Prior Decisions Research Articles

Maintenance of Maternal Breastfeeding up to 6 Months: Predictive Models.

Background: There is evidence of the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) but maintaining EBF for the minimum recommended time of 6 months is challenging. Aims: This study aimed to determine the prevalence of breastfeeding types in a Spanish setting, explore the influencing factors, and analyze the relationships between the reasons for EBF cessation and the EBF durations achieved. Method: This longitudinal descriptive study included 236 healthy children with standard weight followed up by the public health system. A baseline survey and three telephone interviews (1, 3, and 6 months) were conducted. Results: The prevalence of EBF at 6 months was 19.49%. The mean age of the mothers was 32.3 (±5.3). The variables influencing EBF maintenance were the prior decision to practice EBF (p = 0.03), the belief that EBF is sufficient (p = 0.00), not offering water or fluid to the child (p = 0.04), delaying pacifier use (p < 0.001), a longer gestation time (p = 0.05), and previous experience with practicing EBF for more than 6 months (p = 0.00). The reason for the earliest EBF cessation (mean 52.63 ± 56.98 days) was the mother’s lack of self-efficacy (p = 0.05). Conclusion: Knowing the reasons for EBF cessation among mothers is important for helping mothers and preventing early weaning. A safe environment and support can prevent early weaning.

The Influence of Nation-Level Institutions on Acquisition Premiums: A Cross-Country Comparative Study

We build on neo-institutional theory to examine the manner in which nation-level institutions systematically affect domestic acquisitions—that is, acquisitions involving acquirers and targets from the same country. Specifically, we study in what way premiums are influenced through a set of cognitive, normative, and regulatory forces. In terms of cognitive pressures, we theorize that prior premium decisions of industry peers in the same country influence focal acquisition premiums, since prior premium decisions serve as reference frames for firms. In addition, we posit that normative forces in the form of the national cultural values of uncertainty avoidance, future orientation, and in-group collectivism affect bid premiums, as these factors influence the manner in which firms deal with the uncertainty, payoff time, and merger of groups inherent to acquisitions. Furthermore, we propose that a country’s regulatory pressures through its disclosure requirements influence premiums, since they reduce information asymmetries and affect a firm’s confidence in assessing its potential gains from acquisitions. Using a sample of domestic acquisitions, we find support for several of the hypotheses. Our work offers a cross-country comparative study of how nation-level institutions affect domestic bid premiums and makes theoretical contributions to acquisition premium research and institutional theory.

Adaptive Correspondence Experiments

Correspondence experiments probe for discrimination by manipulating employer perceptions of applicant characteristics. We consider the gains from dynamically adapting the number and quality of fictitious applications each employer receives to their prior callback decisions. Calibrating employer behavior to experimental data from Nunley et al. (2015), we find that it is possible to cut the number of applications required to detect a fixed number of discriminators roughly in half relative to a benchmark design with a fixed number of applications per job. These gains are achieved primarily from abandoning jobs with very low callback probabilities and those that call back Black applicants.

The Importance of Qualitative Research Approaches to Gig Economy Taxation

As the United States tax system continues to grapple with how to tax workers in the gig economy, it confronts a number of questions about the nature and composition of the sector as well as the tax issues confronted by its participants. Many of these questions have proven difficult to answer due to a lack of adequate information. But the answers are important and will shape how tax and other areas of law (such as employment law, labor law, and antitrust) respond to the gig economy. Thus, the question of how to obtain the data and information necessary to formulate sound policies for gig work is vital. This chapter discusses the limitations of quantitative empirical research on the gig economy and argues that incorporating more qualitative approaches will help generate a more comprehensive understanding of the tax policy issues involved. Adoption of a diverse set of research approaches is crucial because the administrative tax return and labor survey data are incomplete and are shaped by prior decisions of gig economy firms and participants. Many questions remain that such quantitative data, by its very nature, cannot answer. This chapter first identifies the key tax issues at stake in the gig economy, including tax administration, worker classification, and tax impacts on workforce decisions. It then discusses the key ways in which quantitative approaches do not fully capture the tax issues at stake. Finally, it details how qualitative research methods such as interviews and case studies can flesh out gaps in the quantitative data, can help interpret quantitative data, and can help answer questions that extend beyond the scope of quantitative data, yielding a richer account of gig economy tax issues than that provided by quantitative tax administrative and labor survey data alone.

