Competitive Setting Research Articles

Exercise Intensity and Activity Energy Expenditure of Professional Golf Players in Official Competitive Setting.

Research regarding the physical needs of professional golf players is lacking. With advances in wearable technology, it has become easier to analyze physiological responses such as heart rate (HR) to determine activity energy expenditure (AEE). The purpose of the study was to evaluate exercise intensity (EI) and AEE during 4 consecutive tournament's golf rounds using a popular wrist-based HR monitoring. Wearable systems for HR monitoring can be used to provide an accurate estimate of energy expenditure. Cross-sectional study. Level 3. A total of 20 male professional golfers participated in the study. Each player was monitored during an official tournament consisting of 4 rounds of 18 holes. EI and AEE were determined using HR wrist monitoring (Whoop Strap 2.0). We calculated the percentage of HRmax (%HRmax) and the percentage of HRres (%HRres) and the AEE in kcal/min using Keytel's formula. The calculated mean %HRmax and %HRres for the study population were 56.4% ± 1.8% and 40.5% ± 2.6%, respectively. Considering American College of Sports Medicine guidelines, these average percentages correspond to a moderate EI. The average caloric expenditure was 5.4 ± 0.4 kcal/min and 1555.8 ± 157.8 kcal per round considering an average golf round duration of 288.3 ± 19.5 minutes. A professional player's golf round is moderate physical activity. The AEE of this activity was equal to 5.4 cal/min, which is moderate energy consumption. These data could help golf coaches and conditioning coaches to have a better understanding of the load placed on golfers during tournaments.

The Dos and Donuts of Love by Adiba Jaigirdar

Reviewed by: The Dos and Donuts of Love by Adiba Jaigirdar Aaren Tucker Jaigirdar, Adiba The Dos and Donuts of Love. Feiwel, 2023 [336p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781250842114 $19.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781250842107 $11.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 7-12 Reeling from a break-up, Shireen is prepared to spend her summer moping while bingeing old episodes of The Great British Bake Off and eating donuts from her parents’ struggling donut shop. That quickly changes when she’s selected as a contestant for the first season of The Junior Irish Baking Show. Competing in a show like this has always been Shireen’s dream, and it would raise the profile of the donut shop. Unfortunately, she has to compete alongside her ex-girlfriend Chris, and when they get paired up for the first challenge, it’s clear they have unfinished business. Shireen, however, is determined to put all that aside and focus on the competition; she’s lucky, then, that fellow competitor and new maybe-more-than-friend Niamh is around to help provide a distraction. The charming baking competition setting provides most of the fun and excitement in the story, and adorably punny chapter titles like “Cruller Intentions” and “All Good Things Crumb to an End” bring added humor, but the text injects enough realism to keep the comedic elements this side of twee. In typical teen fashion, Shireen struggles to see things from others’ perspectives, so her growing insight throughout the novel provides a satisfying character arc. Fans of love triangles will be kept guessing about which girl Shireen will choose, though in the end there is no doubt about whom she belongs with in this pleasant, contemplative romance. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Premature depolarisations in horses competing in United States Eventing Association and Fédération Equestre Internationale-sanctioned 3-day events.

