The effectiveness of 2 mg nicotine chewing-gum as an aid to stopping smoking was compared with a placebo containing 1 mg nicotine, but unbuffered, in a double-blind randomised trial. Of 58 subjects given the active gum, 27 (47%) were not smoking at one-year follow-up compared with 12 (21%) of the 58 subjects treated with placebo (p less than 0.025). By the most stringent criterion of outcome, 1...

Ž . In this article we compare two contrasting methods, active set method ASM and genetic algorithms, for learning the weights in aggregation operators, such as weighted mean Ž . Ž . WM , ordered weighted average OWA , and weighted ordered weighted average Ž . WOWA . We give the formal definitions for each of the aggregation operators, explain the two learning methods, give results of processin...

E ffective teachers do no simply present information for students to learn by rote for a good grade. Rather, they provide an environment in which students can engage with course material and both learn and interpret it for their own interest and goals. With this in mind, I have spent a considerable amount of time developing an active learning format for my introductory biology course, including...

This paper explores patterns of transformation of socialist S&T systems into postsocialist systems of innovation and their determinants. First, we reinterpret the socialist period from a systems of innovation perspective by revisiting the socialist S&T system and by pointing to its general features as well as to its national and sectoral variations. Second, we develop a conceptual model to help...

The paper is concerned with mechanical systems which are controlled by implementing a number of time-dependent, frictionless holonomic constraints. The main novelty is due to the presence of additional non-holonomic constraints. We develop a general framework to analyze these problems, deriving the equations of motion and studying the continuity properties of the “input-to-trajectory” maps. Var...

Constructing active sets is a key part of the Multivariate Decomposition Method. An algorithm for constructing optimal or quasi-optimal active sets is proposed in the paper. By numerical experiments, it is shown that the new method can provide sets that are significantly smaller than the sets constructed by the already existing method. The experiments also show that the superposition dimension ...

CDMA cellular networks support soft handover, which guarantees the continuity of wireless services and enhanced communication quality. Cellular networks performance depends upon Soft handover parameters. In this paper, we have shown the effect of soft handover parameters on the performance of CDMA cellular networks. We consider HYST_ ADD and HYST_ DROP as the Soft handover parameters. A very us...

Objective: There are few reports of the long-term outcomes of elderly patients with prostate cancer. We analyzed data from our institution from the past 12 years, including the patient history, treatment methods, and prognosis of patients with prostate cancer aged 80 years or more. Patients and Methods: A total of 179 cases of prostate cancer in patients aged 80 years or more were retrospective...

In this section, we briefly present the formalism we use. This formalism aims at describing the state of a system and its dynamic behaviour in an algebraic framework [DG 94]. It was first introduced in a case study on a formal specification of the embedded safety part of an automatic subway pilot [DM 91], [Dau 92], [DGM 93], in order to cope with the large number of variables whose values made ...

A systematic control structure design method is applied on the concentric heatintegrated distillation column (HIDiC) separating benzene and toluene. A degrees of freedom analysis is provided for identifying potential manipulated and controlled variables. Optimal operation is mapped and active constraints are identified for constructing the supervisory control layer. The fundamental problem of o...