Fifteen percent (approximately 5% per year) of a drug refractory epilepsy population obtained a 6-month terminal seizure remission. Our results signify that no matter how many antiepileptic drug therapies have failed, there is always hope of a meaningful seizure remission in this population. Furthermore, we have elucidated four clinical predictors that can aid the epileptologist in prognostication.

Classical reasons for carrying inventory include fixed (nonlinear) production or procurement costs, lead times, nonstationary or uncertain supply/demand, and capacity constraints. The last decade has seen active research in supply chain coordination focusing on the role of incentive contracts to achieve first-best levels of inventory. An extensive literature in industrial organization that studies incentives for vertical controls largely ignores the effect of inventories. Does the ability to carry inventory influence the problem of vertical control? Conversely, can inventories arise purely due to incentive effects? This paper explicitly considers both incentives and inventories, and their interplay, in a dynamic model of an upstream firm (supplier) and a downstream firm (buyer) who can carry inventories. In our model, none of the classical reasons for carrying inventory exists. However, as we prove, the buyer's optimal strategy in equilibrium is to carry inventories, and the supplier is unable to prevent this. These inventories arise out of purely strategic considerations not yet identified in the literature, and have a significant impact on the equilibrium solution as well as supplier, buyer, and channel profits. We prove that strategic inventories play a pivotal role under arbitrary contractual structures, general (arbitrary) demand functions and general (finite or infinite) horizon lengths. As one example, two-part tariff contracts do not lead to optimal channel performance, nor can the supplier extract away all of the channel profits, in our dynamic model. Our results imply that firms can and must carry inventories strategically, and that optimal vertical contracts must take the possibility of inventories into account.contracts, inventories, industrial organization, supply chain coordination

I n many services, the quality or value provided by the service increases with the time the service provider spends with the customer. However, longer service times also result in longer waits for customers. We term such services, in which the interaction between quality and speed is critical, as customer-intensive services. In a queueing framework, we parameterize the degree of customer intensity of the service. The service speed chosen by the service provider affects the quality of the service through its customer intensity. Customers queue for the service based on service quality, delay costs, and price. We study how a service provider facing such customers makes the optimal "quality-speed trade-off." Our results demonstrate that the customer intensity of the service is a critical driver of equilibrium price, service speed, demand, congestion in queues, and service provider revenues. Customer intensity leads to outcomes very different from those of traditional models of service rate competition. For instance, as the number of competing servers increases, the price increases, and the servers become slower.

Background and Purpose-The level of total homocysteine (tHcy) that confers a risk of ischemic stroke is unsettled, and no prospective cohort studies have included sufficient elderly minority subjects. We investigated the association between mild to moderate fasting tHcy level and the incidence of ischemic stroke, myocardial infarction, and vascular death in a multiethnic prospective study. Methods-A population-based cohort was followed for vascular events (stroke, myocardial infarction, and vascular death).Baseline values of tHcy and methylmalonic acid were measured among 2939 subjects (mean age, 69Ϯ10; 61% women, 53% Hispanics, 24% blacks, and 20% whites). Cox proportional models were used to calculate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% CIs in tHcy categories after adjusting for age, race, education, renal insufficiency, B 12 deficiency, and other risk factors. Results-The adjusted HR for a tHcy level Ն15 mol/L compared with Ͻ10 mol/L was greatest for vascular death (HRϭ6.04; 95% CI, 3.44 to 10.60), followed by combined vascular events (HRϭ2.27; 95% CI, 1.51 to 3.43), ischemic stroke (HRϭ2.01; 95% CI, 1.00 to 4.05), and nonvascular death (HRϭ2.02; 95% CI, 1.31 to 3.14). Mild to moderate elevations of tHcy of 10 to 15 mol/L were not significantly predictive of ischemic stroke, but increased the risk of vascular death (2.27; 95% CI, 1.44 to 3.60) and combined vascular events (1.42; 95% CI, 1.06 to 1.88). The effect of tHcy was stronger among whites and Hispanics, but not a significant risk factor for blacks. Conclusions-Total Hcy elevations above 15 mol/L are an independent risk factor for ischemic stroke, whereas mild elevations of tHcy of 10 to 15 mol/L are less predictive. The vascular effects of tHcy are greatest among whites and Hispanics, and less among blacks. (Stroke.

Web-based group-buying mechanisms are being widely used for both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions. We survey currently operational online group-buying markets, and then study this phenomenon using analytical models. We build on the literatures in information economics and operations management in our analytical model of a monopolist offering Web-based group-buying under different kinds of demand uncertainty. We derive the monopolist's optimal group-buying schedule under varying conditions of heterogeneity in the demand regimes, and compare its profits with those that obtain under the more conventional posted-price mechanism. We further study the impact of production postponement by endogenizing the timing of the pricing and production decisions in a two-stage game between the monopolist and buyers. Our results have implications for firms' choice of price-discovery mechanisms in e-markets, and for the scheduling of production and pricing decisions in the presence (and absence) of scale economies of production.Group Buying, Pricing, Demand Uncertainty, Quantity Discounts, Price Discovery, Demand Heterogeneity

The importance of material flow management for a profit-maximizing firm has been well articulated in the supply chain literature. We demonstrate in our analytical model that a firm must also actively manage information flows within the supply chain, which translates to controlling what it knows, as well as what its competitors and suppliers know. In our model of horizontal competition between an informed and an uninformed firm with a common upstream supplier, material and information flows intersect through leakage of demand (order) information to unintended recipients. As a result, the informed firm's drive to control information flows within the supply chain can trigger operational losses through material flow distortion. These losses can be so severe that the firm may prefer not to acquire information even when it is costless to do so. Our results underscore the importance of strategic information management--actively managing the supply chain's information flows, and making trade-offs with material flows where appropriate, to maximize profits.application contexts/sectors, supply chain and logistics, competitive impacts of IS, economics of IS, manufacturing, strategy

School based interventions are required to reduce the morbidity associated with non-communicable diseases.

No abstract