In phase I trials, effectively treating patients and minimizing the chance of exposing them to subtherapeutic and overly toxic doses are clinicians' top priority. Motived by this practical ...consideration, we propose Bayesian optimal interval (BOIN) designs to find the maximum tolerated dose and to minimize the probability of inappropriate dose assignments for patients. We show, both theoretically and numerically, that the BOIN design not only has superior finite and large sample properties but also can be easily implemented in a simple way similar to the traditional '3+3' design. Compared with the well-known continual reassessment method, the BOIN design yields comparable average performance to select the maximum tolerated dose but has a substantially lower risk of assigning patients to subtherapeutic and overly toxic doses. We apply the BOIN design to two cancer clinical trials.
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 14.7.1 is the only statistical indicator under the SDG framework which measures the progress to achieve sustainable fisheries. However, despite its ...advantages, it suffers from substantial limitations. One main problem is that it is ambiguous what this indicator really measures and what the definition of sustainable fisheries is, which is the core concept of SDG Indicator 14.7.1. In particular, this indicator has both an environmental dimension and an economic dimension, but it is unclear how one indicator can exactly reflect these two dimensions at the same time. In addition, while SDG Indicator 14.7.1 emphasizes inclusiveness in name, its definition, methodology, and practical application reveal the exclusion of a substantial number of countries from this indicator. These limitations not only diminish the anticipated functionality of SDG Indicator 14.7.1 but also contradict the objective of inclusivity. Such shortcomings of SDG Indicator 14.7.1 are possibly a result of the non-statistical considerations during the development of this indicator, including possible political influence on the statistical scientific process. A number of implications for improving the further development and use of this indicator are provided, such as the provision of more specific data and metadata
This article explores the interactions between industrial development and environmental protection dimensions of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In consideration of the suitability and data ...availability, this article uses the SDG indicators 9.2.1 (manufacturing value-added per capita) and 12.4.1 (E-waste per capita) as the two indicators to reflect industrial development and environmental protection under the SDGs framework. Based on a cross-country data source, this article examines the correlation between manufacturing value-added per capita and E-waste per capita in forty countries across four income levels as defined by the World Bank. The results show that the manufacturing value-added per capita and E-waste per capita increase with the countries’ income levels. In addition, the positive correlation between manufacturing value-added per capita and electronic waste (E-waste_ per capita) becomes weaker with the increase of the countries’ income levels, and for high-income countries the correlation turns negative. This provides evidence to partially support the Environmental Kuznets Curve, which demonstrates the ‘inverted-U shape’ relationship between economic development and environmental protection. It also generates a number of implications on the monitoring and management of SDG indicators. In consideration of the interactions between different SDGs (including targets and indicators), a holistic, multi-disciplinary, and cross-departmental management and monitoring of SDG indicators is recommended.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between gender disparities in rural education attainments and agricultural landownership (ALO) in Sub-Sahara Africa with Sustainable ...Development Goal (SDG) perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses SDG indicators interactions and pairwise correlation analysis.
Findings
There is a significant negative association between gender disparities in rural education attainments and ALO in Sub-Sahara Africa. Such negative relationship is not influenced by national economic development and living standards.
Research limitations/implications
The data is limited with 16 Sub-Sahara African countries, and as this is an early output of a number of follow-up studies in the author’s plan, the methodology is relatively simple.
Practical implications
Reducing gender disparity in rural Sub-Sahara Africa especially in ALO requires more integrated approaches which also address other aspects of sustainable development. This is particularly the situation because of the strong male-favored customary practices in rural Sub-Sahara Africa. The prioritization of different dimensions of sustainable development is also important in Sub-Sahara Africa.
Social implications
Strong awareness of SDGs is important. Further efforts in collecting data for and use data of sustainable development, especially the SDGs, are essential. Emerging trend of studying the interactions across SDGs reflects the future direction of relevant fields.
Originality/value
This paper has high originality because it is an early-stage research in the SDG interactions in Sub-Sahara African countries with the perspective of gender, gender disparity, Sub-Sahara Africa, SDGs, ALO and rural education attainments. This paper has both academic and practical values because of its innovative research thoughts and policy-oriented implications.
