Authoritative Information Research Articles

Artificial Intelligence Role in Individual Decision Making

By the partial blast in large facts and the constant obligation for growth, AI is cutting available a better advert in our common community. Over the situation terminal based abilities, it transmits additional opportunities to switch numerous problems inside suggestions. It additionally raises new difficulties about its utilization and cutoff points. This theory expects to offer a higher ability of the occupation of people and AI in the hierarchical Decision-Making method. An examination centres on information serious firms. The fundamental exploration question that directs our examination is the accompanying one: In what capacity can AI re-plan and build up the procedure of authoritative Decision-Making inside information serious firms? We defined three increasingly point by point inquiries to direct us: (1) what are the jobs of people and AI in the Decision-Making procedure? (2) How can authoritative structure boost the Decision-Making procedure using Artificial Intelligence? (3) How can AI help to defeat the difficulties experienced by leaders inside information concentrated firms and what are the new difficulties that emerge from the utilization of AI in the Decision-Making procedure?. Keyword : Artificial Intelligence, Decision makers, Decision making process, Knowledge-concentrated firms, Organizational structure, Organizational test, Smart decisions.

The Risk-Return Behavior of Real Estate Mezzanine Investment (REMI) – The Singapore Experience

REMI is a new financial instrument for Asia’s real estate market offering superior returns than those for the typical commercial bank loans. The resultant risk exposure is relatively high. With recent and robust growth of the Singapore real estate market, there is the fast-growing real estate investment trust market. This paper examines the REMI structure, the measurement and characteristics of its risks and returns via a forward-looking binomial asset tree (BAT) model. Risk neutral pricing probability is adopted to construct the BAT tree. TRs are measured by the probability weighted average returns and discussed under different scenarios. REMI bears more risk than typical commercial bank loans, resulting in higher interest rates than pure equity. Different risk issues focus on two major sources - the financial LTV ratio risk and the real estate and capital markets risk. Empirical analysis involves a rigorous discrete-time forecasting of the market rent and capital value expectations of Singapore’s prime office sector, given the conditions and assumptions unique to this market. This paper fulfils the need to close the gap concerning the REMI structure and performance in the steady state, utilizing reliable, authoritative information and data sources.

Democracy and Digital Dissonance: The Co-Occurrence of the Transformation of Political Culture and Communication Infrastructure

The aim of this essay is to discuss the state of democracy in Western Europe in the light of an essential change in public spheres towards more dissonance, disconnection, and noise. It is argued that this condition is the unintended consequence of the co-occurrence of two long-term changes in contemporary societies: political culture changes in liberal democracy and changes in communication infrastructures. The interaction of the disruption of democracy and digital communication has implications for public spheres as opportunity structures for democratic speech and institutions. The dynamics of dissonant public spheres have created a new disinformation order, pushing new political actors and communication modes to the fore. These conditions threaten established patterns of authoritative information flows and public debate, which puts contemporary democracy under serious stress.

"Coronavirus EXPLAINED": YouTube, COVID-19, and the Socio-Technical Mediation of Expertise.

Since the coronavirus outbreak, YouTube has altered its content moderation policies to surface more “authoritative information” while removing videos that contain “medically unsubstantiated claims.” This was made urgent by incidents like a live-stream interview of renowned British conspiracy theorist David Icke—in which he falsely linked the spread of the coronavirus to 5G technology—that gained substantial traction online. Behind these events, however, lies a tension between the need for authoritative medical information and the socio-technical mediation that enables multiple, competing voices to lay claim to such authority on YouTube; a tension exacerbated by the current pandemic. Following an investigation into the sources and types of video content average users were likely to see when searching for information about the coronavirus on the site, we suggest that through its incentive structure and participatory affordances, YouTube may have subordinated expertise to a logic of likability—leaving institutional experts trailing behind.

