The current study consists of three major parts. Statistical modeling, the connection between statistical modeling and cluster analysis, and proposing new methods to cluster time dependent information. First, we perform a statistical modeling of the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emission in South Korea in order to identify the attributable variables including interaction effects. One of the hot issues in the earth in 21st century is Global warming which is caused by the marriage between atmospheric temperature and CO2 in the atmosphere. When we confront this global problem, we first need to verify what causes the problem then we can find out how to solve the problem. Thereby, we find and rank the attributable variables and their interactions based on their semipartial correlation and compare our findings with the results from the United States and European Union. This comparison shows that the number one contributing variable in South Korea and the United States is Liquid Fuels while it is the number 8 ranked in EU. This comparison provides the evidence to support regional policies and not global, to control CO2 in an optimal level in our atmosphere. Second, we study regional behavior of the atmospheric CO2 in the United States. Utilizing the longitudinal transitional modeling scheme, we calculate transitional probabilities based on effects from five end-use sectors that produce most of the CO2 in our atmosphere, that is, the commercial sector, electric power sector, industrial sector, residential sector, and the transportation sector. Then, using those transitional probabilities we perform a hierarchical clustering procedure to classify the regions with similar characteristics based on nine US climate regions. This study suggests that our elected officials can proceed to legislate regional policies by end-use sectors in order to maintain the optimal level of the atmospheric CO2 which is required by global consensus. Third, we propose new methods to cluster time dependent information. It is almost impossible to find data that are not time dependent among floods of information that we have nowadays, and it needs not to emphasize the importance of data mining of the time dependent information. The first method we propose is called “Lag Target Time Series Clustering (LTTC)” which identifies actual level of time dependencies among clustering objects. The second method we propose is the “Multi-Factor Time Series Clustering (MFTC)” which allows us to consider the distance in multi-dimensional space by including multiple information at a time. The last method we propose is the “Multi-Level Time Series Clustering (MLTC)” which is especially important when you have short term varying time series responses to cluster. That is, we extract only pure lag effect from LTTC. The new methods that we propose give excellent results when applied to time dependent clustering. Finally, we develop appropriate algorithm driven by the analytical structure of the proposed methods to cluster financial information of the ten business sectors of the N.Y. Stock Exchange. We used in our clustering scheme 497 stocks that constitute the S&P 500 stocks. We illustrated the usefulness of the subject study by structuring diversified financial portfolio.

Thesis (Ph. D. (Science)) -- University of Limpopo, 2015 / The objectives of the study were to examine the demographic profile and causes of death of people dying in a hospital and community; and to determine mortality rates, specifically age- and gender-specific mortality rates in a community. The study also compared causes of death assigned to hospital records with causes of death obtained from verbal autopsy reports. Methodology The data used in this thesis were collected in two phases. The first phase involved a retrospective review of all deaths that occurred in the Pietersburg/Mankweng Hospital Complex from 1st January, 2011 to 31st December, 2012. The second phase involved a community-based study using a verbal autopsyto determine cause of death in Dikgale HDSS for the same period. Results A total of 5402 deaths were reported in the hospital and 625 in the community. The majority of deaths in the hospital involved adults in the 15 to 49 year old age group, while in the community more deaths were recorded amongst adults aged 15 to 49 years of age and those in the 65+ year old age group. There were more male deaths in the hospital, while in the community a higher proportion of deaths occurred amongst females. v In children less than1 year old, the cause of death in the hospital was predominantly due to perinatal conditions, particularly preterm birth, low birth weight and birth asphyxia; while in the community, of the 5 deaths in this age group, infectious diseases were recorded as the main cause of death. Amongst children in the 1 to 4 year old age groups causes of hospital deaths were dominated by infectious diseases, injuries and malnutrition; while in the community infectious diseases were the main cause of death. Stillbirths were noted in the hospital with a stillbirth rate of 29.1/1000 deliveries. In the community no stillbirths were reported. More than half of the stillbirths were caused by unexplained intrauterine foetal causes followed by maternal hypertension in pregnancy and placenta abruption. For adults in the 15 to 49 year