In this paper we compare ruin functions for two risk processes with respect to stochastic ordering, stop-loss ordering and ordering of adjustment coeecients. The risk processes are as follows: in the Markov-modulated environment and the associated averaged compound Poisson model. In the latter case the arrival rate is obtained by averaging over time the arrival rate in the Markov modulated mode...

Many lay people still believe that vaccines—especially the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and vaccines with mercury-containing preservatives—have contributed to the increased rate of autism, despite the lack of scientific evidence to support such a notion. We owe it to our patients to show them that medical research is actively searching for factors that may truly be contributing to the in...

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, like the sympathetic nervous system and the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone (RAA) system, sustains life in stressful situations by increasing vascular tone and ensuring fuel availability. It also modulates inflammation and tissue repair processes. Untoward cardiovascular effects of chronic sympathetic and RAA activation are well recognized, illustrat...

This meta-analysis aimed to provide an up-to-date comprehensive evaluation on the association between the MDM2 40bp indel polymorphism and cancer susceptibility. Eligible studies were retrieved by searching Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, and Google scholar databases up to August 27, 2018. The pooled odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to estimate the ...

The recent increase in the frequency and impact of natural disasters1 highlights the need to provide the public with accurate information concerning disaster prevalence. Most approaches to this problem assume that providing summaries of the nature and scale of disasters will lead people to reduce their exposure to risk2. Herewe present experimental evidence that such ex post ‘news reports’ of d...

Individuals can gain fitness benefits and costs through their mates. However, studies on sexual selection have tended to focus on genetic benefits. A potentially widespread cost of pairing with a parasitized mate is that doing so will increase an individual's parasite abundance. Such a cost has been overlooked in systems in which parasites are indirectly transmitted. We manipulated the abundanc...

ED FROM Laursen TM, Munk-Olsen T, Nordentoft M, et al. Increased mortality among patients admitted with major psychiatric disorders: a register-based study comparing mortality in unipolar depressive disorder, bipolar affective disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and schizophrenia. J Clin Psychiatry 2007;68:899–907. Notes: Overlaps in the diagnostic groups (for example, where an individual had m...

PURPOSE Febrile convulsion (FC) and Tourette syndrome (TS) are both common neurological disorders in infants and children. Both disorders share clinical similarities, such as paroxysmal symptoms with normal neurodevelopment and expected remission over time. This population-based study investigated the association between FC with TS during childhood neurodevelopment. METHOD We used the Taiwan ...

This study investigated whether migraine influences the risk of primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) and primary angle-closure glaucoma (PACG) in Taiwan.We retrieved the data analyzed in this study from the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan. We included 17,606 newly diagnosed migraine patients without preexisting glaucoma and randomly selected and matched 70,423 subjects witho...