Health care risks and access within the community of Michigan over-the-road truckers

This mixed methods study explored health care access problems faced by long-distance truck drivers. Thirty trucking professionals were interviewed at truck-stops in Michigan about health status and health care access. Thirty of the 88 drivers approached participated. The most common illnesses they reported concerned the eye, back, excessive stress at work and painful joints or arthritis. Most respondents had a family doctor; for those who did not, cost was a major contributing factor. More than one third stated their health is "not excellent" because of poor accessibility to healthcare on the road. Almost unanimously, drivers desired to have access to health care clinics in truck-stop areas and described particular access problems; the solution may be as simple as making the existing health care system more amenable to those driving large truck rigs.     

Designing and integrating composite networks for monitoring multivariate gaussian pollution fields

Networks of ambient monitoring stations are used to monitor environmental pollution fields such as those for acid rain and air pollution. Such stations provide regular measurements of pollutant concentrations. The networks are established for a variety of purposes at various times so often several stations measuring different subsets of pollutant concentrations can be found in compact geographical regions. The problem of statistically combining these disparate information sources into a single 'network' then arises. Capitalizing on the efficiencies so achieved can then lead to the secondary problem of extending this network. The subject of this paper is a set of 31 air pollution monitoring stations in southern Ontario. Each of these regularly measures a particular subset of ionic sulphate, sulphite, nitrite and ozone. However, this subset varies from station to station. For example only two stations measure all four. Some measure just one. We describe a Bayesian framework for integrating the measurements of these stations to yield a spatial predictive distribution for unmonitored sites and unmeasured concentrations at existing stations. Furthermore we show how this network can be extended by using an entropy maximization criterion. The methods assume that the multivariate response field being measured has a joint Gaussian distribution conditional on its mean and covariance function. A conjugate prior is used for these parameters, some of its hyperparameters being fitted empirically.     

Decision Making in `Random in a Broad Sense' Environments

It is shown that the uncertainty connected with a `random in a broad sense' (not necessarily stochastic) event always has some `statistical regularity' (SR) in the form of a family of finite-additive probability distributions. The specific principle of guaranteed result in decision making is introduced. It is shown that observing this principle of guaranteed result leads to determine the one optimality criterion corresponding to a decision system with a given `statistical regularity'.     

Bayesian prediction of waiting times in stochastic models

The authors show how saddlepoint techniques lead to highly accurate approximations for Bayesian predictive densities and cumulative distribution functions in stochastic model settings where the prior is tractable, but not necessarily the likelihood or the predictand distribution. They consider more specifically models involving predictions associated with waiting times for semi‐Markov processes whose distributions are indexed by an unknown parameter θ. Bayesian prediction for such processes when they are not stationary is also addressed and the inverse‐Gaussian based saddlepoint approximation of Wood, Booth & Butler (1993) is shown to accurately deal with the nonstationarity whereas the normal‐based Lugannani & Rice (1980) approximation cannot, Their methods are illustrated by predicting various waiting times associated with M/M/q and M/G/1 queues. They also discuss modifications to the matrix renewal theory needed for computing the moment generating functions that are used in the saddlepoint methods.     

A semi-parametric method for estimating the beta coefficients of the hidden two-sided asset return jumps

ABSTRACT

We introduce a new methodology for estimating the parameters of a two-sided jump model, which aims at decomposing the daily stock return evolution into (unobservable) positive and negative jumps as well as Brownian noise. The parameters of interest are the jump beta coefficients which measure the influence of the market jumps on the stock returns, and are latent components. For this purpose, at first we use the Variance Gamma (VG) distribution which is frequently used in modeling financial time series and leads to the revelation of the hidden market jumps' distributions. Then, our method is based on the central moments of the stock returns for estimating the parameters of the model. It is proved that the proposed method provides always a solution in terms of the jump beta coefficients. We thus achieve a semi-parametric fit to the empirical data. The methodology itself serves as a criterion to test the fit of any sets of parameters to the empirical returns. The analysis is applied to NASDAQ and Google returns during the 2006–2008 period.     

Urban ecosystem Services in Latin America: mismatch between global concepts and regional realities?

Urban Ecosystems - Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the most urbanized and biologically diverse regions in the world but is often characterized by weak environmental governance and...     

Testing the dilation order by using cumulative residual Tsallis entropy

In this paper, we introduce a new test for the dilation order based on cumulative residual Tsallis entropy of order α. The effect of the values of parameter α on the power of the test statistics is numerically investigated. The asymptotic distribution of the test statistic is given. The performance of the test statistic is evaluated using a simulation study. Finally, some numerical examples illustrating the theory are also given.     

Communication in Statistics-Theory and methods improved GQL estimation method for the generalised BINMA(1) model

In a recent research, the quasi-likelihood estimation methodology was developed to estimate the regression effects in the Generalized BINMA(1) (GBINMA(1)) process. The method provides consistent parameter estimates but, in the intermediate computations, moment estimating equations were used to estimate the serial- and cross-correlation parameters. This procedure may not result optimal parameter estimates, in particular, for the regression effects. This paper provides an alternative simpler GBINMA(1) process based on multivariate thinning properties where the main effects are estimated via a robust generalized quasi-likelihood (GQL) estimation approach. The two techniques are compared through some simulation experiments. A real-life data application is studied.     

In Search of Executive Impairment in Pathological Gambling: A Neuropsychological Study on Non-treatment Seeking Gamblers

Pathological gambling is characterized by a persisting maladaptive and recurrent behavior with severe social and psychological consequences. There is evidence of strong comorbidity with psychiatric manifestations as well as cognitive mainly involving executive functions. This study aimed to investigate impairment in executive functions and working memory, and personality traits in a sample of Greek gamblers. Twenty-four men involved in various gambling activities were recruited from ecological settings as probable pathological gamblers. They were assessed with a comprehensive neuropsychological battery involving several executive tasks, the Zuckerman–Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire, the Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale, and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale. An age- and education-level matched group of 21 men without history of habitual gambling served as controls. As a group, gamblers displayed significantly lower scores on indices of inhibition, decision making and self-reported emotional awareness, and scored higher on impulsivity/sensation seeking personality traits. Notably, gamblers scored similarly or significantly higher on measures of verbal and visuospatial working memory, cognitive flexibility, processing speed, verbal fluency, and sustained attention. Overall, we argue that gamblers do present with specific cognitive deficits, but there is no evidence for a generalized executive impairment, and further stress the importance of investigating cognitive, personality, and psychiatric aspects of gambling on the basis of an ecologically valid sampling.