ECCParaCorp: a cross-lingual parallel corpus towards cancer education, dissemination and application

BackgroundThe increasing global cancer incidence corresponds to serious health impact in countries worldwide. Knowledge-powered health system in different languages would enhance clinicians’ healthcare practice, patients’ health management and public health literacy. High-quality corpus containing cancer information is the necessary foundation of cancer education. Massive non-structural information resources exist in clinical narratives, electronic health records (EHR) etc. They can only be used for training AI models after being transformed into structured corpus. However, the scarcity of multilingual cancer corpus limits the intelligent processing, such as machine translation in medical scenarios. Thus, we created the cancer specific cross-lingual corpus and open it to the public for academic use.MethodsAiming to build an English-Chinese cancer parallel corpus, we developed a workflow of seven steps including data retrieval, data parsing, data processing, corpus implementation, assessment verification, corpus release, and application. We applied the workflow to a cross-lingual, comprehensive and authoritative cancer information resource, PDQ (Physician Data Query). We constructed, validated and released the parallel corpus named as ECCParaCorp, made it openly accessible online.ResultsThe proposed English-Chinese Cancer Parallel Corpus (ECCParaCorp) consists of 6685 aligned text pairs in Xml, Excel, Csv format, containing 5190 sentence pairs, 1083 phrase pairs and 412 word pairs, which involved information of 6 cancers including breast cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, esophageal cancer, colorectal cancer, and stomach cancer, and 3 cancer themes containing cancer prevention, screening, and treatment. All data in the parallel corpus are online, available for users to browse and download (http://www.phoc.org.cn/ECCParaCorp/).ConclusionsECCParaCorp is a parallel corpus focused on cancer in a cross-lingual form, which is openly accessible. It would make up the imbalance of scarce multilingual corpus resources, bridge the gap between human readable information and machine understanding data resources, and would contribute to intelligent technology application as a preparatory data foundation e.g. cancer-related machine translation, cancer system development towards medical education, and disease-oriented knowledge extraction.

A machine learning approach towards prediction of emergency admissions crowding problem

For the most part, Emergency Departments are intensely packed with patients and legitimate administrations and required appropriate administrations to be given. EDs, consequently, need to discover the utilization of new, basic, and viable strategies to improve tolerant flow and forestall this issue or an excessive number of patient’s over-burden. One reasonable and legitimate strategy is the utilization of information mining or Machine learning procedures to anticipate confirmations of ED. This paper utilizes routinely gathered authoritative information from two significant intense medical clinics in Northern India and Eastern India to connect and look at a few Machine Learning Techniques for examining these expectations. We utilize three calculations to fabricate the Classification models: 1) strategic relapse; 2) choice trees, and 3) inclination helped machines (GBM). The GBM performed better (precision = 80.3%, AUC-ROC = 0.86) than the choice tree (exactness = 80.06%, AUC-ROC = 0.822) and the calculated relapse model (precision = 80%, AUC-ROC = 0.85). Drawing on strategic relapse, we recognize a few boundaries identified with emergency clinic ED confirmations, for example, medical clinic site, age, appearance mode, triage classification, care gathering, past affirmation in the previous month, and past affirmation in the previous year. This paper accentuates the possible utility of three normal AI characterization calculations in grouping persistent confirmations.

COVID-19: Guidelines for pharmacists in South Africa.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, and its declaration as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), the reliance on pharmacists as one of the first points of contact within the healthcare system has been highlighted. This evidence-based review is aimed at providing guidance for pharmacists in community, hospital and other settings in South Africa, on the management of patients with suspected or confirmed coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19. The situation is rapidly evolving, and new evidence continues to emerge on a daily basis. This guidance document takes into account and includes newly available evidence and recommendations, particularly around the following aspects relating to COVID-19: EpidemiologyThe virus, its modes of transmission and incubation periodSymptom identification, including the differentiation between influenza, allergic rhinitis, sinusitis and COVID-19Social media myths and misinformationTreatment guidelines and medicines that may need to be kept in stockTreatment and prevention options, including an update on vaccine developmentThe case for and against the use of NSAIDs, ACE-inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) in patients with COVID-19Interventions and patient counselling by the pharmacist.It is critical, though, that pharmacists access the most recent and authoritative information to guide their practice. Key websites that can be relied upon are: World Health Organization (WHO): https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD): https://www.nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-index/covid-19/National Department of Health (NDoH): http://www.health.gov.za/index.php/outbreaks/145-corona-virus-outbreak/465-corona-virus-outbreak; https://sacoronavirus.co.za/

Legal Help Search Audit: Are Search Engines Effective Brokers of Legal Information?

