Up until the early 1970s there was a fair consensus among operations researchers and management scientists of what MS/OR meant, i.e., the application of quantitative methods to model decision making situations in view of achieving some well-defined objective within a systems framework. Optimization of some performance measure was usually an integral part of the methodology. This all changed in ...

AIM We conducted this study to determine key community-level factors associated with higher tobacco control programme performance. METHODS A combination of surveys, administrative and fiscal data were collected to measure local county-level health department performance over a 7-year period. Longitudinal analyses were performed using generalised estimating equations to examine whether countie...

leiomyoma is a rare benign neoplasm deriving from smooth muscle. vascular leiomyoma is its most common subtype in the oral cavity. it may appear at any age with the greatest incidence in the 4th and 5th decade of life. the common manifestation is a slow-growing, asymptomatic, submucousal mass. the diagnosis is only through microscopic examination requiring special staining. treatment of choice ...

Recent progress in single-molecule manipulation technologies has made it possible to exert force and torque on individual DNA biopolymers to probe their mechanical stability and interaction with various DNA-binding proteins. It was revealed in these experiments that the DNA structure and formation of nucleoprotein complexes by DNA-architectural proteins can be strongly modulated by an intricate...

We examined the effects of safety-seeking behavior and guided threat focus and reappraisal on fear reduction during exposure. Participants (N=46) displaying marked claustrophobic fear were randomized to one of three 30-min exposure conditions: (a) guided threat focus and reappraisal; (b) safety-behavior utilization; or (c) exposure only control. Tripartite outcome assessments during a behaviora...

Although a growing number of empirical studies have revealed that activating mate-related motives might exert a specific set of consequences for human cognition and behaviors, such as attention and memory, little is known about whether mate-related motives affect self-regulated learning. The present study examined the effects of mate-related motives (mate-search and mate-guarding) on study-time...

all aquatic organisms are directly or indirectly affected by the physical characteristics of their environment, especially the chemical composition of the water. the high concentration levels, damage tissues and interfere with the normal growth and proliferation. the aim of this research was to investigation acute toxicity of znso4 and cucl2 to gambusia holbrooki by static bioassays at differen...

In recent years, a large body of research has focused on unveiling the fundamental physical processes that living systems utilize to perform functions, such as coordinated action and collective decision making. Here, we demonstrate that important features of collective decision making among higher organisms are captured effectively by a novel formulation of well-characterized physical spin syst...