Absence Of Risk Research Articles

Cool and Safe

This article presents the making of a safe innovation: the application of ice structuring protein (ISP) in edible ices. It argues that safety is not the absence of risk but is an active accomplishment; innovations are not made safe afterward but safe innovations are made. Furthermore, there are multiple safeties to be accomplished in the innovation process. These are financial, public, scientific, and regulatory safety. The negotiations between these safeties determine the material and labeling characteristics of what ISP has become. Not just laboratory researchers but experts from various parts of Unilever, the corporation that produces ISP, participate in accomplishing safety. The safeties they make, interact, overlap, are occasionally in conflict with one another, and continuously connect to outside actors.

Utility independence of multiattribute utility theory is equivalent to standard sequence invariance of conjoint measurement

Utility independence is a central condition in multiattribute utility theory, where attributes of outcomes are aggregated in the context of risk. The aggregation of attributes in the absence of risk is studied in conjoint measurement. In conjoint measurement, standard sequences have been widely used to empirically measure and test utility functions, and to theoretically analyze them. This paper shows that utility independence and standard sequences are closely related: utility independence is equivalent to a standard sequence invariance condition when applied to risk. This simple relation between two widely used conditions in adjacent fields of research is surprising and useful. It facilitates the testing of utility independence because standard sequences are flexible and can avoid cancelation biases that affect direct tests of utility independence. Extensions of our results to nonexpected utility models can now be provided easily. We discuss applications to the measurement of quality-adjusted life-years (QALY) in the health domain.

Risk sensitivity for amounts of and delay to rewards: Adaptation for uncertainty or by-product of reward rate maximising?

Observations that humans and other species are sensitive to variability in the outcome of their choices has led to the widespread assumption that this sensitivity reflects adaptations to cope with risk (stochasticity of action consequences). We question this assumption in experiments with starlings. We show that choices between outcomes that are risky in both amount and delay to food are predictable from preferences in the absence of risk. We find that the overarching best predictor of an option's value is the average of the ratios of amount to delay across its (frequency weighted) outcomes, an expression known as "Expectation of the Ratios", or EoR. Most tests of risk sensitivity focus on the predicted impact of energetic state on preference for risk. We show instead that under controlled state conditions subjects are variance- and risk-neutral with respect to EoR, and this implies variance neutrality for amounts and variance-proneness for delays. The weak risk aversion for amounts often reported requires a small modification of EoR. EoR is consistent with associative learning: acquisition of value for initially neutral stimuli is roughly proportional to the magnitude of their consequences and inversely proportional to the interval between the stimulus and its consequence's onset. If, as is likely, the effect of amount on acquisition is sublinear, the result is a deviation from EoR towards risk aversion for amount. In 3 experiments, we first establish individual birds' preferences between pairs of fixed options that differ in both amount and delay (small-sooner vs. large-later), and then examine choices between stochastic mixtures that include these options. Experiment 1 uses a titration to establish certainty equivalents, while experiments 2 and 3 measure degree of preference between options with static parameters. The mixtures differ in the coefficient of variation of amount, delay, or both, but EoR is sufficient to predict all results, with no additional explanatory role for riskiness.

Robots, Trust and War

Putting robots on the battlefield is clearly appealing for policymakers. Why risk human lives, when robots could take our place, and do the dirty work of killing and dying for us? Against this, I argue that robots will be unable to win the kind of wars that we are increasingly drawn into. Modern warfare tends towards asymmetric conflict. Asymmetric warfare cannot be won without gaining the trust of the civilian population; this is ‘the hearts and minds’, in the hackneyed phrase from counter-insurgency manuals. I claim that the very feature which makes it attractive to send robots to war in our place, the absence of risk, also makes it peculiarly difficult for humans to trust them. Whatever the attractions, sending robots to war in our stead will make success in counter-insurgency elusive. Moreover, there is ethical reason to be relieved at this conclusion. For if war is potentially costly, then this does much to ensure that it will be a choice only of last resort, in accordance with the traditional doctrine of jus ad bellum. In this instance, morality and expediency— fortunately— coincide.

