Antreselj: An early Romanian remnant in Serbo-Croatian

To measure agreement between formal and medical record criteria for the diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) among patients undergoing an emergency department evaluation for potential acute coronary symptoms. Cases of ACS were determined by both formal (World Health Organization 1984 criteria for acute myocardial infarction [AMI], Braunwald criteria for unstable angina pectoris [UAP]) and medical record criteria. In the latter, a diagnosis was made if providers indicated AMI or UAP anywhere in the medical record. All information included in formal criteria was available to clinicians establishing the medical record diagnosis. The two criteria for diagnosis were compared, and a kappa value was recorded. Two blinded observers adjudicated discordant cases, with a kappa value recorded. Disagreements between these two coinvestigators were resolved by a Delphi technique. A total of 375 eligible subjects were enrolled, of whom 65 (17%; 45 AMI, 20 UAP) had ACS by both sets of criteria. Formal and medical record criteria disagreed in 32 subjects. This represented 9% (95% confidence interval = 6% to 12%) of the overall study population but 33% (95% confidence interval = 23% to 43%) of subjects with possible ACS. Coinvestigators acting as judges and blinded to each other's determinations agreed that 25 of these subjects had ACS and three did not; they disagreed on four subjects (kappa = 0.54). Among these four subjects, a Delphi consensus technique determined that two subjects had AMI and two had no ACS. In a single-site study, among subjects who have possible ACS as determined by either or both formal and medical record criteria, these two sets of criteria disagree in almost one third of cases. Among discordant cases, even two expert judges frequently disagreed on the final diagnosis. A modified Delphi technique to address these disagreements is described.

Sample sizes of prediction model studies in prostate cancer were rarely justified and often insufficient

According to the information-seeking behaviors of patients, booklets which can be downloaded from the Internet for free are an important source of information notably for patients with cancer. This study investigated whether information booklets for patients with cancer available at German websites are in accordance with the formal and content criteria of evidence-based information. We compared and compiled both content and formal criteria by matching different national and international standards for written patient information using a merged instrument. A catalog with a total of 16 items within 4 categories (quality of the publication, quality of information, quality of information representation, and transparency) was created. Patient information booklets for the most frequent tumor types were collected from the Internet. A total of 52 different patient booklets were downloaded and assessed. Overall, no booklet fulfilled all criteria. The quality of the publications was evaluated with an average value of 1.67 while the quality of the information had a mean value of 1.45, and the quality of information presentation had a similar rating (1.39). The transparency criteria were evaluated as lowest with an average of 1.07. In summary, German booklets for cancer patients have some shortcomings concerning formal and content criteria for evidence-based patient information. The applied requirement catalog is suitable for wide use and may help in quality assurance of health information. It may be used as part of an obligatory external evaluation, which could help improving the quality of health information.

The notion of grammatical gender is defined and criteria for assigning nouns to genders are discussed, in particular semantic and formal criteria. Data from child language acquisition show that both semantic and formal criteria can be the basis of children's overgeneralizations, although the question of to what extent more opaque semantic or formal gender assignment criteria are available to children remains to be ascertained.

Introduction: The article is devoted to the analysis of the legal category of «internal affairs bodies» and related categories that specify the composition of state apparatus. Rationale is determined by the provisions of theoretical and doctrinal nature, which vaguely formulate the concept of «internal affairs bodies», based on the formal–legal criterion and substantive features of the law enforcement segment of the state apparatus. Methods: When analyzing theoretical provisions of the doctrine, which reveal the concepts under study, comparative analysis and method of historical normative acts analysis were used. Statutory documents of by-law nature that define the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were considered. Results: Formal and substantive (material) criteria defining the system of internal affairs bodies are identified. Formal criteria include fixing the system of internal affairs bodies in normative and administrative acts, departmental organization of internal affairs bodies’ management. Substantive criteria include law enforcement functions performed by internal affairs bodies; the presence of paramilitary units within them; specific features of the public service in the internal affairs agencies.The link between the indicated category and the implementation of the concept of powers separation (separation of the executive branch of power) is noted as well as uncertainty in the historical–legal retrospective sphere of the status of internal affairs bodies as subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs; the dominance of the formal criterion of definition over the substantive one;uncertainty as to the status of some functionally related parts of the state apparatus outside the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs system.

The effectiveness of specialized interventions depends in part on the target population and whether those selected for admission to interventions (i.e., specialized programs) and recruited to participate in research evaluations are representative of the target population. This article describes the process by which clients were selected to participate in a specialized mental health caseload (SMHC). The study focuses on the referral and selection process at the program level and the factors influencing acceptance and rejection. Using a mixed methods approach, we found that selection was guided by a three-stage process: The first was a general education phase, followed by an informal pre-screening stage, and finally a formal screening stage. Once clients were referred, client selection was informed principally by the program’s formal criteria. Informal processes appeared consistent with the formal selection criteria. Further research is necessary to assess potential bias prior to the formal referral process.

