OBJECTIVE Many changes have been initiated in the Dutch hospital sector to optimize health-care delivery: national agenda-setting, increased competition and transparency, a new system of hospital reimbursement based on diagnosis-treatment combinations, intensified monitoring of quality and a multi-layered organizational development programme based on quality improvement collaboratives. The obje...

In order to improve the quality of video transmission over wireless relay system, some of the studies using Network Coding (NC) and Forward Error Correction (FEC) have been studied. In this paper, layered video streaming using scalable video coding (SVC) based on prioritized network coding is investigated. We propose a novel network coding scheme (prioritizedNC) in order to improve the quality ...

In the field of genetic research and the subsequent rise of biobanks an intensive discussion is taking place on national and international levels about property and personality rights to one’s own body and body parts. The authors attempt to develop on the basis of the current controversially discussed law a concept of property, which can solve the legal and bioethical problems of the multiple u...

any software libraries have been created to support the commonly used primitive operations needed in image processing, image analysis and image understanding. Generally, these libraries Mar e based on the single-layered Application Program Interface (API). While a single-layered API provides the useful abstraction level to interact with the library and hides unnecessary implementation details f...

A new genetic algorithm based on multi niche crowding is capable of efficiently locating all the peaks of a multi-modal function. By associating these peaks with the utility accrued from different sets of decision variables it is possible to extend the use of genetic algorithms to multi criteria decision making problems. This concept is applied to address the problems arising in the context of ...

This paper presents an analytical solution to describe tidal groundwater level fluctuations in a coastal leaky aquifer system bounded by water–land boundaries that form a right angle (referred to as L-shaped coastlines). The system consists of an unconfined aquifer, a confined aquifer and a leaky layer between them. Previously published analytical solutions that discuss only single aquifer cons...

Groundwater age distributions are used to estimate the parameters of Fickian, and non-Fickian, effective models of solute transport. Based on the similarities between the transport and age equations, we develop a deconvolution based approach that describes transport between two monitoring wells. We show that the proposed method gives exact estimates of the travel time distribution between two w...

to achieve an excellent thermal-mechanical performance of cmcs, it is necessary to analyze and design the thickness of the multi-layered interphases for an optimized trs distribution. an optimization was performed with a new version of the particle swarm optimization, the bsg-starcraft radius pso linked to a finite element software.

At the Hanford Site, an extensive In Situ Redox Manipulation (ISRM) permeable reactive barrier was installed to prevent chromate from reaching the Columbia River. However, chromium has been detected in several wells, indicating a premature loss of the reductive capacity in the aquifer. Laboratory experiments have been conducted to investigate whether barrier reductive capacity can be enhanced b...

Hydrogeological maps must synthesize scientific knowledge about the hydraulic features and hydrogeological behavior of a specific area, and, at same time, they meet expectations land planners administrators. Thus, can be fully effective when are purpose-designed, especially in complex interconnected systems. In this case study, purpose-designed graphical solutions emphasize all interconnections...