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A combined morphological, molecular and biological study shows that the weevil species presently named Mecinus janthinus is actually composed of two different cryptic species: M. janthinus Germar, 1821 and M. janthiniformis Tosevs...
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A combined morphological, molecular and biological study shows that the weevil species presently named Mecinus janthinus is actually composed of two different cryptic species: M. janthinus Germar, 1821 and M. janthiniformis Tosevski & Caldara sp.n. These species are morphologically distinguishable from each other by a few very subtle morphological characters. On the contrary, they are more readily distinguishable by both molecular and biological characters. A molecular assessment based on the mitochondrial DNA cytochrome oxidase subunit II gene revealed fixed differences between the two species with p-distances between samples of both species ranging from 1.3 to 2.4%. In addition to this, the larvae of the two species are found to develop on different species within the genus Linaria (Plantaginaceae): M. janthinus is associated with yellow toadflax (L. vulgaris) and M. janthiniformis with broomleaf toadflax (L. genistifolia) and Dalmatian toadflax (L. dalmatica). Molecular and host use records further suggest the occurrence of a third species associated with L. vulgaris within M. janthinus, sampled from north Switzerland, central Hungary and east Serbia. The significance of these new findings is of particular importance because species of the M. janthinus group are used, or are potential candidates, for the biological control of invasive toadflaxes in North America.
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The evidence movement and the idea of systematically synthesising results from primary studies has gained support in recent years. As the movement has moved into still more policy fields, from medical treatment to, for example, pu...
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The evidence movement and the idea of systematically synthesising results from primary studies has gained support in recent years. As the movement has moved into still more policy fields, from medical treatment to, for example, public health, social welfare, and education, review practice has also been developed. The initial evidence hierarchy based standard given priority to randomised controlled trials and meta-analysis advocated by the Cochrane and Campbell collaborations has become supplemented with evidence typologies and review practice paradigms stressing the importance of contextual factors as explanations of differences in effects. In addition to analysing and discussing this development, the article discusses the organisation of dissemination of evidence. This topic is interesting because it is part of the self-perception of the evidence movement that evidence should be brought to use in both practice and policy making.
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Consensus conferences are social techniques which involve bringing together a group of scientific experts, and sometimes also non-experts, in order to increase the public role in science and related policy, to amalgamate diverse a...
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Consensus conferences are social techniques which involve bringing together a group of scientific experts, and sometimes also non-experts, in order to increase the public role in science and related policy, to amalgamate diverse and often contradictory evidence for a hypothesis of interest, and to achieve scientific consensus or at least the appearance of consensus among scientists. For consensus conferences that set out to amalgamate evidence, I propose three desiderata: Inclusivity (the consideration of all available evidence), Constraint (the achievement of some agreement of intersubjective assessments of the hypothesis of interest), and Evidential Complexity (the evaluation of available evidence based on a plurality of relevant evidential criteria). Two examples suggest that consensus conferences can readily satisfy Inclusivity and Evidential Complexity, but consensus conferences do not as easily satisfy Constraint. I end by discussing the relation between social inclusivity and the three desiderata.
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Two aspects of problems such as weight over-bounding and reliability-dependence cannot be well solved in the evidential reasoning (ER) approach with both weight and reliability. In order to solve the above problems, the characteri...
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Two aspects of problems such as weight over-bounding and reliability-dependence cannot be well solved in the evidential reasoning (ER) approach with both weight and reliability. In order to solve the above problems, the characteristics of weight and reliability are investigated and summarized, i.e., the reliability of evidence is objective and absolute to reflect information quality, while the weight of evidence is subjective and relative to reflect information importance. Then a new discounting method is defined to generate probability masses for the evidence by assigning residual support of weight to empty set and that of reliability to power set. A new ER rule is established for recursively combining the evidence with both reliability and weight by the orthogonal sum operation and a series of theorems and corollaries are introduced and proved. Finally numerical comparison and illustrative example are provided to demonstrate the performances and the applicabilities of the proposed rule and algorithm.