A conceptual framework for selecting environmental indicator sets

The feature interaction problem in telecommunications systems increasingly obstructs the evolution of such systems. We develop formal detection criteria which render a necessary (but less than sufficient) condition for feature interactions. It can be checked mechanically and points out all potentially critical spots. These have to be analyzed manually. The resulting resolution decisions are incorporated formally. Some prototype tool support is already available. A prerequisite for formal criteria is a formal definition of the problem. Since the notions of feature and feature interaction are often used in a rather fuzzy way, we attempt a formal definition first and discuss which aspects can be included in a formalization (and therefore in a detection method). This paper describes on-going work.KeywordsSimple TransitionTelecommunication SystemFeature InteractionMajor StateLocal ComponentThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This paper discusses criteria for distinguishing attributive (also known as adjectival) clauses and relative clauses, and argues that traditional approaches to these subclause categories and their interrelation lack consistency as well as empirical justification, from a modern Scandinavian perspective. Relative clauses are traditionally and in current Scandinavian reference grammars treated as a formally defined clause type with the attributive function as their prototypical, but not their only, constituent function. In this paper it is argued that the traditional criteria for identifying relative clauses, especially in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, are essentially not formal but functional criteria, more or less identical to those applied to identify attributive clauses. Indeed, the modern Scandinavian languages, it is argued, hardly offer the empirical basis for a coherent category of relative clauses to be consistently distinguished on formal criteria. Rather, to account for the heterogeneous inventory of subclauses traditionally associated with relative clauses, a general outline of the functional category of attributive clauses in Danish is proposed, based on authentic spoken and written Danish discourse. Traditional definitions of attributive clauses are discussed and refined, and are shown to apply to a different and wider range of Danish subclause forms than has traditionally been recognised.

This article offers a new, transparent method to construe morphosyntactic categories for crosslinguistic research. It avoids the problem of categorial confusion attested in major post-Greenbergian studies in morphosyntactic typology, in particular in probabilistic typological investigations, which tend to mix up semantic and formal criteria and marginalize “statistically insignificant” morphosyntactic variants. These and other problems are avoided by using functional criteria as the starting point in identifying comparable forms and constructions in different languages. Subsequently formal and semantic criteria are employed to arrive at a morphosyntactic category whose members are sufficiently similar in terms of function, form, and meaning.

This study examined the decision-making process related to enrollment in jail diversion programs for people with mental illness. The examination explored the activities of diversion programs and courts related to determinations of whether individuals were appropriate for diversion: activities included jail screenings, clinical and criminal justice assessments, psychiatric evaluations, and court reviews of diversion plans. Factors associated with program recommendation decisions and court acceptance decisions were also examined. The study included data from a multisite, federally funded jail diversion initiative. Conditional logistic regression models were employed to determine which factors influenced both program and court decision making. A total of 34,832 activities resulted in a program decision regarding diversion eligibility (N=32,917) or a court decision regarding acceptance of the diversion plan (N=1,915). Compared with the national arrestee population, those referred for diversion had a greater proportion of women, whites, and older persons and a lower proportion of persons with felony and violence charges. Regression analyses indicated that women and persons with nonviolent and nonfelony charges were more likely to be recommended for diversion by programs. These decisions were also influenced by interactions between legal and nonlegal factors. Individuals with nonfelony offenses were more likely to be accepted by the courts. One major finding is the large number of front-end activities required to enroll a small number of jail diversion participants. A second finding is that disproportionate representation occurs early in the decision-making process. Both formal and informal factors influenced decision making. Overall the results suggest that jail diversion programs should examine their decision-making processes to ensure that all appropriate individuals are included in jail diversion.

Political parties sometimes set up formal criteria to define the pool of potential candidates. This article represents the first large-scale comparative analysis of potential unintended gendered consequences of these formal selection criteria for parliamentary representation. Using unique data on 101 political parties in 32 African, Asian, and postcommunist European countries, we find that there is indeed a relationship between formal selection criteria and men’s and women’s political representation. Criteria that concern ethnic or geographic background and intraparty experiences are harmful to women. On the other hand, gendered consequences are not as pronounced as a result of criteria concerning qualifications or requirements in relation to electability. Taken together, the analysis points to the need to pay increased attention to formal selection criteria and how this under-researched aspect of candidate selection shapes the parliamentary representation of underrepresented groups.

Formal criteria of theoretical equivalence are mathematical mappings between specific sorts of mathematical objects, notably including those objects used in mathematical physics. Proponents of formal criteria claim that results involving these criteria have implications that extend beyond pure mathematics. For instance, they claim that formal criteria bear on the project of using our best mathematical physics as a guide to what the world is like, and also have deflationary implications for various debates in the metaphysics of physics. In this paper, I investigate whether there is a defensible view according to which formal criteria have significant non-mathematical implications, of these sorts or any other, reaching a chiefly negative verdict. Along the way, I discuss various foundational issues concerning how we use mathematical objects to describe the world when doing physics, and how this practice should inform metaphysics. I diagnose the prominence of formal criteria as stemming from contentious views on these foundational issues, and endeavor to motivate some alternative views in their stead.

Quality markers of drug information on the internet: an evaluation of sites about St. John’s Wort

In attempting to perfect rules for use in pedagogical grammars, there is a tendency to rely too heavily on formal criteria, without taking into account actual data about language use. Two sets of rules for determining noun gender and making gender agreements in Spanish are examined critically on the basis of both formal criteria, including frequency in discourse of the items described by the rules, and the notions about the role of rules in second language use formalized in the Monitor Model. Some of the proposed rules prove to be either descriptively invalid or, for other reasons, likely to be of little practical utility to the language user. It is suggested that formal criteria, psychological criteria, and data about actual language use by second language learners should be considered in evaluating the formal rules of a pedagogical grammar.