BACKGROUND Infertility patients are increasingly using complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to supplement or replace conventional fertility treatments. The objective of this study was to determine the roles of CAM practitioners in the support and treatment of infertility. METHODS Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted in Ottawa, Canada in 2011 with CAM practitioners who special...

This short paper examines the way in which the electronic repertoire of contention for online social movements is being built, and the means by which it will continue to evolve. Drawing on the work of Tilly and Tarrow, a number of possible explanations are examined for innovation within the online activist space, and for the diffusion of that innovation. Analysis suggests that several of the cu...

This article presents the first results of our system applied to recognize automatically the handwritten dates on Brazilian bankchecks. Considering the omni-writer context, we detail here our recognition module dedicated to process the month field. This module is based on the combination of holistic and analytical approaches with a fixed lexicon. Both approaches operate with a single explicit s...

With growing calls for changes in the field of risk assessment, improved systematic approaches for addressing environmental issues with greater transparency and stakeholder engagement are needed to ensure sustainable trade-offs. Here we describe the comprehensive environmental assessment (CEA) approach as a holistic way to manage complex information and to structure input from diverse stakehold...

This paper discusses (based on the EU project AQUA) how the core elements of three complementary approaches and standards can be integrated into one compact skill set with training and best practices to be applied. In this project experts from Automotive SPICE (ISO 15504), Functional Safety (ISO 26262) and Lean Six Sigma collaborate. In a first analysis the experts identified an architecture of...

Background: The initial review of the holistic nursing theories showed that while most definitions of holism share the same attributes, its application to nursing practice has led to much discourse. Aim: This review therefore was carried out to analyze the concept of nursing in three known holistic theories including Rogers, Watson, and Margaret Newman. Method: This concept analysis of nursing ...

In this talk I will outline and survey some developments in the field of XML tree pattern query processing, especially focussing on holistic approaches. XML tree pattern query (TPQ) processing is a research stream within XML data management that focuses on efficient TPQ answering. With the increasing popularity of XML for data representation, there is a lot of interest in query processing over ...

Perceptual categorization is a key problem for an agent to cope with its internal and external world. Following a functional and subjective approach of cognitive modeling, the primary purpose of perceptual categorization is modeled as the valuation of a stimulus regarding its potential to satisfy an agent's current needs. Additionally an integrated and holistic approach is used, where categoriz...

Purpose Asthma is a chronic disease increasingly found in children. In order to find more economical and efficient alternatives to treat pediatric asthma, the Bureau of National Health Insurance of Taiwan launched the Traditional Chinese Medicine Holistic Treatment Program (TCMHTP). Based on the data collected during the program, we evaluated the effect of TCM holistic treatments on pediatric a...