Necessity Of Conditions Research Articles

What matters the most in curbing early COVID-19 mortality? A cross-country necessary condition analysis.

COVID‐19 represents a turbulent problem: a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous crisis, in which bounded‐rational policymakers may not be able to do everything right, but must do critical things right in order to reduce the death toll. This study conceptualizes these critical things as necessary conditions (NCs) that must be absent to prevent high early mortality from occurring. We articulate a policy‐institution‐demography framework that includes seven factors as NC candidates for high early COVID‐19 mortality. Using necessary condition analysis (NCA), this study pinpoints high levels of a delayed first response, political decentralization, elderly populations, and urbanization as four NCs that have inflicted high early COVID‐19 mortality across 110 countries. The results highlight the critical role of agility as a key dimension of robust governance solutions—a swift early public‐health response as a malleable policy action—in curbing early COVID‐19 deaths, particularly for politically decentralized and highly urbanized countries with aging populations.

Decomposition of complete graphs into connected unicyclic bipartite graphs with eight edges

We prove that each of the 34 non-isomorphic connected unicyclic bipartite graphs with eight edges decomposes the complete graph K n whenever the necesary conditions are satisfied.

An Excel Planning and Teaching Decision Aid for Bonner's Conceptual Framework

INTRODUCTION In 1999, Bonner prescribed a conceptual entitled Choosing teaching methods based on learning objectives: An integrative framework to plan and teach accounting. Since then, Barth's (2008) call for using pedagogical conceptual have motivated the authors to plan and teach accounting based on Bonner's (1999, 2008) conceptual framework. Bonner's conceptual involves a holistic-mapping-process in which an instructor holistically maps a set of accounting learning objectives (ALO), general learning objectives (GLO), necessary conditions (NC), and teaching methods (TM). In this paper, following Albrecht and Sack's (2002) call for pedagogical innovation, we develop an Excel planning and teaching decision aid (EDA) for the holistic-mapping-process of Bonner's conceptual framework. This EDA assists, but does not replace, the holistic-mapping-process of Bonner's conceptual framework. Also, it supports, but does not supplant, the conventional judgment-based planning and teaching process (Bernstein, 1996). However, the EDA offers several significant advantages over the conventional judgment-based process. First, the EDA, as a decision aid, lessens an instructor's cognitive strain of the holistic-mapping-process under Bonner's conceptual framework. Second, the EDA, based on computational logic, reduces potential error of judgment heuristics under the conventional judgment-based planning and teaching process (Kahneman & Shane, 2002). Third, the EDA application, which utilizes the common Excel software, is easy to set up. Fourth, the Excel application, once it is set up, provides a fast and rigorous way of identifying the optimum teaching methods for a particular course. Fifth, the Excel application can be recycled and used across semesters or academic years for updated course materials (Gibson, Buche, & Waite, 2008). Last but not least, the Excel application documents the instructor's effectiveness and efficiency in planning and teaching, which complements the students' documents/evaluations of the instructor's teaching performance (Sullivana & Skanes, 1974). The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. First, we describe four phases of Bonner's conceptual and its holistic-mapping-process. Second, an Excel planning and teaching decision aid (EDA) is derived from Brown and Gibson (1972) and Ammarapala and Luxhoj (2000) for Bonner's holistic-mapping-process. We rewrote Brown and Gibson's basic equation in pedagogical terms to set up the EDA (see details in Appendix A) and explain how the EDA generates four tables (a critical value table, an objective value table, a subjective value table, and a sensitivity index table) for a sensitivity analysis that prioritizes teaching methods. Third, we illustrate how an instructor uses the EDA to plan and teach Chapter 10 of Arens, Elder, and Beasley's Auditing and Assurance Services, 13th edition, 2009 (see details in Appendix B). BONNER'S CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Bonner (1999, 2008) prescribes a conceptual for choosing teaching methods based on learning objectives. Figure 1 shows four phases of Bonner's conceptual and its holistic-mapping-process. (1) [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] In Phase 1 of Bonner's conceptual framework, an instructor begins by identifying accounting learning objectives (ALO) for a particular accounting topic. According to Bonner (1999, 2008), the instructor should consider students' prerequisite skills in identifying the accounting learning objectives (ALO). If students do not have the prerequisite skills, acquiring such skills should be identified as one of the accounting learning objectives (ALO). For example, since students learning about the topic of fraud auditing should know the accounting and legal definition of fraud, the instructor should identify learning the definition of fraud as one of the accounting learning objectives (ALO). In Phase 2 of Bonner's conceptual framework, the instructor sorts the accounting learning objectives (ALO) into four general learning objectives (GLO). …

A Necessary Condition on the Location of Pilot Tones for Maximizing the Correction Capacity in OFDM Systems

This paper presents a new view of the Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquengem (BCH) code through the addition of some flexibility to the syndromes distribution in the transmitted sequence. In order to get this flexibility, we derive a necessary condition (NC) on the syndromes distribution for decoding BCH codes, which includes the already known Hartmann-Tzeng proposition. This NC is essentially deduced from the decoding process of BCH code, and is related to the locator polynomial and the requested constraints to guarantee a maximal error-correction capacity. The obtained results have the advantage to be applicable for any considered field (finite or not). Furthermore, we prove that when the correction capacity is equal to 2 or 3, the obtained NC becomes also sufficient. This result is very useful in some practical transmission systems such as orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing systems. Once the pilot tones considered in such systems verify the necessary and sufficient condition, it becomes possible to both reduce the peak-to-average-power rate and correct the impulse noise, present in such multicarrier systems. The usefulness of the presented analysis and the exploitation of the derived condition on the pilot tones distribution is illustrated by simulation results in the case of the Hiperlan2 system