Injuries and sudden death during the cross-country (XC) phase of eventing have raised interest in the frequency and types of cardiac arrhythmias occurring in these equine athletes. To characterise the frequency and types of rhythm disturbances and examine possible risk factors for premature depolarisations (PDs) occurring during the XC phase of United States Eventing Association (USEA) and Fédération Equestre Internationale (FEI)-sanctioned events. Prospective, cross-sectional study. Continuous electrocardiographic (ECG) recordings were obtained from horses prior to, during and immediately following the XC competition. Physiological rhythms pre-XC were included in the arrhythmia group for analysis. The frequency of PDs was calculated for all horses, as well as by division. PDs were categorised by complexity (singles, couplets, triplets, complex) and variably grouped for statistical analysis. Multiple logistic regression was used to identify risk factors for the presence of specific cardiac arrhythmia groupings during XC. PDs were identified in 42/75 horses (56% [45, 67]) during XC. Horses competing in the upper divisions of eventing had higher odds for having any PD during XC compared to the lower divisions (OR = 17.5 [4.3, 72.01], p = 0.006). The amount of time the heart rate (HR) was greater than 199 beats per minute (BPM) was associated with more complex arrhythmias (triplets, salvos and tachyarrhythmias) (OR = 1.01 [1.0, 1.02], p = 0.005). An arrhythmia at rest (physiological or PD) was associated with arrhythmia in the early recovery period (OR = 3.5 [1.1, 10.8], p = 0.03). Convenience sampling and technical challenges of continuous ECG recordings under competition settings limited the number of enrollments. PDs were seen in a high percentage of horses during the XC competition. Upper levels and time the HR was greater than 199 BPM were related to PD presence and complexity.

Surgical Phase Recognition in Inguinal Hernia Repair—AI-Based Confirmatory Baseline and Exploration of Competitive Models

Video-recorded robotic-assisted surgeries allow the use of automated computer vision and artificial intelligence/deep learning methods for quality assessment and workflow analysis in surgical phase recognition. We considered a dataset of 209 videos of robotic-assisted laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair (RALIHR) collected from 8 surgeons, defined rigorous ground-truth annotation rules, then pre-processed and annotated the videos. We deployed seven deep learning models to establish the baseline accuracy for surgical phase recognition and explored four advanced architectures. For rapid execution of the studies, we initially engaged three dozen MS-level engineering students in a competitive classroom setting, followed by focused research. We unified the data processing pipeline in a confirmatory study, and explored a number of scenarios which differ in how the DL networks were trained and evaluated. For the scenario with 21 validation videos of all surgeons, the Video Swin Transformer model achieved ~0.85 validation accuracy, and the Perceiver IO model achieved ~0.84. Our studies affirm the necessity of close collaborative research between medical experts and engineers for developing automated surgical phase recognition models deployable in clinical settings.

Home Advantage and its Influencing Factors in FIFA World Cup Asian Qualification

To investigate home advantage in the FIFA World Cup Asian qualification, 508 matches in the group stage of World Cup qualifying in a total of five Asian Zone World Cup qualifying tournaments from 2006–2022 were analysed. It was found that home advantage exists in the Asian Zone World Cup qualifiers as a whole (59.9%), with home advantage at the regional level ranging from high to low in South Asia, Southeast Asia, West Asia, East Asia and Central Asia; Turkmenistan is the country with the highest home advantage, reflecting its exceptional nature. At the individual match level, three factors of Country, Subregion and Year were adjusted by putting them into a multilevel model as random effects, meanwhile, a multi-level model with home points as the dependent variable and the rest as predictor variables also fit well ( R2 = .382). The results show that time zone and climate are significantly correlated with home points after controlling for team quality (both p < .05), i.e., travel and climate were key factors influencing the Asian Zone World Cup qualifiers. Altitude, referee bias, crowd and cultural dimensions were not significant influencing factors for home advantage. As cultural dimensions that significantly affect the home advantage in domestic leagues, corruption, ethnic fractionalisation and conflict did not have a significant impact on the home advantage of the Asian qualifiers, indicating that their roles may not be applicable to international competition settings, at least in the Asian qualifiers.

Forecasting realized volatility of Bitcoin: The informative role of price duration

AbstractMotivated by the relationship between trading intensity and volatility and the attractiveness of duration‐based volatility estimators, this paper investigates the ability of price duration to forecast realized volatility of Bitcoin. Using high‐frequency transaction data, trading intensity is measured by price duration and incorporated in the class of heterogeneous autoregressive (HAR) models. Results provide compelling evidence that trading intensity improves the forecasting performance of a highly competitive set of HAR models, commonly used in the literature. HAR extensions that incorporate price duration systematically deliver the lowest forecast errors and generate economically significant gains in volatility targeting exercise over multiple horizons. However, results show no evidence in favor of a unique duration‐augmented model. The predictive ability of price duration is supported by a number of robustness checks, including alternative estimation windows, bull and bear market states, and alternative thresholds that define price events.

