Consensual Procedures Research Articles

Advances and Prospects for Molecular Diagnostics of Fungal Infections

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) methods published for the diagnosis of invasive fungal infections are still not included in the revised European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer/Invasive Fungal Infections Cooperative Group and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Mycoses Study Group (EORTC/MSG) Consensus Group definitions of IA. This could be achieved with consensual PCR procedures. A checklist of items has been proposed to improve the reliability of the results and clinicians' confidence in them, with emphasis on limiting false-positive results from contamination with either previously amplified products or environmental commensals. Internal amplification controls are mandatory to expose false-negative results. However, our ignorance of the origin and the kinetics of fungal DNA during an infection hamper the choice of the best specimen and DNA extraction protocol. Evidence is increasing that serum could be a good compromise between sensitivity and ease of DNA extraction. Once a technical consensus is achieved, clinical studies should be initiated to integrate quantitative PCR in the diagnostic armamentarium.

Do Institutions Matter? What are the Effects of an Imposed Merger of Municipalites in Comparison to a Locally Initiated Merger of Municipalities?

The character of procedures influences the adopted decisions and the ultimate effects of their implementation. Some procedures of decisionmaking are horizontal and stress consensus. Other procedures are vertical, stress advocacy and the open voicing of criticism. The central issue both in politics and in academia is: Are adversarial procedures of decision making more attractive in terms of both proces and ultimate outcomes than consensual procedures? Following Janis (Groupthink, 1982) adversarial procedures stimulating open debate are referable. Available informatie is better attended to. However Lijphart (Patterns of Democracy, 1999) stresses the importance of consensual procedures seeking broad consensus in areas of deep social conflict. Since 2002 in the province South-Holland both types of procedures ware used in deciding on mergers of municipalities. In the mergers of Westland (2004) and Leidschendam-Voorburg (2002) decentral and consensual procedures were followed by the municipalities themselves. In the case of Teylingen (2006) and Zwijndrecht (2003) vertical and unilateral procedures were used by the province. So a natural field experiment was arranged. Early 2008 the province of South-Holland commissioned an evaluation study. In the first round of our evaluation 123 informants participating in the four mergerprocedures were asked to look back and express their judgements on process quality. In the next round we asked 196 officials working in the four new merged muncipalities to assess the quality of the municipalities on seven dimensions of local government in comparison to the situation before the merger. This experimental design made it possible to draw conclusions on the effects of procedures. The proposals resulting from the two adversarial procedures are relatively moderate, and now that these propasals are implemented the newly merged municipalities are functioning relatively well. The proposals following the consensual procedure are quite ambitious, and now that the ambitious mergers are carried through most expectations are not yet met.

The Scope of IMF Conditionality

International organizations are governed by two parallel sets of rules: formal rules, which embody consensual procedures, and informal rules, which allow exceptional access for powerful countries. A new data set drawn from the IMF's records of conditionality provides an opportunity to study the bargaining process within an important international organization and answer questions about the institution's autonomy. I find evidence of U.S. influence, which operates to constrain conditionality, but only in important countries that are vulnerable enough to be willing to draw on their influence with the United States. In ordinary countries under ordinary circumstances, broad authority is delegated to the IMF, which adjusts conditionality to accommodate local circumstances and domestic political opposition. The IMF has refrained from exploiting the vulnerability of particular countries to maximize the scope of conditionality.

Intérêt de l’imagerie hybride TEMP-TDM dans l’exploration des infections

Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography-Computerized Tomography (SPECT-CT) is a new hybrid technique which offers new diagnostical capabilities in daily nuclear medicine practice. This technique not only allows to acquire fusioned anatomic and functional images in the same time, but also, it increases sensitivity and accuracy of SPECT thanks to attenuation and scattering corrections got from transmission data. Until now, SPECT-CT data have been mainly obtained in oncology and cardiology, but now, many authors use it in many scan studies and particularly for infectious diseases. In inflammatory bowel diseases, SPECT-CT seems to increase diagnostical performances and to modify management of many patients. In suspected vascular sepsis, SPECT-CT could increase sensitivity of white blood cell scintigraphy but also its specificity thanks to spatial resolution of CT. In osteoarticular sepsis, SPECT-CT has the advantage to distinguish osteomyelitis from soft tissue infection and to guide biopsies. Nevertheless, in the light of PET-CT works, SPECT-CT development will probably modify nuclear medicine practice and many studies have to be conducted to highlight consensual procedure guidelines.

