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Introduction Clinical decision support science is expanding to include integration from broader and more varied data sources, diverse platforms and delivery modalities, and is responding to emerging regulatory guidelines and increased interest from industry.Objective Evaluate key advances and challenges of accessing, sharing, and managing data from multiple sources for development and implementation of Clinical Decision Support (CDS) systems in 2016-2017.Methods Assessment of literature and scientific conference proceedings, current and pending policy development, and review of commercial applications nationally and internationally.Results CDS research is approaching multiple landmark points driven by commercialization interests, emerging regulatory policy, and increased public awareness. However, the availability of patient-related "Big Data" sources from genomics and mobile health, expanded privacy considerations, applications of service-based computational techniques and tools, the emergence of "app" ecosystems, and evolving patient-centric approaches reflect the distributed, complex, and uneven maturity of the CDS landscape. Nonetheless, the field of CDS is yet to mature. The lack of standards and CDS-specific policies from regulatory bodies that address the privacy and safety concerns of data and knowledge sharing to support CDS development may continue to slow down the broad CDS adoption within and across institutions.Conclusion Partnerships with Electronic Health Record and commercial CDS vendors, policy makers, standards development agencies, clinicians, and patients are needed to see CDS deployed in the evolving learning health system.

Findings from the 2008-2009 Transport Canada project, Methodologies for Identifying and Ranking Sustainable Transport Practices in Urban Regions (Wellar, 2008d) reveal that the research methodologies, methods, and techniques from a number of disciplines apply to the process of making decisions about sustainable transport practices. Evidence in that regard is provided by: 1) the results of keyword-based literature searches; 2) the responses of municipal governments to a survey on the methodologies, methods, and techniques that are used; and 3), the commentaries of experts on the methods and techniques that could be used. The findings are presented in eleven project reports which can be accessed at: http://www.wellarconsulting.com/. This presentation first outlines the major elements and findings of the Transport Canada project. We then suggest how the Operations Research or Operational Research, and Management Sciences (OR/MS) fields could build on that project to enhance the OR/MS contribution to the body of methods and techniques used by municipal governments in making decisions about identifying, adopting, and implementing sustainable transport (ST) practices. The third part of the presentation introduces several OR/MS-based initiatives that we believe could significantly expand the research agenda that has been initiated by the Transport Canada project. Our emphasis in this regard is on drawing attention to what we perceive to be fundamental needs that arise as a result of the empirical lessons learned from the Transport Canada project.

Bargaining between different groups, which differ in objectives, preferences and interests, is at the core of political decision-making. Yet, it is logical to presume that negotiations involving more parties will lead to inertia and a slow pace in the legislative process. According to this hypothesis, political systems involving many veto-players such as federal countries or international organisations must be prone to a low activity. Oddly enough, a closer look on the European Unions' and Germany's legislation activity level shows that these are fairly high, although in both systems exist a considerably amount of opportunities to block or delay reforms. Decision-making in this framework is mostly brought about by side-payments, which are usually not reported to the public. This poses a question. If compensation payments are able to fuel the decision process by balancing interest and help to avoid reform deadlocks why are they frequently disguised? This paper addresses this question by suggesting that politicians do avoid openly paid compensation payments out of concerns over their reputation and that decision-making is rather a strategically action than showing majorities for a certain topic.

What is it like to live in an illiberal regime? Ethical life in totalitarian regimes is easy to critique because it deviates from everything we think morally acceptable. But illiberal regimes are similar enough to liberal democracies to make addressing the experience of living there strikingly difficult.Political ethics in illiberal regimes argues that the common language of normative political theory is simply not up to the task of capturing this experience. On the one hand, we do not really need political theory to know why illiberal regimes are dangerous and undesirable. On the other, we do need political theory – at least of a certain realist kind – to understand why millions of reasonable people come to terms with living in such regimes.The book presents a novel theoretical language – Williamsian, liberal and realist – to articulate this experience. Part I lays out the theoretical framework, while Part II examines how politicians, experts and citizens in illiberal regimes are confronted with role-specific, political-ethical challenges and how the various normative contexts of their roles shape their agency

The article analyzes various projects of hybridization of materialism and political theory in one conceptual system. Special attention is paid to the critical analysis of the phenomenon of economic materialism of the nineteenth century, which for a long time remained the only example of a materialistic analysis of politics. The subsequent development of materialism that became a new limit of economic determinism, put new problems in the context of the capabilities of materialistic policy. The author proposes to follow the argument of the French philosopher Louis Althusser as a philosophy of aleatory materialism created by the thinker himself, including to substantiate the variations of materialistic understanding of the political. The article consistently disassembled the prerequisites for the crisis of the Marxist economic interpretation of history, which, at the original stage of its own formation, had extremely few common with philosophical materialism. The further struggle of new materialists with the idea of a universal explanatory principle ultimately allowed them to create a new type of philosophical knowledge that is not related to the idea of universal history. The focus in this case is chained to the political aspect of Althusser's Materialism regarding the theory of conjuncture as a genuine object of any materialistic politics. Finally, the author compares aleatory materialism with a number of other directions of post-modern materialistic ontology, whose representatives direct their own criticism towards the anthropological component of the political theory, which, however, leads to the denial of this discipline in principle. Thus, it is Althuserianism that in couple with Schmitterism, are the only examples of a successful project to create a materialistic theory of politics.