Neural networks vs. splines: advances in numerical extruder design

In this paper, we present a novel approach to geometry parameterization that we apply to the design of mixing elements for single-screw extruders. The approach uses neural networks of a specific architecture to automatically learn an appropriate parameterization. This stands in contrast to the so far common user-defined parameterizations. Geometry parameterization is crucial in enabling efficient shape optimization as it allows for optimizing complex shapes using only a few design variables. Recent approaches often utilize computer-aided design (CAD) data in conjunction with spline-based methods where the spline’s control points serve as design variables. Consequently, these approaches rely on the design variables specified by the human designer. This approach results in a significant amount of manual tuning to define a suitable parameterization. In addition, despite this effort, many times the optimization space is often limited to shapes in close proximity to the initial shape. In particular, topological changes are usually not feasible. In this work, we propose a method that circumvents this dilemma by providing low-dimensional, yet flexible shape parametrization using a neural network, which is independent of any computational mesh or analysis methods. Using the neural network for the geometry parameterization extends state-of-the-art methods in that the resulting design space is not restricted to user-prescribed modifications of certain basis shapes. Instead, within the same optimization space, we can interpolate between and explore seemingly unrelated designs. To show the performance of this new approach, we integrate the developed shape parameterization into our numerical design framework for dynamic mixing elements in plastics’ extrusion. Finally, we challenge the novel method in a competitive setting against current free-form deformation-based approaches and demonstrate the method’s performance even at this early stage.

Notch2 deficiency generates functionally impaired cDCs and macrophages that correlates with intestinal dysbiosis and low-grade inflammation

Abstract Myeloid cell types including conventional dendritic cells (cDCs) and macrophages are key responders to innate stimuli at epithelial barriers. They are equipped with innate receptors to sense danger signals and pathogens, becoming the first line of immune defense and thereby maintaining homeostasis. The expression of selected transcription factors was shown to be essential for the development of these myeloid subsets including Batf3, Notch2, Irf4, and Irf8 among others. We performed single-cell RNA expression analysis across eight different conditional KO lines and identified multiple defects across each line that compromised the development of unique subsets and also altered expression profiles on the remaining subsets. Within CD11c expressing cells, Notch2 deficiency in particular, seems to impair not only type 2 dendritic cells (cDC2) but also macrophage subsets across several tissues. Mice defective for Notch2 were shown to be susceptible to C. rodentium infection. We observed that the lack of Notch2 was accompanied by intestinal dysbiosis, which produced low-grade inflammation. The altered microbiome could be transferred to WT mice by co-housing, which suggests that the lack of either subset enabled the growth of an opportunistic microorganism that could prevail in competitive settings. Among the dysregulated innate pathways, we identified one that appears to correlate with this dysbiosis, and its deletion was sufficient to reproduce the phenotype in preliminary experiments. Collectively, we hypothesize that Notch2 deficiency alters the functional properties of the cDCs and intestinal macrophages ultimately leading to intestinal dysbiosis and a pre-pathologic inflammatory condition. Supported by NIH intramural funding

Monetary Policy, Market Power, and SMEs

Monetary policy aims to affect corporate borrowing by influencing the marginal costs of firms, but its potency can be conditioned by the degree of market competition. We first identify conditions under which changes in marginal costs have different effects on credit constraints and output under different competitive environments, in a simple Cournot competition setting. We then exploit a monetary policy easing shock in the euro area to examine whether policy pass-through is conditioned by market structure. We show that small firms within less concentrated sectors experienced a larger reduction in credit constraints than similar firms in more concentrated sectors.