An EEMD-BiLSTM Algorithm Integrated with Boruta Random Forest Optimiser for Significant Wave Height Forecasting along Coastal Areas of Queensland, Australia

Using advanced deep learning (DL) algorithms for forecasting significant wave height of coastal sea waves over a relatively short period can generate important information on its impact and behaviour. This is vital for prior planning and decision making for events such as search and rescue and wave surges along the coastal environment. Short-term 24 h forecasting could provide adequate time for relevant groups to take precautionary action. This study uses features of ocean waves such as zero up crossing wave period (Tz), peak energy wave period (Tp), sea surface temperature (SST) and significant lags for significant wave height (Hs) forecasting. The dataset was collected from 2014 to 2019 at 30 min intervals along the coastal regions of major cities in Queensland, Australia. The novelty of this study is the development and application of a highly accurate hybrid Boruta random forest (BRF)–ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD)–bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) algorithm to predict significant wave height (Hs). The EEMD–BiLSTM model outperforms all other models with a higher Pearson’s correlation (R) value of 0.9961 (BiLSTM—0.991, EEMD-support vector regression (SVR)—0.9852, SVR—0.9801) and comparatively lower relative mean square error (RMSE) of 0.0214 (BiLSTM—0.0248, EEMD-SVR—0.043, SVR—0.0507) for Cairns and similarly a higher Pearson’s correlation (R) value of 0.9965 (BiLSTM—0.9903, EEMD–SVR—0.9953, SVR—0.9935) and comparatively lower RMSE of 0.0413 (BiLSTM—0.075, EEMD-SVR—0.0481, SVR—0.057) for Gold Coast.

V-SOINN: A topology preserving visualization method for multidimensional data

Data visualization plays an important role in data analysis by displaying data to observers in an interpretable way. Visualizing multidimensional data requires projecting the data into a low-dimensional space that is visible to humans. In this paper, we propose a neural network model that can generate such projections while preserving the topology relationships within data points, which is named Visible Self Organizing Incremental Neural Network (V-SOINN). V-SOINN is able to construct a topology preserving visible network automatically and classify visible nodes to different classes in the low-dimensional space. The thought of topology preserving visualization stems from Self-Organizing Map (SOM). Compared to SOM, the main advantage of V-SOINN is that it does not need prior decision of network structure, including the number of nodes and grid in the output layer. V-SOINN can show the density distribution of datasets by using the activation counts of datasets. V-SOINN is able to depict the number of classes in the low-dimensional space as well. We perform experiments on artificial and real-world datasets, and V-SOINN outperforms PCA, MDS, t-SNE, Neural Gas and SOM on the datasets. Experiments show that V-SOINN can preserve the topology and V-SOINN can produce the correct classification result when the number of samples is small.

Judges as Party Animals: Retirement Timing by Federal Judges and Party Control of Judicial Appointments

Longstanding debate over the Politicized Departure Hypothesis (PDH) asserts that federal judges arrange to retire under presidents of the same political party as the presidents who first appointed them, thereby giving that party the right to nominate their successor. PDH is important for assessing political party agency by judges, who receive no consequent personal benefit, and for explaining the long-term political party orientation of courts. Previous PDH studies suffer from absent data on known and unknown determinants of retirement timing and correlational rather than causal methods. To avoid both problems, we apply 11 sharp regression discontinuity (SRD) analyses to voluntary judicial departures before and after six elections (1920-2016) that replaced Democratic presidents with Republicans and five elections that replaced Republicans with Democrats. We contrast judicial decisions to retire, resign, or take senior status during the days before a regime-changing election with such decisions during an equal number of days after the inauguration of a president from the other party, with tests performed for periods approximating 6, 9, 12, 18 and 24 months. For pre-election and post-inauguration observation periods of 270 days, for example, the results of 10 of 11 analyses, including difference tests and difference-in-difference tests, are as predicted by PDH: judges were more likely to retire when the same party holds the presidency as when they were first appointed to the federal bench. Serendipitously, judges appointed by Republican presidents appear to respond more strongly than Democratic appointees to changes in the party holding the White House. We offer a novel explanation of PDH based on normative reciprocity in addition to ideology. We also suggest using politicized departure to examine effects of former judges’ political party agency on their prior judicial decisions.

