Several studies have confirmed seasonal variation in suicide rates according to hours of sunshine. The suicide pattern was assessed in São Paulo, southeastern Brazil, at the tropic of Capricorn from 1996 to 2004. Poisson regression was employed to estimate parameters of seasonality, as well as to verify associations for each day between daylight duration and suicide. During the nine-year study ...

According to a recent global analysis, microzooplankton grazing is surprisingly invariant, ranging only between 59 and 74% of phytoplankton primary production across systems differing in seasonality, trophic status, latitude, or salinity. Thus an important biological process in the world ocean, the daily consumption of recently fixed carbon, appears nearly constant. We believe this conclusion i...

The floriculture industry faces many challenges including increasing energy and input prices, seasonality of its products and international competition. To analyze floriculture demand, we estimate and use simulation analysis to decompose it into market penetration and buying frequency. Understanding what are the factors that influence non-buyers of floral products to become buyers, and the fact...

BACKGROUND To examine the seasonality of suicides in Australia and New Zealand during the period 1981 to 1993. METHODS A chi-square test and a harmonic analysis were used to detect the seasonality of the suicide data. RESULTS The reduced amplitude and a smaller proportion of variance accounted for by seasonality suggested the seasonal effect on suicide is greatly diminished. The absence of ...

Given a function f : I → J and a pair of means M and N, on the intervals I and J respectively, we say that f is MN -convex provided that f (M(x, y)) N(f (x), f (y)) for every x , y ∈ I . In this context, we prove the validity of all basic inequalities in Convex Function Theory, such as Jensen’s Inequality and the Hermite-Hadamard Inequality. Mathematics subject classification (2000): 26A51, 26D...

Probabilistic forecasts are often employed to estimate the potential for high pollutant concentrations. To develop a probabilistic forecast of ozone concentrations, we suggest that use be made of the inherent properties of seasonality and autocorrelation in 0, time series. A non-stationary, autocorrelated stochastic process is used to simulate a conditional probability density function (p.d.f.)...

The time of year when patients experience exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a much-overlooked feature of the disease. The higher incidence of exacerbations in winter has important consequences for patients in terms of increased morbidity and mortality. The seasonality also imposes a considerable burden on already-overloaded health care services, with both primary care co...

Rural households in many developing economies have incomes that vary seasonally. We explore the implications of this income seasonality for household consumption. We use household-level data from three Indian villages to document seasonal patterns in income and consumption, and to test whether income seasonality produces seasonal consumption variation. Our basic finding is that while there does...

Everyone knows about seasonality. But what exactly do we know? This study systematically measures seasonal price gaps at 193 markets for 13 food commodities in seven African countries. It shows that the commonly used dummy variable or moving average deviation methods to estimate the seasonal gap can yield substantial upward bias. This can be partially circumvented using trigonometric and sawtoo...