30 research outputs found
Accuracy Versus Falsification Costs: The Optimal Amount of Evidence under Different Procedures
No full textAn arbiter can decide a case on the basis of his priors or he can ask for further evidence from the two parties to the conflict. The parties may misrepresent evidence in their favor at a cost. The arbiter is concerned about accuracy and low procedural costs. When both parties testify, each of them distorts the evidence less than when they testify alone. When the fixed cost of testifying is low, the arbiter hears both, for intermediate values one, and for high values no party at all. The arbiter's ability to remain uninformed as well as sequential testifying makes it more likely that the arbiter requires evidence. (JEL D82, K41, K42) The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected], Oxford University Press.
Prediction of postoperative opioid analgesia using clinical-experimental parameters and electroencephalography
No full textBACKGROUND: Opioids are often used for pain treatment, but the response is often insufficient and dependent on e.g. the pain condition, genetic factors and drug class. Thus, there is an urgent need to identify biomarkers to enable selection of the appropriate drug for the individual patient, a concept known as personalized medicine. Quantitative sensory testing (QST) and clinical parameters can provide some guidance for response, but better and more objective biomarkers are urgently warranted. Electroencephalography (EEG) may be suitable since it assesses the central nervous system where opioids mediate their effects.METHODS: Clinical parameters, QST and EEG (during rest and tonic pain) was recorded from patients the day prior to total hip replacement surgery. Postoperative pain treatment was performed using oxycodone and piritramide as patient-controlled analgesia. Patients were stratified into responders and non-responders based on pain ratings 24 h post-surgery. Parameters were analysed using conventional group-wise statistical methods. Furthermore, EEG was analysed by machine learning to predict individual response.RESULTS: Eighty-one patients were included, of which 51 responded to postoperative opioid treatment (30 non-responders). Conventional statistics showed that more severe pre-existing chronic pain was prevalent among non-responders to opioid treatment (p = 0.04). Preoperative EEG analysis was able to predict responders with an accuracy of 65% (p = 0.009), but only during tonic pain.CONCLUSIONS: Chronic pain grade before surgery is associated with the outcome of postoperative pain treatment. Furthermore, EEG shows potential as an objective biomarker and might be used to predict postoperative opioid analgesia.SIGNIFICANCE: The current clinical study demonstrates the viability of EEG as a biomarker and with results consistent with previous experimental results. The combined method of machine learning and electroencephalography offers promising results for future developments of personalized pain treatment.</p
The D2-triangulation for simplicial homotopy algorithms for computing solutions of nonlinear equations
No full textNonlinear Equations
Book Review: Rosso Come Il Mare di Wolfram Fleischhauer (Emons: Gialli Tedeschi) (Red as the See by Wolfram Fleischhauer)
No full textThe latest Fleischhauer masterpiece: a moving thriller and a passionate call to protect the habitat from which we all come: the ocean. A young fisheries observer disappears from a Spanish trawler on the high seas. Her best friend and mastermind of group of radical environmental activists knows that she was probably killed. Despite the shock, the group remains determined to go on with their mission: to stop the destruction of the oceans by poisoning the sea-food-chain with an ingenious, untraceable and indestructible marine toxin that denatures fish for human consumption and triggers a life-long severe sea-food-incompatibility when ingested. The activist’s father, an influential fisheries lobbyist, will do anything to save this daughter from her insane actions. With the help of an interpreter whose feelings for his daughter he exploits in order to use him as a decoy, he sets out to find and save her before the merciless fisheries mafia will. 448 pages, Droemer Knaur, (March 2017) German Official Bestseller List Rank 37 (Hardcover) one week after publication Dramatic and horrifyingly real: Wolfram Fleischhauer knows how to combine explosive topics with breath-taking suspense like no other writer. The Success Story of Wolfram Fleischhauer: To date, Wolfram Fleischhauer has published 9 novels, all of which have also been published internationally. Since his debut with the art-historical thriller The Purple Line (Die Purpurlinie) in 1996 (currently being developed into a TV series to be called The Poison Portrait), he has written historical novels as well as contemporary fiction. In 2003, Somewhere I Have Never Travelled (Die Frau mit den Regenhänden) was nominated for the prestigious Deutscher Krimipreis for crime literature and was named second runner-up. Wolfram Fleischhauer was born in 1961. He studied languages and literature in Germany, France, and Spain, and did his graduate work in literary theory at UC Irvine, where he also took several creative writing courses. After obtaining his M.A. with a thesis on Don DeLillo, he turned his back on academia in favor of writing novels. Fluent in German, English, French, and Spanish, he trained as a conference interpreter and has been working for the European Commission since 1992. The author lives in Berlin and in Brussels, is married, and has two children
Attitudes Toward Health, Healthcare, and eHealth of People With a Low Socioeconomic Status: A Community-Based Participatory Approach
No full textLow socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with a higher prevalence of unhealthy lifestyles compared to a high SES. Health interventions that promote a healthy lifestyle, like eHealth solutions, face limited adoption in low SES groups. To improve the adoption of eHealth interventions, their alignment with the target group's attitudes is crucial. This study investigated the attitudes of people with a low SES toward health, healthcare, and eHealth. We adopted a mixed-method community-based participatory research approach with 23 members of a community center in a low SES neighborhood in the city of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. We conducted a first set of interviews and analyzed these using a grounded theory approach resulting in a group of themes. These basic themes' representative value was validated and refined by an online questionnaire involving a different sample of 43 participants from multiple community centers in the same neighborhood. We executed three focus groups to validate and contextualize the results. We identified two general attitudes based on nine profiles toward health, healthcare, and eHealth. The first general attitude, optimistically engaged, embodied approximately half our sample and involved light-heartedness toward health, loyalty toward healthcare, and eagerness to adopt eHealth. The second general attitude, doubtfully disadvantaged, represented roughly a quarter of our sample and was related to feeling encumbered toward health, feeling disadvantaged within healthcare, and hesitance toward eHealth adoption. The resulting attitudes strengthen the knowledge of the motivation and behavior of people with low SES regarding their health. Our results indicate that negative health attitudes are not as evident as often claimed. Nevertheless, intervention developers should still be mindful of differentiating life situations, motivations, healthcare needs, and eHealth expectations. Based on our findings, we recommend eHealth should fit into the person's daily life, ensure personal communication, be perceived usable and useful, adapt its communication to literacy level and life situation, allow for meaningful self-monitoring and embody self-efficacy enhancing strategies.Design AestheticsApplied Ergonomics and Desig
