A person experiences different stages throughout the life, causing dramatically varying behavior patterns. In applications such as online-shopping, it has been observed that customer behaviors are largely affected by their stages and are evolving over time. Although this phenomena has been recognized previously, very few studies tried to model the life-stage and make use of it. In this paper, w...

BACKGROUND AND GOALS Cats have become the most popular pet in the United States, yet statistics about veterinary care for cats remain troubling. Although most owners consider their cats to be family members, cats are substantially underserved, compared with dogs. In 2006, owners took their dogs to veterinarians more than twice as often as cats, averaging 2.3 times/year, compared with 1.1 times/...

F or a long time now, arbitrary boundaries have been used in the severity grading of chronic airflow limitation and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The lack of validation of these severity cut-points has been widely criticised, predominantly because they are based on clinical impressions and simplistic metrics. This is acknowledged by the Global Initiative of Chronic Obstructive L...

background: adolescent tobacco use remains a major public health priority to reduce the prevalence of tobacco use in community. the aim of this study was determining the association of the transitions in smoking stages with prevalence of cigarette smoking in the classes and schools in adolescents of tabriz city (northwest of iran). methods: fifty-six high schools were randomly selected, and 490...

Many researchers have conceptualized smoking uptake behavior in adolescence as progressing through a sequence of developmental stages. Multiple social, psychological, and biological factors influence this process, and may play different functions at different points in the progression, and play different roles for different people. The major objective of this paper is to review empirical studie...

The early life history of the conger eel, Conger oceanicus, has been the focus of only a few studies. These have emphasized larval development and distribution; little is known about its metamorphosis and settlement. To quantify changes in body proportions, dentition, and pigmentation of metamorphosing C. oceanicus during these transitions, we collected leptocephali, glass eels, elvers, and juv...