٢٠٠9 ،٢ ‫العدد‬ ‫عرش،‬ ‫اخلامس‬ ‫املجلد‬ ‫العاملية،‬ ‫الصحة‬ ‫منظمة‬ ‫املتوسط،‬ ‫لرشق‬ ‫الصحية‬ ‫املجلة‬ Hospital-based caesarean section in the Arab region: an overview ٢٠٠9 ،٢ ‫العدد‬ ‫عرش،‬ ‫اخلامس‬ ‫املجلد‬ ‫العاملية،‬ ‫الصحة‬ ‫منظمة‬ ‫املتوسط،‬ ‫لرشق

ABSTRACT This article provides an overview of hospital-based rates of caesarean delivery in 18 Arab countries and the association between these rates and selected demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Data on caesarean section were based on 2 of the most recent national hospital-based surveys in each country and on published studies based on hospital samples. High levels of caesarean delivery were found in Egypt (26% in 2003), followed by Sudan (20% in 1993). Six countries and the West Bank area of Palestine had rates > 15% and 11 countries and Gaza had rates between 5% and 15%. The findings indicate an increasing trend of caesarean section delivery in the region. Policies aiming at reducing surgical deliveries should seek to identify and address these risk factors. ‫عامة‬ ‫نظرة‬ ‫العربية:‬ ‫املنطقة‬ ‫مستشفيات‬ ‫يف‬ ‫القيرصية‬ ‫العملية

Improving Relational Consistency Algorithms Using Dynamic Relation Partitioning

International audienceRelational consistency algorithms are instrumental for solving difficult instances of Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs), often allowing backtrack-free search. In this paper, we improve an algorithm for enforcing relational consistency by exploiting the property that the constraints of the dual encoding of a CSP are piecewise functional. This property allows us to partition a CSP relation into blocks of equivalent tuples at varying levels of granularity. Our new algorithm dynamically exploits those partitions. Our experiments show a significant improvement of the processing time for enforcing relational consistency

Compositional derivation of symmetries for constraint satisfaction

This paper reconsiders the problems of discovering symmetries in constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs). It proposes a compositional approach which derives symmetries of the applications from primitive constraints. The key insight is the recognition of the special role of global constraints in symmetry detection. Once the symmetries of global constraints are available, it often becomes much easier to derive symmetries compositionally and efficiently. The paper demonstrates the potential of this approach by studying several classes of value and variable symmetries and applying the resulting techniques to two non-trivial applications. The paper also discusses the potential of reformulations and high-level modeling abstractions to strengthen symmetry discovery