Peter Emerson, ed., Designing an All-Inclusive Democracy: Consensual Voting Procedures For Use in Parliaments, Councils and Committees

Peter Emerson, ed., Designing an All-Inclusive Democracy: Consensual Voting Procedures For Use in Parliaments, Councils and Committees

Alternative Dispute Resolution - Applications in the Upstream Sector

Published in Oil & Gas Executive Report, Volume 2, Number 2, 1999, pages 36-40. In recent years, various methods of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)have found increasing favor among participants in the oil and gas industry. Many legal instruments and agreements governing industry practice today routinely contain provisions that contemplate resolution of disputes without resort to the judicial system. For the most part, the contracting parties negotiate the range of issues that these provisions address. To draft or implement such a provision effectively, these parties must thoroughly understand the forces that may cause a disputant (or a potential disputant) to choose to resolve a dispute outside a court of law. This article examines some of these forces in the context of disputes that commonly arise in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry. Mediation and Arbitration ADR can be broadly defined as the use of a neutral third party to facilitate resolution of disputes outside a formal court of law. This definition encompasses a wide range of procedures that can be used separately or in various combinations. The principal distinguishing factor among these procedures is whether the neutral third party has the power to impose a solution on the parties or merely acts to assist them in arriving at their own solution. The former type of procedure is called adjudicative, while the latter is called consensual. The most prevalent type of consensual procedure is mediation. In mediation, the parties submit a dispute to a third-party neutral, or mediator, who assists them, privately and collectively, in identifying the issues in dispute and in developing settlement proposals to address these issues. The mediator is not, however, empowered to impose a settlement on the parties. A typical mediation procedure might involve submission by the parties of premediation briefs to the mediator. These briefs typically set forth the essence of the dispute and each party's position. At the mediation session, the mediator typically gives each party the opportunity to develop his or her position through oral presentation. The mediator then meets privately with each party and provides an evaluation of the dispute, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses in each party's respective position.

Specific Contributions of Politics, Economics, and Toxicology in Setting Socially Consensual Limit Values

/ Limit values are legal limits for the concentrations of substances in the environment. They must be agreed upon in a consensual procedure between science, economics/technology, and political forces. This is a crucial political precondition for their social acceptance. The arguments put forward to justify their expediency and numerical level are based not only on risk-benefit considerations but also on the aspect of the technical avoidability of direct and indirect exposure. The critical assessment of the direct benefit of specified exposures falls within the responsibility of economics/technology, whereas criteria for their potential adverse effects (direct and indirect) are provided by medicine/biochemistry and/or ecology. Within this concept, the avoidance of nonbeneficial-even if not openly adverse-exposure is the essential aim of environmental hygiene and should be promoted by politics/science. In general, society or segments thereof reject adverse, accept beneficial, and tolerate unavoidable exposure. Conflicts of interest arise when different groups of society simultaneously define a given exposure as being adverse, beneficial, and unavoidable. Therefore, from the viewpoint of society as a whole, an optimal exposure lies as far as reasonably achievable at a level lower than known or plausible adverse effect thresholds (as defined by toxicology or ecology). This optimal level of exposure must be determined using a transparent and, hence, public procedure.KEY WORDS: Legal limit values; Benefit threshold; Social acceptance; Social tolerability; Adverse effect threshold; Avoidable exposure; Tolerance threshold; Environmental hygiene

COMPLAINANT‐RESPONDENT DIFFERENCES IN PROCEDURAL CHOICE

This research concerned preference and choice among six procedures commonly used to resolve disputes. Two experiments revealed that, compared to complainants, respondents liked inaction and disliked arbitration. However, the most striking findings concerned general preferences among the procedures: consensual procedures (negotiation, mediation, and advisory‐arbitration) were best liked, followed by arbitration, with inaction and struggle least liked. Further analysis suggested that perceptions of self‐interest and societal norms underlie these procedural preferences, with the latter perceptions apparently more important. An examination of choices among the procedures revealed that negotiation was by far the most common first choice of action. If negotiation failed to resolve the conflict, the following escalative sequence of actions was typically endorsed: mediation, then advisory arbitration, then arbitration, and finally struggle.

Rational consensual procedure: Argumentation or weighted averaging?

The following is a defense of Jurgen Habermas' argumentational consensual procedure against Keith Lehrer and Carl Wagner's weighted averaging consensual procedure (and, I tentatively claim, against any weighted averaging consensual procedure). The argument is twofold: if Lehrer and Wagner intend, implicity, to replace what is for Habermas the metatheoretical stage of a discussion with the aggregation of judgments of respect, then their procedure fails to make use of all available information and the participants are not committed to the weighted average position on these grounds; if, on the other hand, they do not intend to replace metatheoretical discussion by aggregation, then the conditions under which the discussion could conceivably have come to a halt are such as to provide no support for the claim that it is rational to aggregate, rather than to consider the discussion unresolved until more information is available.