Second-Order Necessary Conditions and Sufficient Conditions Applied to Continuous-Thrust Trajectories

Introduction I N optimal control theory, requiring the first variation of the performance functional to vanish leads to well-known first-order necessary conditions (NC) for an optimal solution.1 These NC allow one to identify candidates for optimality, called stationary or extremal solutions, to distinguish them from solutions that have been proven to be optimal. To determine whether a stationary solution is indeed optimal, one must also test the second-order Jacobi no-conjugate-point NC, which applies if the trajectory is smooth. Also, one can formulate sufficient conditions (SC) that, if satisfied, guarantee that the solution is at least locally optimal. In this Note, a procedure developed by Jo and Prussing2−4 for testing second-order NC and SC is streamlined and applied to an example optimal continuous-thrust trajectory with multiple terminal constraints that yields a different type of result compared to previous examples in Refs. 2, 4, and 5. The procedure is based on earlier work by Wood5,6 that derives new, less restrictive SC for a weak local minimum of the Bolza optimal control problem. However, those SC require that the solution of a matrix Riccati equation be bounded. This is difficult to test numerically because a bounded but rapidly increasing solution can stop the numerical integration and give the false impression that the solution is unbounded. The procedure described and illustrated in this Note replaces the test for an unbounded matrix5,6 by a test for a (scalar) determinant being zero.

Existence and convergence of solutions to the H sampled-data estimation problem

The problem of H filtering for time-invariant linear systems with sampled measurements is considered. Sufficient and neces ary conditions are derived that ensure the existence of a finite-horizon filter and the convergence of this filter to the infinite-horizon one. The convergence conditions are given in terms of allowable regions for the initial state error weighting matrix.

Proportionalism and the Pill: How Developments in Theory Lead to Contradictions to Practice

The Thomist 63 (1999): 269-81 PROPORTIONALISM AND THE PILL: HOW DEVELOPMENTS IN THEORY LEAD TO CONTRADICTIONS TO PRACTICE CHRISTOPHER KACZOR Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, California ONE MAY BE TEMPTED to think that thirty years after the publication ofHumanae vitae scholars have heard almost every argument for and against contraception and almost every argument for and against the moral theory most commonly invoked to justify contraception, namely, proportionalism. Authors on both sides of the matter have pointed out the connections between the theory of proportionalism and the practice of contraception. All proponents of proportionalism argue that this theory justifies the use of contraception at least under some circumstances, and most, but not all, critics of proportionalism hold that contraception is an intrinsically evil act that cannot be justified. As Edward Vacek notes: An argument could be made that Humanae vitae has fueled the development of P[roportionalism] in Catholic thought, and that the birth control debate has been so drawn-out and intense precisely because it is really a debate over a style of moral reasoning and a vision of what it means to be human, not to mention over what God is doing in the world-therefore over much larger matters than the use of a pill.1 Vacek is absolutely correct in saying that Humanae vitae led to a greater and greater questioning of traditional formulations of 1 Edward Vacek, "Proportionalism: One View of the Debate," Theological Studies 46 (1985): 293. 269 270 CHRISTOPHER KACZOR moral theory.2 If one surveys the literature that began what was later called proportionalism,3 one will find a recurring pattern; first basic principles are laid down and defended, and then, invariably, it is shown that these principles justify the use of contraception. John Finnis puts the point as follows: The formal attack on the moral absolutes emerges, among Catholics, in response to the problem of contraception. Not in response to the desire to maintain a counter population deterrent strategy of annihilating retaliation; or to tell lies in military, police, or political operations; or to carry out therapeutic abortions; or to arrange homosexual unions; or to relieve inner tensions and disequalibria by masturbation; or to keep slaves; or to produce babies by impersonal artifice. Those desires were and are all urgent enough, but none of them precipitated the formal rejection of moral absolutes. The desire to practice and approve of contraception did.4 Indeed, early formulations of proportionalism, formulations that understood proportionate reason simply as the injunction to choose the lesser of two evils and lacked a developed application of the goodness/rightness distinction, seemed to justify the use of contraception in most cases. What has been overlooked, however, is how the development of proportionalism itself leads to the conclusion that the use of contraception, for the most part if not entirely, is illicit. In other words, proportionalism itself, given a proper understanding of proportionate reason and the goodness/ rightness distinction, leads one to a rejection of the use of contraception. Unlike consequentialism or act-utilitarianism, proportionalism is not mere maximization of premoral goods or minimization of premoral evils. Though maximization of premoral goods and minimization of premoral evils primarily define proportionate reason, there are other, secondary conditions that establish it as 2 In his book Proportionalism: TheAmericanDebateandIts European Roots (Washington: Georgetown University, 1987), Bernard Hoose makes similar remarks (p. 37). 3 See, for instance, Readings in Moral Theology vol. 1: Moral Norms and Catholic Tradition , ed. Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, S.J. (NewYork: Paulist Press, 1979); ChristopherKaczor, ed., Proportionalism: ForandAgainst (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, forthcoming). 4 John Finnis, Moral Absolutes (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 85. PROPORTIONALISM AND THE PILL 271 well.5 These conditions were worked out through the responses to critics who suggested that proportionalism justifies any sort of behavior whatever, even for example allowing a sheriff to frame and execute an innocent man to prevent a riot. Proportionalists responded by clarifying that proportionalism does not advocate the maximization of nonmoral goods irrespective of all other considerations. Certain secondary conditions must be met for there to be a truly proportionate reason. First, proportionate reason includes a condition ofnecessity of cause...