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Understanding and improving the public risk perception have become an important element in the management of flood risk. In China, the risk government is of so-called nationwide catastrophe response mode which is different from the widely adopted “bottom up” risk governance mode in the Western countries. Such a particular mode may make Chinese people perceive risk in a different way from people in other countries. Hence, a further discussion of risk perception is of great value in China. This paper presents a case study on the public perception of flood hazard and flood risk in a city prone to floods. The relationship between risk perception and exposure was examined by spatial analysis. Meanwhile, inferential testing with chi-squared tests was undertaken regarding experience, social trust, and protective behaviors. Our results suggest that (1) the relationship between exposure and risk perception of people in Nanjing is positive and statistically significant, (2) flood experience was strongly related to risk perception, (3) trust showed a significant relationship to risk perception, and (4) people who have perceived the probability of floods and associated loss of life have a higher willingness to take more protective measures. These findings will help local government to develop effective flood risk communication strategies for improving public awareness creation, emergency response and preparedness.

This paper introduces and studies a new discrete distribution with one parameter that expands the Poisson model, discrete weighted Poisson Lerch transcendental (DWPLT) distribution. Its mathematical and statistical structure showed that some of the basic characteristics and features of the DWPLT model include probability mass function, the hazard rate function for single and double components, moments with auxiliary statistical measures (expectation, variance, index of dispersion, skewness, kurtosis, negative moments), conditional expectation, Lorenz function, and order statistics, which were derived as closed forms. DWPLT distribution can be used as a flexible statistical approach to analyze and discuss real asymmetric leptokurtic data. Moreover, it could be applied to a hyperdispersive data model. Two different estimation methods were derived, i.e., maximal likelihood and the moments technique for the DWPLT parameter, and some advanced numerical methods were utilized for the estimation process. A simulation was performed to examine and analyze the performance of the DWPLT estimator on the basis of the criteria of the bias and mean squared errors. The flexibility and fit ability of the proposed distribution is demonstrated via the clinical application of a real dataset. The DWPLT model was more flexible and worked well for modeling real age data when compared to other competitive age distributions in the statistical literature.

The main aim of the paper was to investigate factors influencing flight delays of a European airline. Besides the identification and analysis of those factors the paper offers possible suggestions on how to eliminate the delays. The research is based on data acquired over the period of time spanning from June to September in 2008 – 2014. Analysis of contingency tables, including Pearson’s chi‑squared test, has been used for data processing. The dependencies have been presented in graphical form by using correspondence maps. The proportion of delayed flights reaches approx. 50 % during nearly the entire monitored period only in September the proportion drops to 45 %. Flight delays are most frequently caused by delays of previous flights of the same plane. These previous delayed flights are the main culprit of long delays and the frequency of delay occurrence caused by this reason increases significantly during the day. Longer delays of flights appear also due to technical maintenance or aircraft defects. On the contrary other factors such as operational control and crew duty norms, air traffic control and airport limitations tend to cause rather shorter delays of flights with the air traffic control encountering more problems with coordination of flights in the early morning. The supply and service companies also manage to eliminate long delays.

This paper examines the effect of weather conditions on truck type distribution using combined nonparametric chi-squared and binomial probability statistical tests. Influence of the winter conditions on truck type distribution is investigated in this paper by classifying trucks into single-unit trucks, single-trailer, and multi-trailer units. The investigation is based on 5 years Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) traffic data collected from Alberta provincial highway network in Canada. The WIM data is collected from six WIM sites located on Highway 2, Highway 2A, Highway 3, Highway 16 and Highway 44. The objective of this study is to investigate the association of three truck type distribution with month and season depending on weather conditions by means of nonparametric statistical test. The statistical results indicate that the variation of truck type distribution is influenced by type of highway facility, such as regional commuter roads and rural long distance highways. The season of the year (winter and non-winter) may also affect the truck type distribution on some types of roads. Findings of this study can benefit highway agencies in developing programs and policies related to efficient monitoring of truck traffic and maintaining highway network throughout the year.

