We construct a game theoretic model of an oligarchic economy that potentially could be targeted by smart international sanctions. Oligarchs in this economy provide support for their leader, a strong man and potentially an autocrat, in return for favors that results in having income higher than the average income in the country. We derive the conditions under which smart sanctions lead to compli...

This is a summary of the workshop that was held as part of the ICT4S conference with a focus on the topic of social practices and smart grids. Here we present an overview of the five invited paper contributions to the workshop, as well as a summary of the plenary discussion, and our final conclusions. Keywords—sustainability; ICT; social practice theory; smart grid; design

Early detection of cancer biomarkers applied in real-time disease diagnosis and therapies can increase the survival rate patients. Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) as a typical biomarker plays great role process monitoring, especially early diagnosis. Unfortunately, most ctDNA systems have not been widely used due to their low sensitivity, poor specificity, high cost. Herein, we developed an alter...

The emerging field of plasmonic metamaterials has introduced new degree of freedom to manipulate optical field from nano to macroscopic scale, offering an attractive platform for sensing applications. So far, metamaterial sensor concepts, however, have focused on hot-spot engineering to improve the near-field enhancement, rather than fully exploiting tailored material properties. Here, we prese...

A novel microarray system that utilizes a porous aluminum-oxide substrate and flow-through incubation has been developed for rapid molecular biological testing. To assess its utility in gene expression analysis, we determined hybridization kinetics, variability, sensitivity and dynamic range of the system using amplified RNA. To show the feasibility with complex biological RNA, we subjected Jur...

This paper studies patient volume and the severity of case mix as they relate to physicians’ human capital accumulation and pace of technology adoption by exploring a quality signaling mechanism through which physicians build peer reputation. We show that volume building leads physicians to actively manage case mix and find that successful surgeries (particularly for difficult cases) raise futu...