OBJECTIVES To determine factors associated with damage accrual in a prospective cohort of patients with SLE. METHODS Patients with SLE who attended the Lupus Clinic at Monash Health, Australia, between 2007 and 2013 were studied. Clinical variables included disease activity (Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index-2K, SLEDAI-2K), time-adjusted mean SLEDAI, cumulative glucocorticoi...

BACKGROUND Accrual to Cancer Control and Supportive Care (CCL) studies can be challenging. Our objective was to identify facilitators and perceived barriers to successful Children's Oncology Group (COG) CCL accrual from the clinical research associate (CRA) perspective. METHODS A survey was developed that focused on the following features from the institutional perspective: (1) Components of ...

Interpreting accruals as working capital investment, we hypothesize based on q-theory that firms optimally adjust their accruals in response to discount rate changes. A higher discount rate means less profitable investments and lower accruals, and a lower discount rate means more profitable investments and higher accruals. Our evidence supports this optimal investment hypothesis: (1) adding an ...

Traditionally, failure detectors have considered a binary model whereby a given process can be either trusted or suspected. This paper defines a family of failure detectors, called accrual failure detectors, that revisits this interaction model. Accrual failure detectors associate to each process a real value representing a suspicion level. An important advantage of accrual failure detectors ov...