Genome-wide association studies the evaluation of association between candidate gene and disease status is widely carried out using Cochran-Armitage trend test. However, only a small number of research papers have evaluated the distribution of p-values for the Cochran-Armitage trend test. In this paper, an enhanced version of Cochran-Armitage trend test based on bootstrap approach is introduced. The achieved results confirm that the distribution of p-values of the proposed approach fits better to the uniform distribution, and it is thus concluded that the proposed method, which needs less assumptions in comparison with the conventional method, can be successfully used to test the genetic association.

Intermittent motion mechanisms are widely used in semiautomatic and automatic machinery. Currently, the most common are mechanisms with a one-way coupling or mechanisms of variable structure. The intermittent movement in these mechanisms is provided by breaking the kinematic chain, so their use is undesirable in high-speed machines. The paper presents and analyzes kinematics of planetary transmission with elliptical gears, which performs intermittent motion of output link without interruption of kinematic chain. A kinematic model of the mechanism is constructed, and there are obtained equations for determining the velocity analogue of the output link of the planetary gear. An experimental verification of the adequacy of the developed mathematical model was carried out on the example of studying the position function of the mechanism. The measurement errors were estimated using statistical methods. Using the chi-squared test, the hypothesis of a normal distribution of measurement errors was verified, and confidence interval was determined.

One of the negative trends in current nutrition is an increased consumption of refined foods with a low content of useful nutrients and antioxidants and an abundance of oxidation accelerators. Fruit paste and jelly have a relatively low energy value, compared to other confectionery products. Along with this fact, they also have gel- ling agents and fruit raw materials in their composition, which can classify them as diet food. This paper presents a comprehensive approach to developing a technology for producing fruit jelly with an improved carbohydrate profile. For that, we used viburnum and orange puree, a valuable natural plant material, as a source of carbohydrates, and fructose, as a sugar substitute. The qualimetric model created from the tasting data was used to select the optimal proportions of the main ingredients, viburnum and orange puree, as 25:75 and 75:25. The comparative assessment of antioxidant capacity (AOC) showed that the sample with the 75:25 ratio of viburnum to orange puree had an AOC of 22.33 μmol TEq/g. It was twice as high as AOC of the 25:75 ratio sample. With a glycaemic index of 29.2, this fruit jelly can be recommended as a diet food with preventative properties.

Shared mobility is an innovative transportation strategy defined as the shared use of a vehicle, bicycle or other mode which enables users to gain short-term access to transportation modes on an as-needed basis. Bike-sharing systems have rapidly expanded around the world with important implications for urban areas. Considering the benefits regarding cycling and implications deriving from bike-sharing services implementation, this paper presents an in-depth analysis to investigate a variety of determinants, barriers and motivation that can influence the willingness to cycling and join bike-sharing. The study focuses on a specific target group represented by university students and their preferences have been collected through a structured questionnaire in applying the Likert Scale. A statistical analysis has been realized based on a chi-squared test, deriving the difference between expected and observed frequencies for several combinations of the analyzed attributes. First results highlight the differences between the impact of economic, environmental and social factors for students cycling and provide useful suggestion to define the way for a well-thought-out design of a bike-sharing transport service.

Revitalization of local cities is one of the major issues of our country, and various actions are performed in terms of tourism, economic ripple effect due to inbound which is increasing in recent years is expected. Not to mention the importance of MICE showed by the Japan National Tourism Organization, in recent years, the importance of increasing the number of visitors to Japan by MICE has been recognized as for the traditional tourism industry. MICE tourism is known to have a much greater economic effect than general tourism travel. In particular, the international convention is attracting attention, because it can increase the economic ripple effect in the regional area of venue. According to the survey made by the Japan Tourism Agency, the economic ripple effect for total Japan by the international conference in FY2017 was announced to be about 678.9 billion yen. Regarding the holding of international conventions, the organizer first plans two to three years before the held time. What is important in planning is to raise the motivation of the participants and make them repeaters of the relevant international conference. Local cities (such as government, bureau, DMO etc.) wanting to invite international conferences propose their own venues and regional features to organizers. It is desirable that this content leads to the interest of the organizer and the satisfaction of participants, which is the key to success of the invitation. In this paper, we conducted a questionnaire survey for interests and expectations concerning international conferences for multinational participants at the academic international convention held in Japan. Based on the survey results, understand the interests and expectations concerning the conference venues and tourism of participants to the international conference to be held in Japan, and clarify the difference depending on nationality. As a result, local cities will be able to design and develop unique venues that consider participants' expectations for attracting international conventions and can make effective proposals to organizers.

