Publicly-available Information Research Articles

An environmental scan of residential treatment service provision in Ontario

BackgroundOntario has one of the highest rates of substance-related harms in Canada. Residential treatment programs in the province provide a variety of in-house treatment services to support the needs of individuals with substance use disorders (SUD). However, these programs are not standardized, often varying in the type, quality, and availability of services offered, including evidence-based interventions such as Opioid Agonist Treatment (OAT). Local treatment systems are also rather fragmented and complex to navigate, creating barriers for potential services users to identify and make informed choices on available treatment options.MethodsBetween May to August 2023, we conducted an environmental scan to capture available information on all publicly-funded residential treatment programs in Ontario using the ConnexOntario service portal, a government-funded, health services information platform. Data were captured on organization name, geographical location, program description, program type (residential addictions treatment or supportive recovery programs), eligibility criteria, target population, the program’s OAT policies, number of available beds, minimum and maximum length of stay, projected wait times, funding source, and associated fees for program admission. Data were extracted and organized by geographic region, and findings were presented descriptively.ResultsA total of 102 residential addiction treatment programs and 36 residential supportive recovery programs in Ontario were identified. The scan noted substantial regional variations in program availability and wait times, along with a lack of programs tailored to unique populations such as women, youth, and Indigenous peoples. There is also a paucity of publicly-available information on program offerings, including detailed specifics on OAT policies within residential treatment programs that are crucial to ensuring that the services being offered are safe and grounded in evidence-based practice.ConclusionsFindings from the scan highlight notable gaps in program types, offerings, and availability among residential treatment programs in the province, including a lack of standardization on OAT policies across programs. Efforts should be made to ensure access to treatment-specific program information relevant to potential service users and to enhance coordinated access to residential treatment services in the province.

A dual account of how excitement impacts risk-taking: Evidence from the National Hockey League’s 50-50 raffle

ABSTRACT The current research seeks to explain the motivation to participate in risk-taking activities as a function of game-related dynamics. We examine the role of excitement in predicting purchase behaviour toward a 50–50 raffle, a prevalent social responsibility activity among sport organizations where half the amount raised is offered to charity while the other half is allocated to a randomly drawn participant. We combine a proprietary dataset of 50–50 transactions for a National Hockey League team with publicly-available information and box scores across two seasons of home games. A dual account reveals that excitement increases risk-taking towards 50–50 purchase amount (1) during non-gameplay (i.e., the pregame and intermission) due to excitement-as-anticipation, and (2) during gameplay due to excitement-as-experience. We discuss the findings’ practical implications for sport organizations’ socially responsible activities and suggest directions for future research.

Profiling African Health Journals: A Bibliometric Study

Objectives: This study aimed to map out African health journals using publicly-available information on major databases.Methods: The authors searched the African Journals Online Library (AJOL) and Scientific Journal Rankings (SJR) databases from their inception in 1998 and 1996 respectively to 17 October 2020, and identified African health journals. The authors extracted data on journal scope, PubMed indexation, open-access status, publishing fees, Journal Publishing Practices and Standards rating and bibliometrics. The data were compared with health journals from other regions using the Chi-square test and odds ratio.Results: AJOL had 173 health journals registered on its database. One hundred (57.8%) journals were actively publishing. Fifty-seven (32.9%) had a 1-star Journal Publishing Practices and Standards rating and 4 (2.3%) had 2-star ratings. 112 (64.7%) had no star rating. The journal scope spanned all aspects of health. Few health journals were PubMed (n = 20) or SJR (n = 22) indexed. On average, African journals had lower total publications (median [IQR]: 52.0 [29.0–74.8] vs. 140.0 [75.8–272.5]), total references (55.0 [19.5–74.8] vs. 160.0 [42.0–519.8]), and H-index (12.2 [5.0–14.0] vs. 39.1 [10.0–53.0]) (P=0.01) compared to other regions.Conclusion: African health journals face unique challenges that require targeted interventions.

Data Representativeness in Accessibility Datasets: A Meta-Analysis.