Online search engines are key providers of civic and legal information. Their response to people’s search queries can influence whether and how people make use of the legal system to deal with problems like evictions, domestic violence, debt collection, and natural disasters. This article proposes an audit protocol of how to evaluate how search engines respond to legal help queries. It summarizes the results of a preliminary audit of Google Search’s results for hundreds of people’s common queries around eviction, domestic violence, post-disaster scams, and debt collection lawsuits. This semi-automated analysis provides a quantitative understanding of how search engines provide information to people seeking legal help online. It also provides the data for robust qualitative analysis of the authority and quality of the results. Our initial audit finds that search engines are providing websites that offer generic information about a given legal problem, but often in ways that are not jurisdiction-relevant, nor with specific and actionable local information about how to make use of the legal aid or court system. The most common domains for legal help searches result in links to national commercial sites that offer short, high level articles about the problem area. Commercial, national websites consistently place higher than government, court, and legal aid websites. There are exceptions, particularly for domestic violence-related queries (which result in more national nonprofit and government websites) and for eviction-related queries that include specific reference to the person’s state or city (which result in more state-specific, nonprofit legal help websites). Of particular concern is the search engine’s apparent disregard for the importance of local jurisdictions for legal help information. In many instances, searches from North Florida and Hawaii about legal problems resulted in sites that offered local information from Maine, Oregon, Iowa, and California -- or from Australia, New Zealand, or the UK. Search engines have already addressed similar problems in civic information quality in other areas -- particularly in providing authoritative voting and public health information. Similar strategies may improve the current dysfunctions of legal help searches, to connect people with local, public, authoritative information that can help them resolve their issues around housing, domestic violence, natural disasters, debt, and beyond.

Digital health communication in South Africa during COVID-19

  On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a global pandemic as the world experienced the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to 144 countries (World Health Organisation, 2020a). The disease resulting from the virus – coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) – had already overloaded the health systems of many nations. In South Africa, which confirmed its first positive COVID-19 case on 5 March, the pandemic has resulted in extreme measures to prevent its spread, including a national lockdown and various restrictions on movement. It has also resulted in one of the most widespread health communication campaigns since the HIV epidemic during the 2000s. Terms such as “social distancing” and “flattening the curve” have become part of our communal vocabulary due to the extent of health messaging. The communication on practical preventative solutions, such as hand- washing and alternative greeting practices (Prem et al., 2020), has also been shared widely in an easy-to- understand manner. The WHO specifically emphasises the accurate and timely communication of essential health information as imperative to curbing the spread of the virus, and how important such communication is to shifting behaviours and perceptions (WHO, 2020b). In addition, accurate and authoritative information, which inspires trust, is important in combatting the spread of the virus. This has meant innovation in digital health communication.

Would You Prescribe Mobile Health Apps for Heart Failure Self-care? An Integrated Review of Commercially Available Mobile Technology for Heart Failure Patients.

Treatment of chronic diseases, such as heart failure, requires complex protocols based on early diagnosis; self-monitoring of symptoms, vital signs and physical activity; regular medication intake; and education of patients and caregivers about relevant aspects of the disease. Smartphones and mobile health applications could be very helpful in improving the efficacy of such protocols, but several barriers make it difficult to fully exploit their technological potential and produce clear clinical evidence of their effectiveness. App suppliers do not help users distinguish between useless/dangerous apps and valid solutions. The latter are few and often characterised by rapid obsolescence, lack of interactivity and lack of authoritative information. Systematic reviews can help physicians and researchers find and assess the ‘best candidate solutions’ in a repeatable manner and pave the way for well-grounded and fruitful discussion on their clinical effectiveness. To this purpose, the authors assess 10 apps for heart failure self-care using the Intercontinental Marketing Statistics score and other criteria, discuss the clinical effectiveness of existing solutions and identify barriers to their use in practice and drivers for change.

