Cryopreservation of embryos and gametes has become an indispensible service for infertility treatment. Vitrification is now a prevalent technique for cryopreservation in assisted reproductive technology (ART) replacing, in many cases, conventional slow cooling methodology. Fertility preservation in female patients has become a very topical issue. Various malignant and nonmalignant diseases have...

Investment in the agricultural sector is important because this sector greatly affects the realms of providing food independence and security, employment, sustainable development, and environmental preservation. So, this study investigated the socio-economic impacts (direct and indirect effects) of the investment development policy on the agricultural sector and its sub-sectors in Iran in 2011 ...

The EU FP7 PROTAGE project opens up a novel approach to digital preservation by utilizing agent ecosystems for automation of preservation processes. The resulting preservation tools have the potential to enable integrated automated digital preservation operations in digital archives and libraries of different scales throughout Europe. It could also assist individuals in preserving their persona...

Developing technology standards require significant upfront investment expenditures. The value of the resulting technology depends on how it is deployed (e.g., proprietary use versus licensing) and remains uncertain. Hence, the rules governing investments in technology development must be conditioned on the subsequent deployment strategy (e.g. licensing fee) and the nature of uncertainty. In th...

Investment-specific technology (IST) shocks are often interpreted as multi-factor productivity (MFP) shocks in a separate investment-producing sector. However, this interpretation is strictly valid only when some stringent conditions are satisfied. Some of these conditions are at odds with the data. Using a two-sector model whose calibration is based on the U.S. Input-Output Tables, we consider...

We examine the adoption of patient care IT systems by US short-term acute care hospitals and the resulting impact these systems have in the productivity of hospitals. Of particular interest is the extent to which forprofit and non-profit hospitals obtain different results from the adoption of IT systems. We find that the marginal effect of IT on for-profit hospital productivity is to reduce the...