In this paper, we explore the idea of simulated experimental analysis for challenge scenarios in robotics using the search and secure problem from the Multi Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge (MAGIC). The MAGIC problem requires a team of heterogeneous robots to locate, classify, and secure a number of targets in an urban environment with indoor and outdoor areas. We introduce a f...

BACKGROUND Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) materials have been linked to asthma in several epidemiologic studies, but the possible causal factors remain unknown. PARTICIPANTS We challenged 10 subjects experimentally to degraded PVC products under controlled conditions. All of the subjects had previously experienced respiratory symptoms suspected to be caused by this kind of exposure in their work pl...

Following a short review of the role traditional knowledge, beliefs and practices concerning medicinal plants and herbs from the newly discovered worlds have played in the past, in the formative period of botany and pharmacology in the West, the implications are indicated of the emergence of Cartesian rationalism in science, in particular in the medical social sciences. Then, the recent reasses...

BACKGROUND This double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted to assess the efficacy of the nonabsorbed oral antibiotic rifaximin to prevent shigellosis in volunteers challenged with Shigella flexneri. METHODS Volunteers were randomized to receive either prophylactic rifaximin (200 mg 3 times daily for 3 days; n = 15) or placebo (n = 10) on days 0, 1, and 2. On day 1, volunteers were c...

The benefits of experimental algorithmics and algorithm engineering need to be extended to applications in the computational sciences. In this paper, we present on one such application: the reconstruction of evolutionary histories (phylogenies) from molecular data such as DNA sequences. Our presentation is not a survey of past and current work in the area, but rather a discussion of what we see...

We discuss four key variables of experimental design that tend to be realized quite differently in economics and in areas of psychology relevant to both economists and psychologists, such as judgment and decision making. On theoretical and empirical grounds, we argue that these different realizations, which concern enactment of scripts, repetition of trials, performancebased monetary payments, ...

The benefits of experimental algorithmics and algorithm engineering need to be extended to applications in the computational sciences. In this paper, we present on one such application: the reconstruction of evolutionary histories (phylogenies) from molecular data such as DNA sequences. Our presentation is not a survey of past and current work in the area, but rather a discussion of what we see...