Accommodating risk in the valuation of expected travel time savings

SUMMARYValuation of travel time savings is a critical measure in transport infrastructure appraisal, traffic modelling and network performance. It has been recognised for some time that the travel times associated with repeated trips are subject to variation, and hence there is risk embedded in the treatment of expected travel time. In the context of the expected utility framework, we use a nonlinear probability weighting function to accommodate choice made under risk. Although the empirical findings suggest small differences between the value of expected travel time savings (VETTS) in the presence and absence of risk, the mean estimate does make a noticeable difference to time benefits when applied to real projects. By incorporating nonlinear probability weighting, our model reveals that the probabilities associated with specific travel times that are shown to respondents in the choice experiment are transformed, resulting in overweighting of outcomes with low probabilities and underweighting of outcomes with high probabilities. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Hidden costs associated with the universal application of risk management in maternity care

This paper presents a critical analysis of risk management in maternity care and the hidden costs associated with the practice in healthy women. Issues of quality and safety are driving an increased emphasis by health services on risk management in maternity care. Medical risk in pregnancy is known to benefit 15% or less of all pregnancies. Risk management applied to the remaining 85% of healthy women results in the management of risk in the absence of risk. The health cost to mothers and babies and the economic burden on the overall health system of serious morbidity has been omitted from calculations comparing costs of uncomplicated caesarean birth and uncomplicated vaginal birth. The understanding that elective caesarean birth is cost-neutral when compared to a normal vaginal birth has misled practitioners and contributed to over use of the practice. For the purpose of informing the direction of maternity service policy it is necessary to expose the effect the overuse of medical intervention has on the overall capacity of the healthcare system to absorb the increasing demand for operating theatre resources in the absence of clinical need.

Risk Factors and Options to Improve Engraftment in Unrelated Cord Blood Transplantation

Use of umbilical unrelated cord-blood (UCB) cells as an alternative source of hematopoietic cell transplantation has been widely used mainly for patients lacking an HLA-matched donor. UCB present many advantages over bone marrow or mobilized peripheral blood from volunteer donors, such as rapid availability, absence of risk for the donor, and decreased incidence of acute graft-versus-host disease. However, a significant clinical problem is delayed engraftment that is directly correlated with the number of hematopoietic stem cells in a cord-blood unit. The identification of prognostic factors associated with engraftment that can be easily modified (e.g., strategies for donor choice) and the development of new approaches including use of multiple donors, intrabone injection of UCB, ex vivo expansion, and cotransplantation with accessory cells are of crucial importance in order to circumvent the problem of delayed engraftment after UCB transplantation. Those approaches may increase the quality and availability of UCB for transplantation.

Pulling Back the Curtain: Improving Reviews in Environmental Health

Pulling Back the Curtain: Improving Reviews in Environmental Health

Behavioral Characteristics and Neural Mechanisms Mediating Performance in a Rodent Version of the Balloon Analog Risk Task

The tendency for some individuals to partake in high-risk behaviors (eg, substance abuse, gambling, risky sexual activities) is a matter of great public health concern, yet the characteristics and neural bases of this vulnerability are largely unknown. Recent work shows that this susceptibility can be partially predicted by laboratory measures of reward seeking under risk, including the Balloon Analog Risk Task. Rats were trained to respond on two levers: one of which (the 'add lever') increased the size of a potential food reward and a second (the 'cash-out lever') that led to delivery of accrued reward. Crucially, each add-lever response was also associated with a risk that the trial would fail and no reward would be delivered. The relative probabilities that each add-lever press would lead to an addition food pellet or to trial failure (risk) were orthogonally varied. Rats exhibited a pattern of responding characteristic of incentive motivation and risk aversion, with a subset of rats showing traits of high-risk taking and/or suboptimal responding. Neural inactivation studies suggest that the orbitofrontal cortex supports greater reward seeking in the presence or absence of risk, whereas the medial prefrontal cortex is required for optimization of patterns of responding. These findings provide new information about the neural circuitry of decision making under risk and reveal new insights into the biological determinants of risk-taking behaviors that may be useful in developing biomarkers of vulnerability.

