When fixing performance problems in new or existing software or determining whether a proposed system will meet its performance objectives, taking an architectural approach can make it possible to achieve performance objectives more quickly and at a lower cost. This paper describes PASA, a method for performance assessment of software architectures. It was developed from our experience in condu...

OBJECTIVES To determine the relationship between osteoarthritis in the plantar region of the first metatarsophalangeal joint of the foot and patient pain after hallux valgus surgery. MATERIAL AND METHODS A total of 28 patients undergoing hallux valgus surgery were examined. The patients were examined for pain in the plantar region of the metatarsophalangeal joint (sesamoid bones area), by loo...

This paper investigates the transmit (Tx) beamforming design to maximize the throughput of a multiple-input multiple-output multicast channel, where common information is sent from the base station to K users simultaneously. This so-called max-min fair beamforming problem is known to be NP-hard. When the base station is equipped with two Tx antennas, we prove that the original complex-valued be...

This work proposes a Progressive Assisted Sorting Algorithm (PASA) based on a multicriteria evaluation ELECTRE-type method. The purpose of the PASA is to aid a decision maker to progressively sort a set of alternatives into a set of categories, which we considered are ordered (ordinal sorting), following a consistency principle. We consider the principle that if an alternative outranks (is as g...

Background Nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems exhibit promising therapeutic efficacy in cancer chemotherapy. However, ideal nano drug carriers are supposed to be sufficiently internalized into cancer cells and then release therapeutic cargoes in response to certain intracellular stimuli, which has never been an easy task to achieve. Objective This study is to design mesoporous silica ...