Background: It is widely perceived that COVID-19 has significant influence on higher education and also contribution to development including Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However there is ...insufficient evidence about investigations on such influences, especially at micro level.
Design and method: A university located in Wuhan, China, is selected for the case study to explore how COVID-19 affects higher education and how universities’ coping strategies of COVID-19 can contribute to SDGs. The method is an analysis of 32 institutional documents published by the university.
Results: The university in the case study has taken a number of coping strategies of COVID-19, largely in four aspects including medical services, online education, logistic support, and graduate employment promotion. These coping strategies contribute to achieving SDGs, especially SDGs 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, and 10.
Conclusions: The case study provides micro-level empirical evidence, which supports that appropriate university coping strategies of COVID-19 can contribute to SDGs, even it is widely perceived that the pandemic has brought strong negative impact on higher education and sustainable development. The selection of a university in Wuhan, China, can generate more practical implications, as Wuhan is the first city that experienced the unprecedented lockdown, and China is the first country that reopened university campuses after the lockdown.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Both child mortality and water stress are included into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Existing studies have explored the relationship between child mortality and water stress with ...different perspectives, however, the results vary due to differences in methods and context. There is still insufficient cross-country comparative research on the association between child mortality and water stress under the framework of SDGs. This article uses data of 20 developing countries to explore the association between child mortality and water stress, based on the path analysis methodology. The results show that in term of statistics, the level of water stress is negatively but insignificantly associated with child mortality in developing countries. This unconventional result is explained by a number of possible reasons such as high reliance on food importation in some developing countries, and also the indirect link between water stress and child mortality via a country’s socioeconomic development (measured by national poverty rate). The results enrich scientific knowledge of and provide practical implications to the interactions between SDGs.
Sample size planning for longitudinal data is crucial when designing mediation studies because sufficient statistical power is not only required in grant applications and peer-reviewed publications, ...but is essential to reliable research results. However, sample size determination is not straightforward for mediation analysis of longitudinal design.
To facilitate planning the sample size for longitudinal mediation studies with a multilevel mediation model, this article provides the sample size required to achieve 80% power by simulations under various sizes of the mediation effect, within-subject correlations and numbers of repeated measures. The sample size calculation is based on three commonly used mediation tests: Sobel's method, distribution of product method and the bootstrap method.
Among the three methods of testing the mediation effects, Sobel's method required the largest sample size to achieve 80% power. Bootstrapping and the distribution of the product method performed similarly and were more powerful than Sobel's method, as reflected by the relatively smaller sample sizes. For all three methods, the sample size required to achieve 80% power depended on the value of the ICC (i.e., within-subject correlation). A larger value of ICC typically required a larger sample size to achieve 80% power. Simulation results also illustrated the advantage of the longitudinal study design. The sample size tables for most encountered scenarios in practice have also been published for convenient use.
Extensive simulations study showed that the distribution of the product method and bootstrapping method have superior performance to the Sobel's method, but the product method was recommended to use in practice in terms of less computation time load compared to the bootstrapping method. A R package has been developed for the product method of sample size determination in mediation longitudinal study design.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The concept of coherence was proposed for single-agent phase I clinical trials to describe the property that a design never escalates the dose when the most recently treated patient has toxicity and ...never de-escalates the dose when the most recently treated patient has no toxicity. It provides a useful theoretical tool for investigating the properties of phase I trial designs. In this paper, we generalize the concept of coherence to drug combination trials, which are substantially different and more challenging than single-agent trials. For example, in the dose-combination matrix, each dose has up to 8 neighboring doses as candidates for dose escalation and de-escalation, and the toxicity orders of these doses are only partially known. We derive sufficient conditions for a model-based drug combination trial design to be coherent. Our results are more general and relaxed than the existing results and are applicable to both single-agent and drug combination trials. We illustrate the application of our theoretical results with a number of drug combination dose-finding designs in the literature.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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