The purpose of this work is to propose a plan for future research and development of the qualitative decision support method DEX. DEX is a qualitative multi-attribute modelling method used to evaluate and analyse multiple decision alternatives in order to select the best alternative. We propose six extensions to DEX: supporting full hierarchies, using numeric attributes, probabilistic and fuzzy...

The human right to adequate food is comprehended in two dimensions: being free of hunger and denutrition and having access to an adequate food. The urban context, in which the possession of food is done primarily through merchandising because of its strong consuming appealing, became a big challenge to debate this topic in poor districts today. Here we combine considerations of a qualitative st...

Support Vector Machines (SVMs) for classification tasks produce sparse models by maximizing the margin. Two limitations of this technique are considered in this work: firstly, the number of support vectors can be large and, secondly, the model requires the use of (Mercer) kernel functions. Recently, some works have proposed to maximize the margin while controlling the sparsity. These works also...

background & aim: sexual activity is one of the most important aspects of a marital life. childbirth is also a major event in the life of women, and the period of postpartum is a time of emotional upheaval. since women believe that vaginal delivery could negatively affect their sexual function after childbirth, they tend to give birth through caesarean section. therefore, this study aimed to ev...

background: availability of antiretroviral therapies has transformed aids into a manageable chronic condition and im­proved well-being among people living with hiv/aids (pha) in developed countries. in developing countries however, such transformations are yet to occur due to socio-economic, systemic and environmental constraint. this study examined the impact of social, economic, psychological...

pulmonary hypertension (ph) is an important cause of heart failure in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (copd). the pro brain natriuretic peptide n-terminal (nt-probnp) has been suggested as a noninvasive marker to evaluate ventricular function. however, there is no evidence to support the use of nt-probnp in monitoring the benefits of vasodilators in copd induced ph. thus, we used nt-probn...

Machine learning with classification can effectively be applied for many applications, especially those with complex measurements. Therefore classification technique can be used for prediction of diseases like cancer, liver disorders and heart disease etc which involve complex measurements. This is part of growing demand and much interesting towards predictive diagnosis. It has also been establ...