Behavioral dynamics and influence in networked coloring and consensus.

We report on human-subject experiments on the problems of coloring (a social differentiation task) and consensus (a social agreement task) in a networked setting. Both tasks can be viewed as coordination games, and despite their cognitive similarity, we find that within a parameterized family of social networks, network structure elicits opposing behavioral effects in the two problems, with increased long-distance connectivity making consensus easier for subjects and coloring harder. We investigate the influence that subjects have on their network neighbors and the collective outcome, and find that it varies considerably, beyond what can be explained by network position alone.

Behavioral experiments on biased voting in networks.

Many distributed collective decision-making processes must balance diverse individual preferences with a desire for collective unity. We report here on an extensive session of behavioral experiments on biased voting in networks of individuals. In each of 81 experiments, 36 human subjects arranged in a virtual network were financially motivated to reach global consensus to one of two opposing choices.

Reliability of the long case.

Objectives: The use of long cases for summative assessment of clinical competence is limited by concerns about unreliability. This study aims to explore the reliability of long cases and how reliability is affected by supplementation with short cases.

Methods: We performed a statistical analysis of examinations held by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 2005 and 2006 to determine overall reliability and sources of variance in reliability according to candidate ability, case difficulty and inter-examiner differences.

Results from the fielding of the Bio-surveillance Analysis, Feedback, Evaluation and Response (B-SAFER) system in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Public health authorities need a surveillance system that is sensitive enough to detect a disease outbreak early to enable a proper response. In order to meet this challenge we have deployed a pilot component-based system in Albuquerque, NM as part of the National Biodefense Initiative (BDI). B-SAFER gathers routinely collected data from healthcare institutions to monitor disease events in the community.