In this paper, Bayesian estimation and hypothesis testing are introduced for identified normalized Vector Autoregressive (VAR) models. A class of priors is proposed to take advantage of the structure of normalized VAR models. Efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms are used for sampling from the posterior of the VAR parameters without using Metropolis algorithms. Marginal likelihoods are ...

Systems of computers and their application in the lives of modern human beings are vastly expanding. In any kind of computer application, failure in computer systems can lead to a range of financial and mortal losses. Indeed, the major origin of software failure can be located in designing or implementing software. With regard to these statistics, 30% of the software projects have been prospero...

OBJECTIVE To assess the cost-effectiveness of 3 treatments (tiotropium, salmeterol, and no treatment) in patients with moderate chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). METHODS A Markov model with a time horizon of 1 year was developed. A hypothetical cohort of 100,000 subjects with moderate COPD with mean age of 65 years, smoking history of 50 pack-years, and disease duration of 9.5 yea...

AIM To assess the costs and cost-effectiveness ratio of topical and peribulbar anesthesia in non-penetrating deep sclerectomy for the surgical treatment of open-angle glaucoma. PATIENTS AND METHODS We evaluated the associated direct costs with both topical and peribulbar anesthesia. Effectiveness was defined as the proportion of patients that experienced no pain during the surgical procedure ...

The exploration of quality clusters in complex networks is an important issue in many disciplines, which still remains a challenging task. Many graph clustering algorithms came into the field in the recent past but they were not giving satisfactory performance on the basis of robustness, optimality, etc. So, it is most difficult task to decide which one is giving more beneficial clustering resu...

Coumarin oral anticoagulant drugs have proven to be effective for the prevention of thromboembolic events. World-wide, warfarin is the most prescribed drug. In Europe, acenocoumarol and phenprocoumon are also administered. Yet it has been proven that variant alleles of the VKORC1 and CYP2C9 genotypes influence the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of these drugs. The combination of these tw...

BACKGROUND Recent studies have investigated alternatives to warfarin for stroke prophylaxis in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), but whether these alternatives are cost-effective is unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS On the basis of the results from Randomized Evaluation of Long Term Anticoagulation Therapy (RE-LY) and other trials, we developed a decision-analysis model to compare the cost a...

Understanding Web searching behavior is important in developing more successful and cost-efficient Web search engines. We provide results from a comparative time-based Web study of US-based Excite and Norwegian-based Fast Web search logs, exploring variations in user searching related to changes in time of the day. Findings suggest: (1) fluctuations in Web user behavior over the day, (2) user i...