Conditional assurance: the answer to the questions that should be asked within drug development

In this paper, we extend the use of assurance for a single study to explore how meeting a study's pre-defined success criteria could update our beliefs about the true treatment effect and impact the assurance of subsequent studies. This concept of conditional assurance, the assurance of a subsequent study conditional on success in an initial study, can be used assess the de-risking potential of the study requiring immediate investment, to ensure it provides value within the overall development plan. If the planned study does not discharge sufficient later phase risk, alternative designs and/or success criteria should be explored. By transparently laying out the different design options and the risks associated, this allows for decision makers to make quantitative investment choices based on their risk tolerance levels and potential return on investment. This paper lays out the derivation of conditional assurance, discusses how changing the design of a planned study will impact the conditional assurance of a future study, as well as presenting a simple illustrative example of how this methodology could be used to transparently compare development plans to aid decision making within an organisation.     

How to Approximate a Histogram by a Normal Density

Which normal density curve best approximates the sample histogram? The answer suggested here is the normal curve that minimizes the integrated squared deviation between the histogram and the normal curve. A simple computational procedure is described to produce this best-fitting normal density. A few examples are presented to illustrate that this normal curve does indeed provide a visually satisfying fit, one that is better than the traditional , s answer. Some further aspects of this procedure are investigated. In particular it is shown that there is a satisfactory answer that is independent of the bar width of the histogram. It is also noted that this graphical procedure provides highly robust estimates of the sample mean and standard deviation. We demonstrate our technique by using data including Newcomb's data of passage time of light and Fisher's iris data.     

Kansas Periodicals

Abstract

Many changes in the Law School Library have occurred during this past year because of INNOVACQ. Within the Serials/Acquisitions Section, almost all the routines and procedures have been radically redefined to allow for the computerization of serials control. There have been some staff reassignments and shifts in responsibility, and in most instances, old tasks and manual file maintenance have been done away with completely and replaced by work at a VDT. Naturally, the impact of INNOVACQ has also been felt in the Cataloging Section, and the instant availability of serials check-in and routing information in public services has certainly added a level of service that was never possible before. In addition, the immediate and up-to-date fiscal information has been a boon for both the library's collection development officers and the Library administration.

Various staff members throughout the year have been working to clean up and upgrade different parts of the serials files and to add or exchange better information in a number of fields in each record. Past payment history has been keyed into over 2/3 of the records in the file. The records for all the loose-leaf services contracted for by the Library are not fully online.

All the records for our California documents have been edited and check-in cards have been created for this large and obviously important part of the file. Conversion of the U.S. documents which had been deferred at the very beginning of the fiscal year, has begun and most entries now can be checked-in and claimed online.

All invoices (both serials and monographs) for this fiscal year have been processed on INNOVACQ, and while there are still some vendor and fund anomalies, Boalt has better, more comprehensive — and certainly more accurate — financial records than ever before.

A massive editing and claiming project has recently gotten under way. All titles on INNOVACQ are being checked against the shelf list to make sure that all the bibliographic elements in each record are in sync and are presented in a standard, retrievable (punctuation and spacing count in INNOVACQ) format. Routine claiming (as part of serials check-in) has been in place for some time now, and that activity was begun when that feature was delivered. A second part of the editing project, is however, to get the thousands of blank boxes out of the check-in screens where they will remain as claimable items until some sort of purging action is taken. The files are now being gone through (a simple command in INNOVACQ can allow one to review every check-in record in the system), our holdings are being checked on the shelves, and decisions to claim or replace the missing pieces are being made. We anticipate that this editing/ claiming project will take approximately half a year.

The INNOVACQ system was pretty exciting when we first saw it demonstrated, and we were eager then to incorporate it into our technical processing activities here at Boalt. If anything, our enthusiasm has grown as the capabilities of INNOVACQ have been realized. Enhancement and refinement — some at our prompting, others by the design staff at Innovative Interfaces — over the past year have resulted in what we believe to be the most comprehensive and easy-to-use serials control system available. Our confidence was manifested when we shifted all of our acquisitions activities from RLIN to INNOVAQ at the beginning of our fiscal year in mid-1984.

Many tasks remain for the Law Library in making the best use of the INNOVACQ system. The rapid acceptance by the public service staff and users has been heartening, and the continuing work to clean up the Serials Records has proven fruitful. System performance and maintenance have been outstanding, and we are excited about various possibilities for future growth. It has not been a simple nor uncomplicated process, but the gains realized by the Law library have been substantial.     

