Differences in treatment effects between centers in a multi-center trial may be important. These differences represent treatment by subgroup interaction. Peto defines qualitative interaction (QI) to occur when the simple treatment effect in one subgroup has a different sign than in another subgroup: this interaction is important. Interaction where the treatment effects are of the same sign in a...

The goal of Qualitative Mechanics (QNI) is to produce a common sense theory of mechanical analysis sufficient to describe the behavior of rigid body mechanisms . In order for machines to reason about manipulation of objects in the physical world we need to develop theories of mechanics sufficiently flexible to describe not only common mechanisms such as the gear trains, pistons, and ratchets, b...

‘Sharing of statistical strength’ is a phrase often employed in machine learning and signal processing. In sensor networks, for example, missing signals from certain sensors may be predicted by exploiting their correlation with observed signals acquired from other sensors [1]. For humans, our hands move synchronously with our legs, and we can exploit these implicit correlations for predicting n...

An important problem for mechanism design and analysis is reasoning about the relationship between object shapes and their kinematic function. Such reasoning is difficult because of the unstructured influence of the shapes’ metric dimensions. In this paper, we show how a qualitative kinematic analysis can be based solely on symbolic reasoning and evaluation of predicates on metric dimensions. T...

BACKGROUND Dry eye is a common problem that affects many people worldwide, reducing quality of life and impacting daily activities. A qualitative approach often used in medicine and other disciplines is used to evaluate how people with dry eye cope with this impact. METHODS Six focus group sessions were conducted at the Singapore National Eye Centre (SNEC), premises of an eye research institu...

The research field of technology acceptance and software acceptance is a fertile field in the discipline of MIS. Acceptance research is mainly affected by the technology acceptance model (TAM). The TAM is counted as the major guideline for acceptance research. But recently more researchers discover the deficits of former acceptance research. The main cause of the criticism is the focus on quant...

INTRODUCTION Reflexology is the systematic practice of applying some pressure to particular points on the feet and hands to impact on health of related parts of the body. OBJECTIVE To explore the practitioners' perspectives of reflexology in Malaysia. METHODS Data was collected using face-to-face semi-structured interviews with practitioners in Malaysia. The interviews were conducted in the...

As a communication vehicle among stakeholders, software architecture gives the entire view of the system’s major components, the behaviour of those components as visible to the rest of the system, and the ways in which these components interact and coordinate to achieve the system’s goal. The architecture determines the non-functional attributes of software systems that are built into quality m...

abstract background: chronic illnesses such as coronary heart disease are among the most prevalent and costly of all global health problems. coronary heart disease is a leading cause of death worldwide, including iran. one aspect of living with chronic illness is self-management which can reduce the impact of illness on daily life and maintain the quality of life. a qualitative understanding of...

This paper introduces a new approach to the conceptual design of mechanical systems from qualitative speciications of behaviour. The power of the approach stems from the integration of techniques in qualitative physics and constraint programming. We illustrate the approach with an eeective kinematic synthesis method that reasons with qualitative representations of connguration spaces using cons...