Climate change is affecting every aspect of human activities, especially the agriculture. In China, extreme drought events caused by climate change have posed a great threat to food safety. In this work we aimed to study the drought risk of maize in the farming–pastoral ecotone in Northern China based on physical vulnerability assessment. The physical vulnerability curve was constructed from th...

The rate of transition of young adults from living with parents or renting to homeownership affects the national homeownership rate. There are substantial racial and ethnic differences in the length of time that it takes for this transition to occur, contributing to the well-known racial gaps in ownership rates. These differences are important because they affect the length of time that househo...

This paper discusses issues faced in using epidemiologic data to develop quantitative estimates of risk from specified patterns of exposure to a toxicant. We focus on use of data from cohort studies with binary endpoints (occurrence or non-occurrence of disease). Relative advantages of Cox regression and Poisson regression are presented. A general form of exposure metric is presented, and crite...

BACKGROUND this study aims to develop and evaluate a simple fracture risk index for use in frail older people. METHODS clinical risk factors were assessed at baseline for 2,005 older people (473 males, 1,532 females; mean age 85.7 years, SD 7.1 years) living in aged-care facilities. Fractures were ascertained for 2 years from baseline. Cox regression model was used to identify significant ris...

Assessing security-related risks in software or systems engineering is a challenging task: often, a heterogeneous set of distributed stakeholders create a complex system of (software) components which are highly connected to each other, consumer electronics, or Internet-based services. Changes are frequent and must be handled efficiently. Consequently, risk assessment itself becomes a complex t...