental health care in the UK.\cite{layard2014thrive}
The book starts with a gentle introduction to mental illness; what it is, who suffers, the nature of treatment. This will give any reader a way in, with an engaging set-up for what follows (though with one third of families including someone with a mental illness, most people will find the topic relatable). The opening chapters go on to dig deeper into these questions; do these people get help, how does it affect their lives and what are the societal impacts? These chapters serve as a crash course in mental health and though the style is conversational and easily followed, on reflection you’ll realise that you’ve absorbed a great deal of information about mental health. More importantly, you’ll have a deeper understanding. This isn’t simply because of the number of statistics that have been thrown at you, but because of the personal stories and illustrations that accompany the numbers. This forms the first half of the book - ‘The Problem’ - which encourages the reader to start questioning why more isn’t being done. Economists may at times balk at the broad brush strokes in considering the societal ‘costs’ of mental health problems, but the figures are nevertheless startling.
From there the book continues to build. In the second half - ‘What Can Be Done?’ - the authors go on to explain that actually there’s a ton of effective therapies available. We know what they are and who they work for, but they aren’t available. There’s no doubt that the view of the evidence presented is an optimistic one, but it isn’t designed to mislead; where evidence is lacking, the authors say so. The book seems to be written with the sceptical academic in mind; no sooner can you start to question a claim than you are thrown another baffling statistic to chew on. Various therapies are explored, though the focus is undeniably on depression and anxiety and on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Readers with CBT bugbears may feel alienated by this, but should consider it within the broader scope of the book.
Readers would do well to stop after chapter 14. Things go sharply downhill from this point and could, for some readers, undermine what goes before. This would be a great shame. In all seriousness, chapters 15 and 16 would be better off read at a later date, once the rest of the book has been absorbed, understood and - possibly - acted upon. In the final chapters Layard and Clark make distinctly political proposals about how society should be organised. The happiness agenda takes centre stage. In places, mental illness is presented as simply the opposite of happiness. This is an unfortunate and unnecessary tangent. I have some sympathies with the happiness agenda, but for many I expect these chapters would ruin the book. The less said about them the better.
It is a scandal that so many people with mental health problems do not have access to the cost-effective treatments that exist. Layard and Clark demonstrate convincingly that the issue is of public interest. Thrive has the potential to instill in people the right amounts of sympathy, anger and understanding to bring about change. Many will disagree with their prescriptions, but this should not detract from the central message of the book.
Sofosbuvir: a fork in the road for NICE?
NICE recently completed their appraisal of the hepatitis C drug sofosbuvir\cite{National_Institute_for_Health_and_Care_Excellence2015-cp}. However, as has been reported in the media, NHS England will not be complying with the guidance within the normal time period\cite{Boseley2015-zg}.
The cost of a 24 week course of sofosbuvir is almost £70,000. Around 160,000 people are chronically infected with the hepatitis C virus in England\cite{Public_Health_England2014-in}, so that adds up to a fair chunk of the NHS budget. Yet the drug does appear to be cost-effective. ICERs differ for different patient groups, but for most scenarios the ICER is below £30,000 per QALY. In the NICE documentation, a number of reasons are listed for NHS England’s decision. But what they ultimately boil down to — it seems — is affordability.
The problem is that NICE doesn’t account for affordability in its guidance. One need only consider that the threshold has remained unchanged for over a decade to see that this is true. How to solve this problem really depends on what we believe the job of NICE should be. Should it be NICE’s job to consider what should and shouldn’t be purchased within the existing health budget? Or, rather, should it be NICE’s job simply to figure out what is ‘worth it’ to society, regardless of affordability? This isn’t the first time that an NHS organisation has appealed against a NICE decision in some way\cite{Wells_2007}. Surely, it won’t be the last. These instances represent a failure in the system, not least on grounds of accountability for reasonableness\cite{Daniels_2000}. Here I’d like to suggest that NICE has 3 options for dealing with this problem; one easy, one hard and one harder.
Authorea's New Editor and Design Principles
and 1 collaborator
Test header 1 | Test header 2 |
Test cell 2 | Test cell 4 |
Getting to know the new editor
The table works just fine if you use a LaTeXwriting block but it does not work as well if you were to use the Markdown formatted writing environment. For most intent and purposes, a LaTeXblock is probably the best option to work wth the ne new wedit d edt editor of Authorea. Excelent effort and now with integration with TheWinnower, looks really good!
ESPECIALIZACIÓN EN INGENIERÍA EN TELECOMUNICACIONES Proyecto del Seminario de Redes de Acceso Fijo
Cantidad de usuarios por Nodo = Cantidad de usuarios por Cluster / Cantidad de Nodos
Ejemplo: Usur/nodo (BsAs NORTE [BAN]) = 500 000 / 56 = 8929
Se verifica del diagrama del Cluster cual es el Nodo más alejado.
Nodo más alejado = nodo con mayor cantidad de puntos intermedios hasta el nodo Borde Gateway
Si consideramos 1 km de largo para cada nodo la distancia de FO = cantidad de nodos intermedios
Authorea Acquires Scientific Publisher The Winnower
and 1 collaborator
gui_es_05_analisi_prototipazione
analyse crétique de sénario negawatt
and 2 collaborators
Creating a domino effect: what can we all do, however small, to make research more open and reproducible?
hacking_type_ff3300_alessandro_tartaglia
What might peer review look like in 2030? Find out at SpotOn16.
analisi&ricerca_mohole_homepage
and 2 collaborators