Abstract PS8-22: Augmentation of a minimal multidisciplinary tumor board with clinical decision support to triage breast cancer patients in the UK

Abstract BackgroundAll UK cancer patients undergo required assessments by a full Multidisciplinary Tumor Board (fMTB) at key treatment decision points, placing a resource burden on the healthcare system. Watson for Oncology (WfO) is a decision-support system that presents therapeutic options to cancer-treating clinicians. This study is an initial phase of an evaluation at Guys and St. Thomas’ NHS Hospital (GSTT), designed to explore the extent to which WfO can be used by the fMTB to triage less complex patient cases and ultimately reduce workload and time pressures currently experienced by fMTBs. We conducted a concordance study with two minimal MTB teams (mMTB) for Stage I-III breast cancer patients. MethodsBreast cancer cases (N=63) treated from 2017-2018 at GSTT were evaluated by 2 independent mMTBs, blinded to each other and previous fMTB decisions rendered prior to this study. Each mMTB consisted of a senior medical oncologist and surgeon; GSTT’s 12+ member fMTB is comprised of oncologists, surgeons, radiologists, pathologists and others. mMTBs were shown options that were either listed as ‘recommended’ or ‘for consideration’ by WfO and given the opportunity to revise prior decisions. The combined 4-person minimal MTB (cmMTB) consisting of both 2-person mMTBs provided a current consensus best-practice plan and systemic therapy recommendations for discordant cases. We evaluated the concordance of WfO’s systemic therapeutic recommendations and mMTBs, as well as concordance with the cmMTB. Previous decisions by the fMDTB were also compared to decisions by the cmMTB. Univariate logistic regression explored characteristics predictive of concordance with the cmMTB. ResultsFor treatment plans, WFO’s therapeutic options had higher concordance with cmMTB decisions than either mMTB alone (concordance 93.7% vs. 92.1%) or the previous decisions by the fMTB (87.3). For systemic therapy decisions, the WfO-cmMDTB concordance was 70.2%; however, adjusting for non-NICE approved drugs and the common practice of Carboplatin use in the UK, concordance increased to 91.5%. Previous decisions by the fMTB had the lowest concordance with the cmMTB (87.3%). Adjusting for the UK-practice related use of Carboplatin, WfO had slightly higher concordance with cmMTB systemic therapy decisions than either mMTB alone (89.4% and 87.2%). Univariate analysis with this limited sample revealed non-significant trends in association between mMTB’s concordance with WfO and stage of cN at diagnosis, HER2 status, tumor location and grade. For example, mMTBs concordance with WfO tended to improve when tumor grade was high. Non-significant trends were also identified in the association between WfO-treatment concordance and tumor location, where treatment concordance increased with medial tumor location. ConclusionIn this small cohort study, a clinical decision-support tool demonstrated better agreement with UK best practice treatment than a 2-person mMTB and may have a role in triaging breast cancer cases in the UK. Citation Format: Hartmut Kristeleit, Martha Martin, Christina Karampera, Rezzan Hekmat, Bertha IntHout, Ashutosh Kothari, Majid Kazmi, Amanda Clery, Yanzhong Wang, Bolaji Coker, Winnie Felix, Anita Preininger, Suwei Wang, Roy Vergis, Tom Eggebraaten, Christopher Gloe, Irene Dankwa-Mullan, Gretchen Jackson, Anna Rigg, Danny Ruta. Augmentation of a minimal multidisciplinary tumor board with clinical decision support to triage breast cancer patients in the UK [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2020 San Antonio Breast Cancer Virtual Symposium; 2020 Dec 8-11; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2021;81(4 Suppl):Abstract nr PS8-22.

