AIM To compare triage strategies using different human papillomavirus (HPV) consensus and genotyping tests and a p16(INK4a) test. METHODS 1228 women referred with a borderline or single mildly dyskaryotic smear. Samples were taken at colposcopy using PreservCyt. Tests included Hybrid Capture 2, Abbott RealTime PCR, BD HPV, Cobas 4800, PreTect HPV-Proofer, APTIMA and p16(INK4a). Results were b...

Forest fires represent a quite complex environment and an accurate prediction of the fires generated is crucial when trying to react quickly and effectively in such a critical situation. In this study, an hybrid system is applied to predict the evolution of forest fires. The Case-Based Reasoning methodology combined with a summarization of SOM ensembles algorithm has been used to face this prob...

This analysis estimates willingness to pay to improve community-based rural water utilities in the Dodoma and Singida Regions of Central Tanzania using Multinomial Logit functions. An estimate of willingness to pay provides an indication of the demand for improved services and potential for them being sustainable. Surveys were conducted in a total of 30 villages in the two regions. In the Dodom...

Most of the existing mobile services were designed based on the client/server architecture. Those mobile services neither paid much attention to mobile users’ interactions with their environments nor considered the collective efforts between the mobile users in a dynamic peer group. In this article, the notion of ambient e-service is so defined as to identify a new scope of mobile e-service, wh...

We study discrete monostable dynamics with general Lipschitz non-linearities. This includes also degenerate non-linearities. In the positive monostable case, we show the existence of a branch of traveling waves solutions for velocities c ≥ c+, with non existence of solutions for c < c+. We also give certain sufficient conditions to insure that c+ ≥ 0 and we give an example when c+ < 0. We as we...

Currently, the introduction of an appropriate rule representation layer for the semantic web stack is discussed. However, with the inclusion of rule-based knowledge new verification issues for rule-augmented ontologies arise. In this paper we investigate the detection of anomalies as an important subtask of verification. We extend and revise existing approaches for the syntactic verification of...

BACKGROUND Two transport media, PreservCyt and SurePath, are widely used for cervical cytology screening. There are concerns that they may perform differently for HPV testing. OBJECTIVES A comparison of the performance of six different HPV tests in SurePath and PreservCyt in a referral population using two samples from each woman. The primary goal was to compare the performance of each test i...

High performance computing systems are becoming increasingly complex, both in node architecture and in the multiple layers of software stack required to compile and run applications. As a consequence, the likelihood is increasing for application performance regressions to occur as a result of routine upgrades of system software components which interact in complex ways. The purpose of this stud...

Designing and implementing a Knowledge Management System (KMS) in a Virtual Enterprise is a labour intensive and risky task. Solution prototypes (Pilots) are usually built to verify system effectiveness prior to final implementation. The paper proposes a methodology to guide this Pilot specifications definition process. These guidelines support engineers and knowledge experts in collaboratively...