There is a long tradition of describing cities through a focus on the characteristics of their residents. A brief review of the history of this approach to describing cities highlights some persistent challenges. To fit within the constraints of widely used multivariate data reduction techniques and thematic cartography populations are classified. Historically, this classification has been guid...

0377-2217/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier B.V. A doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2011.06.041 ⇑ Tel.: +886 920884730. E-mail address: [email protected] Goal programming (GP) has been, and still is, the most widely used technique for solving multiple-criteria decision problems and multiple-objective decision problems by finding a set of satisfying solutions. However, the major limitation of goal progr...

0377-2217/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. A doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2010.05.003 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 06 49 91 07 35; f E-mail addresses: [email protected], Formal modelling may be used to express management operational plans to achieve the desired normative objectives of firms. The plans so formulated should be demonstrably optimal with regard to certain specific obje...

BACKGROUND Medical workforce planning needs to be informed by knowledge about doctors' retirement intentions. Systematic information about retirement intentions, and factors that influence them, is sparse. METHODS Postal questionnaires were sent to members of a cohort of medical qualifiers surveyed regularly since they qualified in 1974, with quantitative analysis of intentions about early re...

Objective: To identify the rate of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children exposed to terbutaline in utero compared to patients untreated with this beta agonist. Methods: Members of three lay organizations collected data regarding significant childhood development problems following their pregnancy using a web-based survey. Results: Over a 90 day period, 11,717 surveys were sent electronical...

0377-2217/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier B.V. A http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2012.11.039 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 095 738 3048; fa E-mail addresses: [email protected] ( unict.it (A. Occhipinti), [email protected] (G. S unict.it (G. Nicosia). This paper is concerned with the complex behavior arising in satisfiability problems. We present a new statistical physics-ba...

0377-2217/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier B.V. A http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2012.09.037 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 15 27 81716; fax E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Rezaei), j.r. 1 Tel.: +31 15 27 84815; fax: +31 15 27 83177. One of the strategic activities of a firm is supplier segmentation, whereby a firm creates groups of suppliers to handle them differently. Existing ...

OBJECTIVE To identify chromosomal regions that show evidence of linkage to age-associated hearing impairment (presbycusis) in humans. DESIGN We evaluated the genetic linkage between quantitative measures from audiometric examinations and markers from a genomewide scan in a population-based sample ascertained without respect to hearing status. PARTICIPANTS Audiometric examinations were condu...

BACKGROUND This cross-sectional study was conducted to compare the average costs of breast cancer screening and treatment among women with the age of 25 and over in Shiraz-Iran. METHODS Three majors hospitals affiliated with Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (SUMS) were selected for data collection. Financial documents and interviews with the hospitals' financial officers were used for da...

The neonatal management of preterm born infants often results in damage to the developing lung and subsequent morbidity, referred to as bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). Animal models may help in understanding the molecular processes involved in this condition and define therapeutic targets. Our goal was to identify molecular pathways using the earlier described preterm rabbit model of hyperoxi...