An overview of facilitators and barriers in the development of eHealth interventions for people of low socioeconomic position: A Delphi study
No full textObjective: eHealth interventions can improve the health outcomes of people with a low socioeconomic position (SEP) by promoting healthy lifestyle behaviours. However, developing and implementing these interventions among the target group can be challenging for professionals. To facilitate the uptake of effective interventions, this study aimed to identify the barriers and facilitators anticipated or experienced by professionals in the development, reach, adherence, implementation and evaluation phases of eHealth interventions for people with a low SEP. Method: We used a Delphi method, consisting of two online questionnaires, to determine the consensus on barriers and facilitators anticipated or experienced during eHealth intervention phases and their importance. Participants provided open-ended responses in the first round and rated statements in the second round. The interquartile range was used to calculate consensus, and the (totally) agree ratings were used to assess importance. Results: Twenty-seven professionals participated in the first round, and 19 (70.4%) completed the second round. We found a consensus for 34.8% of the 46 items related to highly important rated barriers, such as the lack of involvement of low-SEP people in the development phase, lack of knowledge among professionals about reaching the target group, and lack of knowledge among lower-SEP groups about using eHealth interventions. Additionally, we identified a consensus for 80% of the 60 items related to highly important rated facilitators, such as rewarding people with a low SEP for their involvement in the development phase and connecting eHealth interventions to the everyday lives of lower-SEP groups to enhance reach. Conclusion: Our study provides valuable insights into the barriers and facilitators of developing eHealth interventions for people with a low SEP by examining current practices and offering recommendations for future improvements. Strengthening facilitators can help overcome these barriers. To achieve this, we recommend defining the roles of professionals and lower-SEP groups in each phase of eHealth intervention and disseminating this study's findings to professionals to optimize the impact of eHealth interventions for this group.Design AestheticsApplied Ergonomics and DesignMedical Delt
Price competition between an expert and a non-expert
No full textprice competition;product differentiation;quality
The Barriers and Facilitators of eHealth-Based Lifestyle Intervention Programs for People With a Low Socioeconomic Status: Scoping Review
No full textPromoting health behaviors and preventing chronic diseases through a healthy lifestyle among those with a low socioeconomic status (SES) remain major challenges. eHealth interventions are a promising approach to change unhealthy behaviors in this target group. Objective: This review aims to identify key components, barriers, and facilitators in the development, reach, use, evaluation, and implementation of eHealth lifestyle interventions for people with a low SES. This review provides an overview for researchers and eHealth developers, and can assist in the development of eHealth interventions for people with a low SES. Methods: We performed a scoping review based on Arksey and O'Malley's framework. A systematic search was conducted on PubMed, MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library, using terms related to a combination of the following key constructs: eHealth, lifestyle, low SES, development, reach, use, evaluation, and implementation. There were no restrictions on the date of publication for articles retrieved upon searching the databases. Results: The search identified 1323 studies, of which 42 met our inclusion criteria. An update of the search led to the inclusion of 17 additional studies. eHealth lifestyle interventions for people with a low SES were often delivered via internet-based methods (eg, websites, email, Facebook, and smartphone apps) and offline methods, such as texting. A minority of the interventions combined eHealth lifestyle interventions with face-to-face or telephone coaching, or wearables (blended care). We identified the use of different behavioral components (eg, social support) and technological components (eg, multimedia) in eHealth lifestyle interventions. Facilitators in the development included iterative design, working with different disciplines, and resonating intervention content with users. Facilitators for intervention reach were use of a personal approach and social network, reminders, and self-monitoring. Nevertheless, barriers, such as technological challenges for developers and limited financial resources, may hinder intervention development. Furthermore, passive recruitment was a barrier to intervention reach. Technical difficulties and the use of self-monitoring devices were common barriers for users of eHealth interventions. Only limited data on barriers and facilitators for intervention implementation and evaluation were available. Conclusions: While we found large variations among studies regarding key intervention components, and barriers and facilitators, certain factors may be beneficial in building and using eHealth interventions and reaching people with a low SES. Barriers and facilitators offer promising elements that eHealth developers can use as a toolbox to connect eHealth with low SES individuals. Our findings suggest that one-size-fits-all eHealth interventions may be less suitable for people with a low SES. Future research should investigate how to customize eHealth lifestyle interventions to meet the needs of different low SES groups, and should identify the components that enhance their reach, use, and effectiveness.Design AestheticsApplied Ergonomics and Desig
The D1-triangulation in simplicial variable dimension algorithms for computing solutions of nonlinear equations
No full textNonlinear Equations
