Geo additive Cox Models with Gaussian and Binomial Links for the Analysis of Wasting status of Nigerian Children

Malnutrition is associated with more than half of all children deaths worldwide. A study into geographical variability of nutritional status of children in Nigeria was observed from krigingand thecontinuous covariates weight for height (wasting) that exhibit pronounced non-linear relationships with the response variable was analysed. The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 3 (MICS3) data set contains several variables. Only those that are believed to be related to nutritional status were selected. All categorical covariates are effect coded. The child’s age is assumed to be nonlinear; the state is spatial effect while other variables are parametric in nature. Wasting is higher among children in the urban areas, the more rich the parents the more prevalence of wasting. Mother’s education is inversely associated with child’s wasting. Sex of the child is not significant with wasting and severe wasting is prevalent in the Northern region of the country. The study builds a statistical model that will help various health agencies in the country in developing a framework, policies and programmes that will improve child health care. Keywords: Wasting, Categorical data, Binomial,Gaussian, and Krigin

A simulation study of the negative effect of the competing ability of incorrupt persons on the time to extinction of corrupt interactions in a system

The Judicial and Economical approaches employed over the years in combating corruption practices has not been completely successful. This work seeks to complement these approaches as it applied the Sterile Insect Techniques (SIT) in curbing corruption. This was done with the intent of investigating the negative effect of the competing ability (CA) of the incorrupt persons on the time to extinction of corrupt interactions in a system. The model successfully determined the number of incorrupt interaction that will completely prevent the flow of corrupt interactions arising from the corrupt persons in the system. Various scenario of competing abilities were simulated. This begins with CA = 1.0 down to CA = 0.0 with a step size of 0.1. The result showed that for a system of carrying capacity of twenty (20), it takes a time interval of 52 to 492 time units for corrupt interactions to go extinct (with 52 time units for CA = 1.0 and 492 time units for CA = 0.1). The overall result showed that, low competing abilities reflect negatively on the extinctions’ time of corrupt interactions in a system. In conclusion, the introduction of persons with unwavering integrity in a system, will reduce the negative effect of extending the time to extinction of corrupt practices in a system