1. Proportional Odds of Nutritional Status of Under-Five Children in Nigeria Indexed by MUAC

   Anthony Ekpo¹ and Waheed Babatunde Yahya²

   1. Department of Mathematics/Statistics/Computer Science, University of Agriculture, PMB 2373, Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria.
   2. Department of Statistics, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria.

   Abstract: This paper present results regarding the impacts of some anthropometric, epidemiological and demographic factors on the nutritional status of under-five children which were categorized into three ordinal groups of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM) and Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) in Kazaure Local Government Area of Nigeria. An ordinal logit model that depicted the log-odds in favour of GAM (normal) child was fitted to the data based on a surveillance indexed by Mid-Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC). By this, the proportional odds of being in either of the nutritional status based on age, sex and measles when malnutrition surveillance is indexed by MUAC were determined. The results showed that, the proportional odd of measuring malnutrition prevalence using the MUAC index is (OR = 1.138, with p < 0.001). The sex of a child does not play a major role in determining the nutritional status of a child. Being vaccinated for Measles did not play a major role in classifying a child’s malnutrition status. Rather, variables that has to do with access to potable water, access to household food for children and other socioeconomic variable could be considered. Edema as a morbid state was found to be redundant in the study.

   Keywords: Statistical surveillance, severe acute malnutrition, anthropometrics, bilateral edema.

   Pages: 45 – 51 | Full PDF Paper

2. Effect of Parental Characteristics on Child Mortality in Myanmar

   Nyaung Tai, Su Hlaing Tin Htut, Thiri Swe, Hein Min Htet

   Central Statistical Organization, Ministry of Planning and Finance, Office(32), +9567, Naypyitaw, Myanmar.

   Abstract: This paper investigates that effect of parental characteristics on child mortality such as infant mortality, neonatal mortality, and under-5 mortalities in Myanmar. This research paper examines the health conditions of the 2015-2016 Myanmar Demographic and Health Survey (MDHS) that is the first DHS conducted in Myanmar, which is a nationally representative population-based survey with large sample sizes. According to the logistics regression estimation, parental characteristics such as wealth quintile, rich was less likely to compare with the poor for under-5 mortality and infant mortality that were statistically significant by (OR: 0.49; 95% CI: 0.26-0.94; p=0.033 and OR: 0.46; 95% CI: 0.24-0.92; p=0.060); the risk of under-5 child mortality, infant mortality, and neonatal mortality were strongly significant smaller for size of child (OR: 2.22; 99% CI: 1.24-3.95; p=0.007), (OR: 2.26; 99% CI: 1.25-4.06; p=0.007), and (OR: 3.76; 99% CI: 1.89-7.50; p=0.000) respectively. Utilization of health care services such as tetanus injection before birth, assistance of nurse/midwife, and assistance of traditional birth attendant were strongly significant parental characteristics such as wealth quintile, rich (OR: 1.78; 99% CI: 1.27-2.49; p=0.000), (OR: 1.40; 99 % CI: 1.07-1.83; p=0.013), and (OR: 0.22; 99 % CI: 0.15-0.33; p=0.000) respectively. The parental characteristics as wealth quintile, rich was more likely to compare with the poor for utilization of health care services such as tetanus injection before birth and assistance of the nurse/midwife; wealth quintile, rich was less likely to compare with poor for the assistance of traditional birth attendant. This paper finds suggests a significant and negative relationship between parental characteristics and child mortality; a positive relationship between health care services and parental characteristics.

   Keywords: Logistics Regression Method, Child Mortality, Parental Characteristics, Utilization of Health Care Services.

   Pages: 52 – 67 | Full PDF Paper

3. Alternative Representation of Semivalues, the Inverse Problem and Coalitional Rationality

   Irinel Dragan¹, Pierre Dehez²

   1. University of Texas, Department of Mathematics, 411 S.Nedderman Drive, Arlington, Texas 78019-0408, USA. E-mail: dragan@uta.edu
   2. University of Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics, 34 Voie du Roman Pays, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Email: pierre.dehez@uclouvain.be
   

   Abstract: The concept of semivalue of a transferable utility game has been introduced by Dubey, Neyman and Weber as weighted sum of marginal contributions. Later, Puente has introduced a particular class of semivalues, called binomial semivalues, where weights are obtained through a recursive procedure. In the present paper, we extend Puente’s procedure to obtain an equivalent representation of semivalues that turns out to be useful to solve the inverse problem and the question of coalitional rationality.

   Keywords: Transferable utility games, Semivalues, Inverse problem, Power game.

   Pages: 68 – 84 | Full PDF Paper

4. Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis combined with Singular Spectrum Analysis

   Anton Karmatskii

   Ural Federal University, 620026 Yekaterinburg, Russia

   Abstract: This paper addresses the problem of finding appropriate method for analysis of non-stationary time series with complex trends and possibly with distinct periodic components in power spectrum. A well established Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MDFA) combined with Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) used on several artificial examples to demonstrate the capabilities of the method. In this combined method SSA is used for nonparametric periodic components extraction and for adaptive automatic nonparametric trend extraction. As usual, the local fractal characteristics of the signal are studied by utilizing the MFDFA algorithm. It is shown that combined method is capable of accurately extracting fractal features when signal is contaminated with broadband and narrowband noise. The main task that the author focused on when creating the method was the analysis of currents through ion channels in cell membrane.

   Keywords: SSA, DFA, nonparametric.

   Pages: 85 – 93 | Full PDF Paper