Error sensitive historical GIS: Identifying areal interpolation errors in time series data

Historical GIS has the potential to re-invigorate our use of statistics from historical censuses and related sources. In particular, areal interpolation can be used to create long-run time-series of spatially detailed data that will enable us to enhance significantly our understanding of geographical change over periods of a century or more. The difficulty with areal interpolation, however, is that the data that it generates are estimates which will inevitably contain some error. This paper describes a technique that allows the automated identification of possible errors at the level of the individual data values.

Prescription of Epinephrine Auto-injectors - Can we reach a consensus?

A consensus view of Irish Clinical Immunologists as to when auto injection syringes of adrenaline should be prescribed

Effects of Constraint Errors on Parallel Manipulators with Decoupled Motion

From perspective of structure synthesis, certain special geometric constraints, such as joint axes intersecting at one point or perpendicular to each other, are necessary in realizing the end-effector motion of kinematically decoupled parallel manipulators (PMs) along individual motion axes. These requirements are difficult to achieve in the actual system due to assembly errors and manufacturing tolerances. Those errors that violate the geometric constraint requirements are termed “constraint errors”. The constraint errors usually are more troublesome than other manipulator errors because the decoupled motion characteristics of the manipulator may no longer exist and the decoupled kinematic models will be rendered useless due to these constraint errors. Therefore, identification and prevention of these constraint errors in initial design and manufacturing stage are of great significance. In this article, three basic types of constraint errors are identified, and an approach to evaluate the effects of constraint errors on decoupling characteristics of PMs is proposed. This approach is illustrated by a 6-DOF PM with decoupled translation and rotation. The results show that the proposed evaluation method is effective to guide design and assembly.

The police officer's terrorist dilemma: Trust resilience following fatal errors

Suicide attacks have raised the stakes for officers deciding whether or not to shoot a suspect ('Police Officer's Terrorist Dilemma'). Despite high-profile errors we know little about how trust in the police is affected by their response to the terrorist threat. Building on a conceptualisation of lay observers as intuitive signal detection theorists, a general population sample (N= 1153) were presented with scenarios manipulated in terms of suspect status (Armed/Unarmed), officer decision (Shoot/Not Shoot) and outcome severity (e.g. suspect armed with Bomb/Knife; police shoot suspect/ suspect plus child bystander). Supporting predictions, people showed higher trust in officers who made correct decisions. reflecting good discrimination ability and who decided to shoot, reflecting an 'appropriate' response bias given the relative costs and benefits. This latter effect was moderated by (a) outcome severity, suggesting it did not simply reflect a preference for a particular type of action, and (b) preferences for a tough stance towards terrorism indexed by Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA). Despite loss of civilian life, failure to prevent minor terror attacks resulted in no loss of trust amongst people low in RWA. whereas among people high in RWA trust was positive when police erroneously shot all unarmed suspect. Relations to alternative definitions of trust and procedural justice research are discussed. Copyright (C),. 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.