As data-driven systems are increasingly deployed at scale, ethical concerns have arisen around unfair and discriminatory outcomes for historically marginalized groups that are underrepresented in training data. In response, work around AI fairness and inclusion has called for datasets that are representative of various demographic groups. In this paper, we contribute an analysis of the representativeness of age, gender, and race & ethnicity in accessibility datasets-datasets sourced from people with disabilities and older adults-that can potentially play an important role in mitigating bias for inclusive AI-infused applications. We examine the current state of representation within datasets sourced by people with disabilities by reviewing publicly-available information of 190 datasets, we call these accessibility datasets. We find that accessibility datasets represent diverse ages, but have gender and race representation gaps. Additionally, we investigate how the sensitive and complex nature of demographic variables makes classification difficult and inconsistent (e.g., gender, race & ethnicity), with the source of labeling often unknown. By reflecting on the current challenges and opportunities for representation of disabled data contributors, we hope our effort expands the space of possibility for greater inclusion of marginalized communities in AI-infused systems.

Learning Global Proliferation Expertise Evolution Using AI-Driven Analytics and Public Information

Detecting and anticipating global proliferation expertise and capability evolution from unstructured, noisy, and incomplete public data streams is a highly desired, but extremely challenging task. In this article, we present our pioneering data-driven approach to support the non-proliferation mission to detect and explain the evolution of proliferation expertise and capability development globally from terabytes of publicly available information (PAI), focusing on our knowledge extraction pipeline and descriptive analytics. We first discuss how we fuse nine open-source data streams, including multilingual data, to convert 4 TB of unstructured data to structured knowledge and encode dynamically evolving proliferation expertise representations—content and context graphs. For this, we rely on natural language processing (NLP) and deep learning (DL) models to perform information extraction, topic modeling, and distributed text representation (aka embedding) learning. We then present interactive, usable, and explainable descriptive analytics to refine domain knowledge and present it in a human-understandable form. Finally, we introduce future work avenues that will leverage our dynamic knowledge representations and descriptive analytics to enable predictive and prescriptive inferences to achieve real-time domain understanding and contextual reasoning about global proliferation expertise and capability evolution.

Mapping the spatial distribution of global mariculture production

Mariculture (marine and brackish water aquaculture) has grown rapidly over the past 20 years, yet publicly-available information on the location of mariculture production is sparse. Identifying where mariculture production occurs remains a major challenge for understanding its environmental impacts and the sustainability of individual farms and the sector as a whole. We compiled known mariculture locations and applied a simple production-allocation approach to map remaining global mariculture locations across 73 countries using the key determinants of distance to shore and ports, and average productivity (tonnage) of known farms. Our map represents 96% of reported fish and invertebrate mariculture production for 2017, but excludes algae which constitutes half of global mariculture production. We provide, for the first time, a publicly available spatial database of known and estimated mariculture locations. We discuss the utility and limitations of the existing data and our modeling approach, and highlight the key data gaps and future challenges for mapping aquaculture. Our results provide a vital resource for mariculture and environmental researchers, but we emphasize the need for a standardized, ground-truthed global spatial database of aquaculture locations and farm-level attributes (e.g., species, production type) to better understand the distribution of production and adequately plan for future growth.

Asset tangibility, information asymmetries and intangibles as determinants of family firms leverage

Using a sample of Spanish tourism small and medium-sized firms, we have tested the impact of family control, publicly-available information and tangibility on financial structure, providing a multi-theoretical model that incorporates contributions from the classical theory of finance, inspired by agency theory, the behavioural theory of the firm and strategic theory. The results point to the need to jointly consider the effects of information transmission practices, asset investment decisions and ownership structures on debt capacity. The results show how family control is associated with propensity to take on debt, so that the desire to maintain social control and socioemotional wealth prevails over risk aversion, being the relationship between family ownership and leverage more complex and contingent than has been assumed in financial and behavioural models. In addition, this study contributes further evidence on the importance of family reputational intangibles, showing a positive indirect effect on firms’ leverage capacity and relating to the gap left by finance theory regarding the value of intangibles for debt, which has meant that their value in reducing information asymmetries in the capital market has been overlooked.

