Cost-effectiveness of alternative methods of surgical repair of inguinal hernia

Objectives: To assess the relative cost-effectiveness of laparoscopic methods of inguinal hernia repair compared with open flat mesh and open non-mesh repair. Methods: Data on the effectiveness of these alternatives came from three systematic reviews comparing: (i) laparoscopic methods with open flat mesh or non-mesh methods; (ii) open flat mesh with open non-mesh repair; and (iii) methods that used synthetic mesh to repair the hernia defect with those that did not. Data on costs were obtained from the authors of economic evaluations previously conducted alongside trials included in the reviews. A Markov model was used to model cost-effectiveness for a five-year period after the initial operation. The outcomes of the model were presented using a balance sheet approach and as cost per hernia recurrence avoided and cost per extra day at usual activities. Results: Open flat mesh was the most cost-effective method of preventing recurrences. Laparoscopic repair provided a shorter period of convalescence and less long-term pain compared with open flat mesh but was more costly. The mean incremental cost per additional day back at usual activities compared with open flat mesh was €38 and €80 for totally extraperitoneal and transabdominal preperitoneal repair, respectively. Conclusions: Laparoscopic repair is not cost-effective compared with open flat mesh repair in terms of cost per recurrence avoided. Decisions about the use of laparoscopic repair depend on whether the benefits (reduced pain and earlier return to usual activities) outweigh the extra costs and intraoperative risks. On the evidence presented here, these extra costs are unlikely to be offset by the short-term benefits of laparoscopic repair.Luke Vale, Adrian Grant, Kirsty McCormack, Neil W. Scott and the EU Hernia Trialists Collaboratio

Learning Behavioral Representations of Human Mobility

In this paper, we investigate the suitability of state-of-the-art representation learning methods to the analysis of behavioral similarity of moving individuals, based on CDR trajectories. The core of the contribution is a novel methodological framework, mob2vec, centered on the combined use of a recent symbolic trajectory segmentation method for the removal of noise, a novel trajectory generalization method incorporating behavioral information, and an unsupervised technique for the learning of vector representations from sequential data. Mob2vec is the result of an empirical study conducted on real CDR data through an extensive experimentation. As a result, it is shown that mob2vec generates vector representations of CDR trajectories in low dimensional spaces which preserve the similarity of the mobility behavior of individuals.Comment: ACM SIGSPATIAL 2020: 28th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems.November 2020 Seattle, Washington, US

Особенности и закономерности изменения восстановлености углей башкирского яруса Западного Донбасса

В статье приведена детальная петрографическая характеристика углей башкирского яруса Западного Донбасса. Проведена классификация по восстановлености в соответствии с петрографическими типами. Установлены стратиграфические и площадные закономерности изменения степени восстановлености.У статті наведена детальна петрографічна характеристика вугілля башкирського ярусу Західного Донбасу. Проведена класифікація відновленості, згідно з петрографічними типами. Встановлені стратиграфічні та просторові закономірності зміни ступеню відновленості.The article gives detailed petrographic characteristics of coal of Bashkirian formation of Western Donbas. The classifications for recovery in accordance with petrographic types are given. The stratigraphic and areal patterns of change in the degree of recovery are established

Comments on Non-holomorphic Modular Forms and Non-compact Superconformal Field Theories

We extend our previous work arXiv:1012.5721 [hep-th] on the non-compact N=2 SCFT_2 defined as the supersymmetric SL(2,R)/U(1)-gauged WZW model. Starting from path-integral calculations of torus partition functions of both the axial-type (`cigar') and the vector-type (`trumpet') models, we study general models of the Z_M-orbifolds and M-fold covers with an arbitrary integer M. We then extract contributions of the degenerate representations (`discrete characters') in such a way that good modular properties are preserved. The `modular completion' of the extended discrete characters introduced in arXiv:1012.5721 [hep-th] are found to play a central role as suitable building blocks in every model of orbifolds or covering spaces. We further examine a large M-limit (the `continuum limit'), which `deconstructs' the spectral flow orbits while keeping a suitable modular behavior. The discrete part of partition function as well as the elliptic genus is then expanded by the modular completions of irreducible discrete characters, which are parameterized by both continuous and discrete quantum numbers modular transformed in a mixed way. This limit is naturally identified with the universal cover of trumpet model. We finally discuss a classification of general modular invariants based on the modular completions of irreducible characters constructed above.Comment: 1+40 pages, no figure; v2 some points are clarified with respect to the `continuum limit', typos corrected, to appear in JHEP; v3 footnotes added in pages 18, 23 for the relation with arXiv:1407.7721[hep-th