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There has been growing research interest in developing methodology to evaluate healthcare centers' performance with respect to patient outcomes. Conventional assessments can be conducted using fixed or random effects models, as seen in provider profiling. We propose a new method, using fusion penalty to cluster healthcare centers with respect to a survival outcome. Without any prior knowledge of the grouping information, the new method provides a desirable data‐driven approach for automatically clustering healthcare centers into distinct groups based on their performance. An efficient alternating direction method of multipliers algorithm is developed to implement the proposed method. The validity of our approach is demonstrated through simulation studies, and its practical application is illustrated by analyzing data from the national kidney transplant registry. 

Over the past decade, a series of airborne experiments in the Arctic and Antarctica explored microwave emission from sea ice and ice sheets at frequencies from 0.5 to 2 GHz. The experiments were motivated by the fact that lower frequencies penetrate deeper into a frozen surface, thus offering the possibility to measure physical temperatures at great depths in ice sheets and, subsequently, other unique geophysical observables including sea ice salinity. These experiments were made feasible by recent engineering advances in electronics, antenna design, and noise removal algorithms when operating outside of protected bands in the electromagnetic spectrum. These technical advances permit a new type of radiometer that not only operates at low frequency, but also obtains continuous spectral information over the band from 0.5 to 2 GHz. Spectral measurements facilitate an understanding of the physical processes controlling emission and also support the interpretation of results from single frequency instruments. This paper reviews the development of low-frequency, wide band radiometry and its application to cryosphere science over the past 10 years. The paper summarizes the engineering design of an airborne instrument and the associated algorithms to mitigate radio frequency interference. Theoretical models of emission built around the morphologic and electrical properties of cryospheric components are also described that identify the dominant physical processes contributing to emission spectra. New inversion techniques for geophysical parameter retrieval are summarized for both Arctic and Antarctic scenarios. Examples that illustrate how the measurements are used to inform on glaciological problems are presented. The paper concludes with a description of new instrument concepts that are foreseen to extend the technology into operation from space. 

ABSTRACT The radiative counterpart of the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Centre, Sagittarius A*, displays flaring emission in the X-ray band atop a steady, quiescent level. Flares are also observed in the near-infrared band. The physical process producing the flares is not fully understood and it is unclear if the flaring rate varies, although some recent works suggest it has reached unprecedented variability in recent years. Using over a decade of regular X-ray monitoring of Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, we studied the variations in count rate of Sgr A* on time-scales of years. We decomposed the X-ray emission into quiescent and flaring emission, modelled as a constant and power-law process, respectively. We found that the complete, multiyear data set cannot be described by a stationary distribution of flare fluxes, while individual years follow this model better. In three of the ten studied years, the data is consistent with a purely Poissonian quiescent distribution, while for 5 yr, only an upper limit of the flare flux distribution parameter could be determined. We find that these possible changes cannot be explained fully by the different number of observations per year. Combined, these results are instead consistent with a changing flaring rate of Sgr A*, appearing more active between 2006–2007 and 2017–2019, than between 2008–2012. Finally, we discuss this result in the context of flare models and the passing of gaseous objects, and discuss the extra statistical steps taken, for instance, to deal with the background in the Swift observations.