Influence of Educational Levels on Fertility Decisions amongst Females Participating in Labour Force in Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government Area of Ogun State Nigeria

The paper tries to examine the influence of educational levels on fertility decisions amongst females participating in labour force in Ado-odo/ota loco/ government area of Ogun state, Nigeria. A total sample size of 106 of women was interviewed through questionnaires administration. Frequency tables and chisquare were used to analyze the data collected. Only one hypothesis was tested in this study. The fact obtained from frequency table buttressed that the highest proportion of f emale respondents acquired secondary educational qualifications. The result derived from the chi-square is that the higher the level of education, the lower the number of children that females participating in labour force had. However, the paper recommends that for Nigeria to be able to reduce her fertility level and achieve developmental goals simultaneously, then women's education should b·e vigorously encouraged by Nigerian citizens, government and nongovernmental/ multi-national agencies in terms of granting full scholarship awards to them

Les décisions pénales dans les causes d’homicide au tribunal de Montréal, de 1985 à 1989

This paper tries to shed a light on the attrition process and on the factors influencing the sentencing's decision making process, for criminal homicide cases prosecuted in Montreal between 1985 and 1989 inclusively. The results showed that unlike the police mainly laying murder charges, 55 % of the 142 sentenced were found guilty of manslaughter. Therefore a large number has less than eight years in prison to serve before eligibility to full parole. The accused who commited an homicide associated with another crime or a settling of accounts, who went through a trial, who had a criminal record and who killed a woman significantly encounter a greater possibility to be sentenced on a murder charge. Yet a sequence in the decision making process can be observed: once is settled the type of charge to be definitive at the end of the criminal process, the factors studied influence rather little the severity of the imposed sentence. Finally the author points out how the prosecution mode of these homicide cases played an important part on the two levels of decision

Partial fillup and search time in LC tries

Andersson and Nilsson introduced in 1993 a level-compressed trie (in short: LC trie) in which a full subtree of a node is compressed to a single node of degree being the size of the subtree. Recent experimental results indicated a 'dramatic improvement' when full subtrees are replaced by partially filled subtrees. In this paper, we provide a theoretical justification of these experimental results showing, among others, a rather moderate improvement of the search time over the original LC tries. For such an analysis, we assume that n strings are generated independently by a binary memoryless source with p denoting the probability of emitting a 1. We first prove that the so called alpha-fillup level (i.e., the largest level in a trie with alpha fraction of nodes present at this level) is concentrated on two values with high probability. We give these values explicitly up to O(1), and observe that the value of alpha (strictly between 0 and 1) does not affect the leading term. This result directly yields the typical depth (search time) in the alpha-LC tries with p not equal to 1/2, which turns out to be C loglog n for an explicitly given constant C (depending on p but not on alpha). This should be compared with recently found typical depth in the original LC tries which is C' loglog n for a larger constant C'. The search time in alpha-LC tries is thus smaller but of the same order as in the original LC tries.Comment: 13 page

Two Hardware Implementations of the Exhaustive Synthetic AER Generation Method

Address-Event-Representation (AER) is a communications protocol for transferring images between chips, originally developed for bio-inspired image processing systems. In [6], [5] various software methods for synthetic AER generation were presented. But in neuro-inspired research field, hardware methods are needed to generate AER from laptop computers. In this paper two real time implementations of the exhaustive method, proposed in [6], [5], are presented. These implementations can transmit, through AER bus, images stored in a computer using USB-AER board developed by our RTCAR group for the CAVIAR EU project.Commission of the European Communities IST-2001-34124 (CAVIAR)Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC-2003-08164-C03-0

Fast Approximate Reconciliation of Set Differences

We present new, simple, efficient data structures for approximate reconciliation of set differences, a useful standalone primitive for peer-to-peer networks and a natural subroutine in methods for exact reconciliation. In the approximate reconciliation problem, peers A and B respectively have subsets of elements SA and SB of a large universe U. Peer A wishes to send a short message M to peer B with the goal that B should use M to determine as many elements in the set SB–SA as possible. To avoid the expense of round trip communication times, we focus on the situation where a single message M is sent. We motivate the performance tradeoffs between message size, accuracy and computation time for this problem with a straightforward approach using Bloom filters. We then introduce approximation reconciliation trees, a more computationally efficient solution that combines techniques from Patricia tries, Merkle trees, and Bloom filters. We present an analysis of approximation reconciliation trees and provide experimental results comparing the various methods proposed for approximate reconciliation.National Science Foundation (ANI-0093296, ANI-9986397, CCR-0118701, CCR-0121154); Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowshi

Mind the gap! A multilevel analysis of factors related to variation in published cost-effectiveness estimates within and between countries

Background. Published cost-effectiveness estimates can vary considerably, both within and between countries. Despite extensive discussion, little is known empirically about factors relating to these variations. Objectives. To use multilevel statistical modeling to integrate cost-effectiveness estimates from published economic evaluations to investigate potential causes of variation. Methods. Cost-effectiveness studies of statins for cardiovascular disease prevention were identified by systematic review. Estimates of incremental costs and effects were extracted from reported base case, sensitivity, and subgroup analyses, with estimates grouped in studies and in countries. Three bivariate models were developed: a cross-classified model to accommodate data from multinational studies, a hierarchical model with multinational data allocated to a single category at country level, and a hierarchical model excluding multinational data. Covariates at different levels were drawn from a long list of factors suggested in the literature. Results. We found 67 studies reporting 2094 cost-effectiveness estimates relating to 23 countries (6 studies reporting for more than 1 country). Data and study-level covariates included patient characteristics, intervention and comparator cost, and some study methods (e.g., discount rates and time horizon). After adjusting for these factors, the proportion of variation attributable to countries was negligible in the cross-classified model but moderate in the hierarchical models (14%−19% of total variance). Country-level variables that improved the fit of the hierarchical models included measures of income and health care finance, health care resources, and population risks. Conclusions. Our analysis suggested that variability in published cost-effectiveness estimates is related more to differences in study methods than to differences in national context. Multinational studies were associated with much lower country-level variation than single-country studies. These findings are for a single clinical question and may be atypical