Abstract
Background: Most previous studies assessing multimorbidity in asthma assessed the frequency of individual comorbid diseases. Objective: We aimed to assess the frequency and clinical and economic impact of co-occurring groups of comorbidities (comorbidity patterns using the Charlson Comorbidity Index) on asthma hospitalizations. Methods: We assessed the dataset containing a registration of all Portuguese hospitalizations between 2011-2015. We applied three different approaches (regression models, association rule mining, and decision trees) to assess both the frequency and impact of comorbidities patterns in the length-of-stay, in-hospital mortality and hospital charges. For each approach, separate analyses were performed for episodes with asthma as main and as secondary diagnosis. Separate analyses were performed by participants' age group. Results: We assessed 198340 hospitalizations in patients >18 years old. Both in hospitalizations with asthma as main or secondary diagnosis, combinations of diseases involving cancer, metastasis, cerebrovascular disease, hemiplegia/paraplegia, and liver disease displayed a relevant clinical and economic burden. In hospitalizations having asthma as a secondary diagnosis, we identified several comorbidity patterns involving asthma and associated with increased length-of-stay (average impact of 1.3 [95%CI=0.6-2.0]-3.2 [95%CI=1.8-4.6] additional days), in-hospital mortality (OR range=1.4 [95%CI=1.0-2.0]-7.9 [95%CI=2.6-23.5]) and hospital charges (average additional charges of 351.0 [95%CI=219.1-482.8] to 1470.8 [95%CI=1004.6-1937.0]) Euro compared with hospitalizations without any registered Charlson comorbidity). Consistent results were observed with association rules mining and decision tree approaches. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the importance not only of a complete assessment of patients with asthma, but also of considering the presence of asthma in patients admitted by other diseases, as it may have a relevant impact on clinical and health services outcomes.

Abstract
Visualizing and examining the intellectual landscape and evolution of scientific communities to support collaboration is crucial for multiple research purposes. In some cases, measuring similarities and matching patterns between research publication document sets can help to identify people with similar interests for building research collaboration networks and university-industry linkages. The premise of this work is assessing feasibility for resolving ambiguous cases in similarity detection to determine authorship with natural language processing (NLP) techniques so that crowdsourcing is applied only in instances that require human judgment. Using an NLP-crowdsourcing convergence strategy, we can reduce the costs of microtask crowdsourcing while saving time and maintaining disambiguation accuracy over large datasets. This article contributes a next-gen crowd-artificial intelligence framework that used an ensemble of term frequency-inverse document frequency and bidirectional encoder representation from transformers to obtain similarity rankings for pairs of scientific documents. A sequence of content-based similarity tasks was created using a crowd-powered interface for solving disambiguation problems. Our experimental results suggest that an adaptive NLP-crowdsourcing hybrid framework has advantages for inter-researcher similarity detection tasks where fully automatic algorithms provide unsatisfactory results, with the goal of helping researchers discover potential collaborators using data-driven approaches.

Abstract
Paint bases are the essence of the color palette, allowing for the creation of a wide range of tones by combining them in different proportions. In this paper, an Artificial Neural Network is developed incorporating a pre-trained Decoder to predict the proportion of each paint base in an ink mixture in order to achieve the desired color. Color coordinates in the CIELAB space and the final finish are considered as input parameters. The proposed model is compared with commonly used models such as Linear Regression, Random Forest and Artificial Neural Network. It is important to note that the Artificial Neural Network was implemented with the same architecture as the proposed model but without incorporating the pre-trained Decoder. Experimental results demonstrate that the Artificial Neural Network with a pre-trained Decoder consistently outperforms the other models in predicting the proportions of paint bases for color tuning. This model exhibits lower Mean Absolute Error and Root Mean Square Error values across multiple objectives, indicating its superior accuracy in capturing the complexities of color relationships. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.

Abstract

Abstract
This study intends to understand whether hotels should choose to surprise through a discount or a surprise gift. The experiment consisted in identifying whether there were differences in satisfaction and delight, according to the associated treatment (no surprise, surprise discount, or gift). With this purpose, a fictional hotel website was created for participants to simulate a reservation. Through the analysis of the experiment, the impact of surprise on customer satisfaction was confirmed. It was also found that, in the hospitality industry, a gift has a higher impact on satisfaction than a discount. When analyzing the guest delight, the results differ from what is stipulated in the literature (which points to the significant impact of surprise in this measure). It was concluded that between the two promotion tools, only the gift can significantly increase customer delight. This study demonstrates the importance of understanding the concept of surprise according to different industries. It also points to the importance of identifying the best methods to surprise customers, as different methods may lead to different results. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Abstract
Increasing digitalization has posed new challenges for businesses, and digital coupons are an important means of promoting their sales. However, there are still gaps in the literature on how they are distributed. The objective of this paper is to study whether the distribution of digital coupons through a referral program increases purchase intention and perceived quality towards a product. By conducting an experimental design, the results point out that consumer purchase intention increases if the recommendation is made by someone with a strong relationship and if a digital coupon is offered, and when the tie relationship is weak or no relationship, it does not vary significantly. On the other hand, the results showed that perceived quality does not vary with the offer of a digital coupon, regardless of the strength of the tie between the person who recommended and the consumer. Current research suggests that managers should use this information to design a digital coupon program tailored to the company’s objectives to retain and capture customers. This new approach to digital voucher distribution is one of the first to investigate their distribution, and their simultaneous use with a referral program. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.