A Bayesian way of monitoring the linear profiles using CUSUM control charts

In statistical process control applications, profiles functions are considered an efficient way of representing quality of products or processes. Classical and Bayesian thoughts are two chief sources of defining control charting structures for profiles monitoring. This Study introduces novel Bayesian CUSUM control structures for profiles monitoring. The comprehensive comparative study identifies that the proposed Bayesian CUSUM control charts under conjugate priors has better expected performance than competing methods. The implementation of Bayesian structures requires detailed information about process parameters which come up with considerable benefits. In addition, simulative example and case study further justified the superiority of proposed techniques.     

South Africa: Anti-Apartheid NGOs in Transition

Under apartheid, there were an ever-increasing number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) concerned about challenging the South African state and furthering a nonracial democratic society. In the 1990s, with the transition to an African National Congress-led democratic government, these organizations underwent profound changes. This article describes the key dynamics of this process, outlines the challenges currently confronting the new NGO sector, and concludes that the prospects for progressive NGO work in dealing with the poor and marginalized are constrained by the prevailing neoliberal economic climate.     

An Assessment of Vulnerability to Poverty in Punjab,Pakistan: Subjective Choices of Poverty Indicators

In general, the happiness literature has paid little attention to the relationship between physical appearance and well-being. In this paper, we examine the link between weight, height and well-being for three distinct samples in China given that attractiveness effects likely vary greatly across sociocultural contexts. As China has recently undergone rapid economic transformation in the urban areas, this empirical exercise is particularly interesting because it can highlight how changing social norms have affected the relationship between physical appearance and subjective well-being. For the rural and migrant samples, we find that for both men and women, big and tall individuals have higher levels of well-being. This is consistent with the notion that the strong are better off when more labor intensive work is the norm. For the urban sample and for urban males in particular, no well-being penalty is found for being obese, unlike previous results based on Western samples. It is very likely that the unique Chinese cultural practice of network building banquets and feasting is behind this finding.     

Transmuted Weibull distribution: Properties and estimation

In this article, we investigate the potential usefulness of the three-parameter transmuted Weibull distribution for modeling survival data. The main advantage of this distribution is that it has increasing, decreasing or constant instantaneous failure rate depending on the shape parameter and the new transmuting parameter. We obtain several mathematical properties of the transmuted Weibull distribution such as the expressions for the quantile function, moments, geometric mean, harmonic mean, Shannon, Rényi and q-entropies, mean deviations, Bonferroni and Lorenz curves, and the moments of order statistics. We propose a location-scale regression model based on the log-transmuted Weibull distribution for modeling lifetime data. Applications to two real datasets are given to illustrate the flexibility and potentiality of the transmuted Weibull family of lifetime distributions.     

Urban and peri-urban aquaculture as an immediate source of food fish: Perspectives of Dhaka City,Bangladesh

This paper describes the present status of aquaculture activities in Dhaka City and its surrounding areas including the system of fish marketing and distribution and environmental and socioeconomic issues. Dhaka City contains over 10 million people and is expanding day by day. Demand of fish in the last 10 years has increased as a result of increases in population and income levels. The annual per capita consumption of fish is reported to drop by 0.5 kg since 1985. The reason for this decline is increased prices and decreased supply of fish. Fish supply to the city comes from catch in the rivers-estuaries and floodlands of Dhaka district, neighboring districts, imports from other areas and aquaculture in surrounding areas of the city. Considerable quantities of fish are imported from India, Myanmar and Thailand. Seasonal patterns are common both in supply and consumption of fish. Along with traditional rural household aquaculture, in recent years, urban and peri-urban aquaculture has also been popular. Three broad types of aquaculture activities are found in and around Dhaka City; these are polyculture of carp in ponds, monoculture of catfishs in ponds, and pen and cage aquaculture in open waters. The carp includes both Indian major carp and Chinese carp and some minor carp. The catfish group includes mainly Thai pangas (Pangasius sutchi). Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) is also widely popular among the farmers. The technology used for aquaculture is improved extensive to semi-intensive. Increasing demand for fish in the city markets has encouraged the expansion of peri-urban aquaculture with a corresponding increase in the proportion of farmed fish in the markets.     

Inflation uncertainty and economic growth: evidence from the LAD ARCH model

In this paper, we combined the panel data and least absolute deviation autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (ARCH) (L ₁-ARCH) model to infer on the relationship between inflation uncertainty and economic growth in five emerging market economies. Two interesting findings emerged from the analysis; first, we confirmed that the inflation uncertainty has a significant and negative effect on economic growth. Second, inflation is also an important variable and it is detrimental to economic prospects in the fast-growing Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) economies. All in all, the empirical findings suggest that greater stability in the economy may be desirable in order to stimulate economic growth in the region.     

Acceptance sampling plans based on truncated life tests for weighted exponential distribution

Gupta and Kundu proposed a new class of weighted exponential distributions using the idea of Azzalini. In this article, we develop an acceptance sampling plan for the weighted exponential distribution under a truncated life test. For various acceptance numbers, consumer’s confidence levels and values of the ratio of the experimental time to the specified mean lifetime, the minimum sample size necessary to ensure a certain mean lifetime are obtained. The operating characteristic function values and the associated producer’s risks are also presented. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the acceptance sampling plan.     

Designing of a control chart using belief statistic for exponential distribution

A new control chart is proposed by using the belief statistic for the exponential distribution. The structure of the proposed control chart is given to measure the average run length for the shifted process. The comparison of the proposed chart is given with the existing charts in terms of the average run lengths, which shows the outperformance of the proposed chart. The performance of the proposed control chart is also discussed with the help of simulated data.     

Bayesian A- and D-optimal designs for gamma regression model with inverse link function

Bayesian optimal designs have received increasing attention in recent years, especially in biomedical and clinical trials. Bayesian design procedures can utilize the available prior information of the unknown parameters so that a better design can be achieved. With this in mind, this article considers the Bayesian A- and D-optimal designs of the two- and three-parameter Gamma regression model. In this regard, we first obtain the Fisher information matrix of the proposed model and then calculate the Bayesian A- and D-optimal designs assuming various prior distributions such as normal, half-normal, gamma, and uniform distribution for the unknown parameters. All of the numerical calculations are handled in R software. The results of this article are useful in medical and industrial researches.