The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is considering restricting or banning morcellation in minimally invasive hysterectomies and myomectomies (removal of fibroids) because of new reports of higher incidence of undiagnosed sarcoma in women undergoing these procedures. Research now links morcellation to the spread, or upstaging, of undetectable gynecological cancers. In July, FDA convened a 2-da...

Central banks and supervisory authorities regularly assess the situation in the banking sector, which is a vital element in the financial system. Two main questions are at the centre of such assessments: what is the present condition of the banking sector, and how will it evolve in the medium term? The first aim of this paper is to develop a “stress index”, summarising the current condition of ...

This paper considers a condition-based maintenance (i.e. CBM) model for the hydro generating unit in the deregulated power system. As the downtime cost of the generating unit varies according to the time-varying electricity price, the economic dependence among the critical component of the generating unit is dynamic. In this paper, the proposed DynamicEconomic-Dependence and proportional hazard...

In most multiagent systems with communicating agents, the agents have the luxury of using reliable, multi-step negotiation protocols. They can do so primarily when communication is reliable and the cost of communication relative to other actions is small. Conversely, this paper considers multiagent environments with unreliable, high-cost communication. This paper presents techniques for dealing...

introduction. it is important for the managers to know about the most important needs of their employees. many authors believe that one of the most important aspects of working and progressing in an organization is motivation. considering the important role of clinical teachers in educating the medical students, investigating their teaching quality is important. one of the most effective factor...

The sun bear, Helarctos malayanus (Raffles, 1821), is a forest-dependent bear species distributed in tropical Southeast Asia. The species was previously reported from scattered localities in southwestern China, which is at the northeastern edge of its global range. Due to the scarcity of reliable recent records, some authorities cast doubt on the continued existence of sun bear in China. Here w...

Situation: Reliable authorities predicted that the US standard of living would increase about 3% a year for the next 20 years, in effect doubling in a generation This would be taken as a very good sign by the general public A growth rate of 1% per year would cause great concern Question: Does the difference between the degree of elation and concern really matter? o Is it well-founded? o Should ...