The term “random effect” is now used much more broadly than it was, say, 50 years ago. At that time, a random effect was an effect having (in analysis-of-variance jargon) levels that were draws from a population, and the draws were not of interest in themselves but only as samples from the larger population (e.g., Scheffé 1959, p. 238). By contrast, new-style random effects have levels that are...

Most of the available results on optimal block designs for diallel crosses are based on standard linear model assumptions where the general combining ability effects are taken as fixed. In many practical situations, this assumption may not be tenable since often one studies only a sample of inbred lines from a possibly large (hypothetical) population. Recently Ghosh and Das (2003) proposed a ra...

INTRODUCTION Inbreeding coefficients for 9.3 million registered Holsteins were computed by constructing a small relationship matrix for each animal and its arxestors instead of one large matrix for the whole population. Recent cows averaged 2.0% inbreeding if each pedigree path was extended to the most recent ancestor born before 1960. Inbreeding was underestimated because some pedigrees includ...

An important theoretical problem for criminologists is an explanation for the robust positive correlation between prior and future criminal offending. Nagin and Paternoster (1991) have suggested that the correlation could be due to timestable population differences in the underlying proneness to commit crimes (population heterogeneity) andyor the criminogenic effect that crime has on social bon...

We study properties of Linear Genetic Programming (LGP) through several regression and classification benchmarks. In each problem, we decompose the results into bias and variance components, and explore the effect of varying certain key parameters on the overall error and its decomposed contributions. These parameters are the maximum program size, the initial population, and the function set us...

Control of wildlife pest populations by infectious recombinant virus, expressing genes for specific sterilization could be more effective than conventional reproductive antigens. Using the rabbit, I describe the mortality agents, provided that two conditions are met: research required to test the concept and discuss the legal 111 the endocrine function of affected animals is not and ethical con...

Both parametric and nonparametric tests show that housing price volatility is lower in states that impose a real estate transfer tax on transaction values than those that impose no such tax in the United States. However, regression analyses show no difference in price volatility between the two tax regimes, after controlling for known economic and demographic factors, such as income, population...

Predictors of random effects are usually based on the popular mixed effects model developed under the assumption that the sample is obtained from a conceptual infinite population; such predictors are employed even when the actual population is finite. Two alternatives that incorporate the finite nature of the population are obtained from the superpopulation model proposed by Scott and Smith (19...

Long-term absenteeism due to sickness has been increasing in the past two decades. This has raised many questions about causes, financing, and policy measures to prevent further increases. Answering these questions is even more important in a society with an aging population, which is expected to record even more cases. With data from the Swedish National Insurance Board, proportional hazards m...

We consider a class of cure rate frailty models for multivariate failure time data with a survival fraction. This class is formulated through a transformation on the unknown population survival function. It incorporates random effects to account for the underlying correlation, and includes the mixture cure model and the proportional hazards cure model as two special cases. We develop efficient ...