BACKGROUND The rate of cigarette smoking among US adults has declined over the past 50 years. Yet smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and marked disparities now exist in smoking rates based on education level, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and geographic location. In order to target resources to reduce these disparities, a summary measure comparing the relative burden...

Epidemiologists often use ratio-type indices (rate ratio, risk ratio and odds ratio) to quantify the association between exposure and disease. By comparison, less attention has been paid to effect measures on a difference scale (excess rate or excess risk). The excess relative risk (ERR) used primarily by radiation epidemiologists is of peculiar interest here, in that it involves both differenc...

the objective of this study was to compare an indirect elisa, based on a purified 60 kda envelope glycoprotein (gp51su), with a pourquire indirect elisa for the detection of antibodies to the bovine leukemia virus. for conducting this research, 340 serum samples were collected from two different breeds of cows (sarabi and holestin) in different herds. commercial elisa revealed positive results ...

We study the images of Markov measures under transformations generated by Mealy automata. find conditions which image measure is absolutely continuous or singular relative to measure. Also, we determine statistical properties a generic sequence.

MarA activates two membrane dependent mechanisms of resistance to different antibiotics, such as ciprofloxacin and tetracycline, including promotion of outflux and inhibition of influx of antibiotics. Thus, MarA causes multiple antibiotic resistance phenotype. The activation of these mechanisms needs overexpression of marA. This could happen through mutation in marR. Thus, the aim of this study...

Bankruptcy in the same amount of time and history is very rampant and therefore the vision of the future can be prevented. Using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and malmquist index can precise evaluating of the performances of many different kinds of decision making units (DMU) such as hospitals, universities, business firms, etc. In this paper, we will modify directional distance formulation o...

Evaluative and comparative analysis among educational projects remains an issue for administration, program directors, instructors, and educational institutes. This study reports a fuzzy complexity model for educational projects, which has two primary aspects (technical aspects and transparency aspects). These aspects may not be measured precisely due to uncertain situations. Therefore, a fuzzy...

The aim of this research was to measure the relative efficiency of forest management plans in north of Iran. In order to fulfill the research, data of 12 forest management plans were collected from the financial balance sheets of Shafaroud Forest Company during a ten years period. First of all, basic Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models (BCC and CCR) were used to determine the efficiency. The...

     This research has attempted to measure the parameters of barchan dunes as one of the desert landforms. This has been conducted by a field survey using cartographic techniques. In the field, two barchan dunes have completely been surveyed by total station equipment. Using the sample points a novel method has been devised to measure the barchans parameters. The method is mainly based on geom...