The Building Blocks of Clinical Experience: JOSPT Cases

Welcome, readers, to the first issue of JOSPT Cases. Its publisher, JOSPT, Inc, recognized your need and requests for clinically relevant, case-based content and has responded with this quarterly online journal focused on how clinicians apply research to practice every day. While patients present with similar diagnoses, there is always a unique story to tell. Each patient interaction is a building block. A clinician's collective knowledge and past experience must always translate to the patient. Indeed, we are only as good as how well we treated the latest patient and summarized our prior decision making ‘in the moment.’ JOSPT Cases 2021;1(1):1–2. doi:10.2519/josptcases.2021.0101

Are arbitrators biased in ICSID arbitration? A dynamic perspective

Concerns over arbitrator impartiality and independence in ICSID arbitration have led to reform proposals geared towards a multilateral investment court. Due to the ad hoc nature of appointments, it has been suggested that arbitrators may strategically render decisions in biased ways with the goal of encouraging reappointments. Although criticism against arbitrator bias has attracted significant attention, so far limited empirical evidence has been provided to support such concerns. This paper introduces a dynamic perspective to examine concerns of bias arising from ad hoc appointment. I find that contrary to conventional views held by critics of investor-state arbitration, on average, arbitrators tend to decide against their reputation from prior decisions in ICSID arbitration, which implies an effort to establish a reputation for being neutral and unbiased. This finding challenges one of the premises of proposals to replace arbitration with an investment court.

How to Treat The WTO's Problem with Precedent

This Article argues that the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body (AB), or a successor body, must become more transparent in justifying its decision to rely (or not) on prior decisions. The AB’s practice of precedent — which the United States cited as a cause of its decision to paralyze the AB by blocking new appointments — is similar to how it has approached “likeness” in nondiscrimination cases. It placed a lot of weight on whether two cases (or products) are sufficiently similar to be compared, and it spent relatively less time substantively justifying its treatment of prior cases. Because the WTO does not have a system of stare decisis, the AB and WTO panels generally must explain why they find prior decisions persuasive, rather than simply relying on similarity to justify carrying prior interpretations forward. The Article begins by examining and evaluating the results of a new study from Jeffrey Kucik and Sergio Puig, the first study to use a large dataset to study the AB’s use of precedent. The Article then advances a framework for how WTO dispute panels should evaluate the relevance of prior cases in future disputes. The proposed approach would treat the comparison of cases as merely a threshold inquiry. If two cases are sufficiently alike and one party contests the applicability of the prior decision, then a tribunal must substantively justify its treatment of the prior decision in light of a variety of factors. In some instances, the result may be that the AB or a panel acknowledges that a prior interpretation was wrong and should not be followed. Openly analyzing the persuasive value of prior cases, and acknowledging when those cases should not be followed, would better promote the goals of relying on prior decisions — promoting predictability, transparency, and coherence in the law’s application — as compared to deference to prior decisions based only on the similarity of two disputes.

A Perspective on the Historical Developments of Case Law Principles Related to Terra Nullius in Courts in the Common Law Jurisdictions

Although international lawyers are very familiar with the concept of occupation as one of the modes of territorial acquisition by sovereign states, it is not easy for them to pinpoint the nature of such concept. When the Christian states in the Western Europe rushed in for the competition of expanding their territories through colonization, they thought that they had a right to acquire newly discovered territories because those lands belonged to no other foreign states, that is, terra nullius. However, there were natives occupying those lands well before the European settlement, Many courts in the jurisdictions influenced by the English common law decided that such natives did not have proprietary and possessory rights in land. In 1823, the U.S. Federal Supreme Court differentiated the law of the nations and the law applicable to the Indians in the North America. The Court characterized the Indian title to land as usufructuary to the effect that it burdened the British Crown land. In 1888, the Privy Council of the British Empire decided that the effects of the Indian titles to land continued until the lands of the native Indians were transferred by cession or sale to the Government of Canada. In 1992, the highest court of Australia slightly changed its attitudes towards the common law principles on terra nullius by deciding that its prior decisions as to the land title of the natives were no longer sustainable because of their discriminatory and racial nature. The underlying concept of terra nullius still lingers on in judgments by the courts in Canada. In 2014, the highest court of Canada reaffirmed their long line of decisions reflecting jurisprudence of the English common law developed by the British Empire. The World knows that there are no such thing as terra nullius. However, the colonialism arising out of the concept of terra nullius still haunts in the states whose territories were based on the lands of native occupants.

