BACKGROUND Informed and shared decision-making require competences for both partners - healthcare professionals and patients. There is a lack of training courses in evidence-based medicine for patients and counsellors. OBJECTIVE We investigated feasibility, acceptability and the potential effects of a 2 x 2.5 days training course on critical health competences in patients, patient counsellors...

ÐA growing body of literature suggests that there is an optimal size for software components. This means that components that are too small or too big will have a higher defect content (i.e., there is a U-shaped curve relating defect content to size). The U-shaped curve has become known as the ªGoldilocks Conjecture.º Recently, a cognitive theory has been proposed to explain this phenomenon and...

Specific behavior description languages prove to be suitable replacements to native programming language like C++ when the number and complexity of behavior patterns of an agent increases. The XML based Extensible Agent Behavior Specification Language (XABSL) also simplifies the process of specifying complex behaviors and supports the design of both very reactive and long term oriented behavior...

Classifier induction is a specific data-mining task that is part of the knowledge discovery process. Its objectives are to extract accurate, comprehensible and interesting knowledge. However, most classifier induction approaches focus only on one of these objectives. This paper introduces a Multi-Objective Evolutionary Rule Base Induction System (MERBIS) that is capable of optimising both, accu...

In this paper, using the technique of docking, we perform verification & validation (V&V) of agent-based simulation models that simulate the life cycle of Anopheles gambiae, the primary vector for malaria transmission. Working with one (out of several) particular version of the core conceptual simulation model, we perform: (1) verification between two separate implementations (Java & C++) built...

The complexity of both parallel architectures and parallel applications poses several problems for the development of performance analysis and optimization tools. In this paper, we describe the motivations and the main aspects of the design of the Dynamic Probe Class Library (DPCL), an object based C++ class library that provides an infrastructure to reduce the cost of writing instrumentation f...