The credit guarantee system for small and medium enterprises (SMEs, here in after) has been established for more than 10 years in China. There are so many problems resulting in low-effective operation of the credit guarantee system, such as the risks share and amplification multiple of guarantee determined by financial institutions and guarantee organization to reasonably are unreasonable. Aimi...

The Silicon Photo-Multiplier (SiPM) being yet in its infancy, a full protocol for the sensor characterization has been developed and implemented at the Physics Department of Universita’ dell’Insubria. Sensors from different producers have been analyzed and compared, in view of the integration in the instruments for radiation detection. Exemplary illustrations are reported here, together with th...

BACKGROUND National health surveys are sometimes used to provide estimates on risk factors for policy and program development at the regional/local level. However, as regional/local needs may differ from national ones, an important question is how to also enhance capacity for risk factor surveillance regionally/locally. METHODS A Think Tank Forum was convened in Canada to discuss the needs, c...

  Asparagus racemosus Willd. has repeatedly been mentioned as a galactogogue in Ayurvedic literature and has been confirmed through animal experiments as well. This randomized double-blind clinical trial evaluates its galactogogue effect in 60 lactating mothers by measurement of changes in their prolactin hormone level during the study. Several secondary parameters namely mothers’ weight, babie...

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The lack of an adequate standardized method for reporting level of hearing function in clinical trials has hampered the ability of investigators to draw comparisons across studies. Variability in data reported and presentation format inhibits meta-analysis and makes it impossible to accumulate the large patient cohorts needed for statistically significant inference. Recognizing its importance t...

Medical claims cost distributions and factors that relate to these costs were studied among 7796 employees who selected an indemnity medical plan for at least one year during 1985 to 1990. Descriptions for medical claims costs were presented for both single- and multiple-year time periods. Factors that associated with high cost status were studied by using multiple logistic regression models. E...

Middle censoring refers to data that becomes unobservable if it falls within a random interval. The lifetime distribution of such data is defined via the self-consistency equation. We propose an approximation to this distribution function for which an estimator and its asymptotic properties are very easy to establish. Abbreviated title: Estimation for middle-censored data.

Middle-censoring is considered as a modern general scheme of censoring. In this paper, we study the analysis of middle-censored data with Burr-XII distribution which is considered one of the most popular and flexible distributions for modeling stochastic events and lifetime for many products. The parameters are estimated by the maximum likelihood method and the Bayes estimation under gamma prio...

Analyzing events over time is often complicated by incomplete, or censored, observations. Special non-parametric statistical methods were developed to overcome difficulties in summarizing and comparing censored data. Life-table (actuarial) method and Kaplan-Meier method are described with an explanation of survival curves. For the didactic purpose authors prepared a workbook based on most widel...