Examining Recent Expert Elicitation Judgment Guidelines: Value Assumptions and the Prospects for Rationality

This paper was presented at the VALDOR Symposium, Stockholm, June 1999. The author examines the value assumptions in the U.S. Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission guidance on the use of expert judgment relating to high level nuclear waste disposal site selection

The relation of perceptual factors and speed of handwriting to spelling ability.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

An analysis of OTC interest rate derivatives transactions: Implications for public reporting

This paper examines the over-the-counter (OTC) interest rate derivatives (IRD) market in order to inform the design of post-trade price reporting. Our analysis uses a novel transaction-level data set to examine trading activity, the composition of market participants, levels of product standardization, and market-making behavior. We find that trading activity in the IRD market is dispersed across a broad array of product types, currency denominations, and maturities, leading to more than 10,500 observed unique product combinations. While a select group of standard instruments trade with relative frequency and may provide timely and pertinent price information for market participants, many other IRD instruments trade infrequently and with diverse contract terms, limiting the impact on price formation from the reporting of those transactions. Nonetheless, we find evidence of dealers hedging rapidly after large interest rate swap trades, suggesting that, for this product, a price-reporting regime could be designed in a manner that does not disrupt market-making activity

Critical retelling of dental ethics told through 'George Washington's Complete Denture'

Dental ethics is a specialised branch of dentistry addressing ethical issues in dental practice. However, dental ethics and diversity are thought to be at odds within the practice of dentistry. Dentistry centres on ethical clinical practices which assume dental ethics are both value neutral and singular with no need for diverse perspectives. Dental ethics are thought to be static, and yet, they are dynamic and problematic in terms of values in dentistry: cosmetic dentistry and its aim for a white smile and the dentist as a clinician, businessperson when there are glaring oral health disparities in communities. In this paper, we use the artefact of George Washington's complete dentures to tell an alternative story of dentistry that demonstrates just how ethics and diversity are relevant to dentistry. As two dental educators and social scientists, we bring an interdisciplinary praxis to problematise dental ethics and reframe it through a diversity lens. Instead of having a monolithic discourse of dental ethics, we invite critical reflectivity to decentre white, Eurocentric bioethics. Using the implosion method, we deconstruct this dental object to connect it with global history, centring key ethical dilemmas often missed in dental ethics: settler colonialism, biopolitics, whiteness, power and racial capitalism. Every country has its own myth-making, and part of US oral health lore is this complete denture from the country's first president. The denture is problematic because it is possibly composed of teeth from enslaved African people. Unnamed African people are removed from history, and yet their teeth are national lore. As an object, the denture is not a mere artefact of history, but is celebrated to show a nation's founding father's connection to a profession. To celebrate the denture without appreciating these ethical dilemmas is to miss the importance of critically engaging history and context in both oral health practice and dental education.</p

Economic influences on child growth status, from the Children's Healthy Living Program in the US-affiliated Pacific region

Mean obesity level of the 2 - 8-year-old children in the region was 14.4%, 14.1% were overweight, 2.7% were underweight, 1.4% were stunted, and 6.8% were stunted at birth. Acanthosis nigricans prevalence was 5%, an indicator of pre-diabetes. Sixty-one percent of the children were Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander and 20% were of more than one race. Food insecurity was common. It was especially high in the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands at over 70%. Twenty-five percent of households in the region earned less than $10,000 per year. World Bank-defined upper middle-income jurisdictions had relatively high levels of both undernutrition and obesity. Jurisdiction income level was the most important factor influencing growth status in multivariate models. Policies and strategies for jurisdiction economic development and improvement of child growth status should protect local food systems and active living during economic transition. The terms of the renegotiated compact of free association with the United States, especially in the upper middle-income countries (Palau and the Republic of the Marshall Islands) that are experiencing a dual burden of undernutrition and overnutrition, are expected to play a key role in the future health of residents of these jurisdictions

Brand value: how affective labour helps create brands

One way brands create value is by engaging the capacity of cultural labourers to animate affective connections with consumers. Brands assemble social spaces that harness the communicative capacities of cultural actors. A mode of branding that works by managing an open-ended social process depends on affective labour. Affective labour involves not only the capacity of individuals to produce specific meanings and feelings, but also the open-endedly social capacity to stimulate and channel attention and recognition. This affective labour does not always depend on making particular "authentic" representations, but on facilitating a general circulation of meaning. By investing in social spaces and relations corporate brands engage popular musicians in new forms of labour. This article examines the participation of popular musicians in branding programmes run in Australia by corporate brands between 2005 and 2010. I examine the accounts of musicians and managers who participate in these programmes to consider how they make their participation in social relations that create brand value meaningful. They employ a variety of practices: identifying with brands, endorsing brands' claims of socially responsible investment in culture, and distancing themselves from their own participation in branded space

Response to Wolf et al.: Furthering Debate over the Suitability of Trap-Neuter-Return for Stray Cat Management

To continue dialogue over proposed Australian trials of Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), we applied a framework requiring identification of areas of agreement, areas of disagreement, and identification of empirical data collection required to resolve disagreements. There is agreement that Australia has a problem with stray cats, causing problems of impacts on wildlife, nuisance,disease transmission (including public health issues and exchange of diseases between stray cat and pet cat populations), poor welfare outcomes for stray cats, and an emotional burden on staff euthanising healthy stray cats. There is disagreement on whether (i) current measures are failing, leading to unacceptably high euthanasia levels, (ii) some contributors to the debate misunderstand TNR, (iii) TNR trials will reduce urban cat populations and associated problems, (iv) TNR is an ethical solution to cat overpopulation, and (v) some contributors to the debate promulgated misinformation. Although not everyone agrees that TNR trials should proceed, as a hypothetical exploration, we propose an experimental approach explicitly comparing TNR to alternatives. Trials could only be considered if other detailed and well-funded attempts at stray cat control focusing across an entire Local Government Area (LGA) prove ineffective

Comparing Intra-Operative Left Ventricular Contractility Measurements: Echocardiogram vs. Novel Software

The contractility of the left ventricle (LV) is an important characterization of cardiac function and is oftenmeasured through dP/dtmax, defined as the maximum rate of left ventricular pressure change during isovolumetriccontraction. It can also be summarized globally by measurement of the left ventricular ejection fraction. Directmeasurement of left ventricular pressure is difficult as it involves invasive catheter placement, but other methodsof measuring dP/dtmax have been developed, such as echocardiographic analysis of the mitral regurgitation jet.While more convenient and less invasive, this method still has many limitations given inherent variability. Morerecently, several studies have used arterial pressure waveform analysis as a new method of determining dP/dtmax.Though more invasive, this modality is highly applicable in an operating room setting because many patientsalready have arterial catheters placed. Current evidence in literature is conflicted in regards to the accuracy ofthis newer method. The Hypotension Prediction Index (HPI) software is a new technology that integratesselected dynamic cardiovascular measurements, using the arterial pressure waveform, to predict impendingintraoperative hypotensive episodes. In addition, the monitor provides a calculated dP/dtmax, determined from theradial arterial pressure waveform. A recent study has demonstrated significant correlation between radial arterialdP/dtmax values calculated with the HPI software to those calculated using echocardiography in patients with acuteheart failure in the cardiac ICU setting, especially in those with higher systemic vascular resistance, lower cardiacoutput, and lower stroke volumes. Our proposed study sought to assess the strength of correlation betweenarterial pressure waveform derived dP/dtmax and transesophageal echocardiographically (TEE) determineddP/dtmax. In addition, correlations between dP/dtmax and TEE-derived assessment of ejection fraction will provideguidance for relating this new parameter with other standard contractility assessments