Corporate governance e sistema fiscale: discriminazione tra azionisti

Corporate Governance and Tax System: Interest Divergence between Insider-Outsider and Risk - This paper studies the interest diversion that arises, between insider and outsider in the corporation governance, when taking into account the effects determined by tax system. Very similar statutory tax rates, in presence of investment risk, reinforce the positional advantage of insider with respect to outsider. The interaction between corporate governance and tax system has been underestimated by neoclassical economic approach, and recently studied by law and economics’ scholars. On the basis of King and Fullerton’s (1984) model, we have developed a microsimulation model, considering specifically Italian tax system regime. We have then calculated effective marginal tax rates (EMTR) both in presence and in absence of risk. The main results show that at the increase of risk, effective marginal tax rates also decrease, but the reduction is more consistent for insiders. As a result, tax discrimination that arises on shareholders further amplifies the divergence of interest between insider and outsider.

Risk-dependent reward value signal in human prefrontal cortex

When making choices under uncertainty, people usually consider both the expected value and risk of each option, and choose the one with the higher utility. Expected value increases the expected utility of an option for all individuals. Risk increases the utility of an option for risk-seeking individuals, but decreases it for risk averse individuals. In 2 separate experiments, one involving imperative (no-choice), the other choice situations, we investigated how predicted risk and expected value aggregate into a common reward signal in the human brain. Blood oxygen level dependent responses in lateral regions of the prefrontal cortex increased monotonically with increasing reward value in the absence of risk in both experiments. Risk enhanced these responses in risk-seeking participants, but reduced them in risk-averse participants. The aggregate value and risk responses in lateral prefrontal cortex contrasted with pure value signals independent of risk in the striatum. These results demonstrate an aggregate risk and value signal in the prefrontal cortex that would be compatible with basic assumptions underlying the mean-variance approach to utility.

Can adverse effects related to hospital treatment be avoided?

The concept of care risk includes any undesirable situation, or any factor contributing to its occurrence, related to the health care received and which might have negative consequences. It includes conditions like adverse effects of medicines, negligence and litigation. A safe clinical practice requires that three objectives be obtained: to identify which diagnostic and therapeutic clinical procedures are the safest and most efficient; to assure that they are applied to those who need them; and to carry them out correctly and without mistakes. In this sense, what are needed, on the one hand, are systems of notification and epidemiological studies, and, on the other, actions at different levels of the health system. The maximum safety of the patient is obtained by a suitable knowledge of the risks, elimination of those that are unnecessary, and prevention and protection in those that must inevitably be assumed. This is because safety is not the same thing as absence of risk.

Exposures in painting related occupations and risk of selected cancers: Results from a case–control study in montreal

Painters are considered to be at increased risk of lung cancer. The objective was to evaluate risk of several cancers, apart from lung, in painting-related professions. Most previous studies have focused on the job title rather than on exposures incurred. A large population based case-control study was carried out during 1979-1986 in Montreal including several types of cancer and focusing on occupational exposures. Interviews elicited detailed lifetime job histories; those were evaluated by a team of industrial hygienists to assign exposure. The exposure checklist included three paint-related substances: metal coatings, wood varnishes and stains, and wood and gypsum paints. Seven types of cancer were analyzed (numbers interviewed): esophagus (97), stomach (248), colorectal (754), prostate (438), bladder (478), kidney (174) and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (215). For each cancer type, a pooled control group was constituted from 533 population controls and 533 cancer patients selected from other types of cancer. Odds ratios (ORs) were estimated between each of the paint-related agents and each of the seven cancer types, adjusting for several potential confounders, including smoking. The job title of "painters" was not associated with risk of any of the cancers under study. Most of the ORs between the three agents and the seven cancers were close to null. However, there was a tendency for ORs to be above 1.0 for subjects who had substantial exposure to metal coatings, with noteworthy associations for cancers of the esophagus (OR = 4.2; 95% CI: 1.1-17.0; n = 4), prostate (OR = 2.7; 95% CI: 1.0-7.7; n = 13), and bladder (OR = 1.7; 95% CI: 0.7-4.4; n = 13). These results are compatible with an absence of risk among painting-related professions; they are also compatible with excess risk of certain cancers, especially among those exposed to metal coatings.

