A study of subjective visual disturbances in jewellery manufacturing

Subjective Visual Disturbances are silent adversaries that appear over a period of continued exposure and arise when the visual demands of the tasks exceed the visual abilities of the user. Jewellery manufacturing activity involves precision designs, setting the metal and stones, polishing and filing which requires higher visual demand. Therefore, it is expected that the jewellery manufacturing workers may experience subjective visual disturbances. This study was taken up with the following objectives 1) To study the presence of subjective visual disturbances among jewellery manufacturing workers and compare the same with VDT operators 2) To study the effect of work exposures on subjective visual disturbances and 3) to ascertain whether subjective visual disturbances have any permanent vision related problems. The study was carried out on jewellery manufacturing workers, VDT operators and on graduate students. The symptoms of subjective visual disturbances were identified using a questionnaire developed by Sheedy (2003). Viewing distances were measured and visual angles were calculated. The eye check--ups were also carried out. The subjective visual disturbances were higher in jewellery manufacturing workers. The findings suggest that work exposure has an impact on the causation of subjective visual disturbances. No pathological conditions of the eyes were observed.     

Multidimensional Measures of Female Disempowerment

This study offers a new methodology to measure female disempowerment, where such individuals are denied the liberty of making fundamental life choices, with techniques that have been developed exclusively to measure social deprivation. These multidimensional indicators have been applied to calculate statistics in India at state, regional and national levels, and have provided quantifiable statistics with which to assess regional diversity in gender equity in India. Further, the decomposability property of these indicators have allowed for the identification of those regions (or states) and decisions categories that have contributed more than others to the total disempowerment of women.     

Poisson-mixed Inverse Gaussian Regression Model and Its Application

In this article, we have developed a Poisson-mixed inverse Gaussian (PMIG) distribution. The mixed inverse Gaussian distribution is a mixture of the inverse Gaussian distribution and its length-biased counterpart. A PMIG regression model is developed and the maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters is studied. A dataset dealing with the number of hospital stays among the elderly population is analyzed by using the PMIG and the PIG (Poisson-inverse Gaussian) regression models and it has been shown that the PMIG model fits the data better than the PIG model.     

A Development Delivery Institution for the Tribal Communities: Experience of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India

This article examines the varied impacts of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) as a development delivery institution for the tribal communities vis‐à‐vis other social groups across the Indian States, using the framework of new institutional economics. A number of State‐specific, socio‐economic institutional factors seem to be responsible for these variations. The article therefore suggests institutional reforms and convergence of the development initiatives of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs with the NREGS in order to realise the optimal potential of the scheme, and, in particular, to ensure greater livelihood opportunities for these marginalised groups and their entitlement to productive resources with greater socio‐economic and political empowerment.     

On gehan's wilcoxon and the accelerated failure time model

A proof is provided to show that Gehan's 1965 generalization of the two sample Wilcoxon test lies outside the class of efficient score procedures for right censored data (Prentice 1978).     

Another generalization of the logarithmic series and the geometric distributions

A new generalization of the logarithmic series distribution is presented based on a generalized negative binomial distribution obtained from a generalized Poisson distribution compounded with the truncated gamma distribution. By length biasing this generalized log-series distribution, another generalized geometric distribution is uresented. For the generalized log-series distribution, maximum likelihood estimators are developed and an example is presented for illustration.     

A generalised bivariate binomial distribution applicable in four-fold sampling

A bivariate generalisation of the Consul's(1974) quasi-binomial distributionCQBD) has been obtained with the help of an urn-model for eKplaining data obtained as a result of four-fold sampling, The distribution is expected to cover a very wide range of situations in four-fold sampling. The first and the second order moments of the distribution have been obtained,The distribution has been fitted to an observed set of data as an illustration and its limiting form has also been obtained.     

Estimation of reliability under ordered restriction on the parameters

This paper deals with the estimation of reliability for a strength-stress model under ordered restriction on the parameters. It is assumed that components have exponential distributions and are arranged in a parallel system and the failure of one component, results in increasing the failure rate of the remaining components. Results are derived when (i) the ordering of the means is taken into account and when (ii) the ordering of the means is ignored. Simulation studies are carried out to compare the results. It is noticed that, in almost all cases, in case (i) the estimates are closer to the true value with smaller mean squared error (MSE) and smaller’ standard deviation than in case (ii). Thus when the ordering of the means is present in the model, such information should be incorporated in the estimation of reliability.     

A small sample test for an absolutely continuous bivariate exponential model

The finite sample distribution of the likelihood ratio sta-tistic is obtained for testing independence, given marginal homo-geneity, in the absolutely continuous bivariate exponential distri-bution of Block and Basu (1974). This test is discussed in light of the analysis of Gross and Lam (1981) on times to relief of head-aches for standard and new treatments on ten subjects.