This paper focusses on how conflicts that arise during a design process and the management of conflicts can be modelled. A number of possible conflict types are distinguished and it is described how each of them can be detected during the design process, using an explicit meta-representation. Furthermore, it is shown how these conflict types can be analyzed and managed by means of strategic met...

Recent years have seen a growing reliance on "evidence-based" guidelines or consensus statements, in which rigorous, explicit methods are used to translate the complex findings of scientific research into operational recommendations for medical care. Various factors can affect the validity of the conclusions they express, however. The purpose of this review was to compare the levels of evidence...

Background and aims: Infertility is one of the most important conditions in reproductive system and there is no reliable estimates for global prevalence of infertility. Therefore, knowing the prevalence of infertility is important and can be effective in decision making. Methods: We systematically reviewed all published papers in Medline database and Scopus (1988–2010). Univariate and multivar...

conclusions there is a high prevalence of mets in the iranian adult population, with large variations based on different measurement criteria. therefore, prevention and control of mets should be considered a priority. objectives this study systematically reviewed the findings of all available studies on mets in the adult iranian population and estimated the overall prevalence of mets in this po...

a new meta-heuristic method, based on neuronal communication (nc), is introduced in this article. the neuronal communication illustrates how data is exchanged between neurons in neural system. actually, this pattern works efficiently in the nature. the present paper shows it is the same to find the global minimum. in addition, since few numbers of neurons participate in each step of the method,...

background: we aimed to elucidate the association between fat mass and obesity associated gene (fto) polymorphism and the risk of polycystic ovary syndrome (pcos) by meta-analysis. methods: we searched pubmed and embase databases to find the relevant studies. odds ratios (ors) and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (cis) were used for pooled analysis. statistical analyses were carried...

results patients who attained sustained virological response had a less risk (85%) for all-cause mortality and about 63% reduced risk of hepatocellular carcinoma incidence than those who did not achieve sustained virological response. based on deeply analysis, the stage of liver fibrosis was a risk factor at baseline for the incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma. conclusions sustained virologic...

background hepatitis b virus (hbv) infection is a serious global health problem that is associated with huge social and economic costs. early antiviral drugs, such as interferon-α2b, peginterferon-α2a, lamivudine, and adefovir, all have their limitations (such as low responses or safety concerns) in clinical application. telbivudine and entecavir are two of the latest nucleotide drugs and both ...

objectives: to generate synthesized information on the epidemiology of vzv infection, as well as an estimation of prevalence of age-specific antibody in iranian less than 40. material and methods: after exclusion of irrelevant and overlapping reports, 15 papers were included (from nine major cities). studies were pooled according to the heterogeneity test results. random effect model methods we...