The life history characteristics of the rove beetle Paederus fuscipes Curtis were studied under laboratory conditions using three field strains from Malaysia: Desa Wawasan (DW), Sri Pinang (SP), and Ampang Jajar (AJ). The total development time of immature stages differed significantly among the three strains, especially between DW (17.43 +/- 0.16 d), SP (18.60 +/- 0.19 d), and AJ (18.68 +/- 0....

This book is a course of lectures on the mathematics of actuarial science. The idea behind the lectures is as far as possible to deduce interesting material on contingent present values and life tables directly from calculus and common-sense notions, illustrated through word problems. Both the Interest Theory and Probability related to life tables are treated as wonderful concrete applications ...

Formulas for constructing valid pointwise confidence bands for survival distributions, estimated using unequal probability samples, are derived. In addition, a test statistic for comparing estimated survival distributions from several groups is proposed. The methodology can be applied when survival times are subject to an independent censoring mechanism. The methods are illustrated using data f...

Complexity (or its opposite, regularity) of heart period variability has been related to age and disease but never linked to a progressive shift of the sympathovagal balance. We compare several well established estimates of complexity of heart period variability based on entropy rates [i.e., approximate entropy (ApEn), sample entropy (SampEn), and correct conditional entropy (CCE)] during an ex...

The first study was a retrospective analysis of 5,833 AIDS cases (based on the pre-1987 CDC clinical case definition) reported to the city of New York prior to December 31, 1985. The analysis of survival was done by a cross-linkage of death records. The authors acknowledge that this method "may have resulted in some underascertainment of deaths due to outmigration." If a subject moved his or he...