Bayesian estimation of cognitive decline in patients with alzheimer's disease

Recently, there has been great interest in estimating the decline in cognitive ability in patients with Alzheimer's disease. Measuring decline is not straightforward, since one must consider the choice of scale to measure cognitive ability, possible floor and ceiling effects, between-patient variability, and the unobserved age of onset. The authors demonstrate how to account for the above features by modeling decline in scores on the Mini-Mental State Exam in two different data sets. To this end, they use hierarchical Bayesian models with change points, for which posterior distributions are calculated using the Gibbs sampler. They make comparisons between several such models using both prior and posterior Bayes factors, and compare the results from the models suggested by these two model selection criteria.     

Anti‐globalization movements and the European agenda

This article examines the relationship between the Europeanization process and the anti‐globalization agenda in Europe. Relying on the results of fieldwork research conducted since 2001 on the anti‐globalization demonstrations surrounding the European summits, it argues that these transnational protest movements are of a dual and, in part, contradictory nature. On the one hand, they have an agenda‐setting character, contributing to the formation of European public opinion. On the other hand, their influence in terms of agenda setting of European policy is constrained by their discourse style which bypasses or circumvents official discourse about European integration.     

Simple plurality versus plurality runoff with privately informed voters

This paper compares two voting methods commonly used in presidential elections: simple plurality voting and plurality runoff. In a situation in which a group of voters have common interests but do not agree on which candidate to support due to private information, information aggregation requires them to split their support between their favorite candidates. However, if a group of voters split their support, they increase the probability that the winner of the election is not one of their favorite candidates. In a model with three candidates, due to this tension between information aggregation and the need for coordination, plurality runoff leads to higher expected utility for the majority than simple plurality voting if the information held by voters about the candidates is not very accurate. Received: 12 September 2000/Accepted: 8 November 2001     

Finding and fixing systems weaknesses: probabilistic methods and applications of engineering risk analysis.

Methods of engineering risk analysis are based on a functional analysis of systems and on the probabilities (generally Bayesian) of the events and random variables that affect their performances. These methods allow identification of a system's failure modes, computation of its probability of failure or performance deterioration per time unit or operation, and of the contribution of each component to the probabilities and consequences of failures. The model has been extended to include the human decisions and actions that affect components' performances, and the management factors that affect behaviors and can thus be root causes of system failures. By computing the risk with and without proposed measures, one can then set priorities among different risk management options under resource constraints. In this article, I present briefly the engineering risk analysis method, then several illustrations of risk computations that can be used to identify a system's weaknesses and the most cost-effective way to fix them. The first example concerns the heat shield of the space shuttle orbiter and shows the relative risk contribution of the tiles in different areas of the orbiter's surface. The second application is to patient risk in anesthesia and demonstrates how the engineering risk analysis method can be used in the medical domain to rank the benefits of risk mitigation measures, in that case, mostly organizational. The third application is a model of seismic risk analysis and mitigation, with application to the San Francisco Bay area for the assessment of the costs and benefits of different seismic provisions of building codes. In all three cases, some aspects of the results were not intuitively obvious. The probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) method allowed identifying system weaknesses and the most cost-effective way to fix them.     

Forty years of doctoral public relations research in Spain: A quantitative study of dissertation contribution to theory development

In this article, doctoral dissertations on public relations written at Spanish universities (1965–2004) are examined in order to gain an understanding of the level of theory development within the discipline. The following subjects are studied: growth over time, universities where they were written, use of language, gender and the topics of doctoral dissertations. Although still in its early development, public relations doctoral research in Spain is a well-established and burgeoning field in terms of the total of theses examined (62). The conclusion, however, is that their contribution to theory building in public relations has been negligible, with the practical or operational side of public relations standing out more than the conceptual and theoretical side.