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Decision Criteria (decision + criterion)
Selected AbstractsEvaluation of decision criteria for detection of spinal cord compression based on cervical myelography in horses: 38 cases (1981,2001)EQUINE VETERINARY JOURNAL, Issue 1 2004J. Van Biervliet Summary Reasons for performing study: Different criteria have been described based on height reduction of the total myelographic contrast column and components of it as tests for compression of the spinal cord due to cervical stenotic myelopathy (CSM). Fifty percent height reduction of the dorsal myelographic column (DMC), <2 mm empiric height of the DMC and a 40% reduction of the ratio of stenosis calculated based on the height reduction of the entire dural diameter (DD) have been described as decision criteria for considering the test result positive. The reasons for selecting these decision criteria or their accuracies have rarely been reported. Objectives: To evaluate the accuracy of diagnostic criteria based on reduced height of the total myelographic column and components of it for diagnosing extradural spinal cord compression using different decision criteria, and make recommendations for consistent myelographic interpretation in horses suspected of having CSM. Methods: Four measurements were obtained by 2 readers in a retrospective sample population of 38 horses in which both cervical myelography and histopathological examination of the cervical spinal cord were performed. The prevalence of CSM in the sample was 50%. At intervertebral sites, the minimum heights of the DD and DMC were measured. At intravertebral sites, the maximum heights of the entire DD and DMC were obtained. Percent height reductions of the DMC and DD were determined as the ratio of minimum intervertebral height to maximum intravertebral height within the next cranial vertebra. Histological examination was used as the gold standard for determining the actual site of spinal cord compression. Sensitivity and specificity for the diagnostic criteria were estimated at each site in neutral and flexed neck positions using several different decision criteria. Conclusions: At C6-C7, in neutral or flexed neck position and using 20% reduction of DD, the test was highly sensitive and specific for CSM. At other sites, reduced height of the myelographic column generally was not accurate for diagnosing extradural spinal cord compression. Using 20% reduction of DD in neutral position at the mid-cervical sites, the test had only low sensitivity and high specificity. Flexion of the neck appeared to increase detection of spinal cord compression in the mid-cervical region, but also substantially increased the frequency of false-positive diagnoses. Potential relevance: By using the reported sensitivity and specificity estimates, readers may decide on a decision criterion for diagnosis of extradural spinal cord compression due to CSM. However, in planning a surgical correction, it is difficult to define a decision criterion that combines acceptable sensitivity and specificity, especially at the mid-cervical sites. [source] Empathy and Strategic Interaction in Crises: A Poliheuristic PerspectiveFOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 2 2009Jonathan W. Keller Empirical evidence supports the poliheuristic (PH) theory of decision making, which states that leaders typically employ a two-stage non-compensatory decision-making process. In stage one leaders reject options that do not meet some minimum criteria of acceptability on one or more dimensions, and in stage two they choose among the remaining options using a more rational utility-maximizing rule. While PH theory has primarily been applied at the monadic level, to explain the process and content of states' decisions, we contend it has important implications for strategic interaction and can help to explain outcomes in world politics. Specifically, we argue that a crucial variable shaping crisis outcomes is the degree to which leaders' non compensatory decision criteria in stage one include options' acceptability to the opponent. When leaders empathize with their opponent and screen out those options the opponent considers unacceptable, crises will be resolved more quickly and with a lower likelihood of escalation. Empathy introduced during the second, utility-maximizing stage, may also dampen conflict but is less effective than stage one empathy. We illustrate this dyadic non compensatory model by examining two cases involving the U.S.,China and U.S.,Iraq bilateral relationships. [source] Which parameters differ in very old patients with chronic atrial fibrillation treated by anticoagulant or aspirin?FUNDAMENTAL & CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY, Issue 5 2008Antithrombotic treatment of atrial fibrillation in the elderly Abstract The objective was to determine the main parameters taken into account for the decision of antithrombotic treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF) by vitamin K antagonist or aspirin. This was a prospective clinical study of four clinical services of geriatric medicine. Two hundred and nine inpatients, 84.7 ± 7 years (women 60.8%), with chronic AF were included. The patients were distributed into two groups (anticoagulant or aspirin) according to medical decision. All the