Defining Metabolic Syndrome: Which Kind of Causality, if any, is Required?

Preoperative hemostatic evaluation: which tests, if any?

W HEN THE WHOLE BLOOD clotting time and the Duke bleeding time were the tests used to screen hemostatic function preoperatively, the question posed in the title of this brief review was easy to answer: Do not bother with these insensitive tests, rely on the patient’s history. However, the reliability today of screening techniques that can detect virtually all patients with hemostatic abnormalit...

What is episodic memory if it is a natural kind?

Is there any kind of adaptive immunity in invertebrates?

The possible existence of a peculiar form of adaptive immunity in invertebrates is important for a better understanding of immunological evolution and for the development of vaccination strategies. These may be relevant in the control of infectious diseases, common under intensive farming of economically important crustaceans. Adaptive immunity has been assumed to be absent Ž . Ž . from inverte...

Which kind of psychometrics is adequate for patient satisfaction questionnaires?

The construction and psychometric analysis of patient satisfaction questionnaires are discussed. The discussion is based upon the classification of multi-item questionnaires into scales or indices. Scales consist of items that describe the effects of the latent psychological variable to be measured, and indices consist of items that describe the causes of this variable. Whether patient satisfac...

How Much Mathematics Is Hardwired, If Any at All

The investigation of mathematical cognition in developmental psychology has been primarily confined to the study of numerical cognition— basic facts involving quantity, such as the acquisition of number words and some competences for numerical estimation and calculation. But mathematics is much more than simple counting numbers and basic arithmetic. Mathematics, seen by many as the queen of sci...