University of East Anglia

About: University of East Anglia is a education organization based out in Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Climate change. The organization has 13250 authors who have published 37504 publications receiving 1669060 citations. The organization is also known as: UEA.

Cost effectiveness of telehealth for patients with long term conditions (Whole Systems Demonstrator telehealth questionnaire study): nested economic evaluation in a pragmatic, cluster randomised controlled trial

Abstract: Objective: To examine the costs and cost effectiveness of telehealth in addition to standard support and treatment, compared with standard support and treatment. Design: Economic evaluation nested in a pragmatic, cluster randomised controlled trial. Setting: Community based telehealth intervention in three local authority areas in England. Participants: 3230 people with a long term condition (heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or diabetes) were recruited into the Whole Systems Demonstrator telehealth trial between May 2008 and December 2009. Of participants taking part in the Whole Systems Demonstrator telehealth questionnaire study examining acceptability, effectiveness, and cost effectiveness, 845 were randomised to telehealth and 728 to usual care. Interventions: Intervention participants received a package of telehealth equipment and monitoring services for 12 months, in addition to the standard health and social care services available in their area. Controls received usual health and social care. Main outcome measure: Primary outcome for the cost effectiveness analysis was incremental cost per quality adjusted life year (QALY) gained. Results: We undertook net benefit analyses of costs and outcomes for 965 patients (534 receiving telehealth; 431 usual care). The adjusted mean difference in QALY gain between groups at 12 months was 0.012. Total health and social care costs (including direct costs of the intervention) for the three months before 12 month interview were £1390 (€1610; $2150) and £1596 for the usual care and telehealth groups, respectively. Cost effectiveness acceptability curves were generated to examine decision uncertainty in the analysis surrounding the value of the cost effectiveness threshold. The incremental cost per QALY of telehealth when added to usual care was £92 000. With this amount, the probability of cost effectiveness was low (11% at willingness to pay threshold of £30 000; >50% only if the threshold exceeded about £90 000). In sensitivity analyses, telehealth costs remained slightly (non-significantly) higher than usual care costs, even after assuming that equipment prices fell by 80% or telehealth services operated at maximum capacity. However, the most optimistic scenario (combining reduced equipment prices with maximum operating capacity) eliminated this group difference (cost effectiveness ratio £12 000 per QALY). Conclusions: The QALY gain by patients using telehealth in addition to usual care was similar to that by patients receiving usual care only, and total costs associated with the telehealth intervention were higher. Telehealth does not seem to be a cost effective addition to standard support and treatment.

Self-ensembling for visual domain adaptation

Abstract: This paper explores the use of self-ensembling for visual domain adaptation problems. Our technique is derived from the mean teacher variant (Tarvainen et al., 2017) of temporal ensembling (Laine et al;, 2017), a technique that achieved state of the art results in the area of semi-supervised learning. We introduce a number of modifications to their approach for challenging domain adaptation scenarios and evaluate its effectiveness. Our approach achieves state of the art results in a variety of benchmarks, including our winning entry in the VISDA-2017 visual domain adaptation challenge. In small image benchmarks, our algorithm not only outperforms prior art, but can also achieve accuracy that is close to that of a classifier trained in a supervised fashion.

Who speaks for the future of Earth?: how critical social science can extend the conversation on the Anthropocene

Abstract: This paper asks how the social sciences can engage with the idea of the Anthropocene in productive ways. In response to this question we outline an interpretative research agenda that allows critical engagement with the Anthropocene as a socially and culturally bounded object with many possible meanings and political trajectories. In order to facilitate the kind of political mobilization required to meet the complex environmental challenges of our times, we argue that the social sciences should refrain from adjusting to standardized research agendas and templates. A more urgent analytical challenge lies in exposing, challenging and extending the ontological assumptions that inform how we make sense of and respond to a rapidly changing environment. By cultivating environmental research that opens up multiple interpretations of the Anthropocene, the social sciences can help to extend the realm of the possible for environmental politics.

A "carbonizing Dragon" China's fast growing CO2 emissions revisited

Abstract: China’s annual CO2 emissions grew by around 4 billion tonnes between 1992 and 2007. More than 70% of this increase occurred between 2002 and 2007. While growing export demand contributed more than 50% to the CO2 emission growth between 2002 and 2005, capital investments have been responsible for 61% of emission growth in China between 2005 and 2007. We use structural decomposition analysis to identify the drivers for China’s emission growth between 1992 and 2007, with special focus on the period 2002 to 2007 when growth was most rapid. In contrast to previous analysis, we find that efficiency improvements have largely offset additional CO2 emissions from increased final consumption between 2002 and 2007. The strong increases in emissions growth between 2002 and 2007 are instead explained by structural change in China’s economy, which has newly emerged as the third major emission driver. This structural change is mainly the result of capital investments, in particular, the growing prominence of constructio...

Effects of marine reserve characteristics on the protection of fish populations: a meta‐analysis

Abstract: Meta-analyses of published data for 19 marine reserves reveal that marine protected areas enhance species richness consistently, but their effect on fish abundance is more variable. Overall, there was a slight (11%) but significant increase in fish species number inside marine reserves, with all reserves sharing a common effect. There was a substantial but non-significant increase in overall fish abundance inside marine reserves compared to adjacent, non-reserve areas. When only species that are the target of fisheries were considered, fish abundance was significantly higher (by 28%) within reserve boundaries. Marine reserves vary significantly in the extent and direction of their response. This variability in relative abundance was not attributable to differences in survey methodology among studies, nor correlated with reserve characteristics such as reserve area, years since protection, latitude nor species diversity. The effectiveness of marine reserves in enhancing fish abundance may be largely related to the intensity of exploitation outside reserve boundaries and to the composition of the fish community within boundaries. It is recommended that studies of marine reserve effectiveness should routinely report fishing intensity, effectiveness of enforcement and habitat characteristics.