To predict the profitability of a customer, today’s firms have to practice Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) computation. Different approaches are proposed in the last ten years to analyze the complex customer phenomenon. One of them is Markov Decision Process (MDP) model. The class of Markov Models is an effective and a flexibility decision model. Whereas the use of MDP model is limited by its ass...

BACKGROUND Many women use multivitamins in the belief that these supplements will prevent chronic diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. However, whether the use of multivitamins affects the risk of breast cancer is unclear. OBJECTIVE We prospectively examined the association between multivitamin use and the incidence of invasive breast cancer in the Swedish Mammography Cohort. ...

Monitoring task performance is crucial in team work in order to ensure equal participation of all team members. However, it may be difficult to implement due to team dynamism. One of the approaches that can be adopted when monitoring group work relies on measuring efficiency of each task performed by the team members. Thus, this paper aims to demonstrate application of Value Stream Mapping (VSM...

While the Periotest continues to be used in assessing the integrity of implants, there are numerous reports of its inconsistencies. To understand more precisely what the Periotest is actually measuring, a mathematical model was developed that illustrates the effect that various geometric and clinical parameters have on the Periotest value (PTV). In addition, the model was validated with an in v...

Contemporary digital image processing applications require a suitable tool for further applications and processing. In this paper, a Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) based new sub-band decomposition and multi-resolution representation of digital colour images is proposed. Simulation was performed using MATLAB on Lenna image and the resultant sub-bands, which contained different directional de...

Aim: To analysis the relationship between healthy adults right ventricular diameter (RVD) and geographical factors. Location: China’s 22 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. Methods: Using correlation analysis the relationship between RVD and nine geographic factors, build predictive models by factor analysis. Results: There is significant correlation between RVD and geographical f...

Recommended Reference Value Standards based on the potassium hydrogenphthalate buffer at various temperatures are reported for pH measurements in various binary solvent mixtures of water with eight organic solvents: methanol, ethanol, 2-propanol, 1,2-ethanediol, 2-methoxyethanol (“methylcellosolve”), acetonitrile, 1,4-dioxane, and dimethylsulphoxide, together with Reference Value Standards base...

BACKGROUND Numerous school-based interventions for childhood obesity have been emerging in mainland China in recent decades, but little is known about the effectiveness of such interventions. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of school-based interventions for childhood obesity conducted in mainland China. METHODS A systematic search was undertaken in eight databases to identify both...

Combination of grammatical roles in relative clauses (RC) is determined by a multitude of factors (Fox and Thompson 1990, Pu 2007, Ming and Chen 2009). This study shows that four factors (discourse functions of RCs, grounding mechanism, information status, and animacy of head nouns) interact with one another to determine which combination is favored in a Chinese discourse. 1. Introduction The p...