introduction: to compare the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of femtosecond laser versus mechanical microkeratome corneal flap creation in correction of refractive errors. methods: i this review, a comprehensive search of medline, scopus, cochrane, trip database, supplemented by hta and economic databases was performed. we searched for randomized controlled trials (rcts) of femtosecond laser wh...

In multi-division organizations, goal congruence between different divisions and top management is critical to the success of management. In this paper, drawing upon a nonparametric framework to model production technology, we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for a firm with multiple divisions to be goal-congruent, and then extend it to a goal congruence testing measure, which coinci...

A partial occlusion of one or more of the coronary arteries due to atherosclerosis leads to an insufficient supply of blood to the myocardium and as a result to the reduction of its functioning (myocardial ischemia). A total occlusion blocks the blood supply completely, which generally leads to starvation of myocardial tissue (myocardial infarction). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has proven ...

This paper describes the process of developing an approach to evaluating the cost-efficiency of Finnish electricity distribution companies for regulation purposes. The process consisted of three main stages 1) describing of the problem and exploring the key factors, 2) finding measurable quantities for the most essential factors, and 3) selecting the final model to be used in the regulation. Th...

cost optimization of the reinforced concrete cantilever soil retaining wall of a given height satisfying some structural and geotechnical design constraints is performed utilizing harmony search and improved harmony search algorithms. the objective function considered is the cost of the structure, and design is based on aci 318-05. this function is minimized subjected to design constraints. a n...

natural gas is often associated with nitrogen and heavy compounds. the heavy components in the natural gas not only can feed downstream units, owing to the low temperature process may be formed solid as well. therefore, heavy components separation can be a necessity and produce useful products. virtually, all natural gases are containing nitrogen ​​that would lower the heating value of natural ...

Although banking has been widely studied using standard DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) models and its variations, these models do not in fact account for the internal structure relative to measures characterizing banking operations performance. In this paper, efficiency in Brazilian banking is measured using a two-stage process. In the first stage, called cost efficiency, number of branches an...

This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide to performing cost-effectiveness analysis using a multi-state modeling approach. Alongside the tutorial, we provide easy-to-use functions in the statistics package R. We argue that this multi-state modeling approach using a package such as R has advantages over approaches where models are built in a spreadsheet package. In particular, using a syntax-b...