Leveraging Publicly Available Information to Analyze Information Operations

Traditionally, a significant part of assessing information operations (IO) relies on subject matter experts’ time- intensive study of publicly available information (PAI). Now, with massive amounts PAI made available via the Internet, analysts are faced with the challenge of effectively leveraging massive quantities of PAI to draw meaningful conclusions. This paper presents an automated method for collecting and analyzing large amounts of PAI from China that could better inform assessments of IO campaigns. We implement a multi-model system that involves data acquisition via web scraping and analysis using natural language processing (NLP) techniques with a focus on topic modeling and sentiment analysis. After conducting a case study on China’s current relationship with Taiwan and comparing the results to validated research by a subject matter expert, it is clear that our methodology is valuable for drawing general conclusions and pinpointing important dialogue over a massive amount of PAI.

Linear Regression as a Method to Prioritize Humanitarian Efforts in Stability Operations.

With a mandate to work by, with, and through host nation partners, Special Operations Forces (SOF) often face the challenge of pursuing humanitarian endeavors in the hopes of securing access to a specific population and mapping the human terrain. Likewise, should limitations in the rules of engagement (ROE) shift incentives from lethal to non-lethal effects, commanders must find unique ways to exert influence on the operational environment. However, with inevitable resource constraints such as money and time, it can be exceedingly difficult to determine which humanitarian project to undertake, especially in a population whose needs are multifaceted. Linear regression, a statistical tool available within the standard Microsoft Excel package on government computers, permits the modeling of predictive outcomes between a number of independent variables against a dependent variable. This allows the determination of significance and effect for each independent variable, which can facilitate a thoughtful recommendation to commanders for project selection. Using Iraq as an example, publicly available information (PAI) provides a wealth of records to make data-driven assessments for mutually beneficial shaping efforts in a stability operations framework. Additionally, this paper will highlight how data can be analyzed without a reliance on statistical software that is unlikely to be present in the tactical environment.

VectorBase.org updates: bioinformatic resources for invertebrate vectors of human pathogens and related organisms.

VectorBase (VectorBase.org) is part of the VEuPathDB Bioinformatics Resource Center, providing free online access to multi-omics and population biology data, focusing on arthropod vectors and invertebrates of importance to human health. VectorBase includes genomics and functional genomics data from bed bugs, biting midges, body lice, kissing bugs, mites, mosquitoes, sand flies, ticks, tsetse flies, stable flies, house flies, fruit flies, and a snail intermediate host. Tools include the Search Strategy system and MapVEu, enabling users to interrogate and visualize diverse ‘omics and population-level data using a graphical interface (no programming experience required). Users can also analyze their own private data, such as transcriptomic sequences, exploring their results in the context of other publicly-available information in the database. Help Desk: help@vectorbase.org.

National sport organization governance design archetypes for the twenty-first century

ABSTRACT Research question This paper revisits our knowledge of sport organization governance design archetypes. To do so, we focus on Canadian national sport organizations (NSOs) and pose three research questions: (1) what governance design archetypes exist based on the use of more contemporary criteria; (2) how easily can an NSO’s archetype be determined; and (3) what are the implications of these new archetypes for researchers and practitioners? Research methods We undertook a landscape study of 32 Canadian NSOs with data from an online survey, publicly-available information, and clarification calls. Archetypes were derived from 47 organizational and governance characteristics using a k-means cluster analysis. Results and Findings Our empirically-derived archetype design taxonomy showed the best fit to be four clusters (Board-led, Executive-led, Professional, and Corporate) based on key organizational values, complexity, capacity, revenue sources, and governance variables. Implications Besides knowing NSOs are more heterogenous than in the past, researchers and practitioners can use capacity, efficiency, horizontal differentiation, broadcast revenue, political accountability, and social media information to derive an NSO’s governance archetype. These findings imply researchers can (1) examine non-profit sport organizations’ changes over time based on a set of archetypes reflecting contemporary realities, and (2) compare and contrast NSOs’ governance more holistically. In turn, managers can better compare their NSO with other NSOs to optimize their organization’s performance. Finally, national sport agencies/funders should support NSOs’ governance improvement efforts through flexible guidelines and resources because of NSOs’ governance heterogeneity.

