We investigate whether the distributions to the states from the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) in 1998 is associated with stronger tobacco control efforts. We use state level data from 50 states and the District of Columbia from four time periods post MSA (1999, 2002, 2004, and 2006) for the analysis. Using fixed effect regression models, we estimate the relationship between MSA disb...

In this paper, we implement a multilingual Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) system for Arabic-English Translation. Arabic Text can be categorized into standard and dialectal Arabic. These two forms of Arabic differ significantly. Different mono-lingual and multi-lingual hybrid SMT approaches are compared. Mono-lingual systems do always result in better translation accuracy in one Arabic fo...

This paper discusses the design characteristics management accounting systems should have to be useful for strategic planning and control and provides brief introductions to strategic variance analysis, profit-linked performance measurement models and balanced scorecard. It shows two multi-period, multiproduct models are specified, can be related to Porter's strategy framework and cost and reve...

Multiple system atrophy (MSA) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized clinically by any combination of autonomic, cerebellar, and extrapyramidal symptoms. Autonomic symptoms are usually severe, and urinary symptoms are one of the cardinal features of MSA. Bowel dysfunction and sexual dysfunction are also common in MSA. Quality of life (QOL) in patients with MSA is severely impaired by the ...

Mined Semantic Analysis (MSA) is a novel distributional semantics approach which employs data mining techniques. MSA embraces knowledge-driven analysis of natural languages. It uncovers implicit relations between concepts by mining for their associations in target encyclopedic corpora. MSA exploits not only target corpus content but also its knowledge graph (e.g., "See also" link graph of Wikip...

Neuronal cytoplasmic inclusions (NCIs) were demonstrated by means of silver staining (Gallyas staining) in the central nervous systems of 18 deceased patients with multiple system atrophy (MSA) - 6 with olivopontocerebellar atrophy (OPCA), 6 with striatonigral degeneration (SND) and 6 with Shy-Drager syndrome (SDS). We observed NCIs in the cerebral cortex, putamen, pons, medulla oblongata and s...

Muscle synergy analysis (MSA) is a mathematical technique that reduces the dimensionality of electromyographic (EMG) data. Used increasingly in biomechanics research, MSA requires methodological choices at each stage of the analysis. Differences in methodological steps affect the overall outcome, making it difficult to compare results across studies. We applied MSA to EMG data collected from in...

Multiple sequence alignments have primary role in several domains of modern molecular biology such as protein 3D structure/function prediction, phylogeny inference, molecular function, intermolecular interactions and many other common tasks in sequence analysis. Presently, many tools to construct multiple sequence alignments are available but none of them is accurate for all types of data sets....

A convenient method is introduced for myocardial perfusion research by combining multislice short-axis cine cardiovascular magnetic resonance (MSA-CMR) and colored microspheres (CM). In canine control-ischemia-reperfusion (n = 11), Cardiac output (CO) was measured using MSA-CMR (COMSA), Phase Contrast CMR (PC-CMR, COPC) and CM (from reference blood samples, COmicro) in 3 experimental periods pe...