Developing bulletin board visualizations

Prevalent text-based representations within online communities and bulletin boards often make it difficult to contextualise the activity and interactions that are taking place. Visualisation techniques have been successfully applied in a range of domains to augment and enhance existing communication technologies such as bulletin boards. This paper presents a new approach to visualising bulletin board activity: BulB. The use of BulB visualisations enables users to gain an overall picture of bulletin board activity and develop an understanding of the overall interaction context

The diagnostic impact of UK regional variations in age‐specific prostate‐specific antigen guidelines

The ideal prostate cancer diagnostic pathway would maximise detection of clinically-significant prostate cancer (csPCa) while avoiding unnecessary biopsies and other investigations. The introduction of pre-biopsy MRI has done much to aid this goal. However, referrals into the image-based diagnostic pathway still depends on prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing performed in primary care and interpreted using referral guidelines. In the UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) only provides guidance on PSA thresholds for men aged 50-69 years (PSA ≥3.0 ng/mL) [1]. For other age groups, PSA thresholds are set by regional cancer networks without any national consensus. Here we explored if different regional guidelines impacted csPCa detection in modern image-based pathways

Differences in Judgments of Creativity: How Do Academic Domain, Personality, and Self-Reported Creativity Influence Novice Judges’ Evaluations of Creative Productions?

Intelligence assessment is often viewed as a narrow and ever-narrowing field, defined (as per IQ) by the measurement of finely distinguished cognitive processes. It is instructive, however, to remember that other, broader conceptions of intelligence exist and might usefully be considered for a comprehensive assessment of intellectual functioning. This article invokes a more holistic, systems theory of intelligence—the theory of successful intelligence—and examines the possibility of including in intelligence assessment a similarly holistic measure of creativity. The time and costs of production-based assessments of creativity are generally considered prohibitive. Such barriers may be mitigated by applying the consensual assessment technique using novice raters. To investigate further this possibility, we explored the question: how much do demographic factors such as age and gender and psychological factors such as domain-specific expertise, personality or self-perceived creativity affect novices’ unidimensional ratings of creativity? Fifty-one novice judges from three undergraduate programs, majoring in three disparate expertise domains (i.e., visual art, psychology and computer science) rated 40 child-generated Lego creatures for creativity. Results showed no differences in creativity ratings based on the expertise domains of the judges. However, judges’ personality and self-perception of their own everyday creativity appeared to influence the way they scored the creatures for creativity

To whom does the law speak? Canvassing a neglected picture of law’s interpretive field

Among the most common strategies underlying the so-called indeterminacy thesis is the following two-step argument: (1) that law is an interpretive practice, and that evidently legal actors more generally hold different (and competing) theories of meaning, which lead to disagreements as to what the law says (that is, as to what the law is); (2) and that, as there is no way to establish the prevalence of one particular theory of meaning over the other, indeterminacy is pervasive in law. In this paper I offer some reflections to resist this trend. In particular I claim that a proper understanding of law as an authoritative communicative enterprise sheds new light on the relation between the functioning of the law and our theories of interpretation, leading to what can be considered a neglected conclusion: the centrality of the linguistic criterion of meaning in our juridical interpretive practices. In the first part of the chapter I discuss speech-act theory in the study of law, assessing its relevance between alternative options. Then I tackle the ‘to whom does the law speak?’ question, highlighting the centrality of lay-people for our juridical practices. Lastly, I examine the consequences of this neglected fact for our interpretive theories

Digital voices: Posthumanism and the generation of empathy

This chapter investigates digital technologies that variously assist, enable or simulate musical praxis. The first section sets up an opposition between the idea of the digital tool that augments human agency, and the machinic automatism predicated on the idea that reality is fundamentally number (dataism) and ticks along without the need for human consciousness. This gives rise to the idea that mechanical automatism is also intrinsic to human agency, a strand of posthuman thought on which the rest of the chapter turns. Accordingly, the second section shows how posing algorithmic composition as an expression of the posthuman is problematic. The final section focuses on the synthetic voices of digital assistants from online service providers that generate empathy at the price of a surrogate ‘conscience’. Accommodating this within a humanistic model is possible, but a closing case study of Tod Machover’s futurist opera, Death and the Powers (2010), raises the prospect of what might be called a ‘dark ontology’ of the digital

Early ultrasound surveillance of newly-created haemodialysis arteriovenous fistula

IntroductionWe assess if ultrasound surveillance of newly-created arteriovenous fistulas (AVFs) can predict nonmaturation sufficiently reliably to justify randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluation of ultrasound-directed salvage intervention.MethodsConsenting adults underwent blinded fortnightly ultrasound scanning of their AVF after creation, with scan characteristics that predicted AVF nonmaturation identified by logistic regression modeling.ResultsOf 333 AVFs created, 65.8% matured by 10 weeks. Serial scanning revealed that maturation occurred rapidly, whereas consistently lower fistula flow rates and venous diameters were observed in those that did not mature. Wrist and elbow AVF nonmaturation could be optimally modeled from week 4 ultrasound parameters alone, but with only moderate positive predictive values (PPVs) (wrist, 60.6% [95% confidence interval, CI: 43.9–77.3]; elbow, 66.7% [48.9–84.4]). Moreover, 40 (70.2%) of the 57 AVFs that thrombosed by week 10 had already failed by the week 4 scan, thus limiting the potential of salvage procedures initiated by that scan’s findings to alter overall maturation rates. Modeling of the early ultrasound characteristics could also predict primary patency failure at 6 months; however, that model performed poorly at predicting assisted primary failure (those AVFs that failed despite a salvage attempt), partly because patency of at-risk AVFs was maintained by successful salvage performed without recourse to the early scan data.ConclusionEarly ultrasound surveillance may predict fistula maturation, but is likely, at best, to result in only very modest improvements in fistula patency. Power calculations suggest that an impractically large number of participants (>1700) would be required for formal RCT evaluation

Pragmatic Maxims and Presumptions in Legal Interpretation

The fields of linguistic pragmatics and legal interpretation are deeply interrelated. The purpose of this paper is to show how pragmatics and the developments in argumentation theory can contribute to the debate on legal interpretation. The relation between the pragmatic maxims and the presumptions underlying the legal canons are brought to light, unveiling the principles that underlie the types of argument usually used to justify a construction. The Gricean maxims and the arguments of legal interpretation are regarded as presumptions subject to default used to justify an interpretation. This approach can allow one to trace the different legal interpretive arguments back to their basic underlying presumptions, so that they can be compared, ordered, and assessed according to their defeasibility conditions. This approach allows one to understand the difference between various types of interpretive canons, and their strength in justifying an interpretation

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely