We examine codes, over the additive Gaussian noise channel, designed for reliable communication at some specific signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and constrained by the permitted minimum mean-square error (MMSE) at lower SNRs. The maximum possible rate is below point-to-point capacity, and hence these are non-optimal codes (alternatively referred to as “bad” codes). We show that the maximum possible...

purpose: scientific databases are the most important and useful sources where information is accessible via user interfaces. one of the approaches to eliminating the existing challenges in databases user interface is utilizing the sense-making theory (smt) approach. smt approach helps the users to understand problematic situations they have faced with and bridges the cognitive and information g...

BACKGROUND Lack of appropriate health care seeking for ill mothers and neonates contributes to high mortality rates. A major challenge is the appropriate mix of strategies for creating demand as well as provision of services. DESIGN Systematic review and meta-analysis of experimental studies (last search: Jan 2015) to assess the impact of different strategies to improve maternal and neonatal ...

1. What do we mean by "sanitation"? The first challenge for countries seeking to solve the problem of access to sanitation is to define what “sanitation" really means. The second challenge is to decide what aspects are the most important. In other words, what aspect of the problem is going to be dealt with as a priority. This problem is not a simple one and many professionals confuse the two st...

In this paper, we report on a case study on development impediments encountered in the early phase of a transformation to agile methods in a software development organization. Drawing from literature and anecdotal evidence, it was assumed that the majority of the impediments were related to software testing. To investigate this, we performed a case study seeking qualitative and quantitative evi...

Critical review skill is one important aspect of academic writing. Generic trigger questions have been widely used to support this activity. When students have a concrete topic in mind, trigger questions are less effective if they are too general. This article presents a learning-to-rank based system which automatically generates specific trigger questions from citations for critical review sup...

Objective: Personality is the most important infrastructure factor in addiction, and substance abusers have certain personal weaknesses that make them vulnerable to addiction. This study examined the role of sensation-seeking and coping strategies in predicting drug addiction in high school students.  Methods: This study is a descriptive–correlational research. Multi-stage cluster sampling w...

background and aim: family psychological support is a highly important concept concerning patients diagnosed with cancer. the purpose of this study was to investigate cancer patients’ perceptions of family psychological support. methods: this study had a qualitative approach using inductive content analysis method. through purposive sampling, 15 patients were selected who underwent semi-structu...