BACKGROUND Engaging in social interaction has, for people with psychiatric disabilities, been shown to enhance well-being and the experience of meaning and to generally prevent the worsening of mental illness. AIM The aim of the study was to investigate how day centre attendees differed from non-attendees regarding different aspects of social interaction and to investigate how occupational fa...

BACKGROUND Major short-notice or sudden impact incidents, which result in a large number of casualties, are rare events. However health services must be prepared to respond to such events appropriately. In the United Kingdom (UK), a mass casualties incident is when the normal response of several National Health Service organizations to a major incident, has to be supported with extraordinary me...

BACKGROUND Although a decrease in new prescribing has occurred for anxiolytic benzodiazepines, concerns have been raised that a 'core' of long-term users has been left behind. Typically, elderly people represent this 'core', using the benzodiazepines as hypnotics. OBJECTIVE The present study focuses on the reasons why hypnotic benzodiazepines are used for protracted lengths of time. By examin...

This paper investigates the performance of three types of random coefficients logistic regression models; that is, models using parametric, semi-parametric, and nonparametric specifications of the distribution of the random effects. Whereas earlier studies focussed on models with a single random effect, here we look at models with multidimensional random effects (intercepts and slopes). Moreove...

We introduce a nonparametric bootstrap approach for Quasi-Likelihood Ratio type tests of nonlinear restrictions. Our method applies to extremum estimators, such as quasimaximum likelihood and generalized method of moments estimators. Unlike existing parametric bootstrap procedures for Quasi-Likelihood Ratio type tests, our procedure constructs bootstrap samples in a fully nonparametric way. We ...

Scene parsing is a challenging research area in computer vision, which provides a semantic label for each pixel of the image. Most scene parsing approaches are parametric based which need models that are acquired through learning. In this paper, a new nonparametric approach to scene parsing is proposed which does not require a learning stage. All introduced nonparametric approaches are based on...

KEY FINDINGS Following a long period of fairly steady increase, the U.S. preterm birth rate declined for the second straight year in 2008 to 12.3 percent, from 12.8 percent in 2006. This marks the first 2-year decline in the preterm birth rate in nearly three decades. Preterm birth rates declined from 2006 to 2008 for mothers of all age groups under age 40, for the three largest race and Hispan...

This paper compares a number of different extreme value models for determining the value at risk of three LIFFE futures contracts. A semi-nonparametric approach is also proposed where the tail events are modeled using the Generalised Pareto Distribution and normal market conditions are captured by the empirical distribution function. The value at risk estimates from this approach are compared w...

Introduction to Nonparametric Regression describes the usage of MinGW for. 7 Nonparametric regression techniques for time series. Theo Gasser introduced me to the subject I treat in this book. Without his feeling.Semi-parametric approach. To draw the pdf of X. Simplest method: Use a histogram. Nonparametric regression is a set of techniques for estimating a regression curve. Mators, and so they...