This paper deals with statistical inference procedure of multivariate failure time data when the primary covariate can be measured only on a subset of the full cohort but the auxiliary information is available. To improve efficiency of statistical inference, we use quadratic inference function approach to incorporate the intra-cluster correlation and use kernel smoothing technique to further utilize the auxiliary information. The proposed method is shown to be more efficient than those ignoring the intra-cluster correlation and auxiliary information and is easy to implement. In addition, we develop a chi-squared test for hypothesis testing of hazard ratio parameters. We evaluate the finite-sample performance of the proposed procedure via extensive simulation studies. The proposed approach is illustrated by analysis of a real data set from the study of left ventricular dysfunction.

In this paper we investigate a semiparametric testing approach to answer if the Gaussian assumption made by McLachlan et al. (2006) on the unknown component of their false discovery type mixture model was a posteriori correct or not. Based on a semiparametric estimation of the Eu-clidean parameters of the model (free from the Gaussian assumption), our method compares pairwise the Hermite coefficients of the model estimated directly from the data with the ones obtained by plugging the estimated parameters into the Gaussian version of the false discovery mixture model. These comparisons are incorporated into a sum of square type statistic which order is controlled by a penalization rule. We prove under mild conditions that our test statistic is asymptotically χ 2 (1)-distributed and study its behavior under different types of alternatives, including contiguous non-parametric alternatives. Several level and power studies are numerically conducted on models close to those considered in McLachlan et al. (2006) to validate the suitability of our approach. We also discuss the lack of power of the maximum likelihood version of our test in a neighborhood of certain non identifiable situations and implement our testing procedure on the three microarray real datasets analyzed in McLachlan et al. (2006) and comment our results. Finally we discuss possible extension of this work to more general models. MSC 2010 subject classifications: Primary 62F03, 28C20; secondary 33C45.

In this paper we investigate a semiparametric testing approach to answer if the parametric family allocated to the unknown density of a two-component mixture model with one known component is correct or not. Based on a semiparametric estimation of the Euclidean parameters of the model (free from the null assumption), our method compares pairwise the Fourier’s type coefficients of the model estimated directly from the data with the ones obtained by plugging the estimated parameters into the mixture model. These comparisons are incorporated into a sum of square type statistic which order is controlled by a penalization rule. We prove under mild conditions that our test statistic is asymptotically $\chi^{2}_{1}$-distributed and study its behavior, both numerically and theoretically, under different types of alternatives including contiguous nonparametric alternatives. We discuss the counterintuitive, from the practitioner point of view, lack of power of the maximum likelihood version of our test in a neighborhood of challenging non-identifiable situations. Several level and power studies are numerically conducted on models close to those considered in the literature, such as in McLachlan et al. [21], to validate the suitability of our approach. We also implement our testing procedure on the Carina galaxy real dataset which low luminosity mixes with the one of its companion Milky Way. Finally we discuss possible extensions of our work to a wider class of contamination models.

