Search results for "objective"
showing 10 items of 505 documents
Laboratory Tests in Crohn’s Disease
2015
Laboratory tests are useful for diagnosing Crohn’s disease, assessing disease activity, identifying complications, and monitoring response to therapy. Their role has been considered limited in the past due to lack of specificity. The introduction of biological therapies in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has renewed interest in inflammatory markers, especially C-reactive protein (CRP), given their potential to select responders to these treatments. There are several reasons why laboratory markers have been studied in IBD in the past decades: firstly, to gain an objective measurement of disease activity as symptoms are often subjective; secondly, to avoid invasive (endoscopic) procedures wh…
Boosting Design Space Explorations with Existing or Automatically Learned Knowledge
2012
During development, processor architectures can be tuned and configured by many different parameters. For benchmarking, automatic design space explorations (DSEs) with heuristic algorithms are a helpful approach to find the best settings for these parameters according to multiple objectives, e.g. performance, energy consumption, or real-time constraints. But if the setup is slightly changed and a new DSE has to be performed, it will start from scratch, resulting in very long evaluation times. To reduce the evaluation times we extend the NSGA-II algorithm in this article, such that automatic DSEs can be supported with a set of transformation rules defined in a highly readable format, the fuz…
Cancer screening and health system resilience: Keys to protecting and bolstering preventive services during a financial crisis
2012
The aim of this paper is to elucidate the rationale for sustaining and expanding cost-effective, population-based screening services for breast, cervical and colorectal cancers in the context of the current financial crisis. Our objective is not only to promote optimal delivery of high-quality secondary cancer prevention services, but also to underline the importance of strengthening comprehensive cancer control, and with it, health system response to the complex care challenges posed by all chronic diseases. We focus primarily on issues surrounding planning, organisation, implementation and resources, arguing that given the growing cancer burden, policymakers have ample justification for e…
Histological Findings in Coil-packed Experimental Aneurysms 3 Months after Embolization
2002
ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE Knowledge regarding tissue reactions within coil-packed aneurysms is poor. The purpose of this study was to analyze histological changes in a chronic experimental bifurcation aneurysm model that might explain the protective effect of Guglielmi detachable coils. METHODS The aneurysms were produced by means of a venous graft pouch at a surgically created bifurcation of the carotid artery in the neck of rabbits. After 3 weeks, embolization with Guglielmi detachable coils was performed in the treatment group but not in the control group (seven rabbits each). At the time of embolization, six of seven treated aneurysms were completely occluded according to radiological criteria…
Evaluation of bintrafusp alfa, a bifunctional fusion protein targeting TGF-β and PD-L1, in cervical cancer: Data from phase 1 and phase 2 studies.
2021
5509 Background: The accelerated FDA approval of pembrolizumab validated the efficacy of anti–PD-(L)1 therapy for pts with recurrent/metastatic cervical cancer; however, the objective response rate (ORR) with pembrolizumab was 14.3% in pts with PD-L1 expressing tumors. HPV infection is implicated in > 95% of cervical cancers and is linked to upregulation of TGF-β signaling. Bintrafusp alfa is a first-in-class bifunctional fusion protein composed of the extracellular domain of the TGF-βRII receptor (a TGF-β “trap”) fused to a human IgG1 mAb blocking PD-L1. We report pooled safety and efficacy in pts with immune checkpoint inhibitor–naive, recurrent/metastatic cervical cancer treated with…
On interactive multiobjective optimization with NIMBUS® in chemical process design
2005
We study multiobjective optimization problems arising from chemical process simulation. The interactive multiobjective optimization method NIMBUS®, developed at the University of Jyvaskyla, is combined with the BALAS® process simulator, developed at the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, in order to provide a new interactive tool for designing chemical processes. Continuous interaction between the method and the designer provides a new efficient approach to explore Pareto optimal solutions and helps the designer to learn about the behaviour of the process. As an example of how the new tool can be used, we report the results of applying it in a heat recovery system design problem rela…
V I G — A Visual and Dynamic Decision Support System for Multiple Objective Linear Programming
1989
In this paper we describe the principles of VIG (Visual Interactive Goal Programming), a Multiple Criteria Decision Support System, recently developed by Korhonen. PARETO RACE is a corner-stone of this system, which is designed to support both the modelling and solving of a multiple objective linear programming problem. The interface is based on one main menu, spreadsheets, and interactive use of computer graphics. VIG provides the decision-maker with the possibility to approach his/her decision problem by using an “evolutionary approach”. This means that the decision-maker does not have to specify the model precisely prior to solving the problem. In fact, the model evolves progressively. W…
Register data in sample allocations for small-area estimation
2018
The inadequate control of sample sizes in surveys using stratified sampling and area estimation may occur when the overall sample size is small or auxiliary information is insufficiently used. Very small sample sizes are possible for some areas. The proposed allocation based on multi-objective optimization uses a small-area model and estimation method and semi-collected empirical data annually collected empirical data. The assessment of its performance at the area and at the population levels is based on design-based sample simulations. Five previously developed allocations serve as references. The model-based estimator is more accurate than the design-based Horvitz–Thompson estimator and t…
Evaluation of SLA-based decision strategies for VM scheduling in cloud data centers
2016
Service level agreements (SLAs) gain more and more importance in the area of cloud computing. An SLA is a contract between a customer and a cloud service provider (CSP) in which the CSP guarantees functional and non-functional quality of service parameters for cloud services. Since CSPs have to pay for the hardware used as well as penalties for violating SLAs, they are eager to fulfill these agreements while at the same time optimizing the utilization of their resources.In this paper we examine SLA-aware VM scheduling strategies for cloud data centers. The service level objectives considered are resource usage and availability. The sample resources are CPU and RAM. They can be overprovision…
Artificial Decision Maker Driven by PSO : An Approach for Testing Reference Point Based Interactive Methods
2018
Over the years, many interactive multiobjective optimization methods based on a reference point have been proposed. With a reference point, the decision maker indicates desirable objective function values to iteratively direct the solution process. However, when analyzing the performance of these methods, a critical issue is how to systematically involve decision makers. A recent approach to this problem is to replace a decision maker with an artificial one to be able to systematically evaluate and compare reference point based interactive methods in controlled experiments. In this study, a new artificial decision maker is proposed, which reuses the dynamics of particle swarm optimization f…