old age groups infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, were the leading causes of death in both the hospital and in the community. The proportion of deaths due to HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis was significantly greater in the community than in the hospital. Amongst adults in the 50+year old age group non-communicable diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases and cancers were the most common causes of death. In this age group, the hospital recorded more cancer deaths than did the community; while the community recorded more cardiovascular deaths than did the hospital. vi The overall mortality rate in the community was 8.4 deaths per 1000 person-year, with more deaths occurring amongst males (8.9 deaths per 1000 person-year). The mortality rate was high amongst adults in the 65+ year old age group (48.9 deaths per 1000 person-year). When comparing cause-specific mortality between hospital cause of death notification forms and cause of death determined by verbal autopsy reviews, the same top five underlying causes of death were observed, namely: cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases, diabetes mellitus, malignant neoplasms and respiratory infections. The agreement between causes of death reported on cause of death notification forms and cause of death as a result of a verbal autopsywas 48%. For individual causes, agreement of more than 80% was achieved between cause of death recorded on cause of death notification forms and from verbal autopsy reviews for respiratory infections, diabetes, malignancies and injuries. Infectious diseases (68.5%) and cardiovascular diseases (74.1%) achieved the lowest agreement. In other words, in only 68.5% and 74.1% respectively was the cause of death as recorded on the “cause of death notification” forms the same as the cause of death when reviewed verbally. Furthermore, 13 deaths were recorded as being due to cardiovascular diseases on the “cause of death notification” forms, however, in only 5 of these cases was the cause of death recorded as the same in the verbal autopsy report. In 21 cases cause of death was attributed to infectious diseases on the cause of death notification form, vii while in only 13 of these cases was the cause of death similarly ascribed after verbal autopsy review. Conclusion This study showed that the verbal autopsy instrument has the potential to identify causes of death in a population where deaths occur outside of health facilities. Procedures for death certification and coding of underlying causes of death need to be streamlined in order to improve the reliability of registration data. This will be achieved if medical students and trainee specialists are trained in the completion of cause of death notification forms. Foetal autopsies should be introduced at tertiary hospitals to determine the causes of stillbirths.Antenatal care education for pregnant women should be encouraged because the level of antenatal care has an influence on the health of mothers and their newborns. The government should continue to focus on improving the socio-economic status of the population, while adequate foetal monitoring by health workers may reduce neonatal deaths resulting from preterm births, low birth weight and birth asphyxia. Innovative injury prevention strategies, interventions to control infectious diseases, cancer screening and lifestyle program may reduce adult mortality.

Sepsis is still a leading cause of death in the United States despite extensive research and modern advancement in technology. Early recognition of sepsis and timely management strategies are important for effective reduction of sepsis-related morbidity and mortality. Guided by the logic model, the purpose of this project was to evaluate the effectiveness of electronic reminders in enhancing clinical decision-making among 30 nurses in 3 medical-surgical units. The practice-focused question addressed the effectiveness of electronic reminders for early recognition and initiation of goal-directed treatment of sepsis in hospitalized patients on medical-surgical units in an effort to reduce sepsis mortality rates. Data were collected from a randomized convenience sample using a self-constructed questionnaire and through observation. The observations were aimed at assessing whether the nurses adhered to the sepsis protocol, while the questionnaire captured the participants' perceptions regarding the use of automated alerts measured on a 5-point Likert scale. Statistical analysis involved the use of frequencies and percentages, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV). The results indicated that all the nurses adhered to sepsis protocol. The sepsis-related mortality rate, mean response time, and rate of severe sepsis at the hospital were reduced by 17.2%, 14 minutes, and 11.1%, respectively. It was concluded that automatic alert systems improve nurses' ability to recognize early symptoms of sepsis and their ability to initiate Code Sepsis. However, replication of this study using a large sample size could provide findings that are more generalizable. Electronic reminders may promote positive social change because earlier recognition of sepsis by nurses may lead to a reduction of healthcare costs through improved management of sepsis patients in acute care settings.