Targeted Product Design

We propose an intuitive representation of product design in which firms locate inside a circle and consumers in its outer circumference. Designs trade off horizontal and vertical transport costs. Our setting encompasses all linear demand rotations. Firms with lower quality or higher marginal costs choose niche designs that cater to specific consumers at the expense of alienating the rest. Firms choose intermediate designs or more polarized ones, instead, depending on the convexity of the vertical transport cost. We examine such design choices in monopoly, duopoly, and monopolistic competition settings. (JEL D21, D24, D42, D43)

A New Greedy Algorithm for the Curriculum-based Course Timetabling Problem

This study describes a novel greedy algorithm for optimizing the well-known Curriculum-Based Course Timetabling (CB-CTT) problem. Greedy algorithms are a good alternative to brute-force and evolutionary algorithms, which take a long time to execute in order to find the best solution. Rather than employing a single heuristic, as many greedy algorithms do, we define and apply 120 new heuristics to the same problem instance. To assign courses to available rooms, our proposed greedy algorithm employs the Largest-First, Smallest-First, Best-Fit, Average-weight first, and Highest Unavailable course-first heuristics. Extensive experiments are carried out on 21 problem instances from the benchmark set of the Second International Timetabling Competition (ITC-2007). For 18 problems with significantly reduced soft-constraint values, the proposed greedy algorithm can report zero hard constraint violations (feasible solutions). The proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art greedy heuristics in terms of performance.

A Review of the Strategies Used in the IT sector for Employee Training and Development

Purpose: In the current economic climate, the ability of the organisation to find and keep quality people will determine its success or failure. The lifeblood of any firm is its workforce. The performance of the firm's employees determines whether it succeeds or fails. The basis of such success is thought to be employees who have received substantial training and development. The focus of the research was to identify this connection amidst employee performance, productivity along with instruction, and advancement. Numerous research studies have acknowledged this essential function. For example, they have emphasised the importance of maximising employees' contributions to the business's aims and goals in order to maintain effective performance. Employees are a costly and precious resource. Companies that place a high priority on shareholders and customer satisfaction value employee development because they acknowledge the significance of training initiatives. The productivity is increased by the numerous training and development programmes offered by IT companies to their employees. The goal the current study seeks to look at the various theoretical models together with frameworks connected to workforce development through training and development programmes and their effects on employee performance. The current paper provides a succinct assessment of the research on the value of training and how it boosts worker performance. Methodology: The IBEF report on the information technology industry, yearly reports from particular IT companies, journal articles in Google Scholar, media, and business websites are used as secondary sources of data to achieve the paper's goal. Findings: The findings indicate that for the human resource development sector, personal role involvement is more useful than workplace engagement. In a setting of intense competition, It is crucial to address how little the training function is valued in Indian organisations.. The study discovered that "future orientation," "in-group collectivism," and "uncertainty avoidance" are national cultural components that have an impact on e-learning practises. In this study, synchronous and asynchronous e-learning systems are distinguished, and the impact of culture on each is investigated. Originality/Value: This study will help in better understanding the various training and development procedures used by IT industry organisations. Strategies and SWOC Analysis are used to help businesses flourish and achieve greatness with the aid of their workforce. Paper Type: Case Study

Organizational Mergers and Sustainable Competitive Advantage of Almasi Beverages Limited, Kenya

