Soft systems methodology (SSM) is a well-known Problem Structuring Methods that has proven effective when tackling problematic situations. To model different perceptions of situation, SSM encourage stakeholders to propose possible transformation likely improve the situation. The more transformations compiled richer process become; but in practice, managing higher number presents challenge. Valu...

STUDY DESIGN Retrospective analysis of a prospective, multicenter cohort study. OBJECTIVE To estimate the added effect of surgical fusion as compared to decompression surgery alone in symptomatic lumbar spinal stenosis patients with spondylolisthesis. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA The optimal surgical management of lumbar spinal stenosis patients with spondylolisthesis remains controversial. ...

This study investigates the long-run equilibrium relationship between Suisse stock market (SSM) prices and a set of macroeconomic variables (inflation, interest rate, exchange rate) using Monthly data for period 1999:1 to 2018:4. Different specifications tests will be carried out, namely unit root (ADF PP), Vector Auto Regression (VAR) select optimal lag length Granger causality Toda Yamamoto (...

Aim: While skin-sparing mastectomy (SSM) can be performed in patients with stage II-III breast cancer, the impact of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) on SSM rates and reconstructive modalities in these patients is not known. Methods: Between January 2007 and December 2009, 409 immediate breast reconstructions (IBRs) were performed in patients with Stage II-III breast cancer. Data were collected o...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to analyze and compare the surgical data, clinical outcomes, and complications between three-column osteotomy (3-COS) and standard surgical management (SSM) for the treatment of adult spine deformity (ASD). METHODS A total of 112 patients who underwent consecutive 3-COS (n = 48) and SSM (n = 64) procedures for ASD correction at a single institution from 20...

In 2009 and 2010 the L-band microwave Cooperative Airborne Radiometer for Ocean and Land Studies (CAROLS) campaign was performed in southwestern France to support the calibration and validation of the new Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite mission. The Lband Microwave Emission of the Biosphere (L-MEB) model was used to retrieve surface soil moisture (SSM) and the vegetation optic...

Open set speaker identification consists of deciding whether an input utterance corresponds to a target speaker or to an impostor. The most likely among a set of target speakers is hypothesized and verified. Speaker verification is performed by comparing the likelihood score of the most likely speaker model to the likelihood score of an impostor model, and then applying a suitable threshold. Th...

Stereo-based stochastic mapping (SSM) is a technique based on constructing a Gaussian mixture model for the joint distribution of stereo data. This paper considers the use of SSM for noise robust speech recognition, in which clean and noisy speech features form the stereo data. The Gaussian mixture model, whose parameters are estimated from the observed stereo features during training time, is ...

The aim of this study was to discover small-molecule anticoagulants from Scolopendra subspinipes mutilans (SSM). A new acylated polyamine (1) and a new sulfated quinoline alkaloid (2) were isolated from SSM. Treatment with the new alkaloids 1, 2, and indole acetic acid 4 prolonged the activated partial thromboplastin time and prothrombin time and inhibited the activity and production of thrombi...

In the context of multimedia retrieval, the goal of accuracy is to a certain extent contradictory with that of efficiency. The former relies on exploiting sophisticated features, whereas the latter favors using simple features with reduced dimensionality. As an endeavor to strike the balance between these two goals, this paper presents a self-adaptive semantic schema mechanism (SSM) for multime...