BACKGROUND The identification of transmission of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) by blood transfusion has prompted investigation to establish whether there has been any alteration in the vCJD agent following this route of secondary transmission. Any increase in virulence or host adaptation would require a reassessment of the risk analyses relating to the possibility of a significant se...

BACKGROUND: Platelet transfusion is universally employed in acute leukemia. Platelet concentrate supernatants contain high concentrations of biologic mediators that might impair immunity. We investigated whether washed platelet and red cell transfusions could improve clinical outcomes in adult patients with acute leukemia. METHODS: A pilot randomized trial of washed, leukoreduced ABO identical ...

The relationship is studied between possibility and necessity measures defined on arbitrary spaces, the theory of imprecise probabilities, and elementary random set theory. It is shown how special random sets can be used to generate normal possibility and necessity measures, as well as their natural extensions. This leads to interesting alternative formulas for the calculation of these natural ...

We study the relationship between possibility and necessity measures defined on arbitrary spaces, the theory of imprecise probabilities, and elementary random set theory. We show how special random sets can be used to generate normal possibility and necessity measures, as well as their natural extensions. This leads to interesting alternative formulas for the calculation of these natural extens...

This paper considers the problem of combining belief functions obtained from not necessarily independent sources of information. It introduces two combination rules for the situation in which no assumption is made about the dependence of the information sources. These two rules are based on cautious combinations of plausibility and commonality functions, respectively. The paper studies the prop...

This paper contains two important contributions for the development of possibilistic causal networks. The first one concerns the representation of interventions in possibilistic networks. We provide the counterpart of the ”DO” operator, recently introduced by Pearl, in possibility theory framework. We then show that interventions can equivalently be represented in different ways in possibilisti...

Grammaticalization deals with a diachronic process whereby a lexical word evolves into a grammatical word. The typological study recognized the common directionality of grammaticalization among different languages. Two common directionalities in grammaticalization are recognized in the case of the modal markers of possibility: (1) ability > root possibility > permission 1 and (2) ability> root ...

The paper proposes a diagnostic method using possibility theory. According to possibility theory, fuzzy set A on a set of possible causes U, B on possible symptoms V, and a fuzzy relation R on U ́V could be understood as possibility distributions pU(ui), pV(vj) and a conditional possibility distribution pV1⁄2U(vj1⁄2ui), respectively. In this paper, we define diagnosis as a problem to obtain poss...

The paper deals with basic issues regarding the measurement of relevant types of uncertainty and uncertainty-based information in theories that represent imprecise probabilities of various types. Existing results and encountered difficulties regarding these issues, primarily in evidence theory and possibility theory, are presented. Some important open questions and unexplored areas of research ...

According to the Consequence Argument, the truth of determinism plus other plausible principles would yield the conclusion that we have no free will. In this paper I will argue that the conception of determinism typically employed in the various versions of the Consequence Argument is not plausible. In particular, I will argue that, taken most straightforwardly, determinism as defined in the Co...