Unusual presentation of a ring injury in a psychiatric patient

1. A ring embedded in the digits may result in erosion of the skin, tendons, and bones. 2. This type of injury may be prevented by removing the ring at the time of the injury. 3. All constricting bands should be carefully monitered and, if necessary, removed from fingers to prevent chronic erosion especially in people with a physical or mental disability.     

Effects of child mortality on subsequent fertility of women in some rural and semi-urban areas of certain Latin American countries

Abstract With the rapid decline in child mortality in developing countries there is considerable interest in understanding its effects on fertility. According to the theory of demographic transition, mortality declines are accompanied by fertility declines after a time lag, as countries go through the process of economic development. However, the immediate effects of a mortality decline on fertility have not been uniform as in many countries fertility has actually increased. For example, in many Latin American countries where mortality declines have been very rapid there have not been any appreciable changes in fertility. Only in recent years has there been a noticeable decline in the urban areas of some nations. While it is possible to examine the effects of various socio-economic factors on mortality and fertility at the macro-level, any real understanding of how mortality itself influences fertility would require information at the micro-level on couples who have experienced child mortality and who are also exposed to the risk of childbearing.     

Educational attainment, age at first birth and lifetime fertility: an analysis of Canadian fertility survey data

Dans cet article, l'auteur réexamine de manière détaillée les rapports entre le niveau d'instruction, lâge à la naissance du premier-né et la descendance finale des femmes au Canada dans les années 1980, compte tenu des changements en matière d'options socio-professionnelles pour les femmes qui se sont produits au cours de la dernière génération. Les données employées sont tirées de l'Enquête nationale sur la fécondité au Canada de 1984 et concernent les femmes âgées de 35 à 49 ans (n= 2083). Les résultats révèlent une corrélation plus forte entre le niveau d'instruction des femmes et le choix du moment de la première grossesse qu'entre le niveau d'instruction et la descendance finale. De plus, cette influence du niveau d'instruction sur le choix du moment de la première grossesse semble être l'un des grands déterminants de la tendance générale. Cependant, l'étude a permis de dégager une nouvelle tendance démographique importante: même si elles ont moins de 20 ans quand elles donnent naissance à leur premier enfant, les femmes de la plus jeune cohorte (âgées de 35 à 39 ans) ont eu moins de trois enfants au total. Tout laisse prévoir le maintien chez les femmes canadiennes des tendances récentes au mariage tardif, à une progéniture moins nombreuse, à des niveaux d'instruction plus élevés et à une participation accrue à la population active. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine in some detail the relationship between education, age at first birth and life-time fertility of women in Canada in the 1980s. This re-examination is related to the changes that have taken place in the past generation in life course paths for women. The data in this paper are developed from the Canadian National Fertility Survey of 1984, focussing on women 35–49 years of age (N= 2,083). The findings show that it is the timing of first birth rather than the number of children ever born that is more related to educational attainment of women. In addition, it appears to be the effect of education on first birth timing rather than lifetime fertility that is of key importance in the overall pattern. However, an important new demographic trend is observable. Even when there is an early first birth (under the age of 20), the youngest cohort of women (age 35–39) had fewer than three children over the reproductive lifetime. It is likely that the recent trends of later marriage, smaller numbers of children, later age at first birth, and increasing levels of education and labour force activity will continue for women in Canada.     

Is the Burgess concentric zonal theory of spatial differentiation still applicable to urban Canada?

L'auteur examine les données par centre de recensement provenant des recensements de 1961,1971 et 1981 dans le but d'étudier, dans les quatorze agglomérations les plus importantes au Canada, la persistance de la répartition de la population en zones concentriques selon la situation socio-économique et la taille de la famille prédite par la théorie de Burgess. II conclut que même si le caractère des zones n'est plus tout à fait le même que dans le Canada d'antan, le phénomène de la stratification progressive a non seulement persisté, mais s'est peut-être même accentué en ce qui a trait à la situation socio-économique et à la taille des families. Cette persistance s'explique, d'une part, par les valeurs sociales, qui continuent à attacher beaucoup d'importance à la possession d'une maison unifamiliale et, d'autre part, par l'aménagement et le maintien d'un réseau routier qui permet aux gens de travailler dans les grandes villes canadiennes tout en vivant en banlieue ou à la campagne.
Using census tract data from the censuses of 1961,1971 and 1981, this paper examines the durability of concentric zonal patterns in socio-economic status and family size predicted by Burgess' theory in the 14 largest metropolitan areas of Canada. Although the character of the zones may have changed over time in modern day Canada, it was found that the gradient pattern itself not only persists but may have intensified as far as socio-economic status and family size are concerned. This persistence is attributed to the strong societal norm of owning a single family detached dwelling and the development and maintenance of roadways which still make it worthwhile to commute to work in Canadian cities.     

