Russian Mortality Crisis and the Quality of Vital Statistics

Mortality from ill-defined conditions in Russia has the fastest rate of increase compared to all other major causes of death. High proportion of deaths in this category is indicative for low quality of mortality statistics. This article examines the trends and possible causes of mortality from ill-defined conditions in Russia. During 1991–2005, mortality from ill-defined conditions in Russia increased in all age groups. The pace of increase was particularly high at working ages and the mean expected age at death from ill-defined conditions has shifted to younger ages, particularly for men. The analysis of individual medical death certificates issued in Kirov and Smolensk regions of Russia demonstrate that 89–100% of working-age deaths from ill-defined conditions correspond to human bodies found in a state of decomposition. Data from Smolensk region shows that over 60% of these decedents were unemployed. Temporal trends of mortality from ill-defined conditions and injuries of undetermined intent in Moscow city suggest that deaths from the latter cause were probably misclassified as ill-defined conditions. This practice can lead to underestimation of mortality from external causes. Growing number of socially isolated marginalized people in Russia and insufficient investigation of the circumstances of their death contribute to the observed trends in mortality from ill-defined conditions.     

Statistical estimation with bounded memory

We investigate bounded-memory estimators of statistical functionals. It is shown that, for nondegenerate functionals and stochastic processes, it is impossible to achieve consistent estimation with bounded memory. In the positive direction, we show that O(log(1/??)) states suffice to achieve ??-consistent estimation for a natural class of functionals. A?canonical optimal construction is conjectured for arbitrary statistical functionals.     

Adaptive asymptotically efficient estimation in heteroscedastic nonparametric regression

The paper considers some asymptotic properties of the adaptive procedure proposed in authors’ paper, 2007, for estimating an unknown nonparametric regression. We show that the procedure is asymptotically efficient for quadratic risk, i.e. the asymptotic quadratic risk of the procedure coincides with the corresponding Pinsker constant provided the sharp lower bound for the quadratic risk over all possible estimators.     

The pale of settlement: An inseparable part of Byelorussian history

Evgeny Anishchenko, Cherta osedlosti: Byelorusskaya sinagoga v tsarstvovanii Ekateriny II (The Pale of Settlement: The Byelorussian Synagogue During the Reign of Catherine II) (Minsk: Arti‐Fex 1998), 160pp.     

A Nonidentifiability Aspect of the Two-Stage Model of Carcinogenesis

This paper discusses identifiability of the two-stage birth-death-mutation model of carcinogenesis. It is shown that the homogeneous version of the model is nonidentifiable; the same is all the more evident for its nonhomogeneous versions. This result implies that the model parameters cannot be uniquely estimated from time-to-tumor observations.