Resource Adjustment Research Articles

Cost-Effectiveness of Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy Implementation in Neurorehabilitation: The ACTIveARM Project.

BackgroundConstraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) is a recommended intervention for improving arm recovery following stroke and traumatic brain injury; however, delivery in practice remains rare.PurposeThe aim of this study was to investigate the costs and cost effectiveness of CIMT delivery, and the use of a CIMT implementation package designed to improve CIMT uptake and delivery by therapists in Sydney, Australia.MethodsThis economic evaluation was conducted with a subset of CIMT programmes (n = 20) delivered by neurological rehabilitation teams at five varied hospitals within a mixed methods implementation study (ACTIveARM). The costs of delivering the CIMT implementation package and publicly funded CIMT were calculated using a bottom-up approach. A cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted, using decision analytic modelling. We compared the uptake and outcomes of people who received CIMT from health services that had received a CIMT implementation package, with those receiving standard upper limb therapy. An Australian health care system perspective was used in the model, over a 3-week time horizon (the average timeframe of a CIMT programme). All costs were calculated in Australian dollars (AUD). Inputs were derived from the ACTIveARM study and relevant literature. The Action Research Arm Test was used to measure arm outcomes. Sensitivity analyses assessed the impact of improving CIMT uptake, scale-up of the implementation package and resource adjustment, including a ‘best-case’ scenario analysis.ResultsThe total cost of delivering the implementation package to nine teams across five hospitals was $110,336.43 AUD over 18 months. The mean cost of delivering an individual CIMT programme was $1233.38 AUD per participant, and $936.03 AUD per participant for group-based programmes. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of individual CIMT programmes was $8052 AUD per additional person achieving meaningful improvement in arm function, and $6045 AUD for group-based CIMT. The ICER was most sensitive to reductions in staffing costs. In the ‘best-case’ scenario, the ICER for both individual and group-based CIMT was $245 AUD per additional person gaining a meaningful change in function.ConclusionTherapists improved CIMT uptake and delivery with the support of an implementation package, however cost effectiveness was unclear.Clinical Trial Registrationhttps://anzctr.org.au/Trial ID: ACTRN12617001147370.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41669-022-00323-9.

The impact of reduced operating room capacity on the time delay of urgent surgical care for neurosurgical patients during the COVID-19 pandemic

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic raised major challenges to the management of patient flows and medical staff resource allocation. To prevent the collapse of medical facilities, elective diagnostic and surgical procedures were drastically reduced, canceled or rescheduled. MethodsWe recorded all in-hospital treated patients and outpatient clinics visits of our neurosurgical department from March 2017 to February 2021. Changes of OR capacity, in-hospital neurosurgical treatments and outpatient clinics visits during the pandemic episode was compared on a monthly bases to the previous years. ResultsA total of 3′214 data points from in-house treated patients and 11′400 outpatient clinics visits were collected. The ratio of elective (73.5% ± 1.5) to emergency surgeries (26.5% ± 1.5) remained unchanged from 2017 to 2021. Significantly less neurosurgical interventions were performed in April 2020 (−42%), significantly more in July 2020 (+36%). Number of outpatient clinics visits remained in the expected monthly range (mean n = 211 ± 67). Total OR capacity was reduced to 30% in April 2020 and 55% in January 2021. No significant delay of urgent surgical treatments was detected during restricted (<85%) OR capacity. On average, the delay of rescheduled consultations was 58 days (range 3 – 183 days), three (6.5%) were referred as emergencies. ConclusionsDynamic monitoring and adjustment of resources is essential to maintain surgical care. The sharp restrictions of surgical activities resulted in significant fluctuations and 5% decrease of treated neurosurgical patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, urgent neurosurgical care was assured without significant time delay during periods of reduced OR capacity.

