Purpose: The aim of this paper is to study the technical and scale efficiency of a set of public hospitals in Greece during the period of financial crisis 2011-2014.\nMaterial/Methods: The methodology used to estimate efficiency scores and Greek public hospitals ranking was the Data Envelopment Analysis. In addition Window analysis was used to detect efficiency trends and stability over time. \nResults: The results underline that \'scale size\' of hospitals is important factor affecting their efficiency. Α high level of technical and scale efficiency was maintained over the entire 4-year period. Α downturn in the pure technical efficiency is observed in 2012 and 2013 that seems to be improving in 2014. Further exploration reveals that hospitals have adjusted strategies since 2010 that helped hospitals to achieve more appropriate scale size. Despite the limitations related to the data set, the empirical work suggests that future research may need to concentrate on the dynamic factors i.e. characteristics of the regional where the hospital is situated which could play a significant role in a hospital performance.\nConclusions: The analysis provides information on tailor-made political and administrative measures that can lead to improvements in the general infrastructure behind the health system in Greece. Considering that the emerging results needed to be evaluated and considered with a sceptical eye, the present study simply highlights the importance of the information (without sensationalising it) from the policymakers perspective and in so doing perhaps provide an additional information resource on which they can base their decisions and policies.

To evaluate the antioxidant activity of Korean wine waste extract, we examined its effect on genomic DNA oxidation and glutathione (GSH) production in HT-1080 cells. Both acetone+methylene chloride (A+M) and methanol (MeOH) extracts, as well as 85% aq. MeOH and n-butanol (n-BuOH) fractions significantly inhibited oxidative DNA damage (p<0.05). GSH levels were significantly increased in both A+M and MeOH extracts (p<0.05). Treatment of cells with fractions of 85% aq. MeOH, n-BuOH and Water significantly increased GSH levels at concentrations of 0.1 mg/mL (p<0.05). The 85% aq. MeOH and n-BuOH fractions showed the highest antioxidant effects, and thus, they may contain valuable active compounds.

This paper aims at developing a support vector machine for biometric authentication of on-line signature supported the feature values within the info. A collection of signature samples area unit collected from people and these signature samples area unit are scanned in an exceedingly grey scale scanner. These scanned signature pictures area unit are then subjected to variety of image improvement operations like binarization, complementation, filtering, cutting and edge detection. For character recognition, support vector machines area unit used, that area unit famed for his or her high degree of accuracy, a result which may even be ascertained as software design objectory from the check eventualities. From these preprocessed signatures, options area unit are extracted and held on in an exceedingly info individually. The worth from the info area unit are fed to the support vector machine which pulls a hyper plane and classifies the signature into original or solid supported a selected feature value. We also compare our methods performance with Artificial Neural Network’s (ANN) back propagation method.

The \"Theory of Symmetry in the Holy Qur\'an\" states that the Holy Qur\'an in the first kind is divided into two halves (114/2), in which every Sura (Chapter) in the first half has a symmetric relation with a corresponding Sura in the second half, similarly in each Sura as a second kind; each verse or group of verses in the first half corresponds to a verse or group of verses in the second half, and this applicable to the verse itself, too, as a third kind. It is like the symmetry in the universe, similar to the symmetry between the two hands, or in the water molecule, or a symmetric crystal; like a sequence in a necklace. The purpose of this work is to establish the principle and calling the scholars to apply the theory to the different sciences, fields and topics of the Holy Qur\'an.

El presente trabajo explora las necesidades del idioma ingles por parte de los prestadores de servicios en tres areas cruciales del sector turístico: el sector medico, la hoteleria y el ambito publico. El documento que se presenta se deriva de la informacion que se presento en el panel el manejo del idioma ingles en el marco de la 8ª Catedra Patrimonial Internacional en Turismo Sergio Molina en Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. De la misma manera se analiza la condicion actual y el posible alcance del programa de ingles en la licenciatura de Turismo en la Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez. El estudio realizado es de caracter cualitativo en el cual se utilizo la tecnica del panel, asi como entrevistas e investigacion documental. Los hallazgos de la investigacion arrojan una falta de proficiencia del idioma ingles por parte de los empleados que tienen contacto con gente que llega a solicitar un servicio en una de las ares economicas relacionadas con el turismo como lo es la hoteleria. De la misma manera, en el sector medico y el ambito publico se identifican situaciones en las que es apremiante que el personal se comunique en el idioma ingles. Por otro lado se concluye que la Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juarez esta realizando un esfuerzo desde sus diferentes instancias para formar futuros profesionales en turismo con un perfil bilingue, y por consecuencia tenga un impacto en los sectores bajo estudio en esta investigacion.

This paper contributes the investigation of fault current development in a Multi-terminal High Voltage Direct Current (MTDC) system based on two-level voltage source converter. It presents a technique to analyze the individual fault current feeding components during a line-to-ground (L-G) fault. DC capacitors, adjacent feeder cables and the AC infeed contribute the growth of the fault currents that behave as source at the time of fault. A detailed analysis is taken into account in this paper to predict the behavior of each component in MTDC network by considering the communication time delay factor. Influence of key parameters is described comprehensively in the development of fault current and the system voltage. Comprehensive simulations has successfully verified the proposed technique through PSCAD results.