The likelihood approach to compare populations : a study on DNA evidence and pitfalls of intuitions

The paper follows on from earlier work [Taroni F and Aitken CGG. Probabilistic reasoning in the law, Part 1: assessment of probabilities and explanation of the value of DNA evidence. Science & Justice 1998; 38: 165-177]. Different explanations of the value of DNA evidence were presented to students from two schools of forensic science and to members of fifteen laboratories all around the world. The responses were divided into two groups; those which came from a school or laboratory identified as Bayesian and those which came from a school or laboratory identified as non-Bayesian. The paper analyses these responses using a likelihood approach. This approach is more consistent with a Bayesian analysis than one based on a frequentist approach, as was reported by Taroni F and Aitken CGG. [Probabilistic reasoning in the law, Part 1: assessment of probabilities and explanation of the value of DNA evidence] in Science & Justice 1998.

Developing a population approach to gambling health issues

The Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) has developed this briefing paper to highlight the health impacts connected to gambling and in particular problem gambling.  This paper was developed to give information to Government Departments who are currently reviewing gambling legislation across the island of Ireland.  It draws attention to the impact problem gambling can have on the individual, family and community health and well-being.

Coevolutionary networks: a novel approach to understanding the relationships of humans with the infectious agents

Human organism is interpenetrated by the world of microorganisms, from the conception until the death. This interpenetration involves different levels of interactions between the partners including trophic exchanges, bi-directional cell signaling and gene activation, besides genetic and epigenetic phenomena, and tends towards mutual adaptation and coevolution. Since these processes are critical for the survival of individuals and species, they rely on the existence of a complex organization of adaptive systems aiming at two apparently conflicting purposes: the maintenance of the internal coherence of each partner, and a mutually advantageous coexistence and progressive adaptation between them. Humans possess three adaptive systems: the nervous, the endocrine and the immune system, each internally organized into subsystems functionally connected by intraconnections, to maintain the internal coherence of the system. The three adaptive systems aim at the maintenance of the internal coherence of the organism and are functionally linked by interconnections, in such way that what happens to one is immediately sensed by the others. The different communities of infectious agents that live within the organism are also organized into functional networks. The members of each community are linked by intraconnections, represented by the mutual trophic, metabolic and other influences, while the different infectious communities affect each other through interconnections. Furthermore, by means of its adaptive systems, the organism influences and is influenced by the microbial communities through the existence of transconnections. It is proposed that these highly complex and dynamic networks, involving gene exchange and epigenetic phenomena, represent major coevolutionary forces for humans and microorganisms.

A Proportional Approach to Bankruptcy Problems with a guaranteed minimum

In a distribution problem, and specfii cally in bankruptcy issues, the Proportional (P) and the Egalitarian (EA) divisions are two of the most popular ways to resolve the conflict. The Constrained Equal Awards rule (CEA) is introduced in bankruptcy literature to ensure that no agent receives more than her claim, a problem that can arise when using the egalitarian division. We propose an alternative modi cation, by using a convex combination of P and EA. The recursive application of this new rule finishes at the CEA rule. Our solution concept ensures a minimum amount to each agent, and distributes the remaining estate in a proportional way. Keywords: Bankruptcy problems, Proportional rule, Equal Awards, Convex combination of rules, Lorenz dominance. JEL classi fication: C71, D63, D71.

Women's Mental Health: Promoting a Gendered Approach to Policy and Service Provision

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A Multiplex-PCR approach to identification of the Brazilian intermediate hosts of Schistosoma mansoni

Due to difficulties concerning morphological identification of planorbid snails of the genus Biomphalaria, and given a high variation of characters and in the organs with muscular tissue, we designed specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primers for Brazilian snail hosts of Schistosoma mansoni from available sequences of internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) of the ribosomal RNA gene. From the previous sequencing of the ITS2 region, one primer was designed to anchor in the 5.8S conserved region and three other species-specific primers in the 28S region, flanking the ITS2 region. These four primers were simultaneously used in the same reaction (Multiplex-PCR), under high stringency conditions. Amplification of the ITS2 region of Biomphalaria snails produced distinct profiles (between 280 and 350 bp) for B. glabrata, B. tenagophila and B. straminea. The present study demonstrates that Multiplex-PCR of ITS2-DNAr showed to be a promising auxiliary tool for the morphological identification of Biomphalaria snails, the intermediate hosts of S. mansoni.

