The Xylinitai on the Service to Byzantine Emperors: A Seal of Niketas Xylinites, Protospatharios and epi tou koitonos

Introduction. Among the most ancient and noble Byzantine families there were the Xylinitai, who belonged to the first rank of “pure” civil nobility. Nevertheless, only restricted information of this family members survived. Therefore, any new account is of importance not only for the Byzantine prosopography but also for the Byzantine history in general. In this connection, interesting is one sigillographic find which uncovers a new page in the life of one of this family members. According to the seal legend, its owner Niketas Xylinites held the second-class rank of protospatharios and was engaged in the court service at the emperor’s bedchamber, the koiton. There is no doubt that the stylistic features date the molybdoboullon in question to the eleventh century. Analysis and Results. The sources in possession supply information on a few persons bearing this name and belonging to the family in question, who left their footprint in the annals of history in this or that way. All of them were high-ranked courtiers and persons of importance, whose career stages were reflected in different periods of Byzantine history. The comparison of the seal data with other sources allows us to suppose that the owner of the seal was Niketas Xylinites, a member of the milieu of Empress Theodora, related to her ascension to the Byzantine throne following the death of Constantine IX. The sources only inform of his career that he got from the Empress of one of the highest civil offices (logothetes tou dromou) and a high court title of proedros. According to the seal under study, it reflects the earliest stage in Niketas’ career at the court, when he was selected to serve at the emperor’s bedchamber and got the rank of protospatharios. The Seal of Niketas Xylinites probably dates to the late 1030s – very early 1040s, the period before he got the title of patrikios, his works in the Iveron monastery, and Theodora’s ascension to the throne.

Attention to dividends, inattention to earnings?

We examine whether dividends serve as substitutes or complements to accounting information in firm valuation. Consistent with dividends substituting for earnings information, we find that dividend paying firms have 11%–15% lower earnings response coefficients (ERCs) than non-payers. We find more substitution when the dividend provides a stronger signal of permanent earnings: when the firm is less likely to cut the dividend, when the firm is likely to fund the dividend out of earnings rather than cash reserves, or when the dividend is larger. We then show that dividend payers have lower absolute returns, less trading volume, and fewer analyst forecasts at the earnings announcement (EA), suggesting that dividend payers attract less attention to their less informative EAs. Finally, we show that the lower EA attention translates into less earnings management and fewer earnings-related disclosures for dividend payers relative to non-payers. Collectively, this evidence suggests that dividends supply information about permanent earnings and, although costly, could be an efficient way for some firms to satisfy investors’ demand for earnings information.

Evaluation of Patient-Oriented Medicines Supply Information on Russian Healthcare Providers’ Websites

Aims: To evaluate the Russian Federation healthcare providers’ websites compliance to legal requirements on availability of patient-oriented medicines supply information and compare the evaluation results between public and private healthcare facilities. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: The evaluation of compliance to legal requirements to medicines supply information on public and private healthcare providers’ websites available on the Internet was conducted in September 2021. Methodology: The study included a simple random sample of 66 websites of Russian healthcare providers containing two groups: public (n=33) and private (n=33) healthcare facilities’ websites. The compliance evaluation was performed by checking the availability of 4 medicines lists on the websites: (1) essential medicines list; (2) list of medicines for the most expensive chronic diseases to treat; (3) list of medicines that are prescribed only by shared decision of healthcare facility medical commission; (4) list of medicines that are dispensed for certain social groups with no charge or with 50% discount in outpatient care settings. Results: The difference of availability of the first list was 90.9% (95% CI 77.7%–97.4%) vs. 33.3% (95% CI 19.2%–50.3%) on public and private healthcare facilities’ website, respectively, P<.001. The difference of that in the second list was 42.4% (95% CI 26.8%–59.3%) vs. 15.2% (95% CI 6.0%–30.1%), P<.028. For the third no statistical significance was revealed (P>.05). For the fourth list the difference was 66.7% (95% CI 49.7%–80.8%) vs. 21.2% (95% CI 10.0%–37.2%), P<.001. Conclusion: It is required to improve the supervision approaches for both public and private healthcare facilities for better patient-oriented medicines supply information provision. The problem may be solved by the implementation of a centralized government policy repository with regularly updated lists, requirements, and best practices.