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Activity level evaluations, although still a major challenge for many disciplines, bring a wealth of possibilities for a more formal approach to the evaluation of interdisciplinary forensic evidence. This paper proposes a practica...
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Activity level evaluations, although still a major challenge for many disciplines, bring a wealth of possibilities for a more formal approach to the evaluation of interdisciplinary forensic evidence. This paper proposes a practical methodology for combining evidence from different disciplines within the likelihood ratio framework. Evidence schemes introduced in this paper make the process of combining evidence more insightful and intuitive thereby assisting experts in their interdisciplinairy evaluation and in explaining this process to the courts.
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The NHMRC Natural Therapies for Private Health Insurance review has been criticised for requiring medical standards of evidence and as a result finding Natural Therapies to be ineffective. While the report could be criticised on a...
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The NHMRC Natural Therapies for Private Health Insurance review has been criticised for requiring medical standards of evidence and as a result finding Natural Therapies to be ineffective. While the report could be criticised on a number of points, David Casteleijn responds to some of the questions and concerns, explaining the purpose of the report, how the evidence was assessed and how it could inspire new research directions.
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This paper proposes a systematized presentation and a terminology for observations in a Bayesian network. It focuses on the three main concepts of uncertain evidence, namely likelihood evidence and fixed and not-fixed probabilisti...
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This paper proposes a systematized presentation and a terminology for observations in a Bayesian network. It focuses on the three main concepts of uncertain evidence, namely likelihood evidence and fixed and not-fixed probabilistic evidence, using a review of previous literature. A probabilistic finding on a variable is specified by a local probability distribution and replaces any former belief in that variable. It is said to be fixed or not fixed regarding whether it has to be kept unchanged or not after the arrival of observation on other variables. Fixed probabilistic evidence is defined by Valtorta et al. (J Approx Reason 29(1):71-106 2002) under the name soft evidence, whereas the concept of not-fixed probabilistic evidence has been discussed by Chan and Darwiche (Artif Intell 163(1):67-90 2005). Both concepts have to be clearly distinguished from likelihood evidence defined by Pearl (1988), also called virtual evidence, for which evidence is specified as a likelihood ratio, that often represents the unreliability of the evidence. Since these three concepts of uncertain evidence are not widely understood, and the terms used to describe these concepts are not well established, most Bayesian networks engines do not offer well defined propagation functions to handle them. Firstly, we present a review of uncertain evidence and the proposed terminology, definitions and concepts related to the use of uncertain evidence in Bayesian networks. Then we describe updating algorithms for the propagation of uncertain evidence. Finally, we propose several results where the use of fixed or not-fixed probabilistic evidence is required.
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Dempster-Shafer evidence theory is a powerful tool in uncertainty reasoning and decision-making. However counter-intuitive results can be encountered when unreliable bodies of evidence are combined by using Dempster's rule of comb...
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Dempster-Shafer evidence theory is a powerful tool in uncertainty reasoning and decision-making. However counter-intuitive results can be encountered when unreliable bodies of evidence are combined by using Dempster's rule of combination in some cases. In this paper, a novel sequential evidence combination approach is proposed based on the weighted modification of bodies of evidence according to our proposed variances of evidence sequences. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is rational and effective.
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When does a single positive adequate and well-controlled study of a new drug meet the statutory requirement to demonstrate substantial evidence of effectiveness? The answer to this question, particularly with respect to new molecu...
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When does a single positive adequate and well-controlled study of a new drug meet the statutory requirement to demonstrate substantial evidence of effectiveness? The answer to this question, particularly with respect to new molecular entities, has been of considerable debate since 1962 when the requirement that new drugs prove their benefit to patients became law. A 1997 revision to the statute provided one pathway to a single-study approval (a single adequate and well-controlled study plus confirmatory evidence), while a 1998 guidance issued by FDA provided additional pathways, one of which is the one that is most frequently cited by FDA (a single statistically very persuasive study). This paper explains these 2 distinct pathways and provides illustrative examples of how FDA uses each of these 2 pathways. Regulators, industry, patients, and investors should each find this exegesis of these 2 independent, yet equally viable and valuable, pathways to an FDA approval both illuminating and invaluable.
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