The Relationship Between the Effect of Pravastatin and Risk Factors for Coronary Heart Disease in Japanese Patients With Hypercholesterolemia

Several epidemiologic studies in Japan have shown the risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) in the general population. The present analysis determined the risk factors for CHD in the MEGA Study, a large primary prevention trial with pravastatin in Japanese with hypercholesterolemia. The relationship between each baseline characteristic and the risk of CHD for the 5-year study period were evaluated using the Cox proportional hazard model. The multivariable predictors of CHD were sex, age, high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C), diabetes mellitus (DM), hypertension (HT), and history of smoking. Serum total and low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol were not independent risk factors for CHD in the current analysis. In addition, the effect of pravastatin was evaluated by subgroups in each risk factor using the interaction in a Cox model. Diet plus pravastatin treatment reduced CHD risk by 14-43% compared with diet alone, regardless of the presence or absence of risk factors. The risk factors for CHD were sex, age, DM, HT, smoking, and low HDL-C in the MEGA Study. The pravastatin treatment was effective for reducing the risk of CHD, regardless of the presence of risk factors.

Some Proposals for Interpreting the Tax 'Straddle' Rules

This article proposes a solution to a vexing problem of significance when the article was written in 2007, namely how to match up long and short positions in a tax straddle. It also addresses rarely discussed questions relating to the application of the tax straddle rules to liabilities and to positions in a corporation’s own stock, and proposes frameworks for answering those questions. The tax “straddle” rules are important to taxpayers that engage in investment and trading activities because they are the principal rules of the Internal Revenue Code that deal with the hedging of positions in capital assets. The straddle rules are anti-abuse rules, generally intended to prevent taxpayers from deducting tax losses or expenses incurred with respect to an investment asset in the absence of corresponding economic costs, from aging the holding period for an investment asset from short-term to long-term in the absence of risk, and from converting unrelated short-term capital gain or ordinary income to long-term capital gain. They are very broad in scope. Their breadth is in some ways unfortunate, as they were extended only a few years after their original enactment to transactions in stock for which the rules are not ideally crafted. There have been numerous changes in market practice and some changes in other related areas of the law since the straddle rules were first enacted in 1981. The most important amendments to the rules were made in 1986. In 2004, Congress made the first significant changes to the tax “straddle” rules in two decades. The 2004 amendments do not, for the most part, address some important conceptual questions that have arisen over the years, although the commentary on those amendments has made a number of them more visible. This article addresses some of those questions. The principal focus of the article is on the rules addressing timing and holding period arbitrage. Part I discusses the history of the straddle rules and summarizes the rules. It is intended to give readers not familiar with the straddle rules a sense of how they have developed, without addressing many of the details important to applying the rules in practice. Readers familiar with the straddle rules may want to skim Part I, since it is intended to set up the issues and arguments made in Part II. Part II of the article discusses the long-standing question of how to determine which positions held by a taxpayer are part of a straddle. It suggests a line of analysis that explains the limited answers we have to that question to date, and that provides answers consistent with most practitioners’ instincts for unanswered questions. Part III then considers some issues relating to the application of the straddle rules to liabilities. Part IV discusses the question of whether a position in a corporation’s own stock can give rise to a straddle.

Youth and democracy: Participation for personal, relational, and collective well‐being

PERSONAL, RELATIONAL, AND COLLECTIVE WELL-BEING Various traditions within developmental science and psychology have concentrated on either personal or collective correlates as manifestations of well-being. Our claim is that the well-being of any one person is highly dependent on the well-being of her relationships and on the community in which she resides ~Nelson & Prilleltensky, 2005; Prilleltensky, Nelson, & Peirson, 2001!. Well-being may be defined as a positive state of affairs in which the personal, relational, and collective needs and aspirations of individuals and communities are fulfilled. Well-being refers to a satisfactory state of affairs for individual youth and communities that encompass more than the absence of risk. Our definition of well-being is in line with comprehensive conceptualizations of health promotion and youth development that emphasize the values of selfdetermination, participation, community capacity-building, structural determinants, and social justice ~Lerner, 2004!. In this article, we introduce a framework for understanding well-being in general and the well-being of youth in particular. In addition, we offer a model for analyzing interventions designed to promote personal and collective well-being. Finally, we discuss the contributions of the authors of this special issue to our analytical and intervention frameworks. We start by introducing a framework of well-being ~Prilleltensky & Prilleltensky, 2006!. We distinguish among sites, signs, sources, and strategies of well-being for youth and for society at large. These are the parts that comprise the whole of well-being.

