Performance models for unreliable flexible manufacturing systems

This paper deals with the analysis and application of queueing models for single and multi stage flexible manufacturing systems that are subject to resource failure. Exact results are derived for the single stage queueing system. Two approximations are presneted for the multi stage queueing system as a closed network. We validate the approximations by comparing their performance estimates against the exact global balance solution.     

Symbiotic mothers and infantilized only children: A subtype of single-parent family

One single-parent family pattern is the enmeshed mother/onlychild dyad. Women marry to have children, and then divorce, while mother and child live out the reciprocally gratifying symbiotic period. When these mothers hamper offspring moves toward separation-individuation, post-divorce difficulties bring them to treatment. These difficulties are distinct from those found in other single-parent families. Intervention can move mother and child from the prolonged symbiosis. Treatment stresses modification of low maternal selfesteem, and correction of pathogenic maternal behavior. Re-introduction of the father to the system can also free both mother and child for further growth.     

A family life cycle plan for delivering services to the developmentally handicapped

A treatment model for the developmentally handicapped child does more than meet crisis situations.     

The expanded role of nurse case managers

1. Effective nursing practice is responsive to the changing needs of clients. The community, rather than the hospital, has become the primary treatment setting in which the long-term mentally ill manage their daily activities. 2. The professional role of rehabilitative nurse case management can provide an opportunity for nurses to expand their roles and develop new career directions. 3. The primary nursing model provides an excellent foundation for acquiring the attitudes and skills necessary in the delivery of a comprehensive rehabilitative model of case management.     

Modified pseudo-likelihood estimator of the overdispersion parameter in Poisson mixture models

There are a variety of methods available for analyzing count data exhibiting extra-Poisson variation. Those based on quasi-likelihood, in particular, have gained tremendous popularity. In this paper, several moment estimators are compared. A new estimator, based on a modification of the pseudo-likelihood approach, is introduced and shown to perform very well when the overdispersion is not large, even if the sample size is very small.     

Aggregated statistical rankings are arbitrary

In many areas of mathematics, statistics, and the social sciences, the intriguing, and somewhat unsettling, paradox occurs where the “parts” may give rise to a common decision, but the aggregate of those parts, the “whole”, gives rise to a different decision. The Kruskal-Wallis nonparametric statistical test on n samples which can be used to rank-order a list of alternatives is subject to such a Simpson-like paradox of aggregation. That is, two or more data sets each may individually support a certain ordering of the samples under Kruskal-Wallis, yet their union, or aggregate, yields a different outcome. An analysis of this phenomenon yields a computable criterion which characterizes which matrices of ranked data, when aggregated, can give rise to such a paradox. Received: 6 November 2001/Accepted: 7 March 2002