The dynamics of SME growth processes and the role of enabling constraints: an evidence-based theoretical framework

PurposeThis paper aims to explain the dynamics of entrepreneurial decisions and actions (D&As) in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) growth process. The study focuses on the changing portfolio and relationship governance and captures these dynamics by using the concept of “enabling constraints” (ECs).Design/methodology/approachIn-depth, long-term and multiple-case study method was adopted based on six high-growth SMEs. Pattern-matching and alternative template approach formed a basis for developing a research framework, further corroborated and advanced in the empirical study.FindingsThe research provides empirical evidence of ECs as entrepreneurial perceptions that both limit (constrain) the range of accessible options and facilitate (enable) new opportunities. This study’s results point to how owner-managers' judgments about growth motives and rationales constrain their choices and how they enable new directions, acknowledging the changing context.Originality/valueThis work contributes to the research on SME growth processes by specifying their dynamics in terms of a creative mutual causality. Here, D&As stem from entrepreneurs' perceptions that are affected by the context, with the latter also shaped by prior decisions and actions. This theoretical contribution has been synthesized in the form of a framework of ECs in the SME growth process with related propositions.

An Empirical Study Comparing Patent Validity Challenges at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board vs. the Federal District Courts

Using an originally-constructed database of over 12,000 patent decisions heard at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) and over 75,000 patent law decisions heard by the federal district courts from 2012 through October 2020, this Article analyzes the interplay between the two forums in how patent validity claims are adjudicated, particularly focusing on inter partes review (“IPR”). Reviewing over 7,500 patents assessed at the PTAB over the past six years of the adjudicative tribunal’s existence, the Article analyzes whether there are differences in institution rates and final outcomes depending on the type of patentee owner, the technology type, and whether or not there is a prior or past district court case and decision. While about 80% of PTAB proceedings involve a patent that has or is being litigated in at least one district court, there are only about 2,000 PTAB cases in which the district court has ruled on invalidity grounds. Further, in most cases that do involve a PTAB proceeding, the district court rules a patent invalid based on lack of statutory subject matter—a legal challenge that cannot even be brought in an IPR proceeding. Comparing district court cases where the court rules on eligible PTAB statutory sections—namely obviousness and anticipation grounds—indicates preliminarily that the district court and the PTAB largely agree on outcomes. Overall, this empirical research contributes to the debate about how the patent system—and in particular, the practices at the PTAB—should be reformed, and about the role that the administrative state has in patent policy and in influencing outcomes in the federal courts. Specifically, it questions whether the grounds for PTAB proceedings should be enlarged to encompass challenges based on section 101 subject matter issues.

Estimating Tropical cyclone intensity using a deep belief network

The estimation of cyclone intensity is done by deep belief neural network in this paper. The cyclone estimation is useful for marine warnings and landfall evacuation planning so that prior decision can be taken. The satellite image is preprocessed and the noise is removed with median filtering. This model gives better accuracy and the algorithm converges earlier to reduce root mean square error. The hurricane or tropical cyclone causes a low pressure center, strong wind, thunderstorm and rain. The destruction of the cyclone depends on the intensity and location. The existing systems have a drawback of giving same pattern for the cyclones having same intensity. But the proposed model estimates the intensity for all regions.

