The practice of inventory pooling–serving two or more separate markets using a common inventory stock–is extensively studied in operations management. The operational benefits of this strategy are well known: when demand is stochastic, combining multiple markets reduces aggregate uncertainty and improves the firm’s ability to efficiently match supply and demand, increasing profit as a result. I...

BACKGROUND Mutations in HFE, a gene defect that can disrupt iron metabolism, have been implicated in increasing the risk of developing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). OBJECTIVE To further establish the association between ALS and HFE mutations by investigating whether HFE mutations are associated with an increased risk of developing ALS in a population in The Netherlands and by pooling o...

With the growing number of epidemiologic publications on the relation between dietary factors and cancer risk, pooled analyses that summarize results from multiple studies are becoming more common. Here, the authors describe the methods being used to summarize data on diet-cancer associations within the ongoing Pooling Project of Prospective Studies of Diet and Cancer, begun in 1991. In the Poo...

BACKGROUND Both common and rare mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variants may contribute to genetic susceptibility to some complex human diseases. Understanding of the role of mtDNA variants will provide valuable insights into the etiology of these diseases. However, to date, there have not been any large-scale, genome-wide association studies of complete mtDNA variants and disease risk. One reason fo...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Knowledge regarding genetic factors that influence pancreatic cancer risk is currently limited. To identify novel pancreatic cancer susceptibility loci, we conducted a two-stage genome-wide association study. METHODS The Affymetrix Genome-Wide Human SNP Array 6.0 and DNA pooling were used in the screening stage. Twenty-six single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were selected f...

The notion of a defined 'core package of essential health care services' has appeared in many different health reform proposals in the 1990s. This paper attempts to explore the possible objectives of the 'core package' component of health care reform. Two board applications are apparent: the use of essential packages to ration scarce public funds and the incorporation of a minimum benefit packa...

Delirium is a common postoperative complication in older adults associated with adverse events including functional decline, longer lengths of stay, and risk of institutionalization. The purpose of this article is to systematically review preoperative risk factors associated with delirium following noncardiac surgery. A medical literature search was conducted using several bibliographic databas...

New generation antidepressant therapies, including serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRIs), were introduced in the late 1980s; however, few comprehensive studies have compared the benefits and risks of various contemporary treatments for major depressive disorder (MDD) in young patients. A comprehensive literature search of PubMed, Cochrane, Embase, Web of Science, and PsycINFO data...

A number of techniques for generating mid-level features, including two variants of Soft Assignment, Locality-constrained Linear Coding, and Sparse Coding, are evaluated in the main document [1]. Pooling methods that aggregate mid-level features into vectors representing images like Average pooling, Max-pooling, and a family of likelihood inspired pooling strategies are scrutinised there. This ...

BACKGROUND Biologic prosthesis (BP) has been reported as a safe alternative to polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) in vascular reconstruction. However, efficacy of BP remains controversial. We, therefore, conducted a systematic review to summarize previous available evidences comparing the BP and PTFE in terms of clinical outcomes. MATERIALS AND METHODS A literature search of the MEDLINE and Scopu...