Is it ethical to incentivize mammography screening in medicaid populations?– A policy review and conceptual analysis

Mammography screening is controversial, as screening decisions are preference-sensitive: equally well-informed women do not universally get mammograms. Offering financial incentives for screening risks unduly influencing the decision-making process and may undermine voluntariness—yet incentives are being used in 4 US states (Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan) under Section 1115 waivers. These initiatives are especially problematic in Medicaid populations who typically have lower health literacy and face the potential threat of disenrollment if they opt out.From June 2018 to January 2019, we analyzed publicly-available information on mammography incentives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and identified criteria (i.e. starting age and frequency of mammography) for incentive eligibility; income brackets of the affected beneficiaries; whether incentives were financial rewards or penalties; and evaluation arrangements.Several ethically relevant differences emerged: all states except Michigan incentivize screening at starting ages and frequencies that conflict with the US Preventive Services Task Force guidelines. Some incentives are rewards (e.g. reduced cost-sharing), and some penalties (e.g. disenrollment). Across states, rewards range from the equivalent of <1 min of work at state minimum wage to 9 days, and penalties range from 2 to 8 h.Political objectives, rather than evidence and ethics, appear to drive mammography incentive design. Programs risk harming vulnerable low-income populations. CMS and US states should therefore review variations and prevent unjustifiable practices, such as incentivizing 35-year-old women. Large incentives should be offered only if accompanied by robust studies. Incentives for using evidence-based mammography decision-aids, instead of mammography completion, better realize the intended goals.

Mutual Fund Flows and the Information Channel of the Risk-free Rate

This study brings to light the new empirical fact that flows into US domestic equity mutual funds are less sensitive to past fund returns when the risk-free rate declines. In particular, a one-percentage-point drop in interest rates is associated with a decrease in the slope of the flow-performance relationship of around 18%. I demonstrate through a model of portfolio allocation with endogenous information choice that this novel finding is consistent with more privately informed fund investors when rates fall. Specifically, a lower riskless rate diminishes the opportunity cost of acquiring costly private information about a mutual fund, which leads to flows that are less dependent on publicly-available information (i.e., past fund performance). I provide empirical evidence for the model's mechanism by exploiting the cross-sectional implication that the weakening of the link between flows and past performance is more pronounced when information barriers are higher. With a fund class' retail clientele as proxy for information costs, I obtain ample support for this prediction. I also find that, in line with more intense information acquisition, flows are more positively related to future changes in fund performance when rates are low, with this effect similarly being stronger for retail fund classes.

Causal Threat Modeling Applied to the Horn of Africa

Initially developed to defeat the increasing threat of improvised explosive devices (IED) during the height of the Iraq War in 2003, DTRA/JD quickly evolved into the Department of Defense’s (DoD) main effort in countering and reducing the effect of improvised threats. Following a suggestion from DTRA/JD about project leads, our team reached out to AFRICOM and began working on a problem narrowly tailored toward their mission. AFRICOM’s strategic focus in East Africa and the complex situation involving refugees and internally displaced persons in the region require a systematic method to identify the most prevalent threats and their relationship with one another. This paper describes a method to leverage publicly available information (PAI) and K-Means Clustering to identify threats and model their interdependence using a Systems Dynamic model. The output will show the greatest threat to a region enabling a decision maker within AFRICOM to enact policy to reduce the overall threat level.

