https://knowledgecommons.lakeheadu.ca/handle/2453/4085 2025-01-16t10:02:40z https://knowledgecommons.lakeheadu.ca/handle/2453/4964 cost-effectiveness of treatment strategies for selumetinib to neurofibromatosis type i inoperable plexiform neurofibromas patients aged 3 to 18 ault, andrew k. assessing the cost effectiveness for drugs targeting ultra-rare diseases is complex given the limited clinical evidence for many drugs, yet is growing in importance as the number of these drugs being commercialized is increasing rapidly. selumetinib is a recently fda-approved mek inhibitor for patients aged 3 to 18, with neurofibromatosis type i (nf1) inoperable plexiform neurofibromas (pn), a rare genetic disorder, and has been shown in clinical trials to stabilize and contract tumors by up to 20%. as this is an expensive drug with costs ranging from $76,672.03 to $357,802.84cad (2022) per year of treatment depending on one’s body-surface-area, examining its cost-effectiveness to the health system is important; yet made difficult due to the behaviour of the disease largely dependent on one’s age. accordingly, this paper uses the best available clinical evidence, including that of the recent sprint clinical trial, to produce a time-dependent markov model, where costs, utilities and probabilities are based on either the markov stage, patient age, or both; to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of potential dosing strategies of selumetinib for nf1 inoperable pn patients aged 3 to 18. potential treatment strategies were developed, differing on the number of years a patient would take selumetinib following clinical response. incremental cost effectiveness ratios (icer), representing cost per quality adjusted life year (qaly), were calculated for the strategies, which ranged from $74,671.90 cad to $255,674.71 cad. a monte-carlo simulation was run in each scenario, assuming a maximum willingness-to-pay threshold of $150,000, which revealed selumetinib being cost-effective in 70.94% of iterations in the lowest intensity strategy, and in only 6.717% of iterations of the highest intensity. recognizing this study is limited to understanding the cost-effectiveness of potential treatment strategies of this drug for this population, this paper hopes to support development of such strategies, along with clinical and epidemiological evidence, in providing an economic perspective. beyond this application, this paper sets the stage not only for further cost-effectiveness of selumetinib for other populations, but also of other novel drugs with costs, utilities, and probabilities, in part, based on patient age, through use of the time-dependent markov model. future research directions are discussed, based on the limitations of the current study. andrew ault is a graduate student in the faculty of business administration at 阿根廷vs墨西哥竞猜 . 2022-01-01t00:00:00z https://knowledgecommons.lakeheadu.ca/handle/2453/4334 is presidential compensation linked to performance of ontario’s colleges? ault, andrew this paper examines relationships between presidential salaries and key performance indicators for community colleges in ontario, canada. this paper aims to determine the impact college performance has on executive salary levels. this study uses the annual sunshine list to discern three years of data for presidential salaries, up to and including the wage freeze in 2012, for a population of 21 colleges. key performance indicators (kpis) from surveys conducted by colleges ontario between 2010 and 2013, were used to assess lagged salary impacts. a number of linear regressions were conducted, with the dependent variable of most interest being presidential compensation, and independent variables spanning the various kpis, institutional size, full-time enrollment, region and the tenured years of the executive. initially, compensation was found to negatively correlate with graduation rates, whereby compensation increases when graduation rates decrease. through a sobel-goodman test, it was later discerned both were mediated by enrolment figures. hence, a null hypothesis was found; specifically, that presidential compensation does not significantly influence the performance of a college. with ontario’s colleges actively consulting the public on college ceo compensation, this paper provides an important foundation for those considering pay-per-performance mechanisms. to increase school performance, college boards may find their efforts limited should they only focus on the president. above all, this paper highlights the need that ceos of higher educational institutions may, through engagement and leading faculty, academic programming and research, indirectly enhance college performance, including student satisfaction. to the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study of its kind focussed on colleges, and builds of only one other study to consider the nature of performance-based compensation in ontario’s broader public sector empirically. andrew ault is a graduate student in the faculty of business administration at 阿根廷vs墨西哥竞猜 . 2018-01-01t00:00:00z https://knowledgecommons.lakeheadu.ca/handle/2453/4086 ion-assisted deposition of amorphous pbo layers semeniuk, oleksii; csik, a.; kökényesi, s.; reznik, alla lead oxide (pbo) is one of the most promising materials for application in direct conversion medical imaging x-ray detectors. despite its high potential, conventional polycrystalline pbo layers deposited with the basic thermal evaporation method are not yet mature for practical use in x-ray imaging; indeed, they are highly porous, unstable at ambient conditions, and substoichiometric. in order to combat the above issues with pbo, we advance the basic evaporation process with simultaneous energetic ion bombardment of the growing film. we show that tuning the ion-assisted thermal deposition not only solves the structural problems of poly-pbo, but also enables the growth of a new non-crystalline polymorphic form of the material—amorphous pbo (a-pbo). in contrast to poly-pbo, novel a-pbo layers grown by ion-assisted thermal deposition are stable at ambient conditions. structural and morphological analysis confirms that a-pbo is stoichiometric and free of detectable voids, which suggests higher bulk x-ray stopping power than porous poly-pbo. the publisher's version of this article can be viewed at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10853-017-0998-5 a read-only accessible version of this article can be viewed with this sharedit link at http://rdcu.be/tb19 2017-07-01t00:00:00z