Mothers' Education and Survival of Female Children in a Rural Area of Bangladesh

In this paper it is investigated whether the positive effect of mothers' education on child survival is similar for boys and girls in Matlab, Bangladesh. The study is based on follow-up of 7,913 live births that occurred in the study area during the whole of 1982. The five independent variables included in the analysis are: sex of children, mother's education, mother's age at the time of birth, household economic condition, and health programme block. Hazard analysis shows that the positive effect of mother's education on child survival is different for boys and girls. For boys, a change in mother's education from no schooling to 1–5 years resulted in reducing the predicted risk of death by 45 per cent, while for the girls the reduction came to only seven per cent. Similarly, a change in mother's education from no schooling to six or more years of schooling resulted in a reduction of risk of 70 per cent for boys, while for girls it was only 32 per cent.     

Poverty as Functioning Deprivation: Global Estimates

Poverty alleviation and eradication have always remained a major challenge for the political leadership at the national and international level. However, no consensus exists about the definition and measurement of poverty. Recent understanding sees poverty as much more than lack of income. Hunger, unemployment and ill heath are just some of many dimensions of poverty. We have contributed to the existing debate by defining poverty as a deprivation of a number of functionings (actual achievements), considered vital but not equally important for human wellbeing, caused by an inadequate command over market or nonmarket resources. We have identified nine basic functionings and corresponding indicators that best reflect these nine basic functionings and develop a composite index of poverty for 193 countries of the world for cross country comparison. We have analyzed poverty for two periods 1990–2000 and 2001–2010 to make an inter-temporal comparison in global poverty. According to our estimates, the global poverty has only modestly come down by 4 percentage points from 35% in 1990–2000 to 31% in 2001–2010. This contrasts sharply with the estimates based on the poverty line of the World Bank that the proportion of population living in extreme poverty has nearly halved from 47% in 1990 to 24% in 2015.     

Sectarian terrorism in Pakistan: Causes,impact and remedies

Although terrorism has been widely studied for its impact and potential determinants in Pakistan, the answer to the policy question regarding the role of external factors in influencing specifically the sectarian terrorism is not empirically well researched. The study, particularly, analyses the role of Pakistan’s regional foreign policy towards neighbouring India, Afghan wars, and the relations with bi-polar fundamental Muslim Block, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Iran, on sectarian (religious) terrorist incidents for the period 1973–2017. The findings suggest that economic cooperation with India which drive peace-making relations increases the sectarian terrorism. Both the bilateral loans disbursed by the KSA and trade relations with Iran, significantly increase the chances of sectarian terrorism in Pakistan by activating extremist (proxy) groups. However, the Afghan Wars that call for Pak-US strategic partnership helps Pakistan to control the religious terrorism.     

Modeling the Factors Influencing the Evaluations of Items Through Mixture Models for Preference Datasets

In numerous situations, we use ranks dataset to exhibit preferences of a group of respondents towards a set of items. While assigning ranks, judges may consider several factors contributing to overall ranks of items. In this study, an attempt is made to model factors influencing the judges’ evaluations of items through mixture models for preference datasets. Both the probabilistic features of the mixture distribution and inferential as well as computational issues emerging out of the maximum likelihood estimation are addressed. Moreover, empirical evidences from observed dataset confirming the plausibility of the proposed model to preference dataset are provided.     

Bayesian inference on P(X > Y) in bivariate Rayleigh model

In the literature, assuming independence of random variables X and Y, statistical estimation of the stress–strength parameter R = P(X > Y) is intensively investigated. However, in some real applications, the strength variable X could be highly dependent on the stress variable Y. In this paper, unlike the common practice in the literature, we discuss on estimation of the parameter R where more realistically X and Y are dependent random variables distributed as bivariate Rayleigh model. We derive the Bayes estimates and highest posterior density credible intervals of the parameters using suitable priors on the parameters. Because there are not closed forms for the Bayes estimates, we will use an approximation based on Laplace method and a Markov Chain Monte Carlo technique to obtain the Bayes estimate of R and unknown parameters. Finally, simulation studies are conducted in order to evaluate the performances of the proposed estimators and analysis of two data sets are provided.     

Circular L(j,k)-labeling number of direct product of path and cycle

Let j, k and m be positive numbers, a circular m-L(j,k)-labeling of a graph G is a function f:V(G)→[0,m) such that |f(u)?f(v)| _m ≥j if u and v are adjacent, and |f(u)?f(v)| _m ≥k if u and v are at distance two, where |a?b| _m =min{|a?b|,m?|a?b|}. The minimum m such that there exist a circular m-L(j,k)-labeling of G is called the circular L(j,k)-labeling number of G and is denoted by σ _j,k (G). In this paper, for any two positive numbers j and k with j≤k, we give some results about the circular L(j,k)-labeling number of direct product of path and cycle.     

Compound-Estimator Based Cause-Selecting Control Chart for Monitoring Multistage Processes

Although there exists an increasing interest in monitoring and diagnosing multistage processes through the recent years, this issue has been overlooked to a large extent in cascade processes where the quality characteristics are liable to outliers. The presence of outliers has a debilitating effect on the detect-ability of the traditional cause selecting control charts and thus makes them unreliable. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide a robust approach to quality control in multistage processes. It is assumed that the process consists of two stages and the historical data with regard to both dependent quality characteristics contain outliers. A robust fitting procedure based on compound-estimator is employed to build the relationship between the quality variables and a robust monitoring approach is presented. Subsequently, simulation studies are undertaken to assess the performance of the robust scheme by means of the average run length (ARL) criterion. It is shown that the proposed robust procedure can much faster detect diverse types of shift.