In recent times, sustainable competitive advantage has become a common phenomenon worldwide. Organizations have been forced to adopt sustainable competitive advantage as a crucial strategic tool to deal with the ever-increasing global market competition. In many companies, mergers are strategic growth plans which not only helps them stay in competition but also extends their dominance, market share and margins in the global setting. Mergers facilitate firms’ fast growth and a capital market discipline mechanism improving efficient management and profit maximization. The goal of the study was to evaluate how the Kenyan beverage industry sustainable competitive advantage was affected by mergers. Specifically, the study sought to investigate the effect of economies of scale, diversification and also synergy on sustainable competitive advantage of Almasi Beverages Limited in Kenya. The study was underpinned on the following theories; the theory of efficiency, the resource-based view theory, and the hubris theory. The research utilized the descriptive research design. Secondary and primary data was utilized. Primary data was collected using a questionnaire. Blank responses were not included when analyzing the data. Descriptive statistical methods such as mean, frequency, percentages were used for analysis. Research findings were presented through graphs charts and tables. Findings revealed that revealed that Almasi Beverages sustainable competitive advantage was positively and significantly influenced by economies of scale, by diversification, and by synergy. The study concluded that economies of scale led to the firm enjoying large discounts and cheaper more affordable prices, improved capital equipment and production processes, and having quality managers working in various departments. Diversification led the firm to have a wide range of products on their product line, new designs within the organization that were aesthetically designed and were more superior in branding, and new products offerings in the organization contributed to sustainable competitive advantage. Synergy led the firm to have a stronger bargaining power for inputs, stronger bargaining position for cost of capital, and ensuring that the organization was running efficiently and in an effective manner, expediency of the logistics team in terms of their speed and responsiveness, and financial independence would all enhance the organizations sustainable competitive advantage. The study recommends that the organization should adopt a culture of continuous improvement around product improvement through innovation to ensure that it gives the firm sustained competitive advantage in the long run. In order to remain different from competitors, Almasi Beverages should focus on high product quality, fast delivery, design and new products, and unique product features. To achieve this, the study recommends that the firm should embrace differentiation as the key competitive strategy and set sufficient resources. Further, positive competitive advantage should be attained by more beverage firms in Kenya through their firm consolidation via the merger strategy.

Injuries Common to the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Practitioner.

Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) is a martial art that focuses on ground combat, emphasizing skill over strength and submission over striking. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the nature of injuries affecting practitioners of BJJ in the settings of competition, training, and conditioning. An online survey was created to collect demographic and injury-specific information. This survey was distributed to the 234 schools in the United States registered with the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation (IBJJF). The survey was also distributed to local BJJ schools and at local tournaments in the Greater New York City area. Data from atotal of N=56 participants were recorded for this survey. The majority of participants were male (n=44, 78.6%) and amateur competitors (n=29, 51.8%) with an average duration of BJJ training of 6.9 ± 5.9 years. The majority of participants (82.1%) train at least six hours per week and compete in an average of 4.6 ± 2.5 competitions per year. The most common injuries were to the finger/hand (78.6%) and knee (61.5%). The most commonly reported fracture was of the hand/fingers (n=6). Of the 156 total injuries reported, 133 (85.3%) occurred during practice or training rather than in competition and 76 (48.7%) required medical attention. Few injuries required surgical intervention. This study provides novel information regarding injury characteristics of BJJ practitioners with respect to the level of training and use of protective equipment that can guide expectations and management for this unique group of athletes. Amateur BJJ practitioners are the most commonly injured, and largely experience injuries of the upper extremities during training or conditioning rather than during competition.

Complex evolutionary interactions in multiple populations.

In competitive settings that entail several populations, individuals often engage in intra- and interpopulation interactions that determine their fitness and evolutionary success. With this simple motivation, we here study a multipopulation model where individuals engage in group interactions within their own population and in pairwise interactions with individuals from different populations. We use the evolutionary public goods game and the prisoner's dilemma game to describe these group and pairwise interactions, respectively. We also take into account asymmetry in the extent to which group and pairwise interactions determine the fitness of individuals. We find that interactions across multiple populations reveal new mechanisms through which the evolution of cooperation can be promoted, but this depends on the level of interaction asymmetry. If inter- and intrapopulation interactions are symmetric, the sole presence of multiple populations promotes the evolution of cooperation. Asymmetry in the interactions can further promote cooperation at the expense of the coexistence of the competing strategies. An in-depth analysis of the spatiotemporal dynamics reveals loop-dominated structures and pattern formation that can explain the various evolutionary outcomes. Thus, complex evolutionary interactions in multiple populations reveal an intricate interplay between cooperation and coexistence, and they also open up the path toward further explorations of multipopulation games and biodiversity.

Dose-dependent effect of GFI1 expression in the reconstitution and the differentiation capacity of HSCs.

