In this study, we hypothesized that many of the reported effects of phthalate esters and other peroxisome proliferators (PPs) in the testis are mediated by members of the PPactivated receptor (PPAR) family of transcription factors through alterations in proteins involved in steroidogenesis. Exposure of Leydig cells to PPs prevented cholesterol transport into the mitochondria after hormonal stim...

Policymakers hoped to substitute a new, multi-purpose, functional assessment instrument, the minimum data set post-acute care (MDS-PAC), into the planned prospective payment system (PPS) for inpatient rehabilitation hospitals. PPS design requires a large database linking treatment costs with measures of the need for care, so the PPS was designed using the functional independence measure (FIM) d...

Dedicated multisensory mechanisms in the brain represent peripersonal space (PPS), a limited portion of space immediately surrounding the body. Previous studies have illustrated the malleability of PPS representation through hand-object interaction, showing that tool use extends the limits of the hand-centered PPS. In the present study we investigated the effects of a special tool, the wheelcha...

Possibility theory offers a qualitative framework for modeling decision under uncertainty. In this setting, pessimistic and optimistic decision criteria have been formally justified. The computation by means of possibilistic logic inference of optimal decisions according to such criteria has been proposed. This paper presents an Answer Set Programming (ASP)-based methodology for modeling decisi...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a mathematical programming-based approach for evaluates the relative efficiency of a set of DMUs (Decision Making Units). The relative efficiency of a DMU is the result of comparing the inputs and outputs of the DMU and those of other DMUs in the PPS (Production Possibility Set). Also, in Data Envelopment Analysis various models have been developed in order to...

Fuzzy relation-based models for handling uncertainty (in a non-probabilistic way) in diagnosis problems have been introduced by Sanchez about twenty years ago, and since then applied and developed by several researchers. The paper first reviews the existing proposals, also including the association-based abductive model proposed by Reggia and his co-workers, which uses non-fuzzy relations. A ne...

This paper proposes a general discussion of the handling of imprecise and uncertain information in temporal reasoning in the framework of fuzzy sets and possibility theory. The introduction of fuzzy features in temporal reasoning can be related to different issues. First, it can be motivated by the need of a gradual, linguistic-like description of temporal relations even in the face of complete...

Several authors have pointed out the relationship between consonant random sets and possibility measures. However, this relationship has only been proven for the finite case, where the inverse M€ obius of the upper probability induced by the random set simplifies the computations to a great extent. In this paper, we study the connection between both concepts for arbitrary referential spaces. We...