"Weight of evidence" (WOE) is a common term in the published scientific and policy-making literature, most often seen in the context of risk assessment (RA). Its definition, however, is unclear. A systematic review of the scientific literature was undertaken to characterize the concept. For the years 1994 through 2004, PubMed was searched for publications in which "weight of evidence" appeared ...

The waved with open eyes (woe) locus is a spontaneous recessive mouse mutation that exhibits wavy fur, eyelids open at birth, and enlarged heart and esophagus. In this study, we confirmed the previously identified woe phenotypes and additionally identified anterior eye segment defects, absence of the meibomian glands, and defects in the semilunar cardiac valves. Positional cloning identified a ...

"Weighing" available evidence in the process of decision-making is unavoidable, yet it is one step that routinely raises suspicions: what evidence should be used, how much does it weigh, and whose thumb may be tipping the scales? This commentary aims to evaluate the current state and future roles of various types of evidence for hazard assessment as it applies to environmental health. In its re...

The term "weight of evidence" (WOE) appears in regulatory rules and decisions. However, there has been little discussion about the meaning, variations of use, and epistemic significance of WOE for setting health and safety standards. This article gives an overview of the role of WOE in regulatory science, discusses alternative views about the methodology underlying the concept, and places WOE i...

When evaluating the weight of evidence (WoE) for an individual to be a contributor to a DNA sample, an allele frequency database is required. The allele frequencies are needed to inform about genotype probabilities for unknown contributors of DNA to the sample. Typically databases are available from several populations, and a common practice is to evaluate the WoE using each available database ...

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), in collaboration with the Dutch Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) Nutrition and Food Research Institute, is conducting studies to evaluate the role of chemical interactions in the expression of toxicity from low-level exposure to combinations of chemicals. The goal of this collaborative effort is to use a weight-of-e...

Weight of evidence (WOE) coding of a nominal or discrete variable is widely used when preparing predictors for usage in binary logistic regression models. When using WOE coding, an important preliminary step is binning of the levels of the predictor to achieve parsimony without giving up predictive power. These concepts of WOE and binning are extended to ordinal logistic regression in the case ...

This study investigated the instructional efficiency of adaptive instruction to learner expertise in the domain of C programming language with college students. It also aimed to investigate whether a bimodal process-oriented worked-out example (WOE) could effectively control extraneous cognitive load and further improve instructional efficiency. For this purpose, a learner-paced problem-solving...

BACKGROUND One important purpose of the European REACH Regulation (EC No. 1907/2006) is to promote the use of alternative methods for assessment of hazards of substances in order to avoid animal testing. Experience with environmental hazard assessment under REACH shows that efficient alternative methods are needed in order to assess chemicals when standard test data are missing. One such assess...