This Time Is Different: On Similarity and Risk Taking After Experienced Gains and Losses

How do past experiences of losses or gains affect risk taking? Research shows inconsistent effects of prior outcomes on risk taking. To resolve these inconsistencies we propose a similarity-based theory of how past outcomes could affect decisions: Only past situations similar to the current situation affect decisions. Consistent with the similarity theory, the results of a preregistered experiment show that the less similar a prior decision situation is on task-relevant dimensions, the weaker its effect on the current decision. In sum, incorporating similarity into decision-making theory provides a cognitively based explanation of how past experiences influence current decisions under risk.

Derivation and Application of the Subjective–Objective Probability Relationship from Entropy: The Entropy Decision Risk Model (EDRM)

The uncertainty, or entropy, of an atom of an ideal gas being in a certain energy state mirrors the way people perceive uncertainty in the making of decisions, uncertainty that is related to unmeasurable subjective probability. It is well established that subjects evaluate risk decisions involving uncertain choices using subjective probability rather than objective, which is usually calculated using empirically derived decision weights, such as those described in Prospect Theory; however, an exact objective–subjective probability relationship can be derived from statistical mechanics and information theory using Kullback–Leibler entropy divergence. The resulting Entropy Decision Risk Model (EDRM) is based upon proximity or nearness to a state and is predictive rather than descriptive. A priori EDRM, without factors or corrections, accurately aligns with the results of prior decision making under uncertainty (DMUU) studies, including Prospect Theory and others. This research is a first step towards the broader effort of quantifying financial, programmatic, and safety risk decisions in fungible terms, which applies proximity (i.e., subjective probability) with power utility to evaluate choice preference of gains, losses, and mixtures of the two in terms of a new parameter referred to as Prospect. To facilitate evaluation of the EDRM against prior studies reported in terms of the percentage of subjects selecting a choice, the Percentage Evaluation Model (PEM) is introduced to convert choice value results into subject response percentages, thereby permitting direct comparison of a utility model for the first time.

Extending Trade Law Precedent

Precedent is celebrated as a fundamental feature of dense legal systems as it creates predictability, builds coherence, and enhances the authority of courts and tribunals. But, in international adjudication, precedent can also affect interstate cooperation and ultimately the legitimacy of international organizations. Wary of this, most international dispute settlement systems are designed so that rulings do not set obligatory precedent. In this Article, we describe the role of precedent in the Appellate Body (AB) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to explain how precedent can affect compliance with the decisions of international courts and tribunals (ICs). We make two main contributions. First, we show that there can be precedent without a formal stare decisis rule. In theory the AB has a rule against binding precedent. Based on empirical evidence, however, we show that the AB has in fact a strong norm of relying on prior decisions. Second, we show that over time, the widening of legal commitments can result from extending precedent to new situations and this has an impact on the ability or willingness of states to comply. Our findings have implications for the WTO and beyond. For the WTO, we note that efforts to better define the value of precedent is unlikely to resolve the general mistrust of the AB and therefore, we propose other solutions to control the drift resulting from precedent. Beyond the WTO, we note that international scholars should account for the inter-temporal dimension of legal commitments in analyzing and explaining compliance with international law.

Should Children Pay for Their Parent’s Sins? The Sumal Preliminary Reference

While EU competition rules are addressed at ‘undertakings’, a notion that denotes economic rather than legal entities, their enforcement requires the identification and imputation of one or more legal persons. The pending Sumal preliminary reference seeks guidance on whether a follow-on claim may be directed against an affiliate of the legal entity identified in the prior decision of the Commission. The questions before the Court are expected to clarify the power of national courts to attribute liability to legal entities when enforcing a decision in the field of competition law.

Should Children Pay for Their Parent’s Sins? The Sumal Preliminary Reference

While EU competition rules are addressed at ‘undertakings’, a notion that denotes economic rather than legal entities, their enforcement requires the identification and imputation of one or more legal persons. The pending Sumal preliminary reference seeks guidance on whether a follow-on claim may be directed against an affiliate of the legal entity identified in the prior decision of the Commission. The questions before the Court are expected to clarify the power of national courts to attribute liability to legal entities when enforcing a decision in the field of competition law.