Correlates of caregiving burden in schizophrenia:A cross-sectional,comparative analysis from India

Schizophrenia is a global mental health issue that has serious implications not only for the person with the diagnosis, but for caregivers as well. In Asian societies, the family tends to be the “natural” caregiver in such situations and the caregiving function is usually shouldered by parents or the spouse. Asian communities tend to be more closely knit, and it would be expected that more social support would be available to those facing distressing circumstances such as managing the demands of a person with mental illness. This study seeks to explore the perceived burden in family caregivers of persons diagnosed with schizophrenia, the coping strategies that come into play, as well as the extent of social support available to them. Standardized instruments were administered to collect data at a teaching cum treatment facility in south India. A quantitative methodology was used to analyze cross-sectional data from 75 primary caregivers of people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and a reference group of caregivers of patients with general medical ailments. Results indicate higher levels of burden, low social support, and poor coping in the caregivers of people with schizophrenia than the reference group. Implications for intervention with caregivers are also discussed in this article.     

Cubic rank transmuted distributions: inferential issues and applications

In this paper, we introduce a new family of transmuted distributions, the cubic rank transmutation map distribution. This new proposal increases the flexibility of the transmuted distributions enabling the modelling of more complex data such as ones possessing bimodal hazard rates. In order to illustrate the usefulness of the cubic rank transmutation map, we use two well-known lifetime distributions, namely the Weibull and log-logistic models. Several mathematical properties of these new distributions, namely the cubic rank transmuted Weibull distribution and the cubic rank transmuted log-logistic distribution, are derived. Then, the maximum likelihood estimation of the model parameters is described. A simulation study designed to assess the properties of this estimation procedure is then carried out. Finally, applications of the proposed models and their fit are illustrated with some datasets and the corresponding diagnostic analyses are also provided.     

Exponential progressive step-stress life-testing with link function based on Box–Cox transformation

In order to quickly extract information on the life of a product, accelerated life-tests are usually employed. In this article, we discuss a k-stage step-stress accelerated life-test with M-stress variables when the underlying data are progressively Type-I group censored. The life-testing model assumed is an exponential distribution with a link function that relates the failure rate and the stress variables in a linear way under the Box–Cox transformation, and a cumulative exposure model for modelling the effect of stress changes. The classical maximum likelihood method as well as a fully Bayesian method based on the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique is developed for inference on all the parameters of this model. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate all the methods of inference developed here, and a comparison of the ML and Bayesian methods is also carried out.     

Statistical evidence in contingency tables analysis

The likelihood ratio is used for measuring the strength of statistical evidence. The probability of observing strong misleading evidence along with that of observing weak evidence evaluate the performance of this measure. When the corresponding likelihood function is expressed in terms of a parametric statistical model that fails, the likelihood ratio retains its evidential value if the likelihood function is robust [Royall, R., Tsou, T.S., 2003. Interpreting statistical evidence by using imperfect models: robust adjusted likelihood functions. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. B 65, 391–404]. In this paper, we extend the theory of Royall and Tsou [2003. Interpreting statistical evidence by using imperfect models: robust adjusted likelihood functions. J. Roy. Statist. Soc., Ser. B 65, 391–404] to the case when the assumed working model is a characteristic model for two-way contingency tables (the model of independence, association and correlation models). We observe that association and correlation models are not equivalent in terms of statistical evidence. The association models are bounded by the maximum of the bump function while the correlation models are not.     

Likelihood inference for Type I bivariate Pólya–Aeppli distribution

This article discusses likelihood inference for the Type I bivariate Pólya–Aeppli distribution. The Type I bivariate Pólya–Aeppli distribution was derived by Minkova and Balakrishnan by using compounding with geometric random variables and the trivariate reduction method. They also discussed the moment estimation of the parameters of the Type I bivariate Pólya–Aeppli distribution. Here, we carry out a simulation study to compare the performance of the developed Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) method with the moment estimation. The obtained results show that, through the MLEs require more computational time compared to the moment estimates (MoM), the MLEs perform better, in most of the settings, than the MoM. Finally, we apply the Type I bivariate Pólya–Aeppli model to a real dataset containing the frequencies of railway accidents in two subsequent six-year periods for the purpose of illustration. We also carry out some hypothesis tests using the Wald test statistic. From these results, we conclude that the two variables belong to the same univariate Pólya–Aeppli distribution, but are correlated.     

Multivariate Bayesian U-type asymmetric designs for non parametric response surface prediction under correlated errors

The objective of this paper is to study U-type designs for Bayesian non parametric response surface prediction under correlated errors. The asymptotic Bayes criterion is developed in terms of the asymptotic approach of Mitchell et al. (1994 Mitchell, T., Sacks, J., Ylvisaker, D. (1994). Asymptotic Bayes criteria for nonparametric response surface design. Ann. Stat. 22:634–651.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) for a more general covariance kernel proposed by Chatterjee and Qin (2011 Chatterjee, K., Qin, H. (2011). Generalized discrete discrepancy and its applications in experimental designs. J. Stat. Plann. Inference 141:951–960.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). A relationship between the asymptotic Bayes criterion and other criteria, such as orthogonality and aberration, is then developed. A lower bound for the criterion is also obtained, and numerical results show that this lower bound is tight. The established results generalize those of Yue et al. (2011 Yue, R.X., Qin, H., Chatterjee, K. (2011). Optimal U-type design for Bayesian nonparametric multiresponse prediction. J. Stat. Plann. Inference 141:2472–2479.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) from symmetrical case to asymmetrical U-type designs.