The Internet has the potential to fundamentally change the structure of marketing channels, but only if consumers choose to adopt electronic channels. Thus, this paper aims to develop a more nuanced understanding of consumer channel choices. Specifically, it contends that it is important to examine consumers’ intent to adopt electronic channels, not as a monolithic decision, but as a choice the...

This paper presents a new method of measuring performance when positives are rare and investigates whether Chomsky-like grammar representations are useful for learning accurate comprehensible predic-tors of members of biological sequence families. The positive-only learning framework of the Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) system CPro-gol is used to generate a grammar for recognising a class o...

When faced with a variable environment, organisms may switch between different strategies according to some probabilistic rule. In an infinite population, evolution is expected to favor the rule that maximizes geometric mean fitness. If some environments are encountered only rarely, selection may not be strong enough for optimal switching probabilities to evolve. Here we calculate the evolution...

With higher payments and expanded private-plan authority, Medicare Advantage (MA) has caused the market to grow. One in three Medicare beneficiaries with Part D now gets this coverage through MA. Analysis of the sources of and reasons for enrollment growth suggest a troubling report card. Clearly, the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) has expanded choice and the private-sector role. But it also ...

The Medicare Advantage (MA) program continues to grow and thrive, despite plan payment cuts imposed through the Affordable Care Act. What explains this surprising outcome (one that is strikingly different than the experience of MA plans in the late 1990s, when payment cuts led to dramatic shrinkage in enrollment and curtailment of plans)? This analysis argues that a combination of factors, incl...

Sustainable competitive advantage (CA) is a necessary requirement of a rational economic business organisation. Without this CA a business does not have a rational source for appropriating added value in the form of retained profit. Various management research papers have identified numerous factors that may create a source of competitive advantage. Other researchers have shown how industries h...

background: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (copd) is usually considered one of the leading causes of death worldwide, so finding proper therapeutic strategies for this disease is of high importance. in this meta-analysis, we reviewed the existing literature on the efficacy and safety of conventional long acting beta agonists (labas) in copd patients. methods: we searched medline and goog...