Acknowledging the Burden of Nosocomial COVID-19: Results from a Multi-Centre Retrospective Observational Study of 2518 Adults Hospitalised Across the Nation of Wales

Background: The burden of hospital-acquired (nosocomial) COVID-19 remains poorly defined with variation in case-definitions used for reporting and little publicly-available information concerning outcomes.Methods: We conducted a retrospective observational study of adult patients with a positive SARS-CoV-2 positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) hospitalised across Wales between 1st March – 1st July 2020. An electronic survey was used to capture patient outcome following admission until 20th November. The prevalence and outcomes for nosocomial COVID-19 were assessed across of a range of possible case definitions.Findings: The study included 2518 patients from 18 major hospitals sites across Wales and collected outcomes on patients discharged up to 20 th November, representing approximately 60% of patients hospitalised. Inpatient mortality rates for nosocomial COVID-19 ranged from 38% to 42%, and remained consistently higher than patients with community-acquired infection (31% to 35%) across a range of case definitions. Nosocomial patients were older, frailer and multi-morbid population than those with community-acquired disease, even when categorised using a 2-day cut-off. Based on the Public Health Wales case definition of nosocomial COVID-19 infection, 50% of cases had been admitted for 30 days prior to diagnostic testing.Interpretation: This represents the largest assessment of clinical outcomes for patients with nosocomial COVID-19 in the UK to date. These findings suggest that inpatient mortality rates from nosocomial-infection are likely higher than previously reported, emphasizing the importance of infection control measures, and suggests opportunities for inpatient vaccination of vulnerable cohorts.Funding: Welsh Government, Respiratory Health Implementation Group, UK Coronavirus Immunology Consortium, Wellcome Trust Senior Fellowship (to IRH), WCAT Fellowship (to MJP).Declaration of Interests: We declare no competing interests.Ethics Approval Statement: This project constitutes the evaluation/audit arm of the National Pathway for Managing COVID-19 Infections in Secondary Care in Wales. As such, the requirement for formal ethical review or approval was not required

Uber and Alcohol-Related Traffic Fatalities

Previous studies of the effect of ridesharing on traffic fatalities have yielded inconsistent, often contradictory conclusions. In this paper we revisit this question using proprietary data from Uber measuring monthly rideshare activity at the Census tract level. Most previous studies are based on publicly-available information about Uber entry dates into US cities, but we show that an indicator variable for whether Uber is available is a poor measure of rideshare activity — for example, it explains less than 3% of the tract-level variation in ridesharing, reflecting the enormous amount of variation both within and across cities. Using entry we find inconsistent and statistically insignificant estimates. However, when we use the more detailed proprietary data, we find a robust negative impact of ridesharing on traffic fatalities. Impacts concentrate during nights and weekends and are robust across a range of alternative specifications. Overall, our results imply that ridesharing has decreased US alcohol-related traffic fatalities by 6.1% and reduced total US traffic fatalities by 4.0%. Based on conventional estimates of the value of statistical life the annual life-saving benefits range from $2.3 to $5.4 billion. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that these benefits may be of similar magnitude to producer surplus captured by Uber shareholders or consumer surplus captured by Uber riders.

Amazon’s Competition Investigation in India: A Case for Expansion of Investigation and Grant of Interim Relief

In the last few years, associations of domestic retailers have become vociferous opponents of Amazon’s practices in India. In response to complaints of anti-competitive conduct, the Competition Commission of India has initiated an investigation into Amazon’s anti-competitive vertical agreements in online smartphone retail. Against this backdrop, Reuters published a series of investigative reports which indicate that Amazon used internal data of third-party sellers and engaged in preferential treatment of private labels and preferred sellers. The Reuters reports join a series of other reports and studies which reveal that such conduct is pervasive across product categories. In light of this information, this paper makes two broad arguments. First, the paper argues that the scope of the competition investigation in India should be broadened beyond smartphones. The investigation should be reoriented to focus on the relationship between Amazon and its preferred sellers or retailers more broadly, rather than bifurcating the investigation along the lines of separate product categories. Second, the paper argues that the publicly-available information is sufficient to satisfy the legal test for passing an interim order. Such an interim order should prohibit Amazon from acting in the dual capacity of marketplace and seller. The necessity of the interim order has been highlighted through reference to the potentially irreparable and unquantifiable harm done to competition and consumers and the protracted nature of competition proceedings which might render the final order redundant.

