AIMS To evaluate the carotid ultrasound intra- and interobserver agreements in a common clinical scenario when making manual measurements of the intima-media thickness (IMT) and peak systolic (PSV) and end diastolic (EDV) velocities in the common (CCA) and the internal carotid (ICA) arteries. MATERIAL AND METHODS Three different experienced operators performed two time-point carotid ultrasoun...

Smart Contract Templates support legally-enforceable smart contracts, using operational parameters to connect legal agreements to standardised code. In this paper, we explore the design landscape of potential formats for storage and transmission of smart legal agreements. We identify essential requirements and describe a number of key design options, from which we envisage future development of...

If pollution is observable, but some emissions cannot be verified by court, voluntary agreements between a regulator and an industry can be welfareimproving compared to second-best emission taxes. Such agreements differ from direct regulation in a non-trivial way. The first-best optimum may be included in the set of possible agreements, even if it is not attainable using tax instruments. The no...

In this paper we study the robustness of the deadline effect in bargaining games using constant and slowly decreasing pies, different time horizons, and both constant and alternating role modes. With decreasing pies efficiency requires early agreements while constant pies allow for efficient late agreements. Our results indicate that decreasing pies and alternating roles increase initial genero...

The Impact of Research Joint Ventures on Firm Performance: An Empirical Assessment Research and Development Joint Ventures are based on cooperative agreements where firms share the costs and results of a particular research project. While theoretical analysis of research joint ventures on profits, R&D intensity, output and prices is more developed in the existing literature, few empirical inves...

Service level agreements (SLAs) are designed to be monitorable contracts between a provider and consumer of a service. It is of interest to determine if such SLAs can also be used as input to a predictive model, e.g., a discrete-event stochastic model. For that purpose we study in this paper WSLA, the web service level agreement language, an SLA specification language tailored to web services. ...

Compliance checking is gaining importance as today’s organizations need to show that operational processes are executed in a controlled manner while satisfying predefined (legal) requirements or service level agreements. Deviations may be costly and expose an organization to severe risks. Compliance checking is of growing importance for the business process management and auditing communities. ...

Ubiquitous smartphones have created a significant opportunity to form a low-cost wireless Citizen Sensor network and produce big data for monitoring structural integrity and safety under operational and extreme loads. Such data are particularly useful for rapid assessment of structural damage in a large urban setting after a major event such as an earthquake. This study explores the utilization...