The Voice of the Other: A Dialogico-Rhetorical Understanding of Opponent and Toulmin’s Rebuttal

Although contemporary dialectical logic recognizes an important role for the opponent in argumentation, it remains loyal to the idea that arguments are supportive. In this paper, it is argued that because of this dialectical logic does not take seriously its own dialogical perspective. Without acknowledging a substantial role for rebutting factors in argumentation, the role of the opponent remains secondary. Toulmin’s understanding of the rebuttal suggests a way to incorporate such a substantial role of the opponent

But that simply isn\u27t true; rethinking truth in argumentation

Since the dialectical turn in logic, truth has been replaced by acceptability. The latter notion, however, does not provide for a strong enough constraint. It is thought that only truth can overrule acceptability, and for that reason we need to reass ess the notion. Still, truth is a confusing philosophical concept, and we should be clear as to which understanding of the notion can do the job. I shall argue that a correspondence theory of truth in particular will not do. Rather we should adopt a de flationary account: all we need is a suitable understanding of the truth-predicate

The PRIMO FORTE framework for good governance in public, private and civic organisations : an analysis on small EU states

Purpose: In this article we lay out and discuss a framework proposed by the Public Risk Management Organisation (PRIMO) (https://www.primo-europe.eu/) of which the authors are board members and the results of a test on public and private entities of EU small jurisdictions, specifically Malta, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Cyprus. These are countries within the EU having less than 3 million people population. Design/methodology/approach: We collected our primary data by using a semi-structured questionnaire and administering it to participants who are working directly or indirectly with entities within these EU states. The questionnaire was structured using the FORTETM acronym as themes, ‘Financial and compliant design’, ‘Object orientation and delivery’, ‘Responsibility and stewardship’, ‘Tools and processes for creation’ and ‘Environmental awareness and interaction’, with 5 statements under each theme to which participants were required to answer using a 5-point Likert-scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree”. We, however, allowed the participants to open up and discuss each statement and recorded these comments. Some demographic data was also collected as to the type of entity the participants are working with, the level of expertise on governance of the participant and the size of the entity. The quantitative data was subjected to statistical analysis while the results from the open ended question was analysed using the Thematic approach. Findings: Factor analysis provided support for the FORTE Good Governance model for both the Private and Public entities, no-matter if they are small or large. Originality/value: The study provides a better understanding and supports the FORTE Model established by PRIMO-Europe, after approximately 15 years of collecting data on public risks and for the first time tests it on both Private and Public entities, in large and small firms in small EU Jurisdictions. Moreover, this model contributed to the vast literature on models of risk management within organisations, but was not validated empirically for reliability of the factors, and on small jurisdictions. Therefore, the significance and importance of such a study lies firstly on the premise that testing on small countries, can be deemed as small laboratories for more complex politics, regulations and policies of larger countries.peer-reviewe

Computing treewidth with LibTW Thomas van Dijk Jan-Pieter van den Heuvel

There are many algorithms to compute an upperbound, a lowerbound or the exact treewidth of a graph. We have implemented a lot of upperbound and lowerbound heuristics and two exact algorithms (a Dynamic Programming and a Branch and Bound algorithm). This report compares the different kind of algorithms and shows that some algorithms are preferred. From our results with the lowerbound algorithms we can conclude that the Least-C variant for Maximum Minimum Degree almost dominates the other algorithms. For the upperbounds, we conclude that Greedy-FillIn is best. TreewidthDP is quite fast on most of the tested graphs, but runs out of memory on large graphs. If TreewidthDP can not run with the available amount of memory one could use QuickBB, which is slower, but uses less memory. We investigated the effects of the Memorization method on QuickBB suggested by Van Hoesel and found that it improved the algorithm with at least factor 15.