Implementation and Impact of National Centralized Drug Procurement Policy in China: Evidence from the National Drug Procurement Database

Background Chinese government implemented the first round of National Centralized Drug Procurement pilot in 4 municipalities and 7 sub-provincial cities in 2019, so called "4 + 7" policy. This study evaluated the implementation and impact of “4 + 7” policy. Methods This study used drug purchase data from China Drug Supply Information Platform (CDSIP) database. “4 + 7” policy-related drugs were selected as study samples, including 25 drugs in the “4 + 7” List and 92 alternative drugs that have an alternative relationship with “4 + 7” List drugs in clinical use. “4 + 7” List drugs were divided into bid-winning and non-winning products. We applied Defined Daily Doses (DDDs), DDDs per 1000 inhabitants per day (DID), purchase expenditures, and Defined Daily Drug cost (DDDc) as outcome variables. Interrupted time-series was adopted to quantity policy effect. Results As of December 2019, the completion rate of overall bid-winning drugs in 9 pilot cities reached 154.40%, and the completion rate of 25 bid-winning drugs ranged between 74.77% and 477.75%. After policy intervention, the DID of bid-winning drugs, “4 + 7” List drugs, alterative drugs, as well as the overall policy-related drugs increased by 545.18%, 14.03%, 12.21%, and 13.04% in pilot cities. Bid-winning drugs significantly increased 132.84 million DDDs (p < 0.001) in volume and 48.95 million CNY (p < 0.05) in expenditures, and dropped 6.35 CNY (p < 0.001) in DDDc. The volume proportion of bid-winning products increased from 12.67–71.66%. The DDDc of non-winning drugs increased 0.94 CNY (p < 0.001). Overall, the DDDc of policy-related drugs dropped 1.38 CNY (p < 0.001), and the expenditures decreased 634.68 million CNY (p < 0.001). Conclusion An overall satisfying implementation progress of “4 + 7” policy was observed in pilot cities. The policy alleviated the medication burdens of patients, which is supported by the significant reduction in DDDc and costs of policy-related drugs. The accessibility and consumption of policy-related drugs improved. However, monitoring regarding the clinical use of policy-related drugs will still be necessary in the future.

The Impact of Prescribed Dosage Assumptions on the Evaluation of Adherence and Persistence to Medication in Patients After Acute Myocardial Infarction

Medication adherence is a significant problem in public health. Prescription-level pharmacy databases have great potential for monitoring actual drug adherence patterns at the healthcare system level. Many research papers have reported adherence estimates in different settings and populations. However, comparison between studies is not always straightforward due to different approaches taken when computing adherence. A crucial component to accurately estimate adherence is the availability of days’ supply information for each dispensing event. Reasonable assumptions regarding medication dosage have to be made, when this information is not available. In this study, we evaluate adherence and persistence to medication in patients after myocardial infarction and show that corresponding estimates differ significantly, when using different dosage assumptions, namely, when using defined daily dose or tablet per day dosage regimens. Moreover, we demonstrate that observed differences between medications might be a result of inaccurate dosage assumptions. We propose a comparison of distribution of days between dispensing events to that of days’ supplied as a relatively simple visual inspection to validate dosage assumptions.

A Guarneri violin in the attic: the power of dendrochronology for analysing musical instruments

Dendrochronology is the science that dates wooden artefacts by measuring annual growth rings visible in the wood. And, in the case of musical instruments, the method is non-invasive. In addition, dendrochronology can also help to identify the wood’s provenance and to supply information on how the soundboard was made, giving details of ring width and regularity. This study also demonstrates the effectiveness of dendrochronology in attributing a musical instrument to an important luthier. It deals with a privately owned violin, whose date and origin had previously remained uncertain, despite various attempts to authenticate, at least, its technical and stylistic characteristics. The outermost tree-ring of the instrument’s soundboard was dendrochronologically dated to the year 1696 and attributed, with certainty, to the Italian luthier Giuseppe Guarneri filius Andreae, father of the famous Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri "del Gesù". Thanks to dendrochronology, in this way, a twin of an already existing violin has been identified that was made by the same luthier. Both violins are identical in construction, having the same veining and dimensions, and the wood from the same tree was used in all parts, including the soundboard. Dendrochronology has, thus, been proven to be an extremely useful method, which has transformed a violin of uncertain value into a museum piece.