Ensuring Profit and QoS When Dynamically Embedding Delay-Constrained ICN and IP Slices for Content Delivery

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are becoming more critical due to the tremendous growth of video traffic. This paper proposes a complete framework targeting the creation of Information Centric Network (ICN) and IP slices for content delivery. Leveraging ICN's in-network caching advantages, our solution is tailored to a VNF placement context where ICN and IP slices are dynamically created over a physical infrastructure. Embedding delay-constrained slices with high profits requires adjustments of the available resources based on the traffic and slice demands, which leads to the reassigning of the slices. However, slice reassignment may lead to additional costs, content disruption in service delivery, and QoS violation. We formulate the problem as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) and propose a cost-efficient dynamic network slicing heuristic. The objective is to maximize the profit of infrastructure providers while meeting the different QoS requirements of the slices. Our evaluation validates the effectiveness of profit maximization and analyzes the impact of QoS violation on infrastructure provider profit. The results are compared to a recent work from the literature and an optimal solution. The evaluation shows that our proposed heuristic is promising and offers a near-optimal solution while improving profitability and ensuring QoS.

A Review Paper on Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change

The urgency of tackling agricultural adaptation is heightened by the significant trends in climate change currently visible, the probability of additional changes, and the growing magnitude of possible climatic effects more logically. There are many possibilities for adaption accessible for minor alterations to current agricultural systems, frequently; current climate risk management is modified. We demonstrate that putting these ideas into action is likely to affect some agricultural systems that will benefit from mild climate change. However, their efficacy is limited in situations that are more complex. Climate change is becoming more severe. As a result, additional systemic resource adjustments are required. Targeted diversification, for example, must be addressed when allocating resources of lives and production systems. We believe that obtaining increased adaptation activity will require climate change integration climate change-related problems with additional risk factors with other policy domains, such as variability and market risk, and other policy domains, such as long-term development. Dealing with the numerous obstacles to effective adaptation will require a multifaceted and dynamic approach.

The impact of cost stickiness on financial reporting: evidence from income smoothing

AbstractThis study investigates the impact of cost stickiness on income smoothing. Prior literature at the intersection between management and financial accounting has understood changes in cost behaviour as mere consequences of short‐term earnings management incentives. By considering income smoothing as the more complex earnings management strategy, we argue that resource adjustment strategies underlying cost behaviour might also have an impact on long‐term financial reporting choices. Specifically, asymmetric reactions of costs to sales changes should increase earnings volatility and thus restrict managers’ capabilities to report smooth income streams, which is supported by our empirical results. Additional tests reveal that cost stickiness primarily restricts opportunistic income smoothing and that the relationship depends on other factors such as the level of adjustment costs.

Spinoffs’ alliance network growth beyond parental ties: performance diminishing, then performance enhancing

Spinoff firms are a common phenomenon in entrepreneurship where employees leave incumbent parent firms to found their own. Like other types of new firms, such new spinoffs face liabilities of newness and smallness. Previous research has emphasised the role of the initial endowments from their parent firm to overcome such liabilities. In this study, we argue and are the first to show, that, in addition to such endowments, growing an alliance network with firms other than their parents’ is also critical for spinoff performance. Specifically, we investigate the performance effect of alliance network growth in newly founded spinoffs using a longitudinal sample of 248 spinoffs and 3370 strategic alliances in the mining industry. Drawing on theory based on the resource adjustment costs of forming alliances, we posit and find a U-shaped relationship between the alliance network growth and spinoff performance, above and beyond the parent firm’s influence. We further hypothesise and find that performance effects become stronger with increased time lags between alliance network growth and spinoff performance, and when spinoffs delay growing their alliance networks. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Analysis of Route Choice During Planned and Unplanned Road Closures

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Alternate Route Handbook proposes guidance to identify alternate routes during planned and unplanned road closures. A challenge with this process is the lack of traffic data available to decision-makers. High volume corridors experiencing unplanned closures can provide a rich case history by systematically collecting connected vehicle (CV) data during such incidents. CV data provide the ability to directly measure actual diversion routes and travel times during an ongoing or historical incident. This paper presents methodologies to systematically analyze diversion data to identify the most common alternate route choices and impacted interstate exits, valuable information for public safety and transportation agencies to evaluate the surrounding road network&#x2019;s resiliency in accommodating diverting traffic. Agencies can use this information to proactively deploy resources (officers, signs, barricades) at critical locations during future closures. The scalability of this methodology is demonstrated by evaluating 12 additional cases to assess diversion rates found to be in the range of 58% to 93% for total closures exceeding five hours. The paper concludes by recommending agencies apply these methodologies to develop data-driven diversion strategies on critical routes coupled with real-time CV monitoring in dispatch centers to provide agile adjustment of resources along diversion routes.