Best linear unbiased and invariant estimation in location-scale families based on double-ranked set sampling

Abstract

In this article, we propose the best linear unbiased estimators (BLUEs) and best linear invariant estimators (BLIEs) for the unknown parameters of location-scale family of distributions based on double-ranked set sampling (DRSS) using perfect and imperfect rankings. These estimators are then compared with the BLUEs and BLIEs based on ranked set sampling (RSS). It is shown that under perfect ranking, the proposed estimators are uniformly better than the BLUEs and BLIEs obtained via RSS. We also propose the best linear unbiased quantile (BLUQ) and the best linear invariant quantile (BLIQ) estimators for normal distribution under DRSS. It is observed that the proposed quantile estimators are more efficient than the BLUQ and BLIQ estimators based on RSS for both perfect and imperfect orderings.     

Two Rescues,One History: Everyday Racism in Australia

On the same day, at different ends of Australia, two extraordinary rescues of men from extreme hardship took place. The two miners, both white and of Anglo-Celtic origin, were fêted, appeared on television chat shows and became celebrities so sought after that they had to employ an agent. The three Torres Strait Islanders, members of a grouping identified as ‘indigenous’ in the Australian social order, who had survived 22 days at sea in an open dinghy, were, to all intents and purposes, ignored by the mainstream Australian media. They would appear to have simply gone back to their families and got on with their lives. This article tracks the discursive histories in which each event was embedded to examine how this distinction could happen and how it could be so naturalised that hardly anybody commented on the disparity of treatment. It is this taken-for-granted disparity that I am describing here as everyday racism.     

Which Factor has More Impact? An Examination of the Effects of Income Level, Perceived Neighborhood Disorder, and Crime on Community Care and Vigilance Among Low-Income African American Residents

This study investigated predictors of community care and vigilance among 70 African American residents living in high-crime, low-income neighborhoods. A stratified random sampling procedure was employed to select residents who completed a 20-item questionnaire assessing their sense of community care and vigilance and perceptions of perceived neighborhood physical and social disorder. We used police crime reports to assess the levels of property and violent offenses in the targeted neighborhoods. Our goal was to determine which of these variables best predicted community care and vigilance. The results of this study showed that social disorder and violent offenses negatively predicted community care and vigilance. Interestingly, the results also indicated that residents who reported the lowest income expressed the highest levels of community care and vigilance. Implications for community practice are discussed.     

Belonging at work

As a developing and most populous nation in the world, the People's Republic of China (P.R. China) faces unique challenges and opportunities in developing its tremendous human resources. Since its policy of ‘reform and open-door’ was initiated in the late 1970s, China has moved steadily towards establishing a nationwide policy of developing human capital and adopting practical measures of implementation. The paper identifies key themes of developing human capital at different levels: in government, business and families. The paper also discusses unique historical, social, political and cultural influences on the determination of such national policies and strategies. Different approaches to developing human capital are discussed for different sectors: state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private-owned business.     

Using evidence-based practices to enhance transfer of training: assessing the effectiveness of goal setting and behavioural observation scales

Using evidence-based practices we designed goal setting interventions, used in conjunction with behavioural observation scales (BOS), to facilitate transfer from a 2-day performance coaching programme. A total of 210 managers from public sector organisations took part in the study. Transfer was assessed using self-administered surveys and subordinate feedback (in the form of BOS). Transfer was high across all measures; however, our experimental design did not detect any positive effects for learning or behavioural outcome goals relative to being urged to Do Your Best (DYB). Results suggest that providing managers with BOS that outline the key skills covered in the training programme, having them set goals or urging them to do their best to use these skills back at work, and having workplace colleagues assess their performance at work using these BOS, may be sufficient to bring about transfer.     

Corporate eLearning: Human resource development implications for large and small organizations

Abstract

This paper compares and contrasts the current attitudes towards, awareness of and take-up of eLearning in large and small organizations and outlines the implications for human resource development (HRD) professionals. An in-depth study was conducted in Ireland with a number of large multinational organizations and a number of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the engineering, electronics, aerospace, pharmaceutical and medical device sectors. The study focused on awareness, perceptions, technology support infrastructure, current and planned involvement, most frequent and most preferred methods of delivery, benefits, barriers, the motivational factors and overall attitudes to eLearning. The comparison describes a number of similarities and a number of differences both within the large organization sector and within the SME sector and between the two sectors. Finally, the implications for HRD professionals are discussed.