GFI1 is a transcriptional repressor and plays a pivotal role in regulating the differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) towards myeloid and lymphoid cells. Serial transplantation of Gfi1 deficient HSCs repopulated whole hematopoietic system but in a competitive setting involving wild-type HSCs, they lose this ability. The underlying mechanisms to this end are poorly understood. To better understand this, we used different mouse strains that express either loss of both Gfi1 alleles (Gfi1-KO), with reduced expression of GFI1 (GFI1-KD) or wild-type Gfi1/GFI1 (Gfi1-/GFI1-WT; corresponding to the mouse and human alleles). We observed that loss of Gfi1 or reduced expression of GFI1 led to a two to four fold lower number of HSCs (defined as Lin-Sca1+c-Kit+CD150+CD48-) compared to GFI1-WT mice. To study the functional influence of different levels of GFI1 expression on HSCs function, HSCs from Gfi1-WT (expressing CD45.1 + surface antigens) and HSCs from GFI1-KD or -KO (expressing CD45.2 + surface antigens) mice were sorted and co-transplanted into lethally irradiated host mice. Every 4weeks, CD45.1+ and CD45.2 + on different lineage mature cells were analyzed by flow cytometry. At least 16weeks later, mice were sacrificed, and the percentage of HSCs and progenitors including GMPs, CMPs and MEPs in the total bone marrow cells was calculated as well as their CD45.1 and CD45.2 expression. In the case of co-transplantation of GFI1-KD with Gfi1-WT HSCs, the majority of HSCs (81% ± 6%) as well as the majority of mature cells (88% ± 10%) originated from CD45.2 + GFI1-KD HSCs. In the case of co-transplantation of Gfi1-KO HSCs with Gfi1-WT HSCs, the majority of HSCs originated from CD45.2+ and therefore from Gfi1-KO (61% ± 20%); however, only a small fraction of progenitors and mature cells originated from Gfi1-KO HSCs (<1%). We therefore in summary propose that GFI1 has a dose-dependent role in the self-renewal and differentiation of HSCs.

Product‐line pricing with dual objective of profit and consumer surplus

In many settings, consumer surplus directly impacts a firm or organization's objective, and the profit‐only objective becomes inadequate. Our paper is the first to consider the dual objective of profit and consumer surplus in multi‐product pricing under the multinomial logit demand, where the prices are continuously set. We define a firm's marginal consumer surplus as its marginal contribution to the expected customer utility transformed into monetary unit. Although the profit is concave in the choice probability space, the marginal consumer surplus is convex, complicating the analysis. We identify the optimal monopoly pricing solution and develop solution approaches for the equilibrium solutions of both price‐competition and quantity‐competition oligopolies. In the monopolistic setting, we solve the optimal solution in a near‐closed‐form expression, and show that the firm's markup and profit decline as its emphasis for marginal consumer surplus increases and eventually drops to zero when the firm turns into a social welfare maximizer. Therefore, social welfare is maximized only when the monopolist is willing to endure zero profit. In competitive settings, if one firm's emphasis on marginal consumer surplus increases, then the improvement in marginal consumer surplus can magnify through competitive forces, reflected in reduced equilibrium prices for all firms. Moreover, we find that, while the overall marginal consumer surplus always increases with any firm's weight on marginal consumer surplus in its objective (referred to as the CS weight), a firm's marginal consumer surplus increases in its own CS weight but decreases in other firms' CS weight. Finally, we prove that, all else equal, a firm with a higher CS weight can earn a higher profit than its profit‐maximizing competitors, which is counterintuitive. In the quantity competition, a firm may even increase its absolute profit level by increasing its CS weight.

