Objectives: Within the context of Health-Related Quality of Life studies, it was necessary to translate and evaluate the psychometric properties of the SF-12 Health Survey version 2. The aim of this study was to investigate the factorial structure, convergent validity and reliability of this instrument in a healthy Iranian sample, following translation and establishment of content and face vali...

This paper analyzes the behavior of diierent junction models in scale space. In this perspective, we study the behavior of linear models (L,Y and X models) and linear multi-models (two adjacent corners with innnite extent and a closed triangular model) with constant illumination, linear models with non-constant illumination and a non-linear model (curved junctions). The study shows under which ...

larger scale than that for which their estimated effects were originally obtained, occurs across many different applications, programs, and disciplines. Economic models of scale-up, which are the concern of this chapter, have focused on particular types of scale-up effects that occur frequently in interventions where economic outcomes are the major interest and where program beneficiaries—in th...

The role of probabilistic models in the debate over genetics and insurance is discussed. A Markov model is used to show that, under quite extreme assumptions, adverse selection in life insurance ought to be controllable. The statistical problems of estimating small differences in mortality are discussed; these might limit the use of many genetic disorders as rating factors. The influence of the...

accumulation of unmanaged industrial solid waste, especially in developing countries has resulted in an increased environmental concern. in view of utilization of industrial solid waste the recycled paper mill waste (rpmw) – cement composite bricks were designed and developed. in order to investigate the environmental performance of sustainable construction materials two small scale model house...

In this paper we introduce Nieme, a machine learning library for large-scale classification, regression and ranking. Nieme relies on the framework of energy-based models (LeCun et al., 2006) which unifies several learning algorithms ranging from simple perceptrons to recent models such as the pegasos support vector machine or l1-regularized maximum entropy models. This framework also unifies ba...

Bimrocks are complex geomaterials that are defined as mixtures of rocks composed of geotechnically significant blocks within a matrix of finer texture. Bimslopes are made from bimrocks and are usually seen in weathered and shallow environments. Some characteristics of blocks affecting the strength of bimrocks include VBP (Volumetric Block Proportion), orientation, and arrangement, which have im...

We have explored, in the general framework of the “young source” scenario, evolutionary models for GHz Peaked Spectrum (GPS) galaxies and quasars which reproduce the observed counts, redshift and peak frequency distributions of currently available samples. Substantially different cosmological evolution properties are found for the two populations: the quasar luminosity function must evolve stro...

Varying coefficient models have been widely used in longitudinal data analysis, nonlinear time series, survival analysis, and so on. They are natural non-parametric extensions of the classical linear models in many contexts, keeping good interpretability and allowing us to explore the dynamic nature of the model. Recently, penalized estimators have been used for fitting varying-coefficient mode...

BACKGROUND Different structural and non-structural models have been used to describe human growth patterns. However, few studies have compared the fitness of these models in an African transitioning population. AIM To find model(s) that best describe the growth pattern from birth to early childhood using mixed effect modelling. SUBJECTS AND METHODS The study compared the fitness of four str...