Grant audits: No easy riders

Diagnosing dementia: No easy job

BACKGROUND From both clinical experience and research we learned that in complex progressive disorders such as dementia, diagnosis includes multiple steps, each with their own clinical and research characteristics. DISCUSSION Diagnosing starts with a trigger phase in which the GP gradually realizes that dementia may be emerging. This is followed by a disease-oriented diagnosis and subsequentl...

Voluntary Audits versus Mandatory Audits

Exploiting a natural experiment in which voluntary audits replace mandatory audits for U.K. private companies, we analyze whether imposing audits suppresses valuable information about the types of companies that would voluntarily choose to be audited. We control for the assurance benefits of auditing to isolate the role signaling plays by focusing on companies that are audited under both regime...

Reducing caesarean section rates--no easy task.

To identify the greatest potential for reducing overall caesarean delivery rates, we used longitudinally linked data for women with consecutive births 2001-2009 to examine the likely impact of hypothetical risk-based scenarios. Among women with a first birth, singleton, vertex-presenting fetus at term, increasing the vaginal birth rate following induction of labour by 20% potentially has greate...

No Easy Way Out ( or In )

Systems Engineering Philosophy: No Easy Answers?

Many continue to ask if Systems Engineering is really a discipline and does it have an underlying philosophy. This paper is an attempt to fill the gap in the literature on the philosophical drivers of systems engineering. In doing so, we discuss the philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, and their relationship to systems engineering. We also explore some topical issues relevant to thi...