Surge Pricing and Two-Sided Temporal Responses in Ride Hailing

Problem definition: We investigate surge pricing in ride-hailing platforms from a temporal perspective, highlighting strategic behavior by riders and drivers and that drivers respond to surge pricing much more slowly than riders do. Academic/practical relevance: Surge pricing in ride-hailing platforms is a pivotal and controversial subject. Despite abundant anecdotal evidence, strategic behavior by riders and drivers has not been formally studied in the literature. Methodology: We adopt and analyze a classic two-period, game-theoretical model as in the strategic consumer literature. Results: We identify two types of equilibrium pricing strategies. The first consists of a short-lived, sharp price surge followed by a lower price, which we refer to as skimming surge pricing (SSP). The second consists of a low initial price followed by a higher price, which we refer to as penetration surge pricing (PSP). We find that PSP equilibria are generally superior to SSP equilibria when both exist but require platforms to share demand–supply information with drivers. Managerial implications: The SSP equilibrium rationalizes the controversial sharp surge-pricing practice: the short-lived sharp price surge causes many high-value riders to voluntarily wait out the initial surge period, which attracts additional drivers to the region to serve riders at a much lower price than the initial surge price. The theoretically superior PSP equilibrium suggests that a vastly different approach may improve surge pricing and highlights the potential value and importance for platforms to share demand–supply information with drivers.

Contrast Signal to Noise Ratio

The detection and recognition of objects is essential for the operation of autonomous vehicles and robots. Designing and predicting the performance of camera systems intended to supply information to neural networks and vision algorithms is nontrivial. Optimization has to occur across many parameters, such as focal length, f-number, pixel and sensor size, exposure regime and transmission schemes. As such numerous metrics are being explored to assist with these design choices. Detectability index (SNRI) is derived from signal detection theory as applied to imaging systems and is used to estimate the ability of a system to statistically distinguish objects [1], most notably in the medical imaging and defense fields [2]. A new metric is proposed, Contrast Signal to Noise Ratio (CSNR), which is calculated simply as mean contrast divided by the standard deviation of the contrast. This is distinct from contrast to noise ratio which uses the noise of the image as the denominator [3,4]. It is shown mathematically that the metric is proportional to the idealized observer for a cobblestone target and a constant may be calculated to estimate SNRI from CSNR, accounting for target size. Results are further compared to Contrast Detection Probability (CDP), which is a relatively new objective image quality metric proposed within IEEE P2020 to rank the performance of camera systems intended for use in autonomous vehicles [5]. CSNR is shown to generate information in illumination and contrast conditions where CDP saturates and further can be modified to provide CDP-like results.

Dynamic properties of additively manufactured tantalum

In this study a series of gas gun plate impact experiments have been conducted on samples of wire arc AM tantalum to investigate the high strain rate behaviour of the material, including tensile failure (spall) mechanisms. Conventionally processed tantalum was fielded alongside the AM material to provide a direct comparison under identical loading conditions. In-situ velocimetry data was supported by pre-shock characterisation of the samples to supply information on the initial material microstructure, and to link these features to the observed differences in dynamic behaviour. Additional post-shock analysis of the damaged region in the samples provided further insight into the failure process.

Trends in Consumption of Quinolones in Chinese Healthcare Institutions: Results of National Procurement Data Analysis (2015–2018)

BackgroundThere is widespread use of quinolones to treat various infectious diseases due to their broad-spectrum nature and optimal pharmacokinetic characteristics. Nevertheless, the risk of bacterial resistance has also amplified as a consequence of their judicial use in hospitals and the community. The current study investigated the consumption and expenditure of quinolone antibiotics during 2015–2018 in various health settings in China.MethodsWe used the China Drug Supply Information Platform (CDSIP) to analyze the drug procurement data of national healthcare institutions, focusing on determining the trend and pattern of quinolone consumption. The standard Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC)/Defined daily dose (DDD) methodology was opted to quantify antibiotic usage.ResultsA slight decrease in J01M antibiotics consumption (25.7% to 23.5%) was observed over four years (2015–2018). The use of quinolones was significantly higher in rural primary health centers (53.9%) and tertiary hospitals (22.1%). In 2017, levofloxacin (61.4%) was the most commonly consumed quinolone, followed by norfloxacin (27.1%) and moxifloxacin (4.1%). The total spending on J01M antibiotics gradually increased from 21.4% in 2015 to 27.9% in 2018. ConclusionsFrom 2015 to 2018, the general use of J01M antibiotics decreased marginally, but the use of the paternal type of J01M and its expenditure is continuously growing. There is a need to enforce stringent antibiotic management programs to restrict the irrational use of antibiotics.