CONTENIDO Editorial. El papel de la agroforestería en la Facultad de Ciencias Forestales y Ambientales. The role of Agroforestry in the Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Sciences. Noguera L., Oscar E. y Plonczak Ratschiller, Miguel Andrés Artículos Producción y descomposición de la hojarasca en tres agroecosistemas de café en el estado Trujillo, Venezuela. Production and descomposition of litter in three coffee agroecosystems in the Trujillo State, Venezuela. Arellano G., Rosalva; Paolini, Jorge; Vasquez, L. y Mora de Pinto, Elba Marina Caracterización papelera de la especie Schizolobium parahybum. Caracterization wastebasket of the Schizolobium parahybum species. Mogollón, Gladys M.; Aguilera, Antonio V.; Gutiérrez G. Ilvania; Adams, Rubén y Ruiz, Sandra Uso potencial de algunos extractos de corteza de Pinus caribaea y Pterocarpus officinalis, en el control de bacterias y hongos en la industria de pulpa y papel. Potential use of some extracts bark of Pinus caribaea and Pterocarpus officinalis for controling bacteria and fungi in the pulp and paper industry. Gutiérrez G. Ilvania; Mogollón, Gladys M.; Nieves Blanco, Beatriz; Encinas, Osvaldo; Carrero Sulbarán, Sarelie; Chille, Angela y Ramos, Eduardo Caracterización de huertos caseros como sistemas agroforestales en el estado Mérida, Venezuela. Characterization of homegardens as agroforestry systems in Mérida State, Venezuela. Petit, Judith; Padilla, Adriana; Suniaga Q., José; Rincón Toledo, Angel; Padilla, Delfina; Betancourt, Arquímedes Análisis del error tipo I en las pruebas de bondad de ajuste de independencia, utilizando el muestreo de parcelas de área fija. Analysis of the type I error in the tests of goodness of fit and independence in forest inventories, using fixed-area plot. Quintero M., Maria Alejandra y Durán, Mariano J. Anatomía de la madera de ocho especies útiles en carpintería y ebanistería. Wood anatomy of eight species used in carpentry and ebanisteria. León Hernández, Williams J. Capacidad de retención de humedad de un inseptisol de los Andes venezolanos y su afectación por la pérdida de suelo superficial y la acción de abono orgánico. Impact of topsoil loss and organic fertilizer applicaton on water storage capacity in an inceptisol of the Venezuelan Andes. Ferrer, Gilberto y López, Roberto A. Especies del género Helicotylenchus (Nemátoda) en plantaciones de Teca y bosques naturales de Venezuela. Species of Helicotylenchus (Nemátoda) in Teak plantations and natural forest of Venezuela. Bracamonte, Lilian; Maggiorani, Alfredo; Holmquist, Otón; Cadenas, Aurora; Briceño, Elizabeth y Renaud, Juan Identificación de especies del género Helicotylenchus (Nematoda) en Venezuela. Parte I. Identification of species of Helicotylenchus (Nematoda) in Venezuela. Part I. Bracamonte, Lilian; Maggiorani, Alfredo; Holmquist, Otón; Cadenas, Aurora; Briceño, Elizabeth y Renaud, Juan Propiedades físico-mecánicas y usos posibles de la especie forestal Erotheca globosa (Aublet) A. robyns (Ceiba Roja) proveniente del lote boscoso San Pedro, estado Bolívar, Venezuela. Physical-mechanical and possible uses of the wood Erotheca globosa (Aublet) A. robyns (Ceiba roja) from the lote boscoso San Pedro, Bolívar State, Venezuela. Merlo P., Julio C.; Reyes C., Elio C.; Garay J., Dario A. y Valero, Styles W. Insectos del orden Coleóptera de importancia forestal en Venezuela. Coleoptera forest insects from Venezuela. Briceño Vergara, Armando J. y Hernández, Fraternidad Insectos del orden Lepidóptera de importancia forestal en Venezuela. Lepidoptera forest insects from Venezuela. Briceño Vergara, Armando J. y Hernández, Fraternidad Efectos de la densidad de plantación y tratamientos de poda sobre la producción de Pinus taeda L. a los seis años de edad. Stand density and prune treatments effects over six year old yield plantation of Pinus taeda L. Costas, Rubén; Mac Donagh, Patricio; Weber, Elizabeth; Irschick, Pedro y Palavecino, José Tesis Elaboración de tableros de Partículas con costaneras de la especie Erisma uncinatum (Mureillo) de la Guayana venezolana. Particleboards made from Erisma uncinatum (Mureillo) sawmill slabs Venezuela-Guayana. Esquerre I., Grace; Garay J., Dario A. y Durán P., Jorge A. Uso potencial de algunos extractos de corteza de Pinus caribaea var. hondurensis y Pterocarpus officinalis, en el control de bacterias y mohos en la industria de pulpa y papel. Potential use of some extracts bark of Pinus caribaea and Pterocarpus officinalis for controling bacteria and fungi in the pulp and paper industry. Gutiérrez G., Ilvania; Mogollón, Gladys M.; Nieves Blanco, Beatriz; Encinas, Osvaldo; Carrero Sulbarán, Sarelie; Chille, Angela y Ramos, Eduardo mariaq@ula.ve mjdurann@ureach.com, duranca04@yahoo.com semestral Nivel analítico