Assessing spatial and temporal biases and gaps in the publicly available distributional information of Iberian mosses.

One of the most valuable initiatives on massive availability of biodiversity data is the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, which is creating new opportunities to develop and test macroecological knowledge. However, the potential uses of these data are limited by the gaps and biases associated to large-scale distributional databases (the so-called Wallacean shortfall). Describing and quantifying these limitations are essential to improve knowledge on biodiversity, especially in poorly-studied groups, such as mosses. Here we assess the coverage of the publicly-available distributional information on Iberian mosses, defining its eventual biases and gaps. For this purpose, we compiled IberBryo v1.0, a database that comprises 82,582 records after processing and checking the geospatial and taxonomical information. Our results show the limitations of data and metadata of the publicly-available information. Particularly, ca. 42% of the records lacked collecting date information, which limits data usefulness for time coverage analyses and enlarges the existing knowledge gaps. Then we evaluated the overall coverage of several aspects of the spatial, temporal and environmental variability of the Iberian Peninsula. Through this assessment, we demonstrate that the publicly-available information on Iberian mosses presents significant biases. Inventory completeness is strongly conditioned by the recorders' survey bias, particularly in northern Portugal and eastern Spain and the spatial pattern of surveys is also biased towards mountains. Besides, the temporal pattern of survey effort intensifies from 1970 onwards, encompassing a progressive increase in the geographic coverage of the Iberian Peninsula. Although we just found 5% of well-surveyed cells of 30’ of resolution over the 1970-2018 period, they cover about a fifth of the main climatic gradients of the Iberian Peninsula, which provides a fair – though limited – coverage. Yet, the well-surveyed cells are biased towards anthropised areas and some of them are located in areas under intense land-use changes, mainly due to the wood-fires of the last decade. Despite the overall increase, we found a noticeable gap of information in the south-west of Iberia, the Ebro river basin and the inner plateaus. All these gaps and biases call for a careful use of the available distributional data of Iberian mosses for biogeographical and ecological modelling analysis. Further, our results highlight the necessity of incorporating several good practices to increase the coverage of high-quality information. These good practices include digitalisation of specimens and metadata information, improvement on the protocols to get accurate data and metadata or revisions of the vouchers and recorders' field notebooks. These procedures are essential to improve the quality and coverage of the data. Finally, we also encourage Iberian bryologists to establish a series of re-surveys of classical localities that would allow updating the information on the group, as well as to design their future surveys considering the most important information gaps on IberBryo.

Effectiveness Score of the Board of Directors and Modified Audit Opinion: Empirical Evidence from Malaysian Publicly-Listed Companies

The study investigates the association between the effectiveness of the board of directors and the likelihood that a company receives a modified audit opinion (as a measure of the quality of companies' external financial reporting) in Malaysia. The sample companies were extracted from the population of publicly-available information mainly the annual reports of publicly-listed companies on the Bursa Malaysia. 136 firm-year observations listed on Bursa Malaysia were identified to examine the relationship between the effectiveness of the board of directors and a modified audit opinion. Data used in this study are collected from two separate sources-annual reports and Datastream. Any missing financial figure from Datastream was acquired from the annual reports. To test the study's hypotheses, we use the pooled cross-sectional logistic regression analysis for 136 firm-year observations listed on Bursa Malaysia over the period 2009-2011. The evidence we have uncovered is consistent with the hypothesis that companies with large score of the board of directors' effectiveness are less possible to receive a modified audit opinion. Therefore, the result confirms that the combined effect of the board of directors' characteristics has a significant negative association with the likelihood of the companies receiving a modified audit opinion. © The Author(s).

Delivery of community-centred public mental health interventions in diverse areas in England: a mapping study protocol

BackgroundPublic mental health (PMH) is a global challenge and a UK priority area for action. However, to progress, practitioners require a stronger evidence base regarding the effectiveness of approaches, particularly...