decision criteria for treatment were recorded: cardiopathy, conditions of life, clinical examination (nutrition and autonomy, mini-mental state examination (MMSE), walking evaluation, comorbidity), subjective evaluation of risk of falls and glomerular filtration rate. The thromboembolic risk and the bleeding risk, evaluated subjectively for each patient, were compared with two scores of thrombo-embolic risk and bleeding risk. The evolution of the patients was recorded after 3 months. Student's t -test and chi-squared tests were used for statistical analysis. One hundred and two patients (48.8%) received anticoagulant and 107 patients received aspirin. Patients in the aspirin group were significantly older (86.5 ± 6.5 vs. 82.9 ± 7.1 years), with more frequent social isolation, higher systolic blood pressure, and had more important subjective bleeding risk and risk of falls. Patients in the anticoagulant group had significantly more valvulopathies and a more important subjective thromboembolic risk. Thrombo-phlebitis antecedents, dementia, denutrition and walking alterations were only slightly more frequent in patients in the aspirin group. Physicians underestimated thromboembolic risk (one-third of patients) and they overestimated bleeding risk (half of the patients). After 3 months, the two groups did not significantly differ for death, bleeding or ischaemic events. In common practice, the decision of antithrombotic treatment for AF should take into account not only cardiovascular but also geriatric criteria. [source] MINERVA-DM and subadditive frequency judgmentsJOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DECISION MAKING, Issue 5 2004J. Neil Bearden Abstract There is considerable evidence that frequency (and probability) judgments are often subadditive. That is, the frequency judgment assigned to an event is often less than the sum of the frequency judgments assigned to the mutually exclusive component events that together form it. Explanations for subadditive judgments have typically relied on relatively high-level cognitive constructs such as the availability and representativeness heuristics. A lower-level explanation of subadditivity is presented in this paper through a model of memory and judgment processes, MINERVA-DM. Under MINERVA-DM, subadditivity is influenced by the similarity of the representations of the judged component events in memory to one another and by the placement of decision criteria. Results from two experiments support the model predictions. The first examines the effects of component event similarity on subadditivity. The second replicates the first and also provides support for the model's prediction of the effects of payoffs on similarity criteria. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] A fracture-mechanics-based approach to fracture control in biomedical devices manufactured from superelastic Nitinol tubeJOURNAL OF BIOMEDICAL MATERIALS RESEARCH, Issue 1 2008S. W. Robertson Abstract Several key fracture-mechanics parameters associated with the onset of subcritical and critical cracking, specifically the fracture toughness, crack-resistance curve, and fatigue threshold, have recently been reported for the superelastic alloy Nitinol, in the product form of the thin-walled tube that is used to manufacture several biomedical devices, most notably endovascular stents. In this study, we use these critical parameters to construct simple decision criteria for assessing the quantitative effect of crack-like defects in such Nitinol devices with respect to their resistance to failure by deformation or fracture. The criteria are based on the (equivalent) crack-initiation fracture toughness and fatigue threshold stress-intensity range, together with the general yield strength and fatigue endurance strength, and are used to construct a basis for design against single-event (overload) failures as well as for time-/cycle-delayed failures associated with fatigue. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater 2008 [source] Dose determination and confirmation of a long-acting formulation of ceftiofur (ceftiofur crystalline free acid) administered subcutaneously for the treatment of bovine respiratory diseaseJOURNAL OF VETERINARY PHARMACOLOGY & THERAPEUTICS, Issue 3 2002B. HIBBARD Hibbard, B., Robb, E. J., Chester Jr., S. T., Dame, K. J., Boucher, J. F., Alaniz, G. R. Dose determination and confirmation of a long-acting formulation of Ceftiofur (Ceftiofur crystalline free acid) administered subcutaneously for the treatment of bovine respiratory disease. J. vet. Pharmacol. Therap.25, 175,180. The objective of this work was to determine and confirm an effective dose of ceftiofur crystalline free acid sterile oil suspension (CCFA-SS, 100 mg ceftiofur equivalents (CE)/mL], a long-acting single-administration ceftiofur formulation, for the treatment of the bacterial component of bovine respiratory disease (BRD). Study 1 was a dose determination study that used an intratracheal Mannheimia haemolytica (Pasteurella haemolytica) challenge model to evaluate single-administration doses of CCFA-SS at 0.0, 1.1, 2.2, 3.3, 4.4 or 5.5 mg CE/kg body weight (BW) for the treatment of BRD. Data from this study were used to select doses for field testing in three multi-location clinical studies. In Study 2, the efficacy of a