Problems concerning complete structural characterization of quasicrystals involve locating the atomic positions as well as determining the distribution of elements at each site. Quasicrystalline approximants provide models for potential building units of quasicrystals, but a clear determination of the elemental decorations in such approximants also remains incomplete. We report experimental and...

This paper explores the link between the presence of unions in the workplace, the adoption of decentralized labor agreements and technical efficiency, using a large sample of Italian manufacturing firms. We apply the Data Envelopment Analysis, and its robust version based on bootstrap theory, to get reliable estimates of technical efficiency at the firm level in a standard first stage. We devot...

The first part of this paper is concerned with global characterizations of both the multivariate ß-spline and the multivariate truncated power function as smooth piecewise polynomials. In the second part of the paper we establish combinatorial criteria for the linear independence of multivariate ß-splines corresponding to certain configurations of knot sets.

truncated gaussian simulation (tgs) is a well-known method to generate realizations of the ore domains located in a spatial sequence. in geostatistical framework geological domains are normally utilized for stationary assumption. the ability to measure the uncertainty in the exact locations of the boundaries among different geological units is a common challenge for practitioners. as a simple a...

introduction: long term complications of hepatitis c virus (hcv) infection include fibrosis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma and although the disease is treatable with the newly introduced direct acting antivirals, but factors such as drug resistance, viral genotype and adverse effects can limit the effectiveness of therapy. therefore, development of effective, safe and affordable proph...

protein a is a commercially important protein in biotechnological and medicinal applications. the great value of this protein and its applications in genetic and protein engineering and microbial researches as well as the growing use in biochemical industries, biotechnology, medicine and pharmacology, highlight the importance of the present study. in this survey the encoding genes of full-lengt...

The natural preconditioner defined by local potentials is effective in the truncated Newton method for minimizing large scale biomolecular potential energy functions. This paper extends its definition, and proposes an algorithm for generating the sparse pattern of the preconditioner from the primary structure of a molecular system with N atoms. It shows that the implementation of the new compre...

This study analyses the technical efficiency of Saudi banks using a two-stage DEA-data envelopment analysis approach. In the first stage, we use a bootstrapped DEA–VRS model to identify the efficiency scores, and in the second stage, we use a bootstrapped truncated regression model to identify the covariates that explain technical efficiency. Policy implications are derived. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. ...