No description available.

MCur / Department of Advanced Nursing Science / Background: Perinatal and neonatal mortality rates remain high in South Africa especially in rural areas and townships where the majority of poor people live. With regard to perinatal and neonatal mortality, South Africa like many other developing countries has failed to achieve MDG 4 and 5 by 2015 regardless of many efforts by the governments. To achieve the SDG which replaced MDGs for child health, it is necessary for the South African public and private health care to reduce substantially perinatal and new born deaths, particularly in rural areas. There are many factors that contribute to a high perinatal mortality rate in public hospitals in rural areas. To understand these factors, a study was conducted with midwives from selected public hospitals in Limpopo, Vhembe district which experiences the highest perinatal mortality rates in South Africa. Purpose and methodology: The purpose of this research study was to assess factors contributing to high perinatal mortality rates in the selected public hospitals in Vhembe district. A quantitative, descriptive, exploratory and cross-sectional design was used to collect data from the sampled hospitals in the Vhembe district. Hospitals were purposively sampled based on the statistics of monthly deliveries. The target population consisted of all registered midwives who had been working in the maternity units for at least two years. Cochrane's formula was used to determine the sample from the target population for each hospital. A random sample of 110 respondents was selected upon which a questionnaire was administered to each by the researcher. Responses from the close-ended and open-ended questions was grouped and analysed quantitatively by means of Statistical Package for Social Sciences 23.0 (SPSS). Results and findings: Results were presented in frequency tables and graphs revealed that most of the midwives lacked knowledge and skills in a number of key areas needed for them to operate efficiently in the maternity wards. There was also high staff turnover which led to a few midwives being overworked. The utilisation of guidelines and protocols in maternity was left to individual midwives as the hospitals did not evaluate the use of it. Conclusions: Lack of key skills in assisting women in labour, and poor use of guidelines and understaffing were the main contributing factors to high perinatal mortality rates in the selected public hospitals of Vhembe district. Midwife attitudes were not a contributory factor. / NRF

The objectives of this study are to provide a comprehensive assessment of inequalities in infant and under-five years' child survival, access to and utilisations of child health services among different socio-economic groups in Ethiopia; and identify issues for policies and programmes at national and sub-national levels. This thesis examines the effect of parental socioeconomic status, maternal and delivery care services, mothers' bio-demographic and background characteristics on the level of differences in infant and under-five years' child survival and access to and utilisation of child health services. Descriptive and multivariate analyses were carried out for selected variables in the literature which were consider as the major determinants of infant mortality rate (IMR) and under-five years' child mortality rate (U5MR); access to and utilisations of child health services based on data from Ethiopian demographic and health survey (EDHS), covering the years 2000-2005. In the multivariate analysis a logit regression model was used to estimates inequalities in infant and under-five years' child survival, and inequalities in access to and utilisation of child health services. In Ethiopia, little was known about inequalities in IMR and U5MR, and inequalities in access to and utilisation of child health services. Besides, there is no systematic analysis of health inequalities and into its determinants using logistic regression. According to the available literature, this is the first comprehensive and systematic analysis of inequality of health in Ethiopia. The findings show that compared to under-five years' children of mothers' partners with no work, mothers' partners in professional, technical and managerial occupations had 13 times more chance of under-five years child survival for 2000 weighted observations. In addition, compared to infants of mothers who were gave birth to one child in last 5 years preceding the survey, infants of mothers who were gave birth to 2 children in last 5 years preceding the survey had 70% less chance of infant survival while infants of mothers who were gave birth to 3 or more children had 89% less chance of infant survival for 2000 weighted observations. Moreover, this study finding also indicates that inequalities increased significantly in the five years period between 2000 and 2005 among mothers with different birth interval. Most of the relations between birth interval and receiving childhood immunisation for vaccine-preventable diseases were statistically significant. Moreover compared to non-educated mothers, mothers who completed secondary and higher education were nearly 10 times more likely to receive DPT3 immunisation for their young children. This study concludes that policy measures that tackle health inequalities will have a positive impact in the implementation of health sector strategy of Ethiopia. Health inequalities studies in Ethiopia and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries should focus on systematic analysis of different socio-economic groups. The finding of this study support investing in the Ethiopia's health extension package (HEP) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for addressing rural poor health problem. HEP is successful in increasing primary health care coverage in rural Ethiopia to 89.6% (FMOH, 2009) but unable to reduce Ethiopia's higher level of IMR and U5MR. HEP is one of the success stories that address the rural poor health problem and can also be adapted to developing countries of SSA. The finding also shows that the success stories such as health insurance programs like Rwanda (World Bank, 2008a) and Ethiopia (FMOH, 2009/10) will play a key role in achieving country's health care financing goal of universal coverage. This can also be replicated in the developing SSA countries.

