the value of wetlands is receiving increasing attention and the cost–benefit analyses (cba) is essential to evaluate the long-term effects of wetland rehabilitation projects. in order to guarantee the water quality of the south-to-north water diversion project of china (east route), the government of shandong province started a huge lakeshore wetland rehabilitation project in 2008. the cba appr...

BACKGROUND To quantify the contribution of locally implemented prevention programmes in contributing to reductions in treatment and care costs by averting HIV infections among those who inject drugs this study calculates net financial benefit of providing harm reduction programmes using information from services being implemented in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China ( between 2...

This paper introduces the Petri Net Radial Basis Function Perceptron (PNRBFP), a modified Petri Net that exhibits behavior equivalent to that of a typical radial basis function Perceptron when used in neural networking applications under certain domain restrictions. The PNRBFP makes use of modified transitions to perform basis function calculations and 'fuzzy' style tokens to transport values o...

BACKGROUND Patient navigation can increase colorectal cancer screening rates. The net economic impact of a colonoscopy patient navigator program was evaluated in an urban public hospital setting. METHODS Cost, cost-effectiveness, and cost-benefit analyses were performed of a colonoscopy patient navigation program at 3 urban public hospitals in the period from 2003 to 2007. Program effectivene...

Pastoralists on the Tibetan alpine rangeland suffered great economic loss in cold season, due to serious live-weight loss of domestic livestock under traditional grazing management. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of dietary types (crude protein levels) on feed intakes, growth performance and economic returns of local Tibetan sheep and yaks during cold season. Twenty-four yearling Tibet...

In this study, we developed an innovative operational decision-support system (DSS) based on flood data and mitigation or recovery options, that can be used by both naïve and expert users to score portfolios of flood mitigation or recovery measures. The DSS combines exposure (i.e., economic, social, or environmental values at risk) and resilience (i.e., protection of the main equilibrium functi...

BACKGROUND Despite general agreement about the toxicity of methylmercury (MeHg), fish consumption advice remains controversial. Concerns have been raised that negative messages will steer people away from fish and omega-3 fatty acid (FA) benefits. One approach is to provide advice for individual species that highlights beneficial fish while cautioning against riskier fish. OBJECTIVES Our goal...

BACKGROUND Little is known about the net clinical benefit of warfarin therapy in elderly patients with atrial fibrillation. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied 2339 Chinese patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation aged≥80 years: 1805 with no antithrombotic therapy and 534 on warfarin therapy. Patients were stratified according to their CHA2DS2-VASc and HAS-BLED score. The primary end point wa...

The utility of a risk function in clinical practice is an important concept that has received insufficient attention. The authors evaluated the clinical usefulness of the Framingham risk function (FRF) for cardiovascular disease in a Middle Eastern population (2,640 men and 3,584 women aged 30–74 years) free of cardiovascular disease at baseline in 1999. They calculated the net benefit fraction...

We test whether physiological integration enhances the short-term fitness of the clonal herb Hydrocotyle peduncularis (Apiaceae, R. Brown ex A. Richards) subjected to spatial variation in water availability. Our measures of fitness and costs and benefits are based on the relative growth rate of fragmented genets. Physiological integration over a gradient in soil moisture resulted in a highly si...