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Despite providing convenience and reducing the travel burden of patients, Video-Conferencing (VC) clinical visits have not enjoyed wide uptake by patients and care providers. It is desired that the medical problems addressed by VC visits can match a face-to-face encounter in scope and quality. Subsequently, VC visits with nurse assistance are emerging; however, the scalable and financially sustainable of such services are unclear. Therefore, we explore the implementability of VC visits with nursing services using a game-theoretic model, and investigate the impact of different pricing schemes (discriminative pricing based on patient characteristics vs. non-discriminative) on patients’ care choices between VC and in-person visits. Our results shed light on the “artificial congestion” created by a profit-driven medical institution that hurts patient welfare, and subsequently identify the conditions where the interest of the social planner and the medical institution are aligned. Our results highlight that, compared to a uniform price of VC visits which seems fair, discriminative pricing can be more beneficial for patients and the medical institution alike. This heightens the importance of insurance coverage of telehealth-related services to promote the adoption of telehealth by patients and care providers, and ultimately, improving care access and patient outcomes. 

This paper considers the load–deflection behavior of a pyramid-like, shallow lattice structure. It consists of four beams that join at a central apex and when subject to a lateral load, it exhibits a propensity to snap-through: a classical buckling phenomenon. Whether this structural inversion occurs, and the routes by which it happens, depends sensitively on geometry. Given the often sudden nature of the instability, the behavior is also examined within a dynamics context. The outcome of numerical simulations are favorably compared with experimental data extracted from the testing of three-dimensional (3D)-printed specimens. The key contributions of this paper are that despite the continuous nature of the physical system, its behavior (transient and equilibria) can be adequately described using a discrete model, and the paper also illustrates the utility of 3D-printing in an accessible research context. 

Electron-neutrino charged-current interactions with xenon nuclei were modeled in the nEXO neutrinoless double- $\beta$decay detector ( $\sim 5$metric ton, 90% ${}^{136}\mathrm{Xe}$, 10% ${}^{134}\mathrm{Xe}$) to evaluate its sensitivity to supernova neutrinos. Predictions for event rates and detectable signatures were modeled using the Model of Argon Reaction Low Energy Yields (MARLEY) event generator. We find good agreement between MARLEY’s predictions and existing theoretical calculations of the inclusive cross sections at supernova neutrino energies. The interactions modeled by MARLEY were simulated within the nEXO simulation framework and were run through an example reconstruction algorithm to determine the detector’s efficiency for reconstructing these events. The simulated data, incorporating the detector response, were used to study the ability of nEXO to reconstruct the incident electron-neutrino spectrum and these results were extended to a larger xenon detector of the same isotope enrichment. We estimate that nEXO will be able to observe electron-neutrino interactions with xenon from supernovae as far as 5–8 kpc from Earth, while the ability to reconstruct incident electron-neutrino spectrum parameters from observed interactions in nEXO is limited to closer supernovae. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

We propose a general framework of using a multi-level log-Gaussian Cox process to model repeatedly observed point processes with complex structures; such type of data have become increasingly available in various areas including medical research, social sciences, economics, and finance due to technological advances. A novel nonparametric approach is developed to efficiently and consistently estimate the covariance functions of the latent Gaussian processes at all levels. To predict the functional principal component scores, we propose a consistent estimation procedure by maximizing the conditional likelihood of super-positions of point processes. We further extend our procedure to the bivariate point process case in which potential correlations between the processes can be assessed. Asymptotic properties of the proposed estimators are investigated, and the effectiveness of our procedures is illustrated through a simulation study and an application to a stock trading dataset. 

Select hydrogen bond donors can catalyze reactions of ion pairs through the recognition of anions. This mode of action can be exploited in enantioselective catalysis if a suitable chiral hydrogen bond donor is applied. Beyond just anionic recognition, an enantioselective anion-binding catalyst often must host numerous non-covalent interactions, including hydrogen bonding, general base, π-π, and π-cation, to achieve high levels of enantiocontrol. Anion-binding catalysts can be strategically designed to support those non-covalent interactions required to render a process highly stereoselective. Tactics applied in anion-binding catalyst development include enhancing arene substituents for improved π-stacking, linking two anion-binding units together on a single scaffold, expanding types of functional groups for anion recognition, and building frameworks with bifunctional modes of action. The intent of this digest is to highlight observations that suggest as anion-binding catalyst designs advance, their associated synthetic methodologies for complex molecule construction become increasingly impressive. 

A<sc>bstract</sc> We report a search for the charged-lepton flavor violation in Υ(2S) →ℓ^∓τ^±(ℓ=e, μ) decays using a 25 fb⁻¹Υ(2S) sample collected by the Belle detector at the KEKBe⁺e⁻asymmetric-energy collider. We find no evidence for a signal and set upper limits on the branching fractions ($$ \mathcal{B} $$ $B$) at 90% confidence level. We obtain the most stringent upper limits:$$ \mathcal{B} $$ $B$(Υ(2S)→ μ^∓τ^±)<0.23×10⁻⁶and$$ \mathcal{B} $$ $B$(Υ(2S)→ e^∓τ^±)<1.12×10⁻⁶.