14 principles of best practice for Service Delivery: An Interculturally Competent Approach to Meeting the Needs of Victims/Survivors of Gender-based Violence

14 principles of best practice for Service Delivery: An Interculturally Competent Approach to Meeting the Needs of Victims/Survivors of Gender-based Violence Click here to download PDF 390kb This is a publication of the Womens Health Council

An algebraic operator approach to the analysis of Gerber-Shiu functions

We introduce an algebraic operator framework to study discounted penalty functions in renewal risk models. For inter-arrival and claim size distributions with rational Laplace transform, the usual integral equation is transformed into a boundary value problem, which is solved by symbolic techniques. The factorization of the differential operator can be lifted to the level of boundary value problems, amounting to iteratively solving first-order problems. This leads to an explicit expression for the Gerber-Shiu function in terms of the penalty function.

The Road to Recovery: A New Approach to Tackling Scotland's Drug Problem

The Scottish National Drugs Strategy requires the 22 regional Drug Action Teams to prepare and submit to the Scottish Executive annual action plans for tackling drug misuse in their areas. These plans should address national and local priorities, including their contribution to the achievement of national targets. These comprise three parts: Part A provides an overview of the DAT structures and working; Part B provides detailed information on current local services and Part C reports plans for 2003/04.This resource was contributed by The National Documentation Centre on Drug Use.

Everybody active, every day: An evidence-based approach to physical activity

‘Everybody active, every day’ is a national, evidence-based approach to support all sectors to embed physical activity into the fabric of daily life and make it an easy, cost-effective and ‘normal’ choice in every community in England.PHE has co-produced the framework with over 1,000 national and local leaders in physical activity and is calling for action from providers and commissioners in: health, social care, transportation, planning, education, sport and leisure, culture, the voluntary and community sector, as well as public and private employers.To make active lifestyles a reality for all, the framework’s 4 areas for action will:change the social ‘norm’ to make physical activity the expectationdevelop expertise and leadership within professionals and volunteerscreate environments to support active livesidentify and up-scale successful programmes nationwide‘Everybody active, every day’ is part of the cross-government ‘Moving More, Living More’ campaign for a more active nation as part of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games legacy.

A direct approach to the discounted penalty function

This paper provides a new and accessible approach to establishing certain results concerning the discounted penalty function. The direct approach consists of two steps. In the first step, closed-form expressions are obtained in the special case in which the claim amount distribution is a combination of exponential distributions. A rational function is useful in this context. For the second step, one observes that the family of combinations of exponential distributions is dense. Hence, it suffices to reformulate the results of the first step to obtain general results. The surplus process has downward and upward jumps, modeled by two independent compound Poisson processes. If the distribution of the upward jumps is exponential, a series of new results can be obtained with ease. Subsequently, certain results of Gerber and Shiu [H. U. Gerber and E. S. W. Shiu, North American Actuarial Journal 2(1): 48–78 (1998)] can be reproduced. The two-step approach is also applied when an independent Wiener process is added to the surplus process. Certain results are related to Zhang et al. [Z. Zhang, H. Yang, and S. Li, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 233: 1773–1 784 (2010)], which uses different methods.

A simple logical approach to questioned envelopes examination.

This case report outlines research undertaken as the result of a document examination case in which two envelopes were involved. The combination of the circumstances of the case and the results of the examination allows a simple application of a logical approach to pre-assess the probability that an envelope (or a package) potentially recovered at a suspect's home comes from the same batch (same source) as questioned envelopes. This highlights that it is useful to examine envelopes.