Abstract Background Social robots have demonstrated promising outcomes in terms of increasing the social health and well-being of people with dementia and mild cognitive impairment. According to the World Health Organization’s Monitoring and assessing digital health interventions framework, usability and feasibility studies are crucial before implementing prototype social robots and proving their efficacy and effectiveness. This protocol paper aims to detail the plan for conducting the usability and feasibility study of the MINI robot based...

Abstract Background Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) are emerging natural nanoplatforms in cancer diagnosis and therapy, through the incorporation of signal components or drugs in their structure. However, for their translation into the clinical field, there is still a lack of tools that enable a deeper understanding of their in vivo pharmacokinetics or their interactions with the cells of the tumor microenvironment. In this study, we have designed a dual-sEV probe based on radioactive and fluorescent...

Enhancing energy storing capability with the aid of unique nanostructured morphologies is beneficial for the development of the energy-storing capability of supercapacitors. However, the developing earth-abundant and low-cost transition metal selenides (TMSs) with enhanced charge transfer capabilities and good stability is still a challenge. Herein, state-of-the-art iron selenide with a nanoflake surface architecture, synthesized with the aid of a simple, industry-scalable and ionic layer controlled chemical approach, namely the successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction...

The use of real decision-making incentives remains under debate after decades of economic experiments. In time preferences experiments involving future payments, real incentives are particularly problematic due to between-options differences in transaction costs, among other issues. What if hypothetical payments provide accurate data which, moreover, avoid transaction cost problems? In this paper, we test whether the use of hypothetical or one-out-of-ten-participants probabilistic—versus real—payments affects the elicitation of short-term and long-term discounting in a standard multiple...

Information flow during catastrophic events is a critical aspect of disaster management. Modern communication platforms, in particular online social networks, provide an opportunity to study such flow and derive early-warning sensors, thus improving emergency preparedness and response. Performance of the social networks sensor method, based on topological and behavioral properties derived from the “friendship paradox”, is studied here for over 50 million Twitter messages posted before, during, and after Hurricane Sandy. We find that differences...

Additional file 3. Observed Emotions Rating Scale.

Additional file 3. Observed Emotions Rating Scale.

We analyze the relationship between the intensity of banks’ use of soft-information and household bankruptcy patterns. Using a unique data set on the universe of Canadian household bankruptcies, we document that bankruptcy rates are higher in markets where the collection of soft, or qualitative locally gathered information, is the weakest. Using two Canadian bank mergers as exogenous variation in local market structure, we show that the differences in bankruptcy rates are not due to changes...

"How is the stability of the financial sector affected by competition in the deposit market and by banks’ choices about the level of transparency? We propose a model in which both elements interact and influence investors’ withdrawal decisions and banks’ level of distress (that is, the probability banks will default on their debt). The model also shows how measures regulating bank competition and bank transparency affect the stability of the financial sector. Banks face a...

This paper uses Canadian matched employer-employee data to show that working hours are gross complements in production rather than perfect substitutes, as is typically assumed. We exploit within-establishment and individual-level variation in hours and wages to document novel evidence consistent with complementarities in hours worked. Next, we estimate an elasticity of substitution in working hours of 0.69 in the aggregate and between 0.52 and 1.04 at the industry level. We validate our estimates by showing...

Additional file 1. Almere model base questionnaire for Acceptability.

Additional file 1. Almere model base questionnaire for Acceptability.

Additional file 2. System Usability Scale.

Additional file 1. Fig. S1. Physicochemical characterization of non-labeled sEVs by transmission electron microscopy. Images showing the morphology and size of unlabeled sEVs. Fig. S2. In vivo and ex vivo studies of dual-sEVs. A In vivo SPECT/CT imaging of a tumor 24 h after i.v injection of the dual-sEVs. B In vivo optical imaging of tumor-bearing mice 3 h after i.v. injection in the lateral (left) and prone (right) positions. C Ex vivo optical imaging...

RISC Report Series, 23-02

An orb-weaving spider's likelihood of survival is influenced by its ability to retain prey with minimum damage to its web and at the lowest manufacturing cost. This set of requirements has forced the spider silk to evolve towards extreme strength and ductility to a degree that is rare among materials. Previous studies reveal that the performance of the web upon impact may not be based on the mechanical properties of silk alone, aerodynamic drag could...

The steady streaming motion that appears around a pair of circular cylinders placed in a small-amplitude oscillatory flow is considered. Attention is focused on the case where the Stokes layer thickness at the surface of the cylinders is much smaller than the cylinder radius, and the streaming Reynolds number is of order unity or larger. In that case, the steady streaming velocity that persists at the edge of the Stokes layer can be imposed as...

Additional file 1. Fig. S1. Physicochemical characterization of non-labeled sEVs by transmission electron microscopy. Images showing the morphology and size of unlabeled sEVs. Fig. S2. In vivo and ex vivo studies of dual-sEVs. A In vivo SPECT/CT imaging of a tumor 24 h after i.v injection of the dual-sEVs. B In vivo optical imaging of tumor-bearing mice 3 h after i.v. injection in the lateral (left) and prone (right) positions. C Ex vivo optical imaging...

Abstract Background Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) are emerging natural nanoplatforms in cancer diagnosis and therapy, through the incorporation of signal components or drugs in their structure. However, for their translation into the clinical field, there is still a lack of tools that enable a deeper understanding of their in vivo pharmacokinetics or their interactions with the cells of the tumor microenvironment. In this study, we have designed a dual-sEV probe based on radioactive and fluorescent...

Expected returns vary when investors face time-varying investment opportunities. Long-run risk models (Bansal and Yaron 2004) and no-arbitrage affine models (Duffie, Pan, and Singleton 2000) emphasize sources of risk that are not observable to the econometrician. We show that, for both classes of models, the term structure of risk implicit in option prices can reveal these risk factors ex-ante. Empirically, we construct the variance term structure implied in SP500 option prices. The variance term structure...

A spider's web is a multifunctional structure that captures prey and provides an information platform that transmits vibrational information. Many physical factors interact to influence web vibration and information content, from vibration source properties and input location, to web physical properties and geometry. The aim of the study was to test whether orb web vibration contains information about the location of the source of vibration. We used finite-element analysis model webs to control and vary...

RISC Report Series, 22-10

Additional file 2. System Usability Scale.

Abstract Background Social robots have demonstrated promising outcomes in terms of increasing the social health and well-being of people with dementia and mild cognitive impairment. According to the World Health Organization’s Monitoring and assessing digital health interventions framework, usability and feasibility studies are crucial before implementing prototype social robots and proving their efficacy and effectiveness. This protocol paper aims to detail the plan for conducting the usability and feasibility study of the MINI robot based...