This open access book offers up-to-date advice and practical guidance on how to undertake a discrete choice experiment as a tool for environmental valuation. It discusses crucial issues in designing, implementing and analysing choice experiments. Compiled by leading experts in the field, the book promotes discrete choice analysis in environmental valuation through a more solid scientific basis for research practice. Instead of providing strict guidelines, the book helps readers avoid common mistakes often found in applied work. It is based on the collective reflections of the scientific network of researchers using discrete choice modelling in the field of environmental valuation (www.envecho.com).

Die Idee, fur Renate Wald eine Festschrift zu machen, hat mich von Anfang an begeistert, und als ich sie zunachst Kolleginnen und Kollegen im Fachbe- reich Gesellschaftswissenschaften vortrug und urn Beitrage warb, spiegelte die durchweg positive Aufnahme die groBe Wertschatzung der ehemaligen Professorin fUr Soziologie. Die vielen spontanen Zusagen, sich an der Fest- schrift fUr Renate Wald zu beteiligen, lieBen schon bald ein interessantes Konzept entstehen, das nach entsprechenden Verhandlungen auch fUr einen einschlagigen, seriosen Verlag attraktiv genug war. Finanziell unterstutzt durch den Fachbereich Gesellschaftswissenschaften und den Verein der Freunde und Forderer der Bergischen Universitat-Gesamthochschule Wup- pertal konnte die Arbeit beginnen. Sibylle Reinhardt, die bei Renate Wald habilitiert hatte, viele Jahre als Lehrbeauftragte fur Didaktik der Sozialwis- senschaften neben ihrem Hauptamt als Gymnasiallehrerin in Wuppertal ge- lehrt hatte und jetzt Hochschullehrerin in Halle ist, sowie Volker Ronge als Professor fur Soziologie und Prorektor der Hochschule wurden als Mit-Her- ausgeberInnen gewonnen. Die auBergewohnlich konstruktive Zusammenar- beit mit allen, die schlieBlich am Projekt mitarbeiteten, machte trotz der da- mit verbundenen notwendigen Arbeiten im Detail spaS und reflektiert ein Stuck weit die groBe Kooperationsfahigkeit von Renate Wald in ihren Ar- beitszusammenhangen. An dieser Stelle sei auch Frau Luther fUr ihren Ein- satz beim Formatieren der Manuskripte nach der yom Verlag vorgegebenen Form gedankt. Ich selber lernte durch die Arbeit an dieser Festschrift einen Teil des wis- senschaftlichen Netzwerkes von Renate Wald kennen und schatzen.

Patient-centered prognosis focuses on individual patients. It is a methodology that generates individually tailored probabilistic predictions of a specified medical outcome that a particular patient may experience. Its predictions are based on observable prognostic factors. Because these predictions are both particular-outcome-specific and individual-patient-specific, achieving predictive accuracy poses a formidable challenge. Nevertheless, the patient-centered methodology (PCM) appears to produce more accurate individually tailored patient predictions than current prognostic practice. PCM achieves its greater predictive accuracy by exploiting several analytical devices.

1. It redesigns and retools each successive stage of the prognostic procedure to predict the particular future outcome that the targeted patient could experience.

2. It identifies the existence, the direction, the shape, and the magnitude of each prognostic factor's relationship to the particular outcome as that relationship pertains, specifically, to patients similar to the targeted patient.

3. It relies on internal interrelationships among different prognostic factors and the specified outcome to "fill in" missing observations so that an individually tailored probabilistic prediction is possible, even with incomplete patient data.

PCM is applied to 1,222 melanoma patients from the United States and to 1,225 patients from Finland with invasive breast cancer. Substantial improvements in prognostic accuracy are realized in both applications compared to current prognostic practice.

Greater accuracy can lead to better treatment selection decisions and to other improvements in patient management. Greater prognostic accuracy can also eliminate unnecessary medical procedures that are frequently both painful and expensive in treating progressive diseases such as cancer.

This SpringerBrief reviews currently applied and potential solutions for improving the efficiency and quality of rural electricity supply in India, a major bottleneck for agricultural development. It provides background on the current state of supply and reviews recent and ongoing research and development projects. One selected project, designed and conducted by the authors, is outlined in detail. The research findings, project implementation, and evaluation are intended to provide development practitioners, policy makers, and applied researchers with experience from the field. At the core of this Brief is the integration of technical and social solutions, emphasizing the role of collective action, and the merits and demerits of small-scale, technically simple measures.