Background Informal payments for health care, which are common in many countries, can have negative effects on health care access, equity and health status as they lead people to forgo or delay seeking care, or to sell assets to pay for care. Many countries are putting reforms in place with the aim of reducing informal payments. In order to be successful, such policies should be informed by the...

The success and sustainability of informal learning support at the workplace largely depends on motivational, social, and cultural aspects of the involved individuals, teams, and organizations. In this paper, we present our empirical findings from a large-scale interview-based study on those aspects with respect to knowledge development in companies. We draw some conclusions that influence the ...

Recent research at the Bank has been aimed at quantifying the risk of default by individual companies. There are a number of separate ways in which this can be assessed. First, by informal judgement based on company visits and accounting information. Second, by formal quantitative analysis of accounting information and other disclosures. Third, by formal quantitative analysis of market-based in...

Background: Informal payments can cause delayed access to health care services, forcing people to sell their properties for cost of treatment; and as a result, they lose trust in the health system. Considering the importance of this issue, this study was conducted in 2016 to identify solutions to reduce and eliminate informal payments in Iran’s health system.    Methods: Initia...

one of the most important issues that faced cities in developing countries with a crisis is expanding informal settlement in them. these settlements with differences in definition are known as occupational, changing, marginal, self-made and uncontrolled housing. it is estimated that about 1 billion man in all over the world live in such kinds of places. these zones are the texture for creation ...

Emerging research on the long-term impact of concussions on athletes has allowed public recognition of the potentially devastating effects of these and other mild head injuries. Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is a multifaceted disease for which management remains a clinical challenge. Recent pre-clinical and clinical data strongly suggest a destructive synergism between brain temperature el...

The invention of the CMOS active pixel image sensor “camera-on-a-chip” at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech and its subsequent development and commercialization via the spinoff company Photobit Corporation are discussed. The article traces the arc of the technology from innovation, technology transfer, and entrepreneurial startup to its use today in nearly all mobile phone cameras, ...

This paper examines programs conceived and developed at the central headquarters of multinational companies and their implementation process at local sites in different international settings. It first looks at the program content, and then how the program gets translated into measures that are undertaken in selected sites. In a second step, it considers the potential for local response to the ...