Travel restrictions and infectious disease outbreaks.

BackgroundA key purpose of the IHR is to prevent unwarranted interruptions to trade and travel during large and/or transnational infectious disease outbreaks. Nevertheless, such outbreaks continue to disrupt the travel industry. This aspect of the IHR has received little attention in the academic literature despite its considerable impact on affected States and commercial activity. This paper outlines the challenges and gaps in knowledge regarding the relationship between outbreaks and the travel sector and discusses the opportunities for further research and policy work to overcome these challenges.MethodologyWe conducted a literature review on the relationship between outbreaks and travel restrictions, with a particular focus on the 2014–16 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. This review was complemented by an expert roundtable at Chatham House and further supported by case studies and qualitative interviews.ResultsNumerous travel stakeholders are affected by, and affect, large-scale infectious disease outbreaks. These stakeholders react in different ways: peer pressure plays an important role for both governments and the travel sector, and the reactions of the media and public influence and are influenced by these stakeholders. While various data sources on travel are available, and WHO is mandated to work with States, there is no recognised coordinating body to disseminate timely, consistent, reliable and authoritative information and best practices to all stakeholders.ConclusionThis article highlights the interdependent relationship between various travel stakeholders. The reasons for interruption of travel during the 2014–16 Ebola outbreak were complex, with decisions by States only partly contributing to the cessation. Decisions by non-state actors, particularly the travel industry itself, contributed significantly and were based on a variety of factors. Further research, analysis and policy development is required to mitigate the health and economic consequences of infectious disease outbreaks. Any further research will also need to take account of COVID-19 travel related issues.

China’s Foreign Aid to the Middle East: History and Development

As one of the important components of China’s Middle East diplomacy and overall foreign aid, Middle East states have received aid from China since 1954. While the research in this regard is fragmented to a certain extent, the problem of interpretation has become more and more controversial. This paper attempts to review the history of China’s aid to Middle East states through the integration of research data, through three stages of division and analysis of typical forms of aid. This paper finds that the medical teams of foreign aid sent by China in the 1960s and the labour export in the 1970s were developed from the practice of China’s aid to the Middle East states and then extended to other regions. In the early 21st century, China further strengthened its technological cooperation and human resources development cooperation with Middle East states in the new era of rising economic status. This article finds complexities in the role of Middle East states in the field of international aid and the dynamic changes in actual aid needs, due to the lack of authoritative information on relevant regions, total amount of country aid and the amount of funds for each type of aid, as well as the deviations in definitions of ‘aid’ at home and abroad, which has limited Chinese literature on aid to the Middle East.

Language of Warning: The World Scientists' Efforts to Communicate and the Challenge of Poignancy

It’s one thing to issue a clarion cry (or multiple clarion cries), and yet another thing to be heard. The world scientists’ warnings about the direness of our climate predicament have offered detailed, authoritative information about the condition of the planet, but they fall short in the critical area of poignancy. The recent warnings are not the first of their kind—prominent climate scientists have been issuing such documents for decades. And yet even as scientists’ knowledge of planetary systems has become more refined, their attentiveness to the language of warning—and what works and what doesn’t—has not progressed noticeably. Psychologists, communication specialists, and humanities scholars in various disciplines (creative writing, literary studies, philosophy) have long noted that humans are vulnerable to psychic numbing when inundated with abstract information, particularly when this information concerns large-scale phenomena—this includes global climate change. While recognizing the importance of the world scientists’ efforts to evoke an “emergency response,” this article attempts to warn against warnings that do not heed the psychological realities of how the human mind processes data. It is important to calibrate warnings to the sensitivities and insensitivities of human readers. The public cannot heed what it cannot hear.

