localizing the optic disc (od) in retinal fundus images is of critical importance, since it is very similar to hard exudates (found in pathology) in color and brightness. because of the importance of od localization in clinical applications, many techniques have been developed. in this paper, we present the results obtained from two methods, correlation and least square, to approximate the opti...

The sitting beach-chair position is regularly used for shoulder surgery and anesthesia may be induced in that position. We tested the hypothesis that the cardiovascular challenge induced by induction of anesthesia is attenuated if the patient is placed in a reclining beach-chair position. Anesthesia was induced with propofol in the sitting beach-chair (n = 15) or with the beach-chair tilted bac...

Skills management has been recently acknowledged as one of the key factors to adequately face the increasing competitiveness between knowledge intensive companies. In this paper we present a formal approach to Ontology-Based Semantic Matchmaking between Skills demand and supply, devised as a virtual marketplace of knowledge. In such a knowledge market metaphor, skills are a peculiar kind of goo...

OBJECTIVE To describe the longitudinal pattern of health care utilization and cost of care before and after opioid overdose (OD) over a 10-year period using health plan claims data. METHODS Patients who had experienced opioid ODs between April 2005 and March 2015 were identified from Geisinger Health System's electronic health records. Among these patients, a subgroup of patients who were Gei...

This paper shows, using data from both the US and the UK, that average establishment size is larger in denser market areas. However, canonical versions of theories of agglomeration – spill-overs, cost advantages and improved match quality – all predict that establishments should be smaller in cities. The paper proposes a theory based on monopsony in labour markets that can explain the stylized ...

Representative origin-destination (OD) demand tables are a crucial part of making many transportation models relevant to practice. However estimating these OD tables is a challenging problem, even more so determining the confidence intervals on these OD estimates. In this work we propose a method to construct estimates and confidence intervals of OD demand tables from link flow data. Our method...

Innovative methodology based on a combination of Real Time Kinematic GPS (RTK-GPS), lidar, and open source GIS was developed to gain a better understanding of rapid changes in coastal topography. Improved spatial interpolation techniques were implemented to produce detailed topographic surfaces from lidar and RTK-GPS data. The methodology is demonstrated for two North Carolina areas: Jockey's R...

OBJECTIVE Anti-endothelial cell antibodies (AECA) have been described in a number of systemic autoimmune-inflammatory diseases. However, little is known about the relationship of AECA with mixed connective tissue disease (MCTD). METHODS Using an ELISA, the presence of AECA was evaluated in the sera of 33 patients with MCTD and of 30 healthy subjects as controls. Serum levels of AECA were corr...