Search results for "decision"
showing 10 items of 2091 documents
Observed heterospecific clutch size can affect offspring investment decisions.
2011
Optimal investment in offspring is important in maximizing lifetime reproductive success. Yet, very little is known how animals gather and integrate information about environmental factors to fine tune investment. Observing the decisions and success of other individuals, particularly when those individuals initiate breeding earlier, may provide a way for animals to quickly arrive at better breeding investment decisions. Here we show, with a field experiment using artificial nests appearing similar to resident tit nests with completed clutches, that a migratory bird can use the observed high and low clutch size of a resident competing bird species to increase and decrease clutch size and egg…
S-Detect characterization of focal solid breast lesions: a prospective analysis of inter-reader agreement for US BI-RADS descriptors
2020
Background: To assess inter-reader agreement for US BI-RADS descriptors using S-Detect: a computer-guided decision-making software assisting in US morphologic analysis. Methods: 73 solid focal breast lesions (FBLs) (mean size: 15.9 mm) in 73 consecutive women (mean age: 51 years) detected at US were randomly and independently assessed according to the BI-RADS US lexicon, without and with S-Detect, by five independent reviewers. US-guided core-biopsy and 24-month follow-up were considered as standard of reference. Kappa statistics were calculated to assess inter-operator agreement, between the baseline and after S-Detect evaluation. Agreement was graded as poor (≤ 0.20), moderate (0.21–0.40)…
Deregulation of miR-324/KISS1/kisspeptin in early ectopic pregnancy: mechanistic findings with clinical and diagnostic implications
2019
[Abstract] BACKGROUND: Ectopic pregnancy is a life-threatening condition for which novel screening tools that would enable early accurate diagnosis would improve clinical outcomes. Kisspeptins, encoded by KISS1, play an essential role in human reproduction, at least partially by regulating placental function and possibly embryo implantation. Kisspeptin levels are elevated massively in normal pregnancy and reportedly altered in various gestational pathologic diseases. Yet, the pathophysiologic role of KISS1/kisspeptin in ectopic pregnancy has not been investigated previously. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate changes of KISS1/kisspeptin levels in ectopic pregnancy and thei…
Constrained consistency enforcement in AHP
2020
Abstract Decision-making in the presence of intangible elements must be based on a robust, but subtle, balance between expert know-how and judgment consistency when eliciting that know-how. This balance is frequently achieved as a trade-off reached after a feedback process softens the tension frequently found between one force steadily pulling towards (full) consistency, and another force driven by expert feeling and opinion. The linearization method, developed by the authors in the framework of the analytic hierarchy process, is a pull-towards-consistency mechanism that shows the path from an inconsistent body of judgment elicited from an expert towards consistency, by suggesting optimal c…
A Cross-Regional Exploration of Barriers to the Adoption and Use of Electronic Meeting Systems
2007
Originally published in the journal Group Decision and Negotiation: http://www.springerlink.com/content/100270/ Electronic Meeting Systems (EMS) are intended to support group collaboration in completing tasks. While there have been many case studies and laboratory experiments on how EMS can support group tasks, large scale macro investigations exploring EMS adoption and use have been practically non-existent. Furthermore, while several barriers to EMS adoption and use have been suggested, their validation across organizations remains unexplored. We undertook a global initiative to explore information technology support for task-oriented collaboration in the US, Australia, Hong Kong, and Nor…
Some Effects of Individual Learning on the Evolution of Sensors
2001
In this paper, we present an abstract model of sensor evolution, where sensor development is only determined by artificial evolution and the adaptation of agent reactions is accomplished by individual learning. With the environment cast into a MDP framework, sensors can be conceived as a map from environmental states to agent observations and Reinforcement Learning algorithms can be utilised. On the basis of a simple gridworld scenario, we present some results of the interaction between individual learning and evolution of sensors.
Solving two‐armed Bernoulli bandit problems using a Bayesian learning automaton
2010
PurposeThe two‐armed Bernoulli bandit (TABB) problem is a classical optimization problem where an agent sequentially pulls one of two arms attached to a gambling machine, with each pull resulting either in a reward or a penalty. The reward probabilities of each arm are unknown, and thus one must balance between exploiting existing knowledge about the arms, and obtaining new information. The purpose of this paper is to report research into a completely new family of solution schemes for the TABB problem: the Bayesian learning automaton (BLA) family.Design/methodology/approachAlthough computationally intractable in many cases, Bayesian methods provide a standard for optimal decision making. B…
Design of an innovative system for precision beekeeping
2019
The innovative technologies of precision agriculture can be applied today to different productive sectors of agriculture in order to optimize crop production and to improve the quality of the final products. One of these is beekeeping, a very important sector both from an environmental and a production standpoint. The production of honey depends on many factors, some of which are environmental factors such as temperature, relative humidity and wind. The aim of this study was the design of a Precision Apicolture System (PAS) platform for monitoring and controlling the main environmental factors, both inside and outside the hive, in order to assess their influence on the honey daily productio…
Can We Do Better Next Time? Italians' Response to the COVID-19 Emergency through a Heuristics and Biases Lens.
2022
During the outbreak of COVID-19 in Italy, people often failed to adopt behaviors that could have stopped, or at least slowed down, the spread of this deadly disease. We offer cognitive explanations for these decisions, based on some of the most common heuristics and biases that are known to influence human judgment and decision-making, especially under conditions of high uncertainty. Our analysis concludes with the following recommendations: policymakers can and should take advantage of this established science, in order to communicate more effectively and increase the likelihood that people choose responsible actions in a public health crisis.
Maximizers’ Susceptibility to the Effect of Frequency vs. Percentage Format in Risk Representation
2022
The present study explored the susceptibility of maximizers to the effect of the specific information format—frequency vs. percentage—in a risk assessment task. One-hundred and fourteen participants were randomized into two experimental conditions: a frequency format and a percentage format. In both conditions, participants had to rate the level of risk that a mental patient would harm someone after his discharge from a mental health facility, based on the information reported in the psychologist’s assessment for that patient. In the frequency condition, the information was presented in terms of frequencies, whereas in the percentage condition the same information was pres…