Costs associated with reproduction are widely known to play a role in the evolution of reproductive tactics with consequences to population and eco-evolutionary dynamics. Evaluating these costs as they pertain to species in the wild remains an important goal of evolutionary ecology. Individual heterogeneity, including differences in individual quality (i.e., among-individual differences in trai...

BACKGROUND Low-energy-density diets are associated with higher diet costs per 10 MJ. Are diets of higher nutritional quality also associated with higher costs per 10 MJ? OBJECTIVE The objective was to determine the relations between energy-adjusted diet costs, dietary energy density, and nutritional quality of diets. DESIGN This was a cross-sectional study of a nationally representative sam...

BACKGROUND In a randomized, controlled trial (RCT) on childhood eczema we reported that substituting nurse practitioners (NPs) for dermatologists resulted in similar outcomes of eczema severity and in the quality of life, and higher patient satisfaction. OBJECTIVES To determine costs and cost-effectiveness of care provided by NPs vs. dermatologists and to compare our results with those in stu...

External groups requiring measures now include public and private payers, regulators, accreditors and others that certify performance levels for consumers, patients and payers. Although benefits have accrued from the growth in quality measurement, the recent explosion in the number of measures threatens to shift resources from improving quality to cover a plethora of quality-performance metrics...

This research provides a post-decimals analysis of market order execution quality in U.S. equity markets, using order-based data reported in accordance with SEC Rule 11Ac1-5. These data facilitate a comprehensive investigation of multiple dimensions of execution quality, including measures of costs and speed, for large samples of common stocks on Nasdaq and the NYSE. The evidence is consistent ...

energy costs comprise considerable amount of operation costs in water distribution networks. optimal management of energy costs to provide required water for consumers with desired quality is of high importance. to achieve this, optimization is defined as a powerful tool. in this paper, by focusing on operation phase, multi-objective optimization of water supply network considering hydraulic, q...

When recovering from operational problems, the Airline Operations Control Centre (AOCC) usually tries to minimize direct operational costs while satisfying all the required rules. In this paper we present the implementation of a Distributed Multi-Agent System (MAS) representing the existing real-life roles in an AOCC. This MAS includes software agents that cooperate through a distributed proble...

The impact of installing process control systems can be expected in terms of performance improvements through reduced operating costs.  Since these installations impose considerable capital expenditure, the profitability of the new systems should be economically justified. Controlled variable trend was reconstructed by a combination of simple waves, which provided a means to simulate the ef...