What’s Really Wrong with Fining Crimes? On the Hard Treatment of Criminal Monetary Fines

Among the advocates of expressive theories of punishment, there is a strong consensus that monetary fines cannot convey the message of censure that is required to punish serious crimes or crimes against the person (e.g., rape). Money is considered an inappropriate symbol to express condemnation. In this article, I argue that this sentiment is correct, although not for the reasons suggested by advocates of expressivism. The monetary day-fine should not be understood as a simple deprivation of money, but as a punishment that reduces the offender’s capacity to consume for a certain period of time. Conceived in this manner, I argue that it is perfectly suitable to convey censure. However, the practical impossibility of ensuring that the person who pays the fine is the same person who has been convicted of the offense seriously undermines the acceptability of the monetary fine as an instrument of censure. Minimizing the risk of the fine’s hard treatment being transferred to third parties is a necessary condition for the monetary fine to be considered a viable alternative to lengthy prison sentences. Please note: The reference list on the abstract page for this paper is automatically generated by a beta feature and may thus contain errors and omissions. Please consult the PDF version of the paper for complete and authoritative reference information.

Resuscitation of a Phantom? On Robert Alexy’s Latest Attempt to Save His Concept of Principle

This paper is my contribution to round three of a long-standing debate between Robert Alexy and me about the principles theory’s concept of principle. In the first round, Alexy – bucking tradition – proposed a non-gradualist distinction between rules and principles that divided the ontology of norms into two categorically distinct norm-types. He connected this norm-theoretical analysis with a theory of fundamental rights according to which such rights had to be understood as principles and thus interpreted as optimization requirements. In my habilitation some 15 years ago, I objected to the norm-theoretical assumptions and questioned the doctrinal merit of the principles theory approach. Unlike Alexy, I saw no merit in his notion of principle over and above optimization requirements, which by that time Alexy, too, regarded as rules. In round two, Alexy defended his concept of principle by taking refuge in the notion of an ideal ought, which he defined as a command to be optimized. In this second round, I criticized the new attempt to save his view of principles on the ground that the norms Alexy had in mind did not optimize commands but states of affairs and thus were ordinary norms or rules according to the misguided taxonomy of the principles theory. Alexy opened round three of our exchange by admitting that my critique of round two was justified and that he had erred in identifying principles as ideal commands to be optimized. He now proposes an index theory of principles. In the paper, I recapitulate the motive and the main points of our debate and scrutinize Alexy’s latest innovation. The goal of my critique is not so much to deconstruct an idiosyncratic norm-theoretical ontology but rather to break the spell that this misguided but in some parts of the world very influential theoretical position exerts on the interpretation of fundamental rights as optimization requirements. Please note: The reference list on the abstract page for this paper is automatically generated by a beta feature and may thus contain errors and omissions. Please consult the PDF version of the paper for complete and authoritative reference information.

Climate Explorer: Improved Access to Local Climate Projections

AbstractThe goal of the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit’s (CRT) Climate Explorer (CE) is to provide information at appropriate spatial and temporal scales to help practitioners gain insights into the risks posed by climate change. Ultimately, these insights can lead to groups of local stakeholders taking action to build their resilience to a changing climate. Using CE, decision-makers can visualize decade-by-decade changes in climate conditions in their county and the magnitude of changes projected for the end of this century under two plausible emissions pathways. They can also check how projected changes relate to user-defined thresholds that represent points at which valued assets may become stressed, damaged, or destroyed. By providing easy access to authoritative information in an elegant interface, the Climate Explorer can help communities recognize—and prepare to avoid or respond to—emerging climate hazards. Another important step in the evolution of CE builds on the purposeful alignment of the CRT with the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s (USGCRP) National Climate Assessment (NCA). By closely linking these two authoritative resources, we envision that users can easily transition from static maps and graphs within NCA reports to dynamic, interactive versions of the same data within CE and other resources within the CRT, which they can explore at higher spatial scales or customize for their own purposes. The provision of consistent climate data and information—a result of collaboration among USGCRP’s federal agencies—will assist decision-making by other governmental entities, nongovernmental organizations, businesses, and individuals.