The aim of this article is to reconstruct and analyse scholarly book (or monograph) publication patterns in Lithuanian Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) registered in national database "Lituanistika". Database "Lituanistika" provides a good starting point and repository of empirical data as it indexes and abstracts different types of scholarly publications in SSH, monographs included. The empirical part of the research consists of finding registered monographs, attributing them to the individual SSH disciplines, comparing the number of monographs and scholarly articles in various SSH, and retracing the timeline of registered monographs across different disciplines etc. The analytical approach of our research is based on an idea of (social) constructivism. We aim at reconstructing the motives behind the publishing of scholarly books or abstaining from such practice. In this article we argue that the motives to publish (or not to publish) a scholarly book are a product of a broader Lithuanian social, institutional and disciplinary context, which influences and regulates the actions of individual SSH researchers.

AbstractFeminist science and technology studies calls the researcher to reconsider subjectivity in three ways. First, who or what has subjectivity? Second, is subjectivity a property of an individual being with sentience, or is it a more diffuse process? Third, who or what acts in meaningful ways to impact social relations (and are thus worthy of sociological study)? According to feminist STS, the conferral of subjectivity has been nationalized, racialized, and sexualized, and the influence of non‐human life and non‐living matter has been underemphasized. We suggest that sociological research could benefit from a more expansive understanding of subjectivity and a more interactive (or "entangled") notion of social–material relations. Human relations and action need not just be considered in the context of the human and social but can also be considered in relation to the non‐human and material. To make the implications of feminist STS more concrete, we offer specific applications of feminist STS methodologies across a range of sociological methods and topics.

The liberalization of attitudes toward homosexuality in the United States over the past 30 years is well documented. Despite these changes, substantial resistance to equality for gay men and lesbians remains. Previous studies indicate that beliefs about the etiology of homosexuality are central to this discussion. Those who believe homosexuality is innate are more favorable, while those who believe it is the result of a choice are more negative. Moreover, experimental research indicates that those with negative views actually become more opposed when a natural explanation is proposed. This study highlights the importance of perceived sources of epistemic and moral authority for understanding views of homosexuality. Using stances on culturally controversial issues involving "science and religion" as indicators of where individuals place authority, we outline the connection between perceptions of moral authority and attributions about homosexuality. Analyses of a national survey of American adults show that, net of controls, one's stance on moral authority is the strongest predictor of attributions about whether homosexuality is chosen or innate.

The main aim of the EC-financed R&D project PlantLIBRA (PLANT food supplements: Levels of Intake, Benefit and Risk Assessment) is to foster the safe use of food supplements containing plants or botanical preparations, by enabling science-based decision making by regulators and stakeholders. To make informed decisions, competent authorities and industry need more accessible and quality-assured information, as well as better tools (e.g., databases) and procedures for safety and benefit assessments, supported by broadly accepted methodologies. Consequently, PlantLIBRA is working to develop, validate and disseminate data and methodologies for risk and benefit assessment of plant food supplements, and to implement sustainable international cooperation. International cooperation will help ensure the quality of botanicals imported in the EU. Moreover, the project will provide data on intake by conducting a harmonized consumption survey. Existing composition and safety data will be collated into a meta-database. New analytical data and methods will be investigated and validated. The consortium is working closely with competent authorities and stakeholders.

Abstract We test two sets of hypotheses concerning the association between gender and various structural and attitudinal variables, using data collected in two surveys (1979 and 1995–1996) from random samples of land‐grant agricultural scientists. The first set of hypotheses centers on the expectation that the resources and rewards of agricultural science are distributed unequally by gender. We find significant gender differences in scientists' postdoctoral work experience, academic rank, employment of graduate students, rate of book publication, and links with private industry. Our second set of hypotheses, drawing on the literatures of feminist epistemology and situated knowledge, focuses on the relationship between scientists' gender and perceptions of the goals of agricultural research. Our findings indicate that gender is unimportant in explaining differences in scientists' commitment to agricultural sustainability, environmental issues, and family farm preservation as important goals of land‐grant research. Yet we find significant gender differences in attitudes toward biotechnology and the growing links between land‐grant universities and private industry.

Under what conditions do threat perceptions lead to an increasing distrust in government? This article argues that the answer is the degree of ease with which a perceived threat can be linked to governmental actors. First, I argue that threats directed toward society should be more easily linked by citizens to the domestic government compared to perceived threats to the individual (general linkage). Second, a threat linked to a citizen's general political stance more strongly affects their attitude toward governmental actors in negative ways (heuristic linkage). Third, I expect threat perceptions to further increase governmental distrust if the latter's actors are blamed for a perceived threat that is salient to citizens' ideological worldviews (blame attribution). Empirical tests using self-administered survey- and experimental data corroborate the argument. In closing I discuss the implications of the theoretical and empirical setup, emphasizing the need for future studies on blame attribution, heuristic linkages, and political trust.

On cover: Steele's sciences. ; "Edited for the use of schools, in accordance with the recent legislation upon Temperance Instruction." ; Includes index. ; "Reading references" : p. [viii]. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Recent research on political discussion has focused on whether aspects of interaction create a 'democratic dilemma' for the mass public in which people face a choice between political participation and political tolerance. This article argues that there are important variations in how people react to their immediate social contacts. It explores this idea by studying how social disagreement and expertise interact with gender to explain variance in political participation. First, it shows that there are conflicting expectations in the literature about how such dynamics should manifest, despite agreement that men and women should experience different kinds and degrees of social influence. Secondly, it examines these expectations by revisiting prominent, network-based explanations of political participation; it finds that these relationships do not display consistency across sex differences. The results point to the existence of varied 'social logics' for men and women, and suggest the need to reconsider how to think about the efficacy of discussion and disagreement in a democratic society.