OBJECTIVES   To compare the research productivity of different Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in the field of biomedical sciences from 2011-2013.  METHODS This is a retrospective study conducted in the College of Medicine, Alfaisal University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Data on the biomedical publications originating from GCC countries published between January 2011 to December 2013 was ...

The relationship between biodiversity and productivity has been a hot topic in ecology. However, the relative importance of taxonomic diversity and functional characteristics (including functional dominance and functional diversity) in maintaining community productivity and the underlying mechanisms (including selection and complementarity effects) of the relationship between diversity and comm...

BACKGROUND Analysis of the burden of gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GERD) in relation to the severity and frequency of symptoms is essential to identify individuals and groups in whom targeted management is justified. AIM To describe the relationship between symptoms of GERD and self-reported health-related quality of life (HRQL), work productivity, healthcare utilization and concomitant ...

In Bartling, Fehr and Schmidt (2012) we show theoretically and experimentally that it is optimal to grant discretion to workers if (i) discretion increases productivity, (ii) workers can be screened by past performance, (iii) some workers reciprocate high wages with high effort and (iv) employers pay high wages leaving rents to their workers. In this paper we show experimentally that the produc...

The relationship between productivity and biodiversity has long been an important issue in ecological research. However, in recent decades, most ecologists have primarily focused on species diversity while paying little attention to functional diversity and phylogenetic diversity (PD), especially in alpine meadow communities following fertilization. In this study, a fertilization experiment inv...

underlying representations play a crucial role in capturing predictable relations among different phonetic categories in phonological theory. Tone sandhi is a tonal alternation phenomenon in which a tone changes to a different tone in certain phonological environments. This study investigates whether Taiwanese listeners are more sensitive to the surface form of the tones or the underlying tonal...

Real-time computation of data streams over affordable virtualized infrastructure resources is an important form of data in motion processing architecture. However, processing such data streams while ensuring strict guarantees on quality of services is problematic due to: (i) uncertain stream arrival pattern; (ii) need of processing different types of continuous queries; and (iii) variable resou...