PURPOSE Thoracoscopic lobectomy in infants requires advanced minimally invasive skills. Simulation-based education has the potential to improve complex procedural skills without exposing the patient to undue risks. The study purposes were (1) to create a size-appropriate infant lobectomy simulator and (2) to evaluate validity evidence to support or refute its use in surgical education. MATERI...

Corporate credit rating is a process to classify commercial enterprises based on their creditworthiness. Machine learning algorithms can construct classification models, but in general they do not tend to be 100% accurate. Since they can be used as decision support for experts, interpretable models are desirable. Unfortunately, interpretable models are provided by only few machine learners. Fur...

Urban growth is dynamic and complex spatial process that has severe environmental and social impacts. High population growth results in the transformations of forested areas or high quality agricultural lands into urban land-use. The study and modeling of the urban growth and land-use change processes are complex due to the difficulties to represent the interactions between the physical and hum...

There is a substantial empirical literature quantifying the positive relationship between city size and productivity. The paper draws out the implications of this productivity relationship for evaluations of urban transport improvements. A theoretical model is developed and used to derive a wider cost-benefit measure that includes productivity effects. The order of magnitude of such effects is ...

The influence of urban design on economic vitality has been analyzed by a number of researchers and is also a key focus of many planning/design theories. However, most quantitative studies are based on just one city or a small set of cities, rather than a large number of cities that are representative of an entire country. With the increasing availability of new data, we aim to alleviate this g...

As international trade increases so does the prominence of urban areas as gateways for exotic forest insects (EFI).Delimiting hot spots for invasions (i.e., areaswhere establishment is likely) within urban areas would facilitate monitoring efforts. We used a propagule-pressure framework to delimit establishment hot spots of a hypothetical generalist EFI in six U.S. urban areas: Chicago, Detroit...

OBJECTIVES To examine perceived communication barriers between urban consultants and rural family physicians practising routine and emergency care in remote subarctic Newfoundland and Labrador (NL). DESIGN This study used a mixed-methods design. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through exploratory surveys, comprised of closed and open-ended questions. The quantitative data was...

This paper presents a research that integrates remote sensing, GIS, and dynamic spatial modeling for predicting urban spatial growth with different development conditions considered. The study area has been a fast growing American metropolis. The prediction is based on a cellular automate urban growth model governed by a set of complex transition rules combining both socio-economic and biophysi...