Elder mistreatment in urban India: a community based study

This study examined the extent and correlates of elder mistreatment among 400 community dwelling older adults aged 65 and above in Chennai, India. The prevalence rate of mistreatment was 14%. Chronic verbal abuse was the most common followed by financial abuse and the rate of physical abuse and neglect was similar. Among the mistreated, exactly half of them had experienced more than one type of mistreatment (multifaceted-mistreatment). With the exception of financial abuse, a significantly greater number of women experienced verbal and physical abuse as well as neglect compared to men. Adult children, daughters-in-law, spouses, and sons-in-law were the prominent perpetrators. The mistreated older adults were more depressed and less satisfied with life than those who were not mistreated. Logistic regression analysis revealed gender, social support, and subjective rating of physical health as significant factors associated with abuse.     

Risk tolerance and a retailer's pricing and ordering policies within a newsvendor framework

This paper evaluates the pricing and ordering policies of a retailer, facing a price-dependent stochastic demand, within a newsvendor framework, under different degrees of risk tolerance and under a variety of optimizing objectives. These are (i) maximizing expected profit, for a retailer who may be risk-seeker, risk-averse or risk neutral; (ii) deriving a maximin strategy of maximizing a minimum guaranteed profit and (iii) modeling the probability of exceeding a target profit, as a constraint or as an objective. Some analytical properties and numerical examples illustrate the main features of the models and provide some comparative policy analysis across the model.     

Findings and implications of a correlation analysis of the closed and the open birth intervals

A correlation analysis of data on four fertility variables viz. closed birth interval, open birth interval, age and parity, collected in a survey of about 2,000 married women in the reproductive ages in rural India, is carried out in order to study the interrelationships among these variables. Two hypotheses are formulated governing the relationship of the closed and open birth intervals with the fecundability distribution of fertile women, and Parity Progression Ratios which are largely influenced by the proportion of women becoming sterile after each parity. The data lend support to the hypothesis that while the closed intervals are influenced mainly by the distribution of fecundability of women of non-zero fecundability, the open birth intervals are influenced mainly by Parity Progression Ratios or the proportion of women becoming secondarily sterile after each parity. The analysis suggests that we can use the mean open intervals of women classified by parity as indices of fertility, and such an index is comparable to the index of average age of women of given parity. In areas where it is difficult to ascertain the correct age of women this might be of practical value.     

A probability model applicable to the study of inter-live birth intervals and random segments of the same

Abstract This paper deals with an analytical study of two types of birth intervals, viz. 'closed intervals' and 'open intervals' through the application of simple probability theory. The 'closed interval' stands for the time interval between two successive live births of a woman, and the 'open interval' denotes the interval between the date of last live birth and the date of survey for a married woman in the reproductive age group surveyed at a point of time. The study considers the 'closed interval' as the sum of independent random variables, each representing a particular component like post-partum amenorrhea, waiting time in the susceptible state, etc. Approximations to the patterns of distributions of these component random variables are made from the available data collected in fertility surveys at Gandhigram. The 'open interval' for any parity is studied separately for two different (mutually exclusive) categories of women, viz. those who have at least one more live birth at some time or other during their reproductive period and those who cease childbearing. In the first case the 'open interval' is considered as a random segment or partition of the corresponding 'closed interval'; in the second as a random segment of the interval between the date of birth of the last child and date at which the woman attains 45 years of age. The mean and variance of the 'open interval' is obtained separately in each case, and the moments of the 'open interval' distribution for women chosen at random from the population are obtained as an appropriate mixture of the two types.     

An algorithm for inverting matrices whose elements are polynomials

A variety of statistical problems lead to the estimation of parameters in a linear model or solving a system of linear equations. The problem of estimating linear parameters can be solved by adopting well known matrix inversion techniques. In this paper a mathematical algorithm has been developed for inverting a special class of matrices.     

Motor variability--an important issue in occupational life

Several recent reviews have reported that 'repetitive movements' is a risk factor for occupational musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) in the neck, shoulder and arm regions. More variation in biomechanical exposure is often suggested as an effective intervention in such settings. While increasing variation using extrinsic methods like job rotation may not always be possible in an industrial context, the intrinsic variability of the motor system may offer an alternative opportunity to increase variation. Motor variability (MV) refers to the natural variation in postures, movements and muscle activity observed to different extents in all tasks. The current review explores the state of the art in MV research from motor control, sports and occupational biomechanics literature to answer whether MV is important to consider in an occupational context, and if yes, whether this literature stimulates further studies to test if MV can be manipulated as a deliberate intervention for increasing biomechanical variation without jeopardizing production.     

On the Characterization of a Bivariate Geometric Distribution

In this article it is shown that a bivariate random variable has a constant failure rate, and mixture geometric marginals, if and only if, it has the loss of memory property and the discrete Freund distribution. This characterization is achieved by extending a key lemma in this area. The mixture geometric can be collapsed to geometric marginals, thus validating the results.