The Impact of Political Connections on Managerial Short-Term Resource Adjustment Decisions

The Impact of Political Connections on Managerial Short-Term Resource Adjustment Decisions

Wave riding - 12 months of COVID-19 in a German tertiary carecenter

ZusammenfassungEinleitung Mit weit mehr als 1400 stationär behandelten COVID-19-Patienten ist die Universitätsmedizin Essen der größte COVID-19-Versorger der Region Rhein-Ruhr. Wir präsentieren die Daten unserer Patienten aus den ersten 12 Monaten der Pandemie und die hieraus entstandenen praktischen Konzepte. Methode Retrospektive Analyse aller 1396 stationären COVID-19-Patienten, die zwischen dem 1. März 2020 und 28. Februar 2021 versorgt wurden, im Hinblick auf Komorbiditäten, Überleben und Komplikationen im Verlauf. Es erfolgte ein Gruppenvergleich zwischen Patienten auf Normalstation und Überwachungs-/ Intensivstation. Ergebnisse Bei einer Gesamtmortalität von 19,8 % (277/1396) starben 10,6 % (93/877) der Patienten auf Normalstation und 35,5 % (184/519) der Patienten auf Intensiv- und Überwachungsstationen im klinischen Verlauf. Hierbei waren ein Alter über 60 Jahre, Adipositas, maschinelle Beatmung, NO-Therapie, ECMO-Therapie sowie akutes Nierenversagen und Apoplex im Therapieverlauf unabhängige Prädiktoren für Mortalität. Fazit Die Mortalität unseres Kollektivs auf Normal- bzw. Intensivstationen liegt im Rahmen international publizierter Daten. Sowohl die hohe Rate von Komplikationen bei schwerem Verlauf als auch die große Bedeutung einfacher Komorbiditäten kann eindrücklich gezeigt werden. Das mittlere Alter der Patienten ist mit 60 Jahren auf Normalstation und 63 Jahren auf Intensivstationen überraschend niedrig. Maximaler Patienten- und Personalschutz, eine rasche und effektive Teststrategie im Rahmen der primären Triage, standardisierte Abläufe von der Notaufnahme bis zur Intensivstation sowie eine dynamische tagesaktuelle Anpassung der Ressourcen können eine hohe Versorgungsqualität, auch während der Pandemie, sichern.

The binding guided by attention: Toward an integrated approach on the investigations of conflict adaptation

<p indent=0mm>In the everyday life, internal goals guide us to focus on task-relevant information but inhibit task-irrelevant information that however could not be completely filtered out. Here, cognitive control is required to drive the attention in accordance with internal goals. As an important phenomenon in the field of cognitive control, conflict adaptation refers to the adaptability of cognitive control in goal-guided behaviors, which is of great significance for individuals to adapt to ever-changing environments. In the lab, conflict adaptation is indexed by a reduced conflict after conflict trials (i.e., Trial <italic>n</italic>–1 is incongruent stimulus) compared with after non-conflict trials (i.e., Trial <italic>n</italic>–1 is congruent stimulus). In order to explain this important effect, researchers have proposed a number of accounts, which could be classified into two kinds of perspectives: Attention-based control accounts and memory-based learning accounts. The former includes the well-known conflict monitoring theory, the activation-suppression theory, the negative affective theory, and the expectancy theory. Whereas, the feature-integration theory, the contingency learning hypothesis, and the temporal learning hypothesis belong to the latter. In short, the control accounts emphasize that attentional resources adjustment leads to conflict adaptation through allocating more resources to the target dimension while allocating fewer resources to the distractor dimension. On the other hand, the learning accounts propose that the binding and unbinding of memories between stimulus and responses result in conflict adaptation. Due to their different research focuses, however, the previous studies have discussed the two accounts separately, which is not conducive to the investigation and understanding of the full profiles of conflict adaptation. From our perspective, conflict adaptation in essence is a goal-directed adjustment process. Meanwhile, it is also a phenomenon of learning. Accordingly, in the present comprehensive review, we proposed a hypothesis of the binding guided by attention, which combines the control accounts and the learning accounts. Specifically, conflict adaptation does not only need to guide the allocation of attention resources through task demand, but also needs to enhance the memory representation of “stimulus-response” mapping through binding learning. The integration of the two processes should ultimately promote the occurrence of conflict adaptation. In fact, our hypothesis explains conflict adaptation by combining the Biased Competition model with the Parallel Distributed Processing model. Firstly, the Biased Competition model posits that top-down selective attention enhances neuronal activities that respond to target features and inhibits response-selective neuronal activities of distractor features. Thus, the competition between neurons is biased towards target characteristics. Secondly, the Parallel Distributed Processing model postulates that different stimulus dimensions (e.g., colors and spatial locations) are processed in parallel in different channels that however can activate the same response system, and selective attention can change the processing priority of different stimulus dimensions. To conclude, by integrating the control accounts and the learning accounts, the current hypothesis provides a comprehensive and interpretable mechanism to address conflict adaptation. To be more specific, this hypothesis proposes that conflict adaptation is ultimately generated through binding learning (i.e., the Hebbian learning) with the Parallel Distributed Processing model as the underlying mechanism. More importantly, the binding learning must be guided by the top-down attention-based control mechanism, which is achieved through the Biased Competition model. In summary, the attention-guided binding learning hypothesis provides an integrated reference frame for an in-depth understanding of the internal mechanism of conflict adaptation.