The development and validation of the Indigenous Risk Impact Screen (IRIS): a 13‐item screening instrument for alcohol and drug and mental health risk

The study aimed to assess the psychometric properties of the Indigenous Risk Impact Screen (IRIS) as a screening instrument for determining (i) the presence of alcohol and drug and mental health risk in Indigenous adult Australians and (ii) the cut-off scores that discriminate most effectively between the presence and absence of risk. A cross-sectional survey was used in clinical and non-clinical Indigenous and non-Indigenous services across Queensland Australia. A total of 175 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from urban, rural, regional and remote locations in Queensland took part in the study. Measures included the Indigenous Risk Impact Screen (IRIS), the Severity of Dependence Scale (SDS), the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and the Leeds Dependence Questionnaire (LDQ). Additional Mental Health measures included the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and the Self-Report Questionnaire (SRQ). Principle axis factoring analysis of the IRIS revealed two factors corresponding with (i) alcohol and drug and (ii) mental health. The IRIS alcohol and drug and mental health subscales demonstrated good convergent validity with other well-established screening instruments and both subscales showed high internal consistency. A receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis was used to generate cut-offs for the two subscales and t-tests validated the utility of these cut-offs for determining risky levels of drinking. The study validated statistically the utility of the IRIS as a screen for alcohol and drug and mental health risk. The instrument is therefore recommended as a brief screening instrument for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Growth and Risk: Methodology and Micro Evidence

How exposure to risk affects economic growth is a key issue in development. This article quantifies both the ex ante and ex post effects of risk using long-running panel data for rural households in Zimbabwe. It proposes a simulation-based econometric methodology to estimate the structural form of a micro model of household investment decisions under risk. The key finding is that risk substantially reduces growth in this particular setting: the mean capital stock in the sample is (in expectation) 46 percent lower than in the absence of risk. About two-thirds of the impact of risk is due to the ex ante effect (that is, the behavioral response to risk), which is usually not taken into account in policy design. These results suggest that policy interventions that reduce exposure to shocks or that help households manage risk could be much more effective than is commonly thought.

Do vaccines modify the prevalence of asthma and allergies?

Epidemiological studies suggest the hypothesis that the increase in asthma and allergies in the industrialized world can be explained by a decline in the number of infectious diseases occurring during childhood. In the context of this ‘hygiene hypothesis’, is immunization in early life a risk factor for promoting allergic diseases? The majority of studies, especially those conducted with more extensive populations, have not found an increased risk, and although ‘not finding an increased risk’ is not the same as ‘the non-existence of any risk at all’, it seems that the evidence is tipped in favor of the absence of risk. Conversely, although some surveys have described a protective effect of vaccination, the majority refuted this result. If there is any effect, it is probably a weak one.

EGF genetic polymorphism is associated with clinical features but not malignant phenotype in neurofibromatosis type 1 patients

Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is characterized by a wide variation in clinical presentation and in some cases progression to malignant tumor. Epidermal growth factor (EGF) is an important mitogen for Schwann cells and is involved in the development of malignant tumors in NF1 patients. We hypothesized that EGF +61 G/A functional polymorphism, which represents constitutional all-life exposure to higher EGF expression and circulating levels, may predispose for precocious and more aggressive manifestations of disease. We found that clinical findings of intestinal polyps are significantly more frequent in patients with G homozygous genotype (P = 0.023). Those carriers of GG genotype have earlier onset of café-au-lait spots and Lisch nodules appearance (P = 0.030 and P = 0.017, respectively). Nevertheless, the EGF overexpressing genotype-GG, is not associated with higher risk for malignant progression or severity of disease. EGF polymorphism may play a role in the earlier onset of NF1 pigment cell-related manifestations and in intestinal polyps' development. Further studies in larger samples should confirm the absence of risk for having higher severity grade or malignant phenotype in NF1 patients.