La mortalité aux jeunes âges devenant de plus en plus faible, l’augmentation de l’espérance de vie est de plus en plus dépendante des progrès en mortalité aux âges avancés. L’espérance de vie à 65 ans et à 85 ans n’a cependant pas connu un rythme de progression continu depuis les trois dernières décennies. Ces changements dans l’évolution de l’espérance de vie proviennent de changements dans les tendances de certaines causes de décès et de leurs interactions. Ce mémoire analyse la contribution des causes de décès aux changements qu’a connus l’espérance de vie, mais aussi l’évolution spécifique des taux de mortalité liés aux principales causes de décès au Canada entre 1979 et 2007. Finalement, une analyse de l’implication de ces changements dans un contexte de transition épidémiologique sera réalisée, par un questionnement sur le fait que l’on assiste ou non au passage de certaines pathologies dominantes à d’autres. La réponse à ce questionnement se trouve dans l’étude de l’évolution par âge et dans le temps des causes de décès. Les résultats montrent que les progrès en espérance de vie à 65 ans et à 85 ans sont encore majoritairement dus à la diminution de la mortalité par maladies cardiovasculaires. Toutefois, ces dernières causes de décès ne sont pas les seules à contribuer aux progrès en espérance de vie, puisque les taux de mortalité dus aux dix principales causes de décès au Canada ont connu une diminution, bien qu’elles n’aient pas toutes évolué de la même manière depuis 1979. On ne semble ainsi pas passer d’un type de pathologies dominantes à un autre, mais à une diminution générale de la mortalité par maladies chroniques et à une diversification plus importante des causes de décès à des âges de plus en plus avancés, notamment par la diminution des «grandes» causes de décès. / With the decrease of mortality at younger ages, gain in life expectancy is heavily dependent on the progress in old age mortality. However, over the last three decades, life expectancies at 65 and 85 years old have not experienced a constant rate of progress. Changes in life expectancy progress come from changes in specific causes of death trends and their interactions. The present thesis studies the contribution of causes of death on the changes in life expectancies and the trends in death rates of specific causes of death in Canada between 1979 and 2007. An analysis of those changes in an epidemiological transition context has also been done by questioning whether or not we are witnessing a shift from certain dominant diseases to others. This questioning will be answered by studying variation in the causes of death by age and over time. The results of this study show that progress in life expectancies at 65 and 85 years old are still mainly due to the decrease in cardiovascular mortality. However, cardiovascular diseases are not the only causes of death to contribute to the progress in life expectancy. Since 1979, mortality rates from the ten leading causes of death in Canada have all declined but in different ways. Thus, there does not seem to be a shift in the dominant causes of death towards others in Canada, but there is a general mortality decline from chronic diseases and a greater diversification of causes of death at older ages.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the determinants of high neonatal mortality rates in Migori County, Kenya. The neonatal mortality cases were utilised as the target population to the study. A quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional, non-experimental research design was used. A systematic sampling technique was employed to draw a sample of 201 archived neonatal cases out of 420 neonatal mortality medical records, which constituted the study population. Data were collected by means of a developed questionnaire. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 21 was used to analyse data. The main findings revealed the leading determinants of neonatal mortality were early neonatal period, prematurity, poor 1st Apgar score, low birth weight and neonates with intrapartum complications. Obstetrical haemorrhage and HIV were the main maternal complications associated to neonatal mortalities, while the leading direct causes of death in this study were birth asphyxia and sepsis. Other determinants were gender, rural residence, lowly educated and informally employed mothers. To reduce mortalities, a multifaceted approach is needed to establish quality improvement in neonatal intensive care, reduce preterm birth incidences, and empower mothers socio-economically. / Health Studies / M.A. (Nursing Science)