Personalized absolute benefit of statin treatment for primary or secondary prevention of vascular disease in individual elderly patients

JWJ/his department has received research grants from and/or was speaker (with or without lecture fees) on a.o. (CME accredited) meetings sponsored by Amgen, Astellas, Anthera, Astra-Zeneca, Bayer, Biotronik, Boston Scientific, Daiichi Sankyo, Lilly, Genzyme, Medtronic, Merck-Schering-Plough, Pfizer, Orbus Neich, Novartis, Roche, Servier, Sanofi Aventis, The Medicine Company, the Netherlands Heart Foundation, CardioVascular Research the Netherlands (CVON), the Interuniversity Cardiology Institute of the Netherlands and the European Community Framework KP7 Programme. AG received a travel grant from Pfizer inc. NS reports personal fees from Amgen, personal fees from Astrazeneca, personal fees from Merck, during the conduct of the study

Imatinib in patients with severe COVID-19: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, clinical trial

Background The major complication of COVID-19 is hypoxaemic respiratory failure from capillary leak and alveolar oedema. Experimental and early clinical data suggest that the tyrosine-kinase inhibitor imatinib reverses pulmonary capillary leak. Methods This randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, clinical trial was done at 13 academic and non-academic teaching hospitals in the Netherlands. Hospitalised patients (aged ≥18 years) with COVID-19, as confirmed by an RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2, requiring supplemental oxygen to maintain a peripheral oxygen saturation of greater than 94% were eligible. Patients were excluded if they had severe pre-existing pulmonary disease, had pre-existing heart failure, had undergone active treatment of a haematological or non-haematological malignancy in the previous 12 months, had cytopenia, or were receiving concomitant treatment with medication known to strongly interact with imatinib. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive either oral imatinib, given as a loading dose of 800 mg on day 0 followed by 400 mg daily on days 1–9, or placebo. Randomisation was done with a computer-based clinical data management platform with variable block sizes (containing two, four, or six patients), stratified by study site. The primary outcome was time to discontinuation of mechanical ventilation and supplemental oxygen for more than 48 consecutive hours, while being alive during a 28-day period. Secondary outcomes included safety, mortality at 28 days, and the need for invasive mechanical ventilation. All efficacy and safety analyses were done in all randomised patients who had received at least one dose of study medication (modified intention-to-treat population). This study is registered with the EU Clinical Trials Register (EudraCT 2020–001236–10). Findings Between March 31, 2020, and Jan 4, 2021, 805 patients were screened, of whom 400 were eligible and randomly assigned to the imatinib group (n=204) or the placebo group (n=196). A total of 385 (96%) patients (median age 64 years [IQR 56–73]) received at least one dose of study medication and were included in the modified intention-to-treat population. Time to discontinuation of ventilation and supplemental oxygen for more than 48 h was not significantly different between the two groups (unadjusted hazard ratio [HR] 0·95 [95% CI 0·76–1·20]). At day 28, 15 (8%) of 197 patients had died in the imatinib group compared with 27 (14%) of 188 patients in the placebo group (unadjusted HR 0·51 [0·27–0·95]). After adjusting for baseline imbalances between the two groups (sex, obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease) the HR for mortality was 0·52 (95% CI 0·26–1·05). The HR for mechanical ventilation in the imatinib group compared with the placebo group was 1·07 (0·63–1·80; p=0·81). The median duration of invasive mechanical ventilation was 7 days (IQR 3–13) in the imatinib group compared with 12 days (6–20) in the placebo group (p=0·0080). 91 (46%) of 197 patients in the imatinib group and 82 (44%) of 188 patients in the placebo group had at least one grade 3 or higher adverse event. The safety evaluation revealed no imatinib-associated adverse events. Interpretation The study failed to meet its primary outcome, as imatinib did not reduce the time to discontinuation of ventilation and supplemental oxygen for more than 48 consecutive hours in patients with COVID-19 requiring supplemental oxygen. The observed effects on survival (although attenuated after adjustment for baseline imbalances) and duration of mechanical ventilation suggest that imatinib might confer clinical benefit in hospitalised patients with COVID-19, but further studies are required to validate these findings