Специфіка діяльності міжнародних неурядових організацій щодо забезпечення принципу гендерної рівності: досвід для України

The article considers the specifics of the activities of international non-governmental organizations to ensure the gender equality principle. Attention is drawn to the practice of activities of such international non-governmental organizations as: «Gender and Development Network» (GADN), Equality Now, Promundo, which directly fulfill the mission of advocating for women's interests, guaranteeing their equal opportunities with men in all spheres of public life. Women's international non-governmental organizations are best known for two different but often interrelated activities: firstly, it is the provision of services for women in need, and secondly, it is the organization of informational outreach activities and public campaigns to implement the social transformations needed to achieve gender equality. INGOs are important partners of national governments in ensuring gender equality; act as experts, diplomats, advocates for specific issues or groups, protesters and activists; they are involved, for example, in the development of international rules, standards and regulations; use their experience and special authority to inform societies and national governments on particular issues and raise people's awareness about specific problems; promote new ideas and encourage governments to implement them; can act as representatives of national governments in times of crisis; awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for «spreading authoritative information and raising public awareness». Ukraine's positioning in the leading international rankings, which consider gender equality as an integral component, the basis of a democratic society, is examined. It is about such reports as the Human Development Index, the Freedom House Report, the Global Gender Gap Report. It is concluded that, according to the 2020 Global Gender Gap Report, in Ukraine a positive dynamics is observed compared to a similar report for 2014, however, the worst is the situation with the political component (women's participation in decision-making) – 83th place with a value that is almost approaching zero, that is, continuous gender inequality.

A feasibility study of a psycho-educational support intervention for men with prostate cancer on active surveillance.

PROACTIVE is a psycho-educational support intervention for prostate cancer patients managed on Active Surveillance. PROACTIVE is composed of two interdependent components: group workshops and internet-delivered information modules. We conducted a feasibility study to determine the practicality of delivering PROACTIVE at two prostate cancer centres. The feasibility study was a mixed-methods randomized parallel-group exploratory trial. Participants were randomised using a ratio of 3:1 PROACTIVE group to treatment as usual. Qualitative semi-structured interviews and quantitative measures were completed at baseline, intervention completion (week 6), and at 6-month follow-up. Interview transcripts were analysed thematically using Framework analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to examine recruitment and retention rates and changing trends in outcome measures. Most aspects of the research design and PROACTIVE intervention were acceptable to those participating in the study. In particular, participants valued the opportunity to share and discuss experiences with other prostate cancer patients on Active Surveillance and receive detailed authoritative information. However, three issues were identified: (a) a low response rate (13 participants recruited, response rate 16%), (b) low utilisation of internet delivered information modules, (c) self-perceived low levels of anxiety amongst participants with the majority perceiving their cancer as not impacting on their day-to-day life or causing anxiety. Due to these significant research design issues, it is not recommended PROACTIVE be evaluated in a large-scale randomised controlled trial. Further research is required to explore the impact of Active Surveillance on anxiety amongst men with localized prostate cancer managed by Active Surveillance.

Publications

The BSAVA Guide to the Use of Veterinary Medicines is an invaluable resource for veterinary practitioners, providing comprehensive and authoritative information on the use of veterinary medicines in companion animals in the UK. The 2019 version of the Medicines Guide has been comprehensively updated and expanded under the expert direction of the editors, Fred Nind and Pam Mosedale.

A glimpse of Semantic Web trust

Trust management plays a significant role in the Semantic Web for combining authoritative information, fitting the services and increasing data security and user privacy. It helps people to overcome mistrust and fear of risk (for selecting the services) as well as providing reliability for the user to use the Semantic Web services. This paper tries to give an insight regarding different dimensions of Semantic Web trust layer. It will look at trust from four different perspectives, namely policies which can be applied, contents that should be proven, in addition to origins of acquired information or services. Finally, due to emergence of Semantic Web of things, the trust model and management within distributed systems will be reviewed.