Go, go …. You'll be happier. Psychological variables among cyclists during COVID-19 lockdowns

COVID-19 lockdowns involved radical changes in the habits and lifestyles of many. Notably, athletes saw their training routines altered. The relationship between lockdown effects and psychological variables was analysed using a sample comprising 1032 cyclists (average age: 42.97 years, s.d. = 8.94), taking part in the first cycling competition after lockdown. The target variables included psychological variables such as frustration tolerance, subjective vitality, autonomy self-determination, and affective status, as well as sociodemographic and training habits-related variables.The results showed that the constructs under analysis are related. Pre- and post-competition psychological variables were measured, and no significant differences were detected, except concerning subjective vitality. A regression analysis model was designed to analyse the impact of frustration tolerance, autonomy self-determination, and affective status on subjective vitality. The results reveal a lineal relationship (F = 71.789, p < .001) between subjective vitality and a set of independent variables: positive affects; health status; km of training per year; and frustration tolerance, which explain 46.7% of variance. Finally, since the variable that measures subjective vitality was shown to be significant, mediation analyses were undertaken to answer our hypothesis, following the results of the exploratory analysis. The results suggest that frustration tolerance has a direct effect on subjective vitality, and that this relationship is mediated by positive affects, health status, and km of training per year.It is concluded that exercising increases subjective vitality, which is affected by frustration tolerance, positive affects, health status and km of training per year. In addition, it can be argued that these three variables mediate the relationship between frustration tolerance and subjective vitality. Finally, it is worth stressing that, given the positive effects of exercise not only in physical health but also in psychological, social and personal wellbeing, self-determined attitudes in training should be encouraged, as this promotes self-efficacy and self-satisfaction, in both training and competition settings.

Remanufacturing with innovative features: A strategic analysis

In this study, we investigate the best remanufacturing strategy for the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and independent remanufacturer (IR) in an innovative industry where the consumer valuation of the products increases with the level of innovation, and we characterize how the best strategy changes with the identity of the remanufacturer. Our work differs from existing articles that investigate the remanufacturing strategy in the presence of quality decisions, by actively including the innovative features in the remanufactured products, as opposed to passively carrying over product quality to the remanufactured products. We consider three remanufacturing strategies: (i) not remanufacturing, (ii) remanufacturing without adding innovative features, and (iii) remanufacturing adding innovative features (upgrading). To analyze the problem, we create a single-period model where the OEM determines the level of innovation and the quantity of new products, in both competitive settings, and either the OEM or IR determines the remanufacturing quantity depending on the competitive setting. We investigate how the firms’ environmental impact and the consumer surplus are affected by the competition and the remanufacturing strategy.

Feasibility of a point-of-care ultrasound protocol for cardiorespiratory evaluation of horses in different clinical settings.

A point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) protocol for evaluation of the cardiac and respiratory systems in horses does not exist. (a) Describe the windows of a POCUS protocol for cardiorespiratory assessment of horses (CRASH); (b) Estimate the number of acoustic windows that can be acquired by a sonographer-in-training; (c) Estimate the time required to complete the protocol for specific groups of horses; (d) Describe the sonographic abnormalities detected in horses presented with cardiovascular, respiratory, or systemic disease. Twenty-seven healthy horses, 14 horses competing in athletic events, and 120 horses with clinical disease. A pocket-sized ultrasound device was used to acquire 7 sonographic cardiorespiratory windows in various clinical scenarios. The duration of the examination was timed, and images were evaluated for diagnostic quality. Abnormalities in horses with clinical disease were determined by an expert sonographer. The CRASH protocol could be performed in healthy and diseased horses in hospital, barn, and competition settings between 5.5 ± 0.9 (athletic horses) and 6.9 ± 1.9min (horses with clinical disease). Thoracic windows were obtained most consistently, followed by right parasternal long-axis echocardiographic windows. Frequently detected abnormalities were pleural fluid, lung consolidation, B-lines, and moderate-to-severe left-sided heart disease. The CRASH protocol was feasible using a pocket-sized ultrasound device in various groups of horses, could be completed rapidly in a variety of settings, and frequently identified sonographic abnormalities when evaluated by an expert sonographer. The diagnostic accuracy, observer agreement, and utility of the CRASH protocol merit further evaluation.