Statistical expansions and locally uniform Fréchet differentiability

Estimators which have locally uniform expansions are shown in this paper to be asymptotically equivalent to M-estimators. The M-functionals corresponding to these M-estimators are seen to be locally uniformly Fréchet differentiable. Other conditions for M-functionals to be locally uniformly Fréchet differentiable are given. An example of a commonly used estimator which is robust against outliers is given to illustrate that the locally uniform expansion need not be valid

Assessment of Saudi Public Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Mental Health Disorders and Its Demographic Correlation

Objectives: To assess Saudi citizen’s level of knowledge, attitude and stigma toward mental disorders and its demographic correlations. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study carried out in 15 PHC centers in Hail City, Saudi Arabia; among 403 participants from Jan to May 2020 by using a questionnaire includes the MH Knowledge Scale (MAKS) to assess the levels of MH literacy and the perceived devaluation and discrimination scale (PDD) to evaluate the levels of MH stigma and among the Saudi populations attended the Primary health Care centers. Results: The findings revealed that only 16% of the participants had a high level of knowledge, and only 22 % had low stigma attitude toward MH illnesses. They expressed high familiarity and recognition of schizophrenia and depression. The higher level of MH knowledge was associated with young age, males, students, and those who had experience with mental disorders or had a relationship with MH patients. High stigma attitude was associated with older participants, those with only primary level education, and housewives. In addition, there was a significant positive correlation between high MH knowledge and a positive stigma attitude. Conclusion: working on enhancing community awareness, promoting education, and developing anti-stigma interventions are highly recommended to ameliorate the level of MH knowledge and attitude to improve MH care. Keywords: mental health knowledge, stigma, mental disorders, MAKS, PDD, attitude, PHC, Saudi Arabia. DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/107-01 Publication date: April 30th 202

Clinical Validation of a Whole Exome Sequencing Pipeline

Establishing whole exome sequencing (WES) in an accredited clinical diagnostic space is challenging. The validation (as opposed to verification) of an approach that will lead to clinical reports requires adhering to international guidelines and recommendations and developing a robust analytical pipeline that can scale due to the increasing clinical demand for comprehensive gene screening. This chapter will present a step-wise approach to WES validation that any laboratory can follow. The focus will be on highlighting the pivotal technical issues that must be addressed in validating WES and the analytical tools and QC metrics that must be considered before implementing WES in a clinical environment

Valuation Of Continuously Monitored Double Barrier Options And Related Securities

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/92059/1/j.1467-9965.2010.00469.x.pd

Psychological impact and psychosocial consequences of the COVID 19 pandemicResilience, mental well-being, and the coronavirus pandemic

Since December 2019, the coronavirus (COVID19) outbreak has impacted everyone's daily lives globally, especially those experiencing mental health issues. The well-being and mental healthcare of patients, families, and health-care professionals who have been directly or indirectly affected by this pandemic has not been well addressed. Governments have asked their citizens to take actions, some of which include making sacrifices that may result in dignity violations and moral injury, a term originating in the military to describe the psychological distress that results from actions, or the lack of them, which violate a person's moral or ethical code. Health professionals, individuals, and communities have changed their way of life and working to decrease coronavirus infectivity, causing additional stress and increasing potential for moral injury. It is important to hear the first-hand experience of people affected to understand the new psychosocial stressors that they face in their day to day lives and what they found helpful in managing these. This global survey carried out by the World Dignity Project in collaboration with the Global Mental Health Peer Network is to ensure that the voices of people with lived experience of mental health, their families, and professionals that work with them are heard. Aims: To understand the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on mental health, well-being, and dignity, what has helped and what lessons can be learned to support coping in future. Materials and Methods: Online qualitative and quantitative survey (April 15-June 15, 2020)Participants gave narrative responses to several questions, posting photos or images. Analysis: Narrative responses were analyzed using the Gioia approach, a systematic inductive approach to develop concepts that help make sense of socially constructed worlds. Visual ethnographic data was used to give insight into the participant's socio-cultural context.publishersversionpublishe

Poland and the EU Do recent disputes threaten the accession process?

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:3830.23425(16) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Threshold Stochastic Conditional Duration Model for Financial Transaction Data

This paper proposes a variant of a threshold stochastic conditional duration (TSCD) model for financial data at the transaction level. It assumes that the innovations of the duration process follow a threshold distribution with a positive support. In addition, it also assumes that the latent first-order autoregressive process of the log conditional durations switches between two regimes. The regimes are determined by the levels of the observed durations and the TSCD model is specified to be self-excited. A novel Markov-Chain Monte Carlo method (MCMC) is developed for parameter estimation of the model. For model discrimination, we employ deviance information criteria, which does not depend on the number of model parameters directly. Duration forecasting is constructed by using an auxiliary particle filter based on the fitted models. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed TSCD model and MCMC method work well in terms of parameter estimation and duration forecasting. Lastly, the proposed model and method are applied to two classic data sets that have been studied in the literature, namely IBM and Boeing transaction data