background:  geographic and doctor-to-doctor variations in care are a focus of quality and safety efforts in medicine. this study addresses factors associated with variation in the rate of operative treatment of de quervain tendinopathy.   methods: we used a database including all patient encounters at 2 large medical centers, to study the experience of 10 hand surgeons and 1 physiatrist workin...

A submarine's sonar team is responsible for detecting, localising and classifying targets using information provided by the platform's sensor suite. The information used to make these assessments is typically uncertain and/or incomplete and is likely to require a measure of confidence in its reliability. Moreover, improvements in sensor and communication technology are resulting in increased am...

This study presents a framework for understanding task and psychological factors affecting reliance on advice from decision aids. The framework describes how informational asymmetries in combination with rational, motivational and heuristic factors explain human reliance behavior. To test hypotheses derived from the framework, 79 participants performed an uncertain pattern learning and predicti...