Bayesian approaches to technology assessment and decision making

Until the mid-1980s, most economic analyses of healthcare technologies were based on decision theory and used decision-analytic models. The goal was to synthesize all relevant clinical and economic evidence for the purpose of assisting decision makers to efficiently allocate society's scarce resources. This was true of virtually all the early cost-effectiveness evaluations sponsored and/or published by the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) (15), Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Cancer Institute, other elements of the U.S. Public Health Service, and of healthcare technology assessors in Europe and elsewhere around the world. Methodologists routinely espoused, or at minimum assumed, that these economic analyses were based on decision theory (8;24;25). Since decision theory is rooted in—in fact, an informal application of—Bayesian statistical theory, these analysts were conducting studies to assist healthcare decision making by appealing to a Bayesian rather than a classical, or frequentist, inference approach. But their efforts were not so labeled. Oddly, the statistical training of these decision analysts was invariably classical, not Bayesian. Many were not—and still are not—conversant with Bayesian statistical approaches

Photoluminescence Properties of the Zn1-x Y (x) O Tubes Prepared by Polycarbonate Templates

We have prepared Zn1-x Y (x) O (x=0 and 0.01) tubes to study its structural and photoluminescent properties. A pore wetting process of porous polycarbonate templates with the liquid precursor and following thermal treatment were utilized for preparing the Zn1-x Y (x) O tube structure. Using the polycarbonate template with pore size of about 2 mu m diameter, the Zn1-x Y (x) O tubes were obtained. Photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy was used to measure optical emissions from 350 to 650 nm with a He-Cd laser. The results of the PL spectra show that the Zn1-x Y (x) O tubes have evident emission peaks at the UV (about 380 nm) and visible (around 500 to 650 nm) region. The emission peak at the UV region was slightly shifted to higher wavelengths with increasing Y content. Meanwhile, the green and yellow emission peaks intensity increases as Y content increases. These results are explained by the structure tuning and oxygen deficiency with the introduction of Y

Reaction of decabrominated diphenyl ether by zerovalent iron nanoplarticles

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) recognized as a new class of environmental persistent toxic contaminants have been distributed widely in the world. In this study, the synthesized nanoscale zerovalent iron (NZVI) in the laboratory was used to investigate the removal kinetics and mechanisms of decabrominated diphenyl ether (DBDE) at different pH. Within 40 min 90% of DBDE was rapidly removed by NZVI as compared to around 40 d needed for 24-fold weight of microscale ZVI. The removal by NZVI is much faster than that by microscale ZVI due to its high surface area and reactivity. At a different pH, the pseudo-first-order removal rate constants of DBDE linearly increased from 0.016 to 0.024 min(-1) with the decreasing of aqueous initial pH values from 10 to 5. The degradation of DBDE with NZVI is favorable in an acid condition. The debromination pathways of DBDE with NZVI were proposed on the basis of the identified reaction intermediates ranging from nona- to mono-brominated diphenyl ethers (BDEs) for an acid condition and from nona- to penta-BDFs for an alkaline condition. The debromination of PBDEs from para positions is more difficult than that from meta or ortho positions. Adsorption on NZVI also plays a role on the removal of DBDE. These findings can facilitate the treatment and fate prediction of PBDEs with NZVI in the environment. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Realizing various urban spaces in Year 2050 Taiwan: Camera-matching in helicopter movement animations

This paper combines the 3D dynamic camera-matching technology adapted from the movie industry with the computer animation of digitally designed model and the multimedia video on high altitude of helicopter will enable realer and more effective representation of the diversities in an urban space

Digital Architecture in CAD studio and Internet-based competition

Architectural design has been changing because of the vast and creative use of computer in different ways. From the viewpoint of designing itself, computer has been used as drawing tools in the latter phase of design (Mitchell 1977, Coyne et al. 1990), presentation and simulation tools in the middle phase (Liu and Bai 2000), and even critical media which triggers creative thinking in the very early phase (Maher et al. 2000, Liu 1999, Won 1999). All the various roles that computer can play have been adopted in a number of professional design corporations and so-called computer-aided design (CAD) studio in schools worldwide (Kvan 1997, 2000, Cheng 1998). The processes and outcomes of design have been continuously developing to capture the movement of the computer age. However, from the viewpoint of social-cultural theories of architecture, the evolvement of design cannot be achieved solely by designers or design processes. Any new idea of design can be accepted socially, culturally and historically only under one condition: The design outcomes could be reviewed and appreciated by critics in the field at the time of its production (Csikszentmihalyi 1986, 1988, Schon and Wiggins 1992, Liu 2000). In other words, aspects of design production (by designers in different design processes) are as critical as those of design appreciation (by critics in different review processes) in the observation of the future trends of architecture.Nevertheless, in the field of architectural design with computer and Internet, that is, so-called computer-aided design computer-mediated design, or internet-based design, most existing studies pay more attentions to producing design in design processes as mentioned above. Relatively few studies focus on how critics act and how they interact with designers in the review processes. Therefore, this study intends to investigate some evolving phenomena of the interaction between design production and appreciation in the environment of computer and Internet.This paper takes a CAD studio and an Internet-based competition as examples. The CAD studio includes 7 master's students and 2 critics, all from the same countries. The Internet-based competition, held in year 2000, includes 206 designers from 43 counties and 26 critics from 11 countries. 3 students and the 2 critics in the CAD studio are the competition participating designers and critics respectively. The methodological steps are as follows: 1. A qualitative analysis: observation and interview of the 3 participants and 2 reviewers who join both the CAD studio and the competition. The 4 analytical criteria are the kinds of presenting media, the kinds of supportive media (such as verbal and gesture/facial data), stages of the review processes, and interaction between the designer and critics. The behavioural data are acquired by recording the design presentation and dialogue within 3 months. 2. A quantitative analysis: statistical analysis of the detailed reviewing data in the  CAD studio and the competition. The four 4 analytical factors are the reviewing time, the number of reviewing of the same project, the comparison between different projects, and grades/comments. 3. Both the qualitative and quantitative data are cross analyzed and discussed, based on the theories of design thinking, design production/appreciation, and the appreciative system (Goodman 1978, 1984).The result of this study indicates that the interaction between design production and appreciation during the review processes could differ significantly. The review processes could be either linear or cyclic due to the influences from the kinds of media, the environmental discrepancies between studio and Internet, as well as cognitive thinking/memory capacity. The design production and appreciation seem to be more linear in CAD studio whereas more cyclic in the Internet environment. This distinction coincides with the complementary observations of designing as a linear process (Jones 1970, Simon 1981) or a cyclic movement (Schon and Wiggins 1992). Some phenomena during the two processes are also illustrated in detail in this paper.This study is merely a starting point of the research in design production and appreciation in the computer and network age. The future direction of investigation is to establish a theoretical model for the interaction between design production and appreciation based on current findings. The model is expected to conduct using revised protocol analysis and interviews. The other future research is to explore how design computing creativity emerge from the process of producing and appreciating.