Economic Development and Human Capital are Always Current Concepts

The European Union established, since 2000, a major objective, the development of human capital, so that, by 2020, we may have the most dynamic society and an economy based on knowledge. In the current context of economic development, human resources are the primordial element of competition. The investment in human capital, education, training, and health involves the adjustment of human resources to the structural change of the economy based on efficiency. This article presents the influence of genuine “intangible assets” on the development of society.

Stakeholder orientation and cost stickiness: Evidence from a natural experiment

Using the enactment of state-level constituency statutes that allow firms to consider nonshareholding stakeholders’ interests when making business decisions as a quasi-natural experiment, we study how stakeholder orientation affects asymmetric cost behavior. We employ a difference-in-differences research design and find that the enactment of constituency statutes leads to a significant increase in the degree of operating cost stickiness. We further show that this effect is mainly driven by resource adjustment costs.

Consumer Sentiment, Managerial Expectations and Resource Adjustment Decisions

This study presents evidence on the relationship between consumer sentiment and resource adjustment decisions. Consumer sentiment is an important piece of economic information, accepted as a reliable predictor of future economic activity, which is why it should influence managerial expectations underlying future-oriented resource adjustment decisions. In line with these considerations, I find that managers are more likely to retain slack resources following a decrease in sales when consumer sentiment about future business prospects is improving. Managers seem to adopt consumers’ optimism about future economic prospects by deciding to stall resource adjustments until sales recover to avoid current and future adjustment costs, thus increasing firms’ level of sticky cost behavior. Together with various additional analyses, this study provides new insights into managers’ resource adjustment decision-making process and enhances our understanding of the information upon which managers form their expectations.

Edge artificial intelligence-based affinity task offloading under resource adjustment in a 5G network

Edge artificial intelligence-based affinity task offloading under resource adjustment in a 5G network

License to Fire? Unemployment Insurance and the Moral Cost of Layoffs

Using staggered expansions of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, this study examines moral costs as a constraint on managers’ layoff decisions and more generally, firm resource adjustment. UI not only reduces the burden for the unemployed but also the moral cost of layoffs to their managers. We show that expanding UI leads to larger layoffs in firms experiencing negative economic shocks. The licensing effects are stronger for weakly governed or financially unconstrained firms, whose managers have greater discretion to avoid moral cost and keep marginal workers on their payroll, and for non-Republican or internally promoted CEOs, who show stronger prosocial concerns and lay off fewer workers despite low performance. This study presents moral cost as a novel microeconomic channel through which UI affects layoff decisions, which can compromise its effectiveness as a social insurance program and an automatic stabilizer.

Integrating supply and demand factors for estimating ecosystem services scarcity value and its response to urbanization in typical mountainous and hilly regions of south China

In the process of rapid urbanization, the decline in ecosystems' physical supply value is a direct result of the increasing demands of human development. The ecosystem services value combined with supply and demand factors can be used to obtain the ecosystem services scarcity value (ESSV). These ecosystems with larger ESSVs warrant increased protection, or at the very least a development plan to ensure a balance between their continued existence and human usage. However, urbanization and other developmental effects have often caused the ESSV of those regions to be disregarded, which produces an imbalance in the ecosystem. This paper evaluated the spatial differentiation of ESSV based on heterogeneous units in the Yuebei region, China. Then, a spatial response analysis of the ESSV to urbanization according to the spatial correlation model and Getis-Ord Gi* was conducted. The results showed that the ecosystem service physical supply value declined due to urban sprawl in 1990–2015, but the ESSV increased sharply during the same time with its acceleration being particularly strong after 2000. Areas with higher ESSV were concentrated in the northern region due to a higher prevalence of woodland. Urbanization accelerated significantly after 2000, and it is found that similar tendencies of ESSV and urbanization occurred over the same period. Surprisingly, the ESSV was negatively correlated with urbanization in local regions, and their interaction continued to increase over time. The spatial hotspot map of the ESSV and urbanization also formed an opposite pattern. In addition, the grid number of High-Low and Low-High types is more than half of the total number of aggregated grids. According to the results, understanding the variation in the ESSV clearly due to urbanization and identifying their interaction in local regions can provide a more specific direction for future resource adjustment and ecosystem service improvements.

Research on Optimization Method of Computer Network Service Quality Based on Feature Matching Algorithm

On the whole, the main basis for strengthening the quality of network service is the construction of network system, reasonable arrangement of network and adjustment of information resources. In order to enhance the quality of network services, we should minimize the problems. In order to improve the quality of network, we should study more new network technologies and make up for network loopholes in time. In this study, in order to solve the efficiency problem brought by mass candidate services to quality-aware service selection, a service selection strategy based on feature matching algorithm is proposed. Based on statistical method, a probability matrix describing the mapping relationship between quality demand pattern and quality-oriented service pattern is established, and the service selection algorithm is improved by using the probability matrix. A series of experiments on artificial simulated data sets generated from real service data sets prove the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

The Effect of Foreign Sales on Management’s Resource Adjustments: Focusing on Sticky Cost Behavior

The Effect of Foreign Sales on Management’s Resource Adjustments: Focusing on Sticky Cost Behavior

Municipal cost behavior during financial crisis and financial sustainability periods: Evidence from Spain

This study explores municipal cost behavior during periods of financial crisis and strict financial sustainability legislation. The study employees Anderson, Banker, and Janakiraman approach on a data sample of 48,096 observations from Spanish municipalities for the period 2008-2018. The results suggest that during this period municipality total, service provision and investment expenses exhibit anti-sticky behavior; that is the cost response to an activity level decrease is greater than its response in the case of an activity increase. After the adoption of the financial sustainability legislation this behavior is more intense for all expense categories. Moreover, in periods preceding elections the anti-stickiness trend is mitigated, while size appears to play a role as well, with larger municipalities showing greater anti-stickiness. Eventually, it appears that resource adjustment motivations during crisis periods, under law enforcement and before elections, play a key role in municipal asymmetric cost behavior.

Fuzzy-Based Microservice Resource Management Platform for Edge Computing in the Internet of Things.

Edge computing exhibits the advantages of real-time operation, low latency, and low network cost. It has become a key technology for realizing smart Internet of Things applications. Microservices are being used by an increasing number of edge computing networks because of their sufficiently small code, reduced program complexity, and flexible deployment. However, edge computing has more limited resources than cloud computing, and thus edge computing networks have higher requirements for the overall resource scheduling of running microservices. Accordingly, the resource management of microservice applications in edge computing networks is a crucial issue. In this study, we developed and implemented a microservice resource management platform for edge computing networks. We designed a fuzzy-based microservice computing resource scaling (FMCRS) algorithm that can dynamically control the resource expansion scale of microservices. We proposed and implemented two microservice resource expansion methods based on the resource usage of edge network computing nodes. We conducted the experimental analysis in six scenarios and the experimental results proved that the designed microservice resource management platform can reduce the response time for microservice resource adjustments and dynamically expand microservices horizontally and vertically. Compared with other state-of-the-art microservice resource management methods, FMCRS can reduce sudden surges in overall network resource allocation, and thus, it is more suitable for the edge computing microservice management environment.