single administration dose of CCFA-SS at 4.4 mg CE/kg BW was compared with a negative control for the treatment of naturally occurring BRD in feedlot cattle. Treatments were administered when uniform clinical signs of BRD were present. Study 3 used a design similar to Study 2, and compared single-administration doses of CCFA-SS at 3.0 or 4.4 mg CE/kg BW with the positive-control tilmicosin (Micotil® 300 Injection, Elanco Animal Health) at 10 mg/kg BW. Study 4 compared the efficacy of single doses of CCFA-SS of 1.1,8.8 mg CE/kg BW with tilmicosin at 10 mg/kg BW. A total of 1176 cattle were included in these clinical studies. In Study 1, a dose of 4.55 mg CE/kg BW was determined to be effective. This was rounded to 4.4 mg CE/kg for field testing. In Study 2, a single dose of CCFA-SS at 4.4 mg CE/kg BW had a higher treatment success rate on day 14 (61%) than negative controls (26%, P < 0.01). However, in Study 3 this dose was judged to be at the beginning of an efficacious dose range for the treatment of BRD when compared with tilmicosin. In Study 4, day 28 treatment success rates were higher for CCFA-SS at 4.4,8.8 CE/kg BW than for tilmicosin (P=0.002) or the noneffective CCFA-SS dose of 1.1 mg CE/kg BW (P < 0.001). Based on decision criteria for Study 4, the effective dose was determined to be 4.4,5.5 mg CE/kg BW. These clinical studies demonstrated that a single dose of CCFA-SS (100 mg CE/mL) administered subcutaneously (s.c.) in the neck at 4.4,5.5 mg CE/kg BW is an effective treatment for BRD in feedlot cattle. However, this route of administration is no longer being considered for this formulation because of the ceftiofur residues that are present at the injection site for extended periods of time. [source] When consensus choice dominates individualism: Jensen's inequality and collective decisions under uncertaintyQUANTITATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2010Charles F. Manski D7; D81; H42 Research on collective provision of private goods has focused on distributional considerations. This paper studies a class of problems of decision under uncertainty in which an efficiency argument for collective choice emerges from the mathematics of aggregating individual payoffs. Consider decision making when each member of a population has the same objective function, which depends on an unknown state of nature. If agents knew the state of nature, they would make the same decision. However, they may have different beliefs or may use different decision criteria to cope with their incomplete knowledge. Hence, they may choose different actions even though they share the same objective. Let the set of feasible actions be convex and the objective function be concave in actions, for all states of nature. Then Jensen's inequality implies that consensus choice of the mean privately chosen action yields a larger mean payoff than does individualistic decision making, in all states of nature. If payoffs are transferable, the mean payoff from consensus choice may be allocated to Pareto dominate individualistic decision making. I develop these ideas. I also use Jensen's inequality to show that a planner with the power to assign actions to the members of the population should not diversify. Finally, I give a version of the collective-choice result that holds with consensus choice of the median rather than mean action. [source] The Role of Uncertainty in Investment: An Examination of Competing Investment Models Using Commercial Real Estate DataREAL ESTATE ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2000A. Steven Holland Neoclassical investment decision criteria suggest that only the systematic component of total risk affects the rate of investment, as channeled through the built-asset price. Alternatively, option-based investment models suggest a direct role for total uncertainty in investment decisionmaking. To sort out uncertainty's role in investment, we specify and empirically estimate a structural model of asset-market equilibrium. Commercial real estate time-series data with two distinct measures of asset price and uncertainty are used to assess the competing investment models. Empirical results generally favor predictions of the option-based model and hence suggest that irreversibility and delay are important considerations to investors. Our findings also have implications for macroeconomic policy and for forecasts of cyclical investment activity. [source] A Bayesian approach to the evolution of perceptual and cognitive systemsCOGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 3 2003Wilson S. Geisler Abstract We describe a formal framework for analyzing how statistical properties of natural environments and the process of natural selection interact to determine the design of perceptual and cognitive systems. The framework consists of two parts: a Bayesian ideal observer with a utility function appropriate for natural selection, and a Bayesian formulation of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Simulations of Bayesian natural selection were found to yield new insights, for example, into the co-evolution of camouflage, color vision, and decision criteria. The Bayesian framework captures and generalizes, in a formal way, many of the important ideas of other approaches to perception and cognition. [source] | ||||||||||||||||