La mortalité aux jeunes âges devenant de plus en plus faible, l’augmentation de l’espérance de vie est de plus en plus dépendante des progrès en mortalité aux âges avancés. L’espérance de vie à 65 ans et à 85 ans n’a cependant pas connu un rythme de progression continu depuis les trois dernières décennies. Ces changements dans l’évolution de l’espérance de vie proviennent de changements dans les tendances de certaines causes de décès et de leurs interactions. Ce mémoire analyse la contribution des causes de décès aux changements qu’a connus l’espérance de vie, mais aussi l’évolution spécifique des taux de mortalité liés aux principales causes de décès au Canada entre 1979 et 2007. Finalement, une analyse de l’implication de ces changements dans un contexte de transition épidémiologique sera réalisée, par un questionnement sur le fait que l’on assiste ou non au passage de certaines pathologies dominantes à d’autres. La réponse à ce questionnement se trouve dans l’étude de l’évolution par âge et dans le temps des causes de décès. Les résultats montrent que les progrès en espérance de vie à 65 ans et à 85 ans sont encore majoritairement dus à la diminution de la mortalité par maladies cardiovasculaires. Toutefois, ces dernières causes de décès ne sont pas les seules à contribuer aux progrès en espérance de vie, puisque les taux de mortalité dus aux dix principales causes de décès au Canada ont connu une diminution, bien qu’elles n’aient pas toutes évolué de la même manière depuis 1979. On ne semble ainsi pas passer d’un type de pathologies dominantes à un autre, mais à une diminution générale de la mortalité par maladies chroniques et à une diversification plus importante des causes de décès à des âges de plus en plus avancés, notamment par la diminution des «grandes» causes de décès. / With the decrease of mortality at younger ages, gain in life expectancy is heavily dependent on the progress in old age mortality. However, over the last three decades, life expectancies at 65 and 85 years old have not experienced a constant rate of progress. Changes in life expectancy progress come from changes in specific causes of death trends and their interactions. The present thesis studies the contribution of causes of death on the changes in life expectancies and the trends in death rates of specific causes of death in Canada between 1979 and 2007. An analysis of those changes in an epidemiological transition context has also been done by questioning whether or not we are witnessing a shift from certain dominant diseases to others. This questioning will be answered by studying variation in the causes of death by age and over time. The results of this study show that progress in life expectancies at 65 and 85 years old are still mainly due to the decrease in cardiovascular mortality. However, cardiovascular diseases are not the only causes of death to contribute to the progress in life expectancy. Since 1979, mortality rates from the ten leading causes of death in Canada have all declined but in different ways. Thus, there does not seem to be a shift in the dominant causes of death towards others in Canada, but there is a general mortality decline from chronic diseases and a greater diversification of causes of death at older ages.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze two major indicators representing the processes of natural changes in population, which are not influenced by age structure -- age specific fertility rate and age specific mortality rate and to introduce functional data analysis, which has recently become increasingly applied in many scientific fields. The functional data analysis is introduced on the Czech demographic data set for more than last sixty years. The thesis briefly describes historical development of mortality and fertility and also describes selected methods of functional data analysis by using statistical program R. Functional data analysis provides a wide variety of graphics tools to explore the data which we called functional and help us to explore all typical and atypical features, identify outliers etc.