A reflective programming language provides means to render explicit what is typically abstracted away in its language constructs in an on-demand style. In the early 1980’s, Brian Smith introduced a general recipe for building reflective programming languages with the notion of procedural reflection. It is an excellent framework for understanding and comparing various metaprogramming and reflect...

Standard laparoscopic instruments have limited dexterity due to their rigidity, making some surgical tasks extremely challenging. Robotic surgery was developed overcome these issues, but the da Vinci system is associated with high costs. During last few years, many companies designed and produced new robotic platforms, improve ergonomics less impact on cost effectiveness. This chapter describes...

Network goods and platform-enabled marketplaces are a dominant part of industry and entrepreneurship today. Firms selling these products task selling agents to recruit network participants. This creates a novel agency problem, distinct from one encountered with traditional goods because of externalities created by network effects. We analyze this managerial problem within a principal-agent fram...

Why do competing platforms or networks exist? This paper focuses on instances where the value of a platform depends on the adoption decisions of a small number of firms, and analyzes the strategic competition among platforms to get this oligopolistic side on-board. I study a bilateral contracting game among platforms and firms that allows for general externalities across both contracting and no...

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The liver is the largest internal organ in the human body that is responsible for more than 500 vital functions, including biosynthesis of major plasma proteins, immunity against infectious pathogens, balancing energy metabolism and xenobiotics biotransformation (1). One of the main functions of the liver is an important role in drug metabolism (2). Since developing new drug compounds into mark...