The sharp decline in exports and industrial production, rising unemployment and rapidly eroding consumer confidence had a severe negative impact on tourism consumption. This paper explores the factors that affected tourist's behaviour, hence their preferences and holiday destination choice on the background of the economic crisis. It is focused on a qualitative methodology approach that is based on a questionnaire and a quantitative research based on statistical data. The research was structured to build an understanding of how the economic crisis affected the tourists that “consume” tourism products and which have made changes in their destination choices.

In 1939 N.I. Ermolaeva published the results of an experiment which repeated parts of Mendel’s classical experiments. On the basis of her experiment she concluded that Mendel’s principle that self-pollination of hybrid plants gave rise to segregation proportions 3:1 was false. The great probability theorist A.N. Kolmogorov reviewed Ermolaeva’s data using a test, now referred to as Kolmogorov’s, or Kolmogorov-Smirnov, test, which he had proposed in 1933. He found, contrary to Ermolaeva, that her results clearly confirmed Mendel’s principle. This paper shows that there were methodological flaws in Kolmogorov’s statistical analysis and presents a substantially adjusted approach, which confirms his conclusions. Some historical commentary on the Lysenko-era background is given, to illuminate the relationship of the disciplines of genetics and statistics in the struggle against the prevailing politically-correct pseudoscience in the Soviet Union. There is a Brazilian connection through the person of Th. Dobzhansky.

To estimate cell probabilities for ordered sparse contingency tables several smooth- ing techniques have been investigated. It has been recognized that nonparametric smoothing methods provide estimators of cell probabilities that have better performance than the pure frequency estimators. With the help of simulation examples it is shown in this paper that these smoothing techniques may help to get test which are more powerful than Chi-Squared test with raw data. But the distribution of the Chi-Squared statistics after smoothing is unknown. This distribution can also be estimated by simulation methods.

Background The evaluation of associations between genotypes and diseases in a case-control framework plays an important role in genetic epidemiology. This paper focuses on the evaluation of the homogeneity of both genotypic and allelic frequencies. The traditional test that is used to check allelic homogeneity is known to be valid only under Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, a property that may not hold in practice. Results We first describe the flaws of the traditional (chi-squared) tests for both allelic and genotypic homogeneity. Besides the known problem of the allelic procedure, we show that whenever these tests are used, an incoherence may arise: sometimes the genotypic homogeneity hypothesis is not rejected, but the allelic hypothesis is. As we argue, this is logically impossible. Some methods that were recently proposed implicitly rely on the idea that this does not happen. In an attempt to correct this incoherence, we describe an alternative frequentist approach that is appropriate even when Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium does not hold. It is then shown that the problem remains and is intrinsic of frequentist procedures. Finally, we introduce the Full Bayesian Significance Test to test both hypotheses and prove that the incoherence cannot happen with these new tests. To illustrate this, all five tests are applied to real and simulated datasets. Using the celebrated power analysis, we show that the Bayesian method is comparable to the frequentist one and has the advantage of being coherent. Conclusions Contrary to more traditional approaches, the Full Bayesian Significance Test for association studies provides a simple, coherent and powerful tool for detecting associations.