Background and study aims  Endoscopic biliary intervention (BI) is often difficult to perform in patients with prior bariatric surgery (BRS). We sought to analyze outcomes of patients with prior BRS undergoing endoscopic and non-endoscopic BI. Patients and methods  The Nationwide Inpatient Sample (2007 - 2011) was reviewed to identify all adult inpatients (≥ 18 years) with a history of BRS un...

in this paper, the staff assignment problem considering cross-training of caregivers in health care systems is addressed to determine which staff should be cross-trained for each service and how they should be assigned to services. a bi-objective non-linear mathematical programming model is presented where the first objective function aims to minimize workload balancing, cross-training as well ...

One of the key issues in mining is the hauling system. Truck and shovels are the most widely used transportation equipment in mines. In this paper, a two-phase simulation-based optimization is presented to maximize utilization of hauling system in the largest Iranian open-pit copper mine. In the first phase, The OptQuest for Arena software package was used to solve the optimization problem to p...

Mammographic risk assessment provides an indication of the likelihood of women developing breast cancer. Anumber ofmammographic image based classification methods have been developed, such as Wolfe, Boyd, BI-RADS and Tabár based assessment. We provide a comparative study of these four approaches. Results on the full MIAS database are presented, which indicate strong correlation (Spearman’s > 0....

Many relations between model elements are expressed in OCL. However, tool support to enable synchronization of elements based on OCL-expressed relations is lacking. In this paper, we propose to use active operations in order to achieve incremental execution of some OCL expressions. Moreover, bidirectionality can also be achieved in non-trivial

This paper demonstrates the existence of bi-directional relationships between interfirm collaboration and business sales. Entry and post-entry collaboration often contribute to superior performance, which in turn attracts more partners. At the same time, though, collaboration may impose constraints on growth opportunities. The relationships vary across types of collaborators and collaborations ...

this research presents a numerical tool to estimate the green's function operator matrix of intraplate faults. having this matrix and its inverse, spatial distribution of fault slippage could be investigated through the inverse analysis of geodetic data. this